I

William closed his eyes just before he hit the street.

To his surprise, he did not feel the impact, or an explosion of pain, or a sudden extinction of consciousness. Instead it seemed to him that as his hands touched the ground, his fingers disappeared into the tarmac as if it were dense, dark water. He felt his hands follow, then his arms, and he only just had time to take a deep breath before his head followed them into the street.

He opened his eyes. It was dark, but not as entirely black as he would have expected. There was a small amount of reddish light, like the last rays of a sunset. As his body swam down into the earth, he tried to make sense of what was happening.

Perhaps, he realised, this was not impossible. At the quantum level, nothing is solid. Even on the larger, atomic level, the interior of atoms is mostly empty space. Existence is 99.9% non-existent.

Knowing this, why shouldn’t he dive into the street?

Because, he suddenly realised, he could not breathe.

He began to panic, turning his body and beating with his arms and legs as he tried to swim back up to the street. He felt a pressing need for oxygen, but how far had he gone under the ground?

His chest was in agony, but he did not dare open his mouth, imagining that it would fill with earth when he breathed in. He swam feverishly, heading toward the origin of the soft red light. The lack of oxygen was affecting him seriously now, weakening his muscles and dizzying his brain...

Suddenly his head broke the surface into the daylight.

He breathed deep, desperate for oxygen.

“He’s breathing!” somebody said close by.

William rolled onto his back, exhausted by the effort.

“Don’t move him!” a second voice cried urgently. “We need to hold his head!”

II

William’s body felt like stone. He tried to move his arms, but they would not obey. He was conscious, yet inanimate. His eyes were open, but he could not focus – he saw the vague shapes of people around him, their faces indistinct, almost inhuman. If somebody moved close to him, their face would suddenly jump into clarity, only to dissolve again as they moved away.

The face of a blonde woman appeared over him, upside down. Her features were so clear, so sharp, that it was like cold water being thrown on his face – he could see every line on her skin, every follicle of hair on her cheek, and ice-cold terror in the whiteness of her eyes.

“Are you okay?” she said, “Can... can you hear me?”

He tried to answer her, but his lips would not move. Her face pulled back, disintegrating in the light.

“We need an ambulance! Has anybody called an ambulance?”

As well as her voice, there were other sounds: car horns, the distant voice of a hysterical woman crying “Oh god, is he dead? I didn’t see... he came out of nowhere... it wasn’t my fault!”, the noise of a plane overhead, a jack-hammer digging up the road somewhere, a man shouting “No, I can’t get my car out of the fucking way! There’s been a fucking accident!”

An accident. William remembered the accident. He was concussed, semi-conscious, and that was why he could not move. He would be okay again, wouldn’t he? He felt a sharp bayonet of fear plunge into his stomach. What if he was not all right? What if he was paralysed?

“Has anybody got something to stop the blood?” the blonde woman said, “A scarf, maybe? Anything?”

Among the indistinct shapes of people, there was one figure who stood at William’s feet, solitary and immobile, with her arms by her sides. He thought it was a woman because he had an impression of long, dark hair. She was looking at him, her head tilted a little to one side, as if curious to see what was wrong with him.

Through his blurred vision, he saw her step toward him, her arms rising from her sides. Her movements were too slow and calm for someone who was coming to his aid, and William felt a sense of trepidation: something was not right about this woman.

She came closer, her legs bending gracefully as she lowered herself. Her hands appeared briefly in focus as her arms passed either side of his head, then the black leather of her jacket arms going past like two black snakes. A curtain of dark hair descended around him, and in the darkness a face came into focus, terrifyingly clear: it was the girl he’d been looking at before the accident. She stared at him with bright blue eyes: intrigued, but apparently unmoved by his predicament.

As her soft lips parted and she moved closer still, William realised that she was going to kiss him. He did not understand and his sense of panic mounted: why did nobody else there say anything to her? Everything had suddenly gone silent, as if William and she were alone in the world. Paralysed, he could do nothing but submit as her lips closed over his.

Electricity shocked through him, there was a blinding white light in his head, and deep inside his body sounded an audible 'crak!'. He immediately sensed that something had changed, and that he could now control his muscles again. Her lips moved away and William sat up, as if chasing after them.

The girl rose gracefully to her feet and silently offered him her hand. He took it, standing up beside her. He looked down at the street where he had been lying a second ago, and his heart froze in horror: the blonde woman who had spoken to him was there, kneeling on the street with her hands holding the head of a man whose face was so covered in blood that it was impossible to see what he looked like.

But he was wearing William’s clothes.

“Stay with me...” he heard her say, “You’re going to be okay.”

William turned in shock to the girl who had kissed him.

“I’m not dead, am I?” he asked.

III

Sarah left her coffee cup in the kitchen sink and went upstairs to get ready for work. In the early days, William used to want to watch her dressing in the morning. It had made her feel self-conscious, but she’d liked it even so: to be observed like that, to be the focus of his attention, had heightened her sense of being alive, of existing. She wished she could still feel that. She wished his eyes were still on her.

She let her bathrobe slip to the floor so as to see herself naked in the bathroom mirror. She turned sideways to look at her tummy, pinching the flesh between her fingers to see if she was putting on weight.

“There’s nothing wrong with your body.” she said to herself in the mirror.

She did not sound convinced. Sarah turned round and leaned forward toward the mirror, looking herself in the eyes.

“There is nothing... wrong... with your body.” she repeated firmly.

No, that was not right. It was still a negative statement.

“You have a...” she stopped, searching for the right word. A beautiful body? A sexy body? A great body?

“...a nice body.”

Nice? She’d called her body 'nice'?

“I fucking hate you.” she said.

IV

William looked at the girl’s black tresses, her pale skin and strangely perceptive blue eyes. He considered the accident, the sense of disconnection he had from everybody at the scene, and the fact that he felt no pain from his fall. The conclusion seemed clear.

“Is this it?” he asked, “Are you... Death?”

The girl did not answer William’s question, looking at him with what appeared to be a form of detached amusement. He touched himself to verify that his body was still solid and not some form of phantom. Satisfied on that question, he then held two fingers to the vein in his wrist to check that he still had a pulse.

The girl burst into laughter as she watched him: a rich, uninhibited laugh that made him think of bars he’d known in the past, and strange bedrooms, and days when he returned home after sunrise. It was a laugh so normal and earthy that William suddenly felt like an idiot.

“Oh my god,” he smiled in embarrassment, “I don’t believe what I just asked you. I’m sorry, but I thought... I don’t know what I thought, but do you understand?”

She did not answer, but turned to walk away, still laughing.

“Wait!” he said, “Where are you going?”

She looked back at him and raised her arm to point at a coffee shop across the street. Then she pointed at him and gestured with her hand, inviting him to follow her.

William looked at the scene around him: the expressions of distress on people’s faces, the body between the blonde woman’s legs. How could he be alive, and yet in two places at once?

None of this was real, he realised. He was concussed from the accident and this was all a hallucination. He had not been kissed by the beautiful girl he’d seen coming out of the Angel Underground. She was not inviting him to join her for coffee. It was all a product of his imagination: in reality he was lying unconscious on the street.

The black-haired girl had just reached the coffee shop. She glanced back in his direction as she opened the door, a feline smile on her lips. She disappeared inside, and he was left alone in the crowd of people.

Illusion or not, William told himself, he had to stay here until the ambulance arrived. That was important. He should probably lie down in the spot between the woman’s legs. If he did that, everything might become normal again. Real again. The ambulance would arrive and take him to hospital, and Sarah would come, and maybe life would once more be just as it was earlier this morning.

And yet he walked across the street to the coffee shop.