Apples and cream

Cream, it's like cream. My neck is longer and paler than I remembered, though maybe the black dress just accentuates those features, adding false intensity, a forgery. My face looks peaceful, far more peaceful than I would've expected, if I'd known. I didn't know. Obviously, I didn't know. How could I? I still don't know. I don't know what happened, I don't know where I am. Where am I?

The only thing I do know is that I am outside of myself, because the me that I once was is currently bleeding out on the rainy, bloodstained cement. I think I must be a ghost, which is unfortunate, because ghosts always have cold hands, and my hands were already cold enough as is. Will anyone voluntarily hold my hands ever again?

My neck is like cream. It's stretched out, almost beautiful, so fragile. There's no life left in it. My neck does not move, but there's a small laceration by my Adam's apple, and blood drips down slowly, drips down softly.

This is so much quieter than I expected. I'm remembering more now—I'd been driving home from a bad date, and there was a crash, a car crash, and then I was no longer driving anywhere, I was dying, and then I was dead. I'm dead. I must be dead.

I can see shattered glass from the car's windows and windshield on the cement too, little icebergs atop a dark red backdrop. One of the shards must've pricked my neck, and that's why I'm bleeding. That's why the body in front of me, the one that was once me, is bleeding. Be logical, be rational. I'm trying, I'm trying.

The cut by my Adam's apple isn't what killed me, it can't be, but I don't think I want to look any closer. I'm a little self-conscious about my appearance, even after death. Instead, I focus on the drops of crimson slithering down my neck. My Adam's apple looks so prominent, and I wonder if I've always looked like that, and I wonder why no one ever told me.

I reach a hand out, or at least, I try to. There's no hand for me to reach out. I start to realize that I really don't exist, or at least, not in a corporeal sense. I'm thinking, so therefore I am, right? Surely Descartes knew what he was talking about. But who am I, and what am I?

My Adam's apple looks sheer white compared to the carmine rivulet beside it. I think the cut must've intensified somehow, because the blood pours thicker now, it pours faster. Or maybe it doesn't, maybe I'm seeing things. If I had a stomach, I might be sick. I'm not very fond of blood.

When I was younger, I ate red apples in October. Cool, crisp autumn days were incomplete without the sweetness of an apple. I had long braids back then, with bangs and glasses, and I had a little dog, and—it feels so real, why does it feel so real? I can taste those October apples, I can see that little girl with the bangs and the braids.

This is all very confusing, please bear with me. I've never died before, and I don't care to do it again. Once is enough. I wonder what happens next, and as I wonder, I start to feel faint. Everything becomes more distanced, and I feel a vast space begin to grow between myself and everything else.

I think this is it. The waiting period is over, the abyss beckons. I hope there's room in the void for one more speck of nothingness.

My Adam's apple is white, the blood is red, the dress is black. These are the colors of my death, how gory, how solemn. I might feel vaguely upset, if I had the ability. Now, all I feel is, well, nothing.