Chapter Text
The first thing Jessica Moore noticed was the smell. The putrid scent of charred fat assaulted her nostrils, masking all other senses for a few brief moments. Then, so suddenly that it was unfathomable she hadn't noticed it at once, pain flared from every nerve ending she possessed and Jess was certain she was burning alive. Panicked, her mind raced; she knew she could get to a faucet and quench the flames if she could just move, but try as she might, her body was immobile. The thrashing and screaming she had come to associate with violent deaths on television was conspicuously absent; her jaw had completely locked up and her limbs felt as though they were encased in a slab of concrete. Immobile and in excruciating pain, Jess stared down at her bed—and really, what an odd view to have while burning to death—and prayed that someone would save her. Her thoughts cycled through the same subjects, over and over again: Sam, her parents, a snapshot from her childhood, then the shocking white brought on by her sizzling flesh before the montage started again.
Sam, a voice in the back of her head, one that she thought would have surely been suffocated by now, hissed insistently. The man in the kitchen had said something about Sam.
And oh, how she wished Sam was here. Though it had surely only been a few minutes at most, Jess felt as though hours had passed since the initial flames. She hurt and she wanted someone, anyone to take it away.
Please! she tried to scream, still fighting for control of her own body. Please, help!
Suddenly, her view shifted to what she was used to; she was standing at the doorway of the room she shared with her boyfriend. The whole room was now ablaze and she could see the blistering mass of her own body pinned to the ceiling, but the young blonde felt curiously detached from the situation. In fact, the whole room seemed to be... fading. Rooms didn't just fade away, did they? But as far as Jess had been concerned, people didn't burn to death while pinned to their ceilings, either. She had been wrong before. Suddenly feeling incredibly tired, Jess closed her eyes and thought of Sam. Had he come home yet? She couldn't think. She couldn't remember. Where had he gone again? How long had she known him?
When she opened her eyes again, Jess was in a room so white, it glowed. A man was standing before her, appraising her. Was it Sam? What color hair had he had again? The man nodded to himself, apparently satisfied with whatever conclusion he had reached, and opened his mouth to speak. Whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a high pitched squeal, loud and intense and vaguely reminiscent of a hearing test. The young woman attempted to withstand the noise, curious to what the man wanted—and really, what had she been doing before then anyway?—but in the end, she was overpowered by the noise. Before she blacked out, Jess thought that she heard something along the lines of "Sam."
Who was Sam?