When Ramona wakes up it's to the wailing of an alarm clock and the solid wood of a desk under her cheek. She can tell straight away she's not at home, without cracking open a single eye, because of a distinct lack of the damp scent of mildew that has plagued her apartment since the air conditioner started leaking two years ago. It was one of those things she'd always meant to replace, like the leaky tap, broken bed stand and faulty light switches. But like most things, she never got around to it. (Or more like never got around to being successful enough to afford it.)
Instead, wherever she is, the air is suffused with the clinical lemon scent of some generic cleaning product. The type used in hospitals with guaranteed 99.99% germ removal.
She cracks an eye open to survey the room and turn off the whining alarm but immediately moans in pain. The lights are on at full force, blinding her painfully and she throws herself back into the chair she's collapsed on, rolling backwards a few inches. By the time the white spots in her vision have faded the alarm clock has switched itself off.
The first thing she notices is the walls. Or rather, what's on the walls. Thousands of red strings connecting photos and papers and newspaper clippings. Like a conspiracy theorist gone even further off the deep end into some weird form of investigative art. It's the type of thing you find in a hidden room of a serial killer's house after all their neighbours swear that "he's such a nice man, he'd never hurt a fly." Except this unsettling collage isn't hidden at all, instead its displayed for everyone to see like some prized pig. Goosebumps ripple up her arms.
Ramona stands, swaying slightly, to back away from the red web of evidence. She feels dizzy and too tall, like a drunk woman in stilettos, except she can feel hardwood under her toes. She's not wearing shoes at all. Somehow she's made it barefoot into someone's creepy office and taken a nap.
And it is an office. That's obvious from the expansive and expensive looking desk, dark red mahogany, littered with the echoes of a high-intensity office job. One file has a name printed on the front in black block font.
Chief J.Caddel
Ramona takes a moment to wonder what the J stands for. Janice? Juniper? Jackson? She shakes the thought away.
Adjacent to the fancy desk is an exit, an ajar door. Either whoever owns this place doesn't care to keep me in, Ramona thinks, or I just left it open when I broke into their house. She trudges through, closing it behind her, still barefoot and debating whether or not she should shout out for help. There's none of the rising panic you'd expect of someone stranded in the unknown. Instead Ramona feels disconnected from her body, floating and omnipresent like an addict in the throes of a high.
The door leads to an empty hallway with two more doors. She tries the nearest one, slowly turning the metal handle with trepidation. The fear is unnecessary because no one is inside. Instead Ramona's greeted with a bathroom. Next to the sink is two toothbrushes (red and green), and an open tube of paste smearing on the marble. The medicine cabinet is open wide, the inside in disarray. More than one pill bottle is open, the contents messily spilling onto the cabinet's shelf.
Ramona closes it, glimpsing in its mirrored door, and freezes. There's a strange, familiar, woman in the glass. Ramona spins with urgency, trying to stutter out an apology, an explanation, a cry for help, but her tongue is too heavy and thick in her mouth. It doesn't matter anyway, the woman has disappeared without a sound. Ramona stumbles after her, frantically holding herself upright using the bathroom's doorway, and peers down the length of the hall.
Empty.
It's impossible. The woman can't have entered any of the rooms, the doors are all closed and Ramona would have heard the tell tale creak of a them opening. The stranger (owner of the house, maybe?) has evaporated into thin air, like mist. Or a ghost.
Chills crawl up Ramona's skin and she backs into the bathroom, closing the door tentatively and then locking it with building urgency. The previously absent panic starts to set in at a sluggish pace, flaring the nausea that has been stirring in her stomach since she woke up. It feels like a hundred ants are crawling along her intestines with pinching feet, stirring the acid of her stomach until it swirls like a tsunami.
She throws her head into the sink and throws up.
The bile is caustic, on its way out and as it lingers in her mouth. A rancid lemon rooted to the back of her tongue. Ramona almost hurls again. Keyword, almost.
Instead she flicks the faucet on, washing the evidence down the sink and out of her mouth. For good measure she splashes her face. The water is freezing cold which isn't optimal, but at least gives Ramona an excuse for her trembling hands. She looks up.
And immediately wishes she hadn't.
The woman is back in the glass, but this time her face is wet and terrified. A terrible premonition nudges Ramona into action.
Ramona smiles. The woman smiles, looking as unsure as Ramona feels.
Ramona waves. The stranger shakes a trembling hand back.
Ramona bursts into fat tears and so does, what is now undoubtedly, her reflection. Her reflection that DOES NOT HAVE HER FACE. The glass shows none of Ramona's brown ringlets and freckle spangled skin. The birthmark along her hairline. The eyes her mother resolutely insisted were "Hazel! Not brown, hazel."
It takes an embarrassing amount of time for Ramona to pull herself together, but it feels justified when considering she's facing the realisation she's just transmigrated.