Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.

I seriously don't know where this came from, but I cried all the same.


I died.

Despite the various means and varying reasons that people die in the end everyone ends up - a simple pile of bones.

People die and no matter how much one tries to forget it - death is something inevitable. For me death just meant that I ended up in something's stomach.

I was eaten alive. It was as simple as that.

Except - somehow - it wasn't all that simple since I'm once again alive and kicking.

I was eaten alive, but not by bears or wolves or even lions. In the end, it wasn't even by something that could even be considered natural or even sane.

Since I died during what many would consider a Zombie Apocalypse.

Ripped to shreds by the ones I had once held dear in life.

Or at least that's what I think happened, because unfortunately (or fortunately) the situation surrounding my death is a little bit blurry. The last thing I remember is being close to my family as the world went to hell.

I died - I can remember those bits and pieces. The taste of blood in my mouth... The crunch of bone and flesh. Of becoming cold. I don't want to ever feel that sensation again. It wasn't such a crazy leap in logic that I gained... a distaste of being eaten alive again.

I should be dead. People just don't get back up again after death - ah, the irony of the statement. Yet here I am, once again kicking it up. Though don't get me wrong now. I didn't rise up from the dead and I'm not living it up in an undead hoard.

Not that there was much of anything left to rise back up from the dead anyway - if I'm remembering it right.

So how is it that I'm once again among the living? Maybe it was all a dream?

Has my family history finally caught up with me after all these years of ignorance and denial?

Am I...? Is this truly- A trap, a construct of my own mind?

I badly want it to be a dream, but I'm loosing it. I'm living a loosing battle against a bleeding heart. When my own bleeding heart was literal - I liked that scenario much better.

I'm weak. I'm scared. I'm afraid. Of night time and nap times. Of finding soft skin too cold. Of bright futures suddenly non-existent, and a room devoid of something barely heard.

I think to myself that this is all a dream - a dream. A dream that's all too real. A dream that lives and breathes and cries. A lucid dream that just won't end. A horrible, horrible dream that giggles and gasps and holds on tight.

A dream made of a steady beat and baby breaths.

Oh god, why is this so real..


A little hand in an equally tiny one is all it takes.


I don't sleep. I can't sleep, and I know that it's taking a toll on me.

I live day by day. With casual looks and casual touches.

Finger tips and the tips of a nose.

Warm breath-

-as you sleep.

Head to chest.

It lifts-

-it rests.

It falls and rises.

A reassuring feeling-

-to see that you're still breathing.


...