The world was brown and grey. The sky hung low over the muddy colored trees, a smudged charcoal drawing of shifting clouds. The air stirred around the solitary figure sitting motionless on the grey bench on the edge of the park. His red hoodie and dark blue jeans were the only real color here, outside of the exposed viscera of a dog left to rot on a bald patch of dirt nearby. The dogs mouth was stretched wide, yellowed teeth starkly bright in the dull light, withered lips pulled back in an eternal snarl.

The dog smelled of once-life, and the meat tugged at the figure's senses like a whisper across an empty room. There was a smell of fire, oil and burnt flesh too, brought to him by a languid breeze from the black husk of a car and its driver resting against an old oak, scarred by the meeting.

Something in him responded to these smells, wanted him to wander and find more, stronger smells, vibrant with life. But something else surrounded him, kept drawing him off of the task. Music. Weaving rhythms fluttering like heartbeats and voices laden with life circled him, saturated him, kept him listening and wandering through their offered landscapes.

The wandering had led him here, to sit at the edge of a dying park, to slowly become a part of the scenery, another dead thing scattered amongst trees casting off shriveled leaves.

He watched the leaves fall around him, watch them spin and twist on their way to the dry grass, their movements in time with the music surrounding him.

Dancing. The word rose like a bubble in the still lake of his mind, and he held it there at the surface, marveling at its meaning.

The leaves are dancing. Something stirred in him them, a memory of his body in motion. He followed it, and felt his body shift slightly, hesitantly. He'd been sitting motionless for a long time, the sensation was like the thawing of something buried beneath old blue ice. Slowly, as the music filled him, he moved, swaying like the creaking branches of the scarred oak before him.

"Hello?"

At first, he'd thought it was a part of the song. It didn't match the melody though and he thought that strange. His grey eyes opened.

Someone was walking around the bench. His senses sparked as he drew in their smell. Curious, he turned to look.

"Oh shit!"

He caught a glimpse of something colorful as it yelled and darted away. The smell withdrew.

A new song grew around him, and his gaze was drawn back to the falling leaves. Once more the melody stirred his body into motion as the beat swelled through him, threaded with voices mourning the loss of love.

Something tugged at him again, a scent, dizzying and vibrant, and deep within him, he felt something wake.

He opened his eyes again.

A young girl was staring at him a few feet away. She'd jumped back when he'd first opened his eyes, but was now standing still, watching him with a scrunched up face. Her scent was fascinating.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Something stretched within him, and nudged him to draw her scent in deep. It wanted it. He didn't understand why, and a new song replaced the old, drawing him back to the dancing leaves. His eyes fell closed.

"This is so weird!" the girl's voice spoke again. He weaved it through the music around him, made it dance with the leaves. "You're listening to music aren't you!"

The girl kept talking then, her voice rising and falling with an energy he could feel in the air. An energy that invaded his senses and set them buzzing. As the music faded his eyes opened once more and his gaze fell to his lap, his grey hands laying on either side, curled open to the sky.

"Good music?" the girl asked, and her words weren't dancing with the music anymore. His gaze rose from his lap and he turned to look at her, dazzled for a moment by the chaos of color surrounding her, by the life in her smile. She was sitting at the far end of the bench. Her nearness made something in him shudder, something that held him close as the music tried to pull him away again.

Stop. Not again.

Leaning towards him, she pointed. "What are you listening to?"

He gazed down at where she had pointed, but saw only himself, and looked back at her. Questions. The girl was asking questions. She wanted answers. He needed answers. Answers were sounds that made sense. He tried some sounds, but they didn't make sense.

I'm not doing this again!

The song finally reached through to him, and he looked out over the park, the vivid colors of the girl fading from his eyes to greys, browns and the dark exposed red of a snarling dog.

"Can I look?"

Suddenly her smell surrounded him so intensely he felt the air grow solid with it, and when he looked she was next to him, leaning near to him, and drawing something from his hoodie pocket. He watched, curious, still caught in the spell of song while something clawed him inside, screaming.

No! Fucking stop! The world stuttered and froze around them both for a moment, then continued on.

The screen flared up on the white device she'd drawn from his pocket, and she laughed. "Bloodstream? Ha! Zombie music!"

The music stopped abruptly as the screen went blank.

"Oops." The girl shifted slightly, and her hair fell from her neck. "I think the battery just died..."

Nonononono...

The loss of the music, deep in the middle of the song, left him profoundly lost. The little bit of life he'd been enveloped with fell away from him, leaving him reeling with a desperate emptiness.

His gaze fell to her neck, to the pulse beneath the skin. Something inside told him it was a new kind of music. A new rhythm to absorb. A better type of life.

"Maybe it just needs to be warmed up a little?"

I... I'm... hungry.

He drank in the energy of the girl's scent and knew it was what he needed.

TAKE.

His grey hands twitched, and rose, and his arms encircled the girl.

She immediately tried to jerk away, but his arms drew in like a vise, trapping her close.

"Hey!" she cried, and kicked, frantically trying to free herself. "Let me go!"

Leaning in, he tore out the life she held inside as she screamed and bucked beneath him.

I'M SORRY! I didn't WANT THIS! I'm sorry!

The world stuttered again, and suddenly, R was fully aware, fully himself. He felt the hard bench beneath him, felt his arms wrapped tightly about the still girl, and tasted blood in his mouth...

Oh no.

He drew back quickly, horrified, and tried to push the girl away. Her body fell back against the bench, blood pouring from the wound in her neck.

"Noo..." he moaned. It happened again. He'd killed her again. Something... was in his mouth. Something warm, solid, that made his mind buzz. He groaned and spat it out, overwhelmed with disgust.

When he turned back the girl was sitting upright, staring at him. Her brown eyes looked huge against her pale, blood flecked skin.

"You're sorry?" she said, as her skin started to turn grey.

Stunned, he stared back at her as she changed, then realized his dead body was changing too. Something he'd felt before, a return of life. Spreading as his heart pumped new blood through his body. The chill fall air crawled over his newly flushed skin and he shivered.

I'm dreaming... I'm just dreaming. Maybe I can talk to her, make these dreams stop...

Those big eyes stared at him, slowly turning an alien silver, as he tried to talk to her, desperate for understanding, for forgiveness.

"I'm so sorry I killed you, I...I didn't mean to. I didn't know what I was doing."

Her voice was a hoarse whisper as her mouth drew back over dark teeth. "Little late for that, don't you think?"

"Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing this to me?" he asked, his voice raising, pleading for something that made sense. This was his dream, his imagination, why was he doing this to himself?

With a guttural rasp, she moved towards him on the bench.

As she advanced, he jerked away, terrified, intending to run, but her arm snaked out and a grip like steel closed around his wrist.

"Let me go," he demanded, his heart starting a frantic rhythm in his chest.

Wake up... wake up... wake up...

The girl smirked, "You didn't let me go."

"I was a corpse!" he cried, "I couldn't help it - I'm sorry!" Frantically, he tried to pry her hand off, but she only drew him closer.

"Well I'm a corpse now... and I'm HUNGRY," she snarled, jaws opening wide as she attacked.

She moved so quickly, he had no time to twist away. Her jaws fastened on his throat, tearing through the flesh of his neck, and he screamed, kicking and punching at her, trying desperately to get her off, the agony making him wild and frantic. Grabbing his flailing arm, she slammed it repeatedly against the bench until it fell away from him, numb, then ripped her head back, tearing a mass of tissue from his throat.

Blood, dark and red, sprayed across her face, over the bench and down his hoodie. Jerking back in shock, he tried desperately to hold back the rush of his life blood, but the wound was too big. It poured over his hand, a viscous hot river, and he fell shuddering against the bench.

Jesus! I'm dying! WAKE UP!

"Not yet," she rasped, a small smile spreading across her face as her mouth worked on what she had torn from him. Swallowing thickly, her smile turned into a black grin, smudged red with gore, "You need to feel what you did to me."

Falling on him again, her jaws tore deeper through the muscles of his neck, and he moaned, trying and failing to fight her off again, his body growing sluggish from loss of blood. It spattered against the ground beneath him through the slats of the bench.

"Please..." he whispered, no longer able to move, to fight. Everything was starting to pull away, and it terrified him. The last time he'd died in a dream, he'd changed and almost killed people. He'd hurt Julie. He couldn't do that again. Whatever part of him was doing this to himself, he had to reach it, make this stop. "I'm s-sorry..."

"I know," she sighed, withdrawing from his throat. With sad eyes, she stared down at him, blood dripping from the soaked grey skin of her jaws. "I'm sorry too."

A little spark of hope flared in him as his vision started to fade. Had he reached her? With a painful wrench, his heart spasmed in his chest.

"But I'm not a figment of your imagination," she whispered, leaning in close as his breath hitched and stilled. "I'm real."

As the grey charcoal sky and her face, drying and stretching to the mummified husk of a skeleton, dissolved into a void of nothing, her gravel voice echoed in his dying mind.

"FIND ME."