I was sixteen going on seventeen the first time I saw a dead body.

The fact it seemed to be mine didn't seem to make the situation any weirder than it already was, to tell the truth.

It may sound very common to hear someone say they feel "Detached" when experiencing things or situations, but I feel language sometimes has a limberness that means literal expectations are often just overlooked.

I tried to turn my head around or up again but found I could make no real progress on motion in any direction anymore, and the hand cradling the side of my face was overly warm, smelt of cloves and had started to become extremely irritating.

Let me try to explain better.

I'm not being very clear because of my current situation.

I appear to currently have my head [?grafted/sewn?] onto the arm of a crazy redheaded dressed as a riverboat lady, instead of sitting on my shoulders like it has all my life. I am still somehow alive and being moved in haste down a dark back alley, which is a sentence I didn't see myself saying before.

I can see, what I can only come to the conclusion is my headless corpse. I mean it looks like me, the remainder of my body, or someone who is at the very least my spitting image (but missing a head, and covered in blood) draped over the other shoulder of this mad woman, being borne aloft seemingly effortlessly in a fireman's lift and I'm still not quite sure I'm not trapped in some kind of a dream.

The Redheaded lady who I have never laid eyes on before, had been repeating the same set of phrases to me over and over, but I still had yet to work out a damn word they were actually saying. I mean I'm not trying to say I was a Cant prodigy but I could understand nearly all the Cants of the other orphans at the Grindhouse pretty damn perfectly, even when I didn't grow up with any knowledge of their locale. The prefects who ran the place couldn't even understand more than but a third of them normally when push came to shove.

The freckled face of the redhead turned towards me again and one of several arms (above what a person should normally have), had protruded out from under the cloak she had gathered up around herself and she was now poking with something into my neck (Look, I'm still going to call it MY neck, OKAY). I couldn't see what was going on now but something was being changed.

A fourth limb had obviously emerged from beyond my sight and I tried to twist further as it clasped at the back of my head. I was vaguely aware that this should all be hurting in some way but I guess trying VERY hard not to think about how the HELL I was breathing when I no longer had any lungs or in fact ANYTHING below the collarbone...

...Come on Ada,

hold it together Ada.

This was doing a damn fine job of taking up any chance of processing logic at this point.

I was going to wake up any minute now.

Any minute...

Let me try again to introduce myself, my name is Ada Art Winters and this time last week, it was nearly time for me to enter my final year of duties and leave the Grindhouse that had raised me as an orphan and then make my way in the world after my renaming day. I'd find the street paved with gold that they say is somewhere in London, or more likely become a proper member of society as a sign maker no less.

But last week was quite literally a lifetime (and 90% of a body) away now and crying over spilt milk seemed a bit churchish. As well as the little fact that I didn't want to find out if I'd lost the ability to cry as surely as I'd lost the ability to control my own locomotion.

Taking away someones ability to cry is just not fair, I mean it just isn't something you should be able to do to anything living.

And there we were again, right back where I was trying to avoid thinking about.

At what point does one consider themselves dead?

I looked back over at my feet, that were swinging limply about in the air, seemingly without a care in the world as we made a fast pace towards the river.

"So," I said to what I should term my captor in my head really, instead of as the dashing damsel Red.

"Am I dead, insane or are you just a piece of stolen late-night cheese I've eaten that is giving me possibly the worst nightmare I've ever had?" I continued after being seemingly thoroughly ignored.

"You can't just continue to ignore me, I mean I'm a person!". I was plucking up the courage to bite something if I could and force some kind of response.

NOW I had a plan. 

And of course, that was right around the time that Red had decided that jumping into an open sewer was a thing that was happening.

They say shit rolls downhill, and that seemed to be what we were doing.

Well, at least that was a familiar feeling.

I'm going to cling to that if I can't hold onto anything else...