Everything is cold, numb, empty. Forever and ever.
“We really must stop meeting like this.”
She feels warmth for the first time and realises with horror that she's still alive. Any reparation that had occurred during her incarceration is undone in an instant.
She smiles. She's dreamt this dream before, and she'll dream it again. The stranger is a figment of her broken mind, an imaginary rescuer.
Of course! That's the secret to staying sane. Pretend that you don't know that the hallucinations are hallucinations and then when they -