This is just a nightmare, I repeat to myself over and over.
No matter how many times I close my eyes and try to wake up, nothing happens.
"Who are you?" I whisper, my voice cracking.
"Why do you want to know my name?" he asks cynically, his voice has a mocking edge that makes the lizard part of my brain want to hide so deep nobody could ever find me.
His face shows no feeling.
"I don't know, but since I'm not going to resist, I just want to know the name of the person who caused my death, isn't that fair?" I mumble.
He laughs.
Two extremely sharp canines like a wolf's grazes his lower lip.
Why am I paying attention to his mouth?
"You have a point, little girl. I'm Theodore, but don't worry, you won't die like you think." A dark, sarcastic smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
He is wrong.
At that moment my essence was fading, my soul was darkening, and my humanity was hanging by a thread.
I am dead although my heart still beats and I breathe.
But his name and his face are engraved in my subconscious.
It's impossible to forget the face of the person who destroyed your life, especially since it's one of the most perfect faces I've ever seen.
The asphalt is hot beneath my back, every cell in my body aches with even the slightest movement.
I can feel the fractures, the injuries, the broken ribs, the blood running from my forehead and from various places on my body and soaking my clothes, which are probably torn, I'm not very keen on checking it right now.
In short, I am the perfect victim.
He, the relentless hunter.
Being so close, I can hear his breathing, slow and measured. His body is hidden under a black overcoat, like he is covered by pure darkness, immaterial.
The only things that distinguish him from the darkness are his absurdly fair complexion, his molten gold eyes, and the snow-white hair framing his cheekbones. A faint orange light like one of those old lanterns dances over his features, oddly entrancing.
His knee is pressing into the side of my thigh and the asphalt, the only point of contact, he is in the same position just looking at me since I opened my eyes.
Suddenly he bends over me slightly.
His hands are so quick and abrupt that it takes my brain a while to process what's happening and I flinch, the small movement sending more waves of pain that makes my vision white out.
It's only when my eyes return to normal that I'm able to understand what he did. The glint of a long, sharp object zeroes in my mind.
He stuck a needle in my heart.
A whitish, glistening liquid is being injected slowly.
I don't even feel it right away, the other pains are stronger, but little by little a feeling of numbness takes over me, as if it's a sedative.
I can't muster any reaction.
But I know it's not sedative.
I've seen enough medical series to know that they don't inject sedatives directly into the heart.
In between the blink of an eye he disappears, as if he had never been there. Like it was all in my head.
The syringe also disappears with him.
Then my body begins to be torn apart by nothing.
Every bone in my body is being crushed at the same time.
My throat closes up, I can't even scream. It burns like each viscera, one by one, is being ripped out by long, sharp nails.
I am being devoured alive, unable to react, my mouth locked in a silent scream that never ends.
Around me the night remains impassive, my vision blurred with tears that refuse to drop.
I feel blind.
Until my head gives way to the side.
Before I lose consciousness, I discover where the faint orange light is coming from.
At the foot of the ravine, about a hundred meters away from me, is the car I was in a few minutes earlier with my parents, completely engulfed in crackling flames of fire.