You lose yourself when you go through the Changing.
"Ben. Ben! Hold still, shuck-face!" He can here someone talking to him, but he doesnt know who. He doesn't know why. All he knows is pain. All he knows is he's changing. He'll stay Ben, he knows that, or at least he knows his name will stay Ben, but he's not sure if that will be who he is anymore.
Ben. He thinks his name. He needs something, Anything, to focus on other than the visions. Other than the pain.
He's aware, barely, of the med-jacks moving around him. He can feel their hands holding him down, pinning him against the bed.
His throat is raw, and he can taste blood. A scream echos through the room and common sense tells Ben that it's his own.
The room around Ben disappears, and is replaced by a face. The face of a kid he doesn't know, but feels like he should. He focuses on the features of the boy, if only to give him something to do. He has mousy brown hair that flops in his eyes, and isn't good-looking by any stretch of the imagination. Some memory, that seems just out of reach, dances on the edge of Ben's mind. Something about this kid. Something he should remember. Something he can't.
As the image fades the pain returns and Ben can hear himself screaming again. He arches his back, straining against something. Something is trying to hold him down. With a more powerful scream, Ben struggles harder, but is unable to throw whatever it is off. Confusion sets in as he tries to take in his surroundings, and as he tries to figure out what his restraints could be.
"Damnit, slinthead! Can't you hold still for..."
The voice grows quieter as another vision replaces the boy. Ben's in a room with blue walls. A bed is shoved up in the corner, and the bedspread's pattern consists of space-ships, stars and planets. This is my room. Ben remembers. But something isn't right. He can't remember. He's never remembered.
"Ben!" A woman's voice, warm and caring comes from behind the door.
"Coming, Mom!" Ben sees a five-year-old version of himself jump up and run for the door, but just as his hand touches the doorknob the vision swirls away from him.
And it's back to the pain. The pain. The restraints. The screaming.
He turns his head to the left, and forces his eyes into focus. He blinks, willing to swear that through the door that had been open for all of two seconds, he had seen the boy from his vision, staring back at him.
Another scream rips his throat to shreds and he is almost grateful when the next vision swims in front of his eyes.
Men in white coats escort him down a long hallway. At the end of it is what looks like elevator doors. The Box. Ben thinks.
As they draw closer the door opens, seemingly without any assistence from the men he is with. The men stop, but Ben keeps walking, into the box, and he wants to scream at himself not to do it. To run away. To get out now. To escape the Maze. But he can't change history.
He turns around, and the last thing he sees before the doors close and plunge him into complete darkness, is the boy.
Instead of returning to the pain and the screaming, conciously at least, the vision swirls, like smoke in the wind, and changes to a new scene.
He's standing outside, sweat pouring down his face, and his skin is red and blistering, and some instict tells him that he's only been standing here for a few minutes.
All around him there is nothing. No people. Just desert. He can feel that sand burning the bottoms of his feet, even through his shoes, and he is almost certain that were he to lift his foot up and inspect it he would find the rubber souls of his shoes melted from the scorching heat.
Almost out of nowhere Ben realizes he can make out the shape of a person, appearing through the waves of heat that melt the air like water. The person is followed by another. And one more after that.
The Ben in the memory smiles, but Ben feels something is wrong. He just can't remember what. Every time he tries the memory dances further and further away from him.
Memory Ben can't believe his luck. He had thought he was alone. Abandoned. And that he was going to die. Ben tries to remember what will happen next, and eventually bits and pieces begin to take shape in his mind, seconds before they do for Memory Ben.
The man in the front's entire face is covered in blood. His own blood, seeping from two identical scratch wounds, one on each cheek. They look as if they have been clawed with fingernails.
he next person, a woman, is missing fingers, two on each hand, and around her neck hangs a necklace of teeth. Her toothless smile tells Ben they are her own.
Another Woman is the third. Her face is just as bloody as the man's, however with no obvious cuts the blood seems to not be her own. She is smiling, but instead of a warm look, she looks deranged. She brings her hand to her mouth and gnaws on her finger.
Finally, Memory Ben appears to notice these things too. The smile slips off his face and he turns around, running, as far and as fast as he can.
Memory Ben trips on his shoelaces and falls face-first into the hell-hot sand. Before he can get up three gunshots ring out in the silent desert air. One after another the three people fall. The man, then the two women.
Memory Ben looks up, expecting to find a gun aimed at him too, but instead finds the boy kneeling near him, with another man, with a gun, standing behind him. The armed man holsters his gun, and though memory Ben's attention remains fixed on him, Ben turns back to the boy, but before any of them speak, the vision fades.
Ben returns to screaming. Screaming and thrashing. Until finally, utterly exhausted, he collapses, and allows himself to lose consciousnes.
So I'm thinking this is going to end up being around three or four chapters...up until Ben gets banished...anyone like it? Hate it? Nothing it? Lemme know in a review please!
-pyro325