By Andrea Tillmanns

When I woke up and saw my body lying next to me, I thought at first it was a hallucination. It took a moment for me to realize that this was reality. 

Yet my body was clearly not dead. It was breathing, and I could hear its steady heartbeat. And so, I firmly believed that everything would be okay again. 

Until my body suddenly sat up, my eyes looked at me, and my hands reached for my throat. I never would have thought it was possible to strangle oneself. Whoever had slipped into my body obviously didn’t want any witnesses.

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Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash, SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.