I was walking through the woods next to a girl with wild brown hair. We came upon two men with long hair, one blonde and shirtless the other a brunette; they were talking among six dismembered corpses. The girl next to me stopped and looked at me quickly before grabbing my hand and as she was about to start running, I pulled my hand away from her, she gave me a pleading frightened look but I shook my head. Seeing I was determined to stay, she left me there and ran away. I looked back at the men and the brunette one started to run after her calling: "Tatia, Tatia … Tatia".

I approached the blonde man who was facing my way now. He was beautiful even if half of his face and torso were covered in dried blood. As I made my way among the corpses, I knew he was responsible for their demises and yet, I knew he would never hurt me. Once I reached him, he looked down ashamed and started to turn away from me. I grabbed his shoulders and really observed him to make sure he wasn't hurt. "Are you okay?" I asked him trying to get him to look at me.

"You shouldn't come near me." He said as he took a step back away from me. "I killed those men." I stepped closer to him and cradled his face in my hands.

"I don't care." I told him. "I know you would never hurt me, Nik." He looked at me and he gently held my hands against his face.

"I'm a monster Dae." He said softly, closing his eyes as I lightly ran one of my thumbs across his cheekbone.

"No, you're not." I said just as softly before standing on my tiptoes and kissing his lips tenderly. He kissed me back and I felt him wrap his arms around me as fireworks exploded behind my eyelids and butterflies swirled in my stomach. We broke the kiss but kept our foreheads touching. "I love you." I said softly.

He looked surprised but then he said: "I love you too, Dae." I smiled at him.

Our moment was interrupted when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my neck and became extremely weak, if his arms weren't around me I would have fallen to the ground. I touched my neck where I felt the pain but nothing was there. "Something's wrong." I said as took a step back from him. I looked away to where I came from and wanted to run in that direction as if I knew I had to find something but he grabbed my hand.

"Please don't go." He said looking at me pleadingly. I stepped back towards him and kissed him.

As I pulled back I said: "I have to, but I promise I'll come back to you." I gave him one last kiss goodbye. "I promise." I repeated and he let go of my hand and then I started to run in the direction that the girl named Tatia and I came from. I searched the woods for a while and then arrived at a small house that felt like it was the place I had to be but that what I was looking for wasn't there yet and so I hid by the trees close by, waiting.

I lost track of how long I waited, but not long after the sun had set, I saw the brunette man from earlier carrying the limp form of the woman, Tatia, in his arms, looking distraught. I ran over to them just as the man gave Tatia over to the older blonde woman who lived in the small house and fell to his knees.

"What happened to her?" I asked the man as I helped her carry Tatia inside the house. He just kept looking down and shaking his head. "Is she going to be ok?" The blonde woman was looking at me strangely. As we set her on the table inside the house, I looked Tatia over. She had a bloody gash where I felt the stabbing pain earlier. As I looked back to see where the older woman had gone, I just barely saw the glimmer of a blade near my face and then everything went black.


With a gasp, I awoke in what appeared to be a hospital bed. What the…? I sat up and saw what seemed to be millions of I.V.'s poking out of my arms making me feel really uncomfortable; I wanted to get out of here, I stood up from the bed before weakly falling back onto it. Why am-I so weak? What's going on? At that instant a nurse rushed in and helped me back into bed. "Let's get you back into bed. How you feelin', honey?" She asked as she grabbed the chart at the end of my bed.

"I'm… okay." I replied hesitantly. "Why am I here?"

"You were in a car crash a few months ago." She said sympathetically. "Do you remember anything?" She asked me nicely as she placed the chart back at the end of my bed. I tried to recall what happened but I came up blank. I then tried to remember anything before that. Nothing. What? Ok, let's try something simple, something useful. What's my name? …

"I … uh… um…" I started to panic. Why can't I recall my name?

"It's okay, honey. You've hit your head pretty hard in that crash." The nurse said. "I'll go get a doctor." And then she left me alone with my thoughts. I at least want to know my name. I slowly crawled to the end of my bed and picked up my medical chart. Ok, let's see, so my name is Aria Hope Gilbert, I'm 17, I live at 2104 Maple street in Mystic Falls, Virginia and my emergency contact is someone called Jenna Sommers.

I didn't get to read much more as a doctor walked in. "Hi, my name is Doctor Lancaster. Can I please have your chart?" She said holding out her hand. I shyly handed it to her. "Thank you." She looked it over. "Do you remember anything that happened?" She asked nicely as she got out a small flashlight and checked out my eyes.

"I don't remember anything." I stated truthfully.

"At least you're able to talk." She said more to herself than to me. "Do you know who you are? Where you are?"

"Well, I've read that my name's Aria Gilbert… on my chart and that I'm 17, but I don't really know anything else. And I know that I'm in a hospital due to a car crash but I don't remember it."

After a long series of questions, it was time for lunch. Hospital food, yum. It consisted of what seemed to be mashed potatoes, some sort of meat, a mix of carrot and green beans and for desert an apple. I ate the vegetables and apple but left the meat and most of the potatoes. It tasted awful anyway.

After lunch I went to the bathroom and had a shock when I saw my reflection in the mirror. I looked exactly like the girl from my dream, Tatia. Ok, almost exactly, where she had crazy brown hair and brown eyes, I had relatively tamed brown hair and green eyes.

After I finished looking at myself from all angles in the bathroom, I went back to my room and was whisked away by a different nurse to perform some tests.

I have retrograde amnesia, I lost the memory of my life (which sucks) but I didn't lose my eyesight, or hearing, or my reflexes, I'm able to still speak, read, write and walk with no problems. Well, I'm still weak so walking is kind of hard but that's just due to the fact that I spent 4 months in a bed, not because I forgot how to.

After all the tests were done, I was escorted back to my room and after maybe an hour of waiting, a blonde woman ran in and headed straight to me. "Aria. Thank god." She said right before giving me a big hug which I returned a bit awkwardly. After a few more seconds she released me from the hug and observed my face.

"Uh, hi…" I said after a moment.

"It's me." She said. "Aunt Jenna." Ah, so she is Jenna Sommers, the emergency contact. She's my aunt… I smiled what else could I do.