Chapter One

                I died on a Monday.  There is not a single good thing about Mondays. You wake up, you end up dragging ass while getting ready. You spend the whole day trying to get back into the “weekday” routine. Nobody wants to be at work.  The coffee doesn’t do its job, you’re running behind half the time, and sometimes you die.  Or is that just me?

            It started out as a normal day. I hit the snooze three times and woke up fifteen minutes later than I needed to be up. I ran out the door, with my coffee in hand, to make a twenty-minute drive in ten minutes.  When I arrived at my office and got out of the car, I tried and spilled coffee all over my blouse. Of course, I did. I was wearing white. My tits were a magnet for messes, especially when they were covered in white. When I opened the front door, I heard our weekly morning meeting already taking place.  I tried to sneak in the back of the room without being noticed. I took my seat and tried to hide my blouse under my blazer.

            “Rachel, I see you’re late again as usual.”  Damn. My sneaky entrance was not so unnoticed. “Would you like to go over what you did last week with the group?” my boss continued to my coworkers. Double Damn.  What did I do last week? I’d slept since then. I cannot remember anything. And they’re all staring with their grumpy morning faces. “Um. Well, last week….” Come on. Something. Anything. I saw my saving grace on the white board behind my boss’s head.  “I mainly worked on analyzing the latest samples from the Schekovsky project. Results are inconclusive.”  That seemed to be a sufficient response. My boss returned to his previous topic.  Good. Let me finish my coffee. Please.

                I’m a biochemist by the way.  It’s a smaller company and somehow all my coworkers are men. Old, unattractive, nerdy men.  I suppose I won in the gene pool lottery that is life. I’m a girl. I’m attractive. And I’m smart. Shocker.  If only any of these things did me any good. I never date or meet new friends because I’m surrounded by the same twenty faces every week. I have no external interactions in my workplace.  I could have been a nurse. Lots of pretty girls are nurses. If I had gone that route, I wouldn’t have been working in a male dominated team. But you know. People… They suck.  I do not want to spend my days caring for dim whited asshats.  I especially do not want to be stuck with the frequent guests that are in for their fifth “deathly” googled symptoms of the month.  I’d be the one to accidentally slip up. By visit number two, I’d be telling them that they are asshats and to stay off the internet.  I would the nurse that got fired every time I spoke my mind. I preferred to stay behind the scenes and away from the “sick” masses. At least that way, I stayed employed.

                Anyways, back to THE Monday.  My last Monday living. The meeting dragged on, I finally got to escape to my office.  I took my lunch at the normal time. Business as usual.  I had plans after work on this Monday. A blind date. I never make plans after work, but this evening I agreed to plans for some reason. Let that be a sign. Make plans and you die.  My workday ended and I gathered my things up. I was ready to go rush and still run late for my next event of the day. Seemed to be my thing.  I was driving home and realized I would never make it to the date without stopping. Everything could have been fine. I could have avoided my death entirely, but fate seems to have its way I guess. When I was rushing that morning, I forget to grab gas. I was cruising on E and had to stop somewhere. I pulled into the closest gas station, and it seemed kind of empty.  Like the gas stations usually stay when they’re overpriced or out of the way.  Not a huge crowd. In fact, I saw one other car parked by the building. There were no other cars in the lot. Kind of creepy and it was already dark outside at this point. The darkness and dim lighting in the parking lot added to the creep factor. That hair raising feeling that happens when you overthink and scare yourself. 

                And then it happened.  I had just put the nozzle into my car. I opened my car door to wait in my seat and scroll through my phone while it refilled. I sat down, grabbed my phone, and had that creepy feeling like I was being watched. I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw dark eyes staring back at me. I screamed. My dumbass too scared that my brain stopped functioning. I didn’t jump out. I didn’t run. I didn’t grab the closest thing I could use as a weapon. I just sat and screamed like some idiot in those stereotypical slasher films. The next thing I knew, this stranger, this strange man in MY car, bit me. He BIT me. What is that about? My vision blurred and the gas station started to fade. Everything went dark soon after. That is the last thing I remember. Well, of my “life” at least.