Incarnate Memories
Chapter 1
My vision started to blur as I continued to move through the streets of Rocket Town. It was a quiet little town that used to have a giant rocket (hence its name. There's a whole history behind this place but I'll get to that later). Subconsciously, I knew I had been injured but survival instincts and adrenalin tend to make you forget about little things like that, any second they would find me and finish the job. I still couldn't believe what happened; normal evening and then chaos as a pair of monsters killed my parents and would have killed me if I hadn't dodged at the last second, and even then they cut me on my side and I guessed it was poisoned too if the smell was any clue. Finally I found an empty alley way with only a dirty, forgotten dumpster that sat in the corner looking sad and pathetic. I hid behind my new best friend and finally took a look at the damage; it didn't look that bad except for the blood that continued to flow at a disturbing rate (and I already mentioned the bad smell…).
The only thing I had available to use as pressure against the wound was my t-shirt. That was the good news...bad news was, I had to lift it off my wounded side first. After a few minutes of tentative work I managed to get the shirt off. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out as I tied it tight around my waist. Now that I took care of the wound as best I could, I knew I had to get to the hospital but I was too dizzy and I had no idea if my attackers were still out there. No one would believe I was attacked by monsters; they rarely show up in towns or cities any more. I felt myself slipping away, and I guess I should have been alarmed by this but I was too tired to stay awake. Before things turned to black I could have sworn I saw a woman with bright red hair walk up with a look of relief on her face.
"Nice to see you haven't changed... even though that was a century ago and a whole other world."
A block away, in a house by the old rocket site, was a large family with two adults and four children winding down for the night; technically three people were doing this (a pair of fraternal twins were fast asleep in their bed, as well as the man snoring loudly on the couch). A woman named Shera Highwind shook her head at the sight of her husband. Her eldest son paused in leaving the kitchen, seeing the slightly amused look on his mother's face. He was about to continue upstairs with his prize of cookies and a large glass of milk when the doorbell rang. Both he and his mother looked over in surprise and he set his late night snack down (unbeknownst to him a pair of glowing purple eyes were watching the plate intently, obviously up to no good). Shera opened the door, expecting a person standing there, not an unconscious boy (me, in case you didn't know) with a bloody shirt used as a makeshift bandage.
Getting over her shock, Shera called for her husband. When she failed to get a response, her son hurried off to wake him, coming to the conclusion that it would take more than that to wake the deep sleeper. Shera's cry did get the attention of her eldest daughter. She came running down the stairs.
"Mom, Jr., what's going on?" She stopped short when she took in the scene in front of her.
By this time Jr. (or he sometimes prefers to be called CJ) had managed to wake his father; the former leading the way, the latter grumbling as he followed.
Shera saw him coming and called out in a panicked voice, "Cid, we need to take this boy to the hospital, he's badly injured!"
Without responding, almost as if a switch was flipped, Cid quickly scooped the boy up (still me), and rushed to the hospital. In the wake of all that excitement Shera shut the door and told her children to go to bed. Jr turned to pick his snack back up, only to find that mysteriously, two cookies were missing. Not fooled by what happened he managed to glare at a black tail that was slithering out of sight. I learned all of this later at the hospital because at the time I was, of course, unconscious. When I did wake up, the first person I saw was a man who appeared to be in his 40s. He had a look of a seasoned sea captain (not the best thing to wake up to) but instead of yelling at me for stowing away in his ship (okay, so might have been a little out of it from blood loss), he looked over and saw that I was conscious and staring at him.
"Looks like somebody decided to wake up. So how ya feeling?"
"Um... fine I guess..." My brain apparently was taking its sweet time rebooting. Normally, you wouldn't group 'surviving a life threatening situation' with 'fine'.
"That side of yours and the doctor tell me otherwise." He paused and then continued. "So...How'd ya get it?"
I got the feeling that 'I fell down the stairs' was not going to fly with him or with the doctor either but before I could come up with an answer he spoke up again. He could probably tell I was doing some fast thinking.
"Well, ya don't have to tell me if ya don't want, but others are gonna to ask questions and they'll want answers."
I looked down at my sheets. "My family was attacked by monsters. I know it sounds crazy but it's the truth. My parents were killed and I thought I was done for last night too. I guess I survived somehow, thanks to you I'm sure."
He gave a resigned sigh. "Well...that explains it, but...uh...makes things a little complicated. The cops found your parents dead alright... problem is, they think you did it."