Her mind was blank, save for the fact that her name was Chell.
As she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the sun was beginning to rise. Stalks of wheat encircled her and scratched at her ankles. Her hand was instinctively drawn to a bump between the top of her head and forehead. A stinging pain ran through her temples whenever she touched it, and she pulled away.
Fear surged through her veins, as she had not a clue where she was. A box with a heart on each side sat beside her. Why was it here? She ran her hand along the cube, but there was no lid. It was useless. Her breathing became erratic as she scoured her memory banks, but they were empty. The unmistakable sting of tears pricked behind her eyes. Her legs wobbled like the wheat beside her as she jumped to her feet. She examined her surroundings, but there was not a sign of life in sight. Her gaze flickered to her hands, and she rubbed them together as her mind tried to construct a course of action.
She wanted to panic. She wanted to scream. She wanted to admit that she was afraid.
But then her tenacity and refined survival instinct kicked in, and she willed herself to calm. Pacing around erratically wouldn't solve anything. Her eyes shut for a few moments, and when she opened them, she had returned to the picture of serenity.
She could worry about who she was and why she was here later, but for now, she needed food, water, and shelter. Eyeing the odd box, she decided to leave it. It was bulky and it would only weigh her down. The road was almost grown over, with sprouts every which way, but it was clear that this was for traveling. Chell turned her head, examining each direction. Without an inkling of where to go, as either side had no signs of civilization, she breathed and went with her gut. Her legs were still soft, and her body slithered with congealed grime as she turned to the right. She kept walking while wishing, hoping, praying, that there was some sort of refuge at the end of this journey.
The road seemed to never end. Lightheadedness made her droopy, and her walking became slow, each step a stomp. Even though she hadn't been awake for long, drowsiness overtook her, and she felt as if she would slump over, asleep, at any moment. Periodically, a tree would appear on either side of the road, becoming more frequent until she was walking through the middle of a forest. She was considering pulling aside and resting for a moment when she saw the house.
It was an old farmhouse, and whoever used to live in it obviously wanted to be cut off from the outside world. Chell tentatively climbed the rickety wood steps up onto the porch, and knocked on the screen door. It didn't seem inhabited, but it was tidy, as the only mess was the plants that climbed up the railing of the porch. When there was no response, she opened the screen and jiggled the doorknob. No surprise that it was locked. She sighed and sat down for a moment on the dusty porch swing, scanning her memory. There was a faint recollection of spare keys hidden underneath mats and cermic pots, and so she snooped around. A key was lodged inside the hay of the doormat. Her thumb ran along the ridges of the key as she evaluated the morality of it. Was this wrong? She was breaking into a home, but it wasn't as if this was a booming city. It was desolate, and it seemed it had been that way for a long while. With a reluctant gaze, Chell put the key in the lock and turned. It opened, and soon she was submerged into a time capsule.
The interior was just as neat as the porch, with bookshelves that contained literature sorted by height, and plush chairs that seemed inviting. She paused in the doorway, unsure if she really wanted to enter. The need for shelter surpassed her sense of decency, though, so she pushed on through. There were pictures on the walls of a family consisting of a man, his wife, and their son, then a child. Her hand grazed the aged glass, fingers running along snapshots: them on vacation, all with smiles that eminated joy; another with the son, even younger then, carrying a backpack and a lunchbox; a domestic scene with the wife reading a book in one of the very chairs Chell stood in front of now. Chell's memory still couldn't pull up any information pertaining to her personally, but if she had to describe a typical family, this would be it. The father was tall and lanky and had unkempt blond hair, the wife had glowing pale skin and dark brown curls of hair that framed her face perfectly, and the child was a mixture of both of them, with his father's hair and his mother's heart-shaped face.
Seeing this- knowing this was what used to live and pulse in the walls around her -made her eyes water. She touched one of the tears, incredulous. The concept of sadness was foreign to her. Why did she feel such compassion for a family she had never met?
Blinking away the water that pooled in her eyes, she walked out of the sitting room and into the kitchen. A sign on the wall read "Love Grows Here." Cookbooks along the counter were held in place by vases with various spatulas and spoons inside, like makeshift bookends. She tried the light switch- miraculously, after a moment, there was still power. The fridge opened with a bit of hesitation, and inside, still cold, was an assortment of standard items, like eggs, milk, and butter, although she knew anything inside it had long spoiled. The pantry was full of cans and boxes, and she grabbed a granola bar. Even though it was stale, it stoked the burning hunger inside her stomach. The wood floors creaked underneath her as she walked in the square kitchen, her gaze landing on a rotten bowl of fruit.
They weren't expecting to be gone for so long.
Perhaps a few days, maybe even a week. That was likely why the house was so tidy, but these people were expecting to return.
Her heart ached for this silent family that she had slowly begun to mourn.
The rest of the house was most of the same. Faded photographs and inspirational quotes were everywhere. Upstairs, in what she assumed was the boy's bedroom, there was a large, plush comforter. From what she could pull from her memory about teenagers, he seemed to be one when he was yanked away. Throughout the whole house, there was an ubiquitous motif of coziness. The parent's bedroom had a plush white comforter, pillows, and several candles.
What had happened to them? She kept looking for an answer, but there was none to be found, at least not from what she could pull from the clues around her.
Unable to bring herself to sleep in one of the family's bedrooms, she bunked in the guest bedroom. The sheets were still crisp. A vase on the nightstand held a hydrangea that had long wilted, the water it was in now a murky brown. Light poured out from the window above the bed, and even though it was midday, she found herself being carried off to sleep.