NO BODY

I had no body.

All that was there was my essential organs neatly packed into some kind of clear, plastic casing moulded to be the perfect fit of a human's inside form. My heart sat in place within this casing, squeezing itself to pump blood, and I watched the movement of my lungs as they heaved up and down.

Taking all of this in, I laid back and started to cry.

“You don't have to be too hard on yourself. I have a solution for you.” The doctor said, standing so I could see him, and pointing his hand at the robotic-looking human frame with shiny metal.

“Waterproof, strong, and connected to your brain and spinal cord, this frame will help you get a body. You will be able to use it to walk, eat, and carry out every basic human function that you would need to with your human body. It will also help you cover the burns on your face.”

“And what am I to give in exchange for this?”

“Yourself.” He replied, fixing his gaze on me.

I'd been through one tricky interview already, and I wanted to be sure of what this man wanted and the full conditions attached. If I had done the same with Hades, I would have known that my body was burnt and barely alive, and would not have sought revenge after all.

This prompted my next question. “What do you mean?”

“There are wars that you will be required to fight in.”

“So I have to give myself for your cause, then.”

“Yes.” He replied, adjusting his glasses.

In that instant, I was reminded of Hades' words to me. Why was I surprised? He had made it clear that I would not be human, but that I would have to fight in wars for me to get myself back. He had also promised that there would be a guide for me to find myself, and I now wondered if that guide was the doctor.

With no arms, as my body had burned from the shoulder below, leaving only my necessary organs, the doctor made a video recording of me agreeing to the process. After a sixteen second recording, he dropped the camera, smiled, and then snapped his finger.

Everything started to blur for me, except his face as he passed his hand over it, and I was sure, more than anything, that his face had morphed into the one of Hades that I spoke to when I died the first time.

When I opened my eyes again, there were no bright lights, but only the light shade of blue in the sky outside my window as the sun rose to show morning. I got up, went to stand there, and even opened the window, and never had I felt so alive.

The sound of chirping birds as they sang their morning tunes, and the dew that settled on the grass, and the window…

THE WINDOW…

This wasn't my room's window.

I started to remember the details of my terrifying dream. Of dying and having Debbie leave me and speaking to Hades and having nothing left but my head and shoulders and the internal organs of my body and the doctor's face turning to Hades' again.

The anxiety it caused me made me put my hand to my chest as my breath quickened, only for me to hear the dull sound of metal clanking against another metal. I swallowed, not wanting to see, until I bowed my head and saw my feet.

They were designed after human toes, and very much like the robotic one I saw standing in the corner. Only that this wasn't made out of shiny metal, but matte black. So was the rest of my body — my new metallic body — modelled after the form of the human body, but made of metal and not shiny, but covered in matte black paint.

I turned each part around, from curling my fingers to clapping my hands to shaking my legs and even moving my waist. Everything moved accordingly, just the way a normal human body would respond to the mind's movements, until I tried to pinch myself and realised that I could not feel.

At this point, I started to look for a mirror, to see what I looked from the eye of another person, and I soon found one in the room when I looked hard enough. Raising it high up, I saw that my face and both my shoulders were the only parts of me left from my old body, with everything else covered in the matte black metal.

It was the sight of my face that did much to break me down. Half had burnt away, and was a large, bald, scarred mass, while the other half was what I used to be — a handsome, charming lad with blonde hair and green eyes, of which I had only one left now. One eye.

Unable to take anymore, I threw the mirror on the floor, shattering it into pieces.