Chapter 1
Memory Lane
"He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past." - Gabriel Garcia
I ran and as I ran my feet carried me almost as if I were in a trance. Though it had been many years since I'd been in the confines of Hillwood memory served its purpose as I began to recollect every street name and corner in my mind's eye. My blue converse smacked against the old chipped pavement viciously as I collected all my speed. My untamed cornflower hair whipping into my Jade eyes from the breeze I created in my momentum. I had no destination. In honesty there was nothing left in this town for me. Yet, with the passing of my remaining family suddenly property belonged to me in a place that did not belong in my being. I had no destination, yet I continued to run, as if it wasn't out of madness and as if I had a goal place to find.
I tugged at my fitted Blue cap; that currently replaced the little blue cap I hid underneath a floor board. Why had these events happened to me? Why when I had spent half my existence-advising people no one was here when I truly needed it? Why was I even back in this forsaken town that I had forgotten so long ago? The questions exhilarated in my mind one chasing after the next. As the questions raced towards me I continued to run. I realized then that I wasn't running towards something on the contrary I was running away! Running from my past in hopes of abandoning my current future.
Who was I really? Could I even give myself an answer to that? I wasn't sure anymore. A piece of me had died and I wasn't sure what good was left to my fractured battered heart. No more mister nice guy. I thought to myself bitterly. My thought process was about to get instantaneously derailed. I hadn't been focused on my surroundings too engulfed in the misery I usually suppressed from my conscious awareness. I impacted ferociously the reality. I collided into someone and as I did I clutched them in a subconscious effort to protect. They toppled on top of me and as they did my head smacked painfully against the hard concrete.
"Arnold? Is it you?" A voice called out to me the sound of a symphony of angels. Perhaps I was just in my own fantasy that I always seemed to escape to in my head.
"Oh, Arnold! Arnold you're bleeding!" The angel cried. She was blurry; but in her prefection, I noticed a pink bow brightly waving close to my face atop her head. I could smell a metallic odor and in instinct I began to burry my face into her platinum colored curls.
"You're bleeding too much. I'm calling an ambulence!" She yelped. "Listen bucko, put your head on my lap and stay still until they come. "Pheebs call an ambulence!" the girl shouted at a second blur. "Calling," The second girl exclaimed.
That was the last thing I recalled as the world seemed to tip on its axes. Memories were soon not an issue of pain nor the throbbing against my skull. I closed my eyes and faded into a quiet peaceful black abyss.