Sydney

The asshole is going into my house! INTO MY HOUSE!

HOLY- HE WENT RIGHT THROUGH THE DOOR!

I race after him and fumble with my key before finally throwing open the door in a state of utter panic.

He's going up the stairs! GET HIM! I race up the stairs and see him jump upwards into the attic. As I'm about to grab hold of the string, the door, to the attic falls open and the stairs come sliding down easily. I quickly rush up them, tripping several times and them I see him, standing at the other end. I run at him, in a desperate attempt to grab him by the damn throat. But them, BAM! Collision! And I hit the hard ground, a box knocked over and it's contents, spilled out.

At first this registered no interest, until my foot, having lost a flip-flop, came to rest on something soft and silky-satin. I rear around. I've felt that material before.

The dress. It's that Amanda girl's dress! What's it doing in this box? But then, my gaze was caught by something orange.

I grab the silicon-y feel. And it falls open with my grasp. A… prison jumpsuit? It was just as matted as the dress, tears in the pants, blood on the inside of the top. The number 3489765 are stitched on as patches. I stare at the blood in fear and quickly let it fall from my hand, but then out falls a white tank top from folded inside of it.

It was worse, hell, it wasn't even a tank top. It was just a couple of bloody threads, barely even holding on. I gasp and drop it as well then I pull the box over, Fedora no longer in my mind as I start to root through. There're are the prison shoes in here as well, and a bunch of DVDs and VHS tapes. Tied, down at the bottom, are a bunch of newspapers and magazines. I dump the entire box out on the ground and bite the string off the papers. Headlines shock me.

SYDNEY FALCON, TEENAGE CRIMINAL!

15 YEAR OLD PUNKER GIRL ARRESTED FOR MURDER AT SAINT CHAVERS EVENT

THE GIRL YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW: FALCON-MURDERER INSIDE STORY! FRIENDS AND FAMILY SPILL!

KIDNAPPED: ACCLAIMED TEENAGE MURDERER-SYDNEY FALCON.

WHERE IS THE MURDERER? PRISON BREAK OR HOSTAGE SITCH?

DUNCAN FALCON FORCES PRESS OUT OF HOME.

"I'M NOT THE KILLER." THEN WHO IS? INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS.

DR. OHUME KUMA ARRESTED FOR THE KIDNAPPING OF SYDNEY FALCON

THE TRAUMA BEHIND THE SCENES! THE FALCON FRAMAGE, KIDNAP, AND NOW IT'S ALL GONE. LITERALLY!

THE DRAMATIC-TRAUMATIC RETURN!

Newsprint and blurry pictures of me are splattered before me as I go through more of this. There's me! Being escorted into a cop car! And there sitting before a crowd of people in court! Then me, lying on the ground, my face bruised, cut and the rest of my body more beat up that my face.

I lift up my shirt, where a long trailing white mark lies just barely under my belly button. There, on one of the insanely realistic pictures of me on the front lawn of the police station, I can see it, my stomach slashed clean open, blood both dried and spilling from me is covering all of me. Not only that, but there's sweat and grime marking my face, highlighting the bruises.

I stare in pure, utter horror. This is terrifying! I want so desperately to believe it was all a dream, my imagination run helplessly amuck, anything, anything! Please, God, anything! This can't be true! This can't be reality! This- This happened. I catch myself staring in terror at a particularly gruesome picture of me. Crime scene tape bright yellow in the back, and an exceptional contrast to the brown, red, and white.

My hands are palm-up and facing the sky and my left arm is completely covered in bright red blood. My dark blue and black laced-edge Candies bra is sticking out like some sort of survivor. The once-upon-time- a white tank top is covering my right side, although it's been slashed to bits. My hair is messy, tangled and covered in everything from, blood to spit, to grass, to dirt. You couldn't even tell my bangs were purple.

My face is grim, pale, and deathly. I'm a mixture of colors, white, blue, black, brown and red. The colors of wounds. Like I was in the fight of my life and I skipped everything! I can't remember shit about any of this! I drop the paper and shake myself, hoping ever so longingly that I'll shake myself awake.

But of course not, and my breath hitches. I'm sitting here, discovering that I've lived some sort of double life. And survived to tell the tale, that is, if I could remember the tale. It was insane, not right, crazy. I was sitting here, being told that I was not this. Everything I was told, everything that was happening to me in the past three months was a lie.

And there in this swift moment, I began to get furious. This explained everything! This was- This is- I'm so pissed I can't even formulate a proper sentence.

But this explains the look of every damn stranger on the street, the secrecy, the tens of thousands of scars loitering on my arms, my legs, my neck, my stomach, my back and face and that God awful feeling that absolute lies were lingering all around me, that simple feeling that knives were being plunged into my back quicker than I could count.

Everyone had a second face. Everyone. All my friends, Aunt Rhonda, Gunther, even Duncan. Duncan, turned his back on me. God, I'm so stupid! I'm so freaking stupid!

I was a prisoner, a so acclaimed murderer, I was in New York at the time of the explosion of Saint Chavers. I was there, fighting for my life in NY. I was kidnapped, taken, and beaten. For Christ's holy sake, beaten! And it had been so bad, tat I had amnesia! AMNESIA. All the while I had been told it was just an "uneventful" summer.

Whoever had this damn idea to keep this all a lie, is really headed for hell tonight!

I try to breath but nothing comes in or out. I just move from newspaper to newspaper.

Despite the deep striking feeling inside of me that's simply begging me to stop, to forget it all, I pursue through the mounds and mounds of newspaper and glossy pages of magazines. Reading word after word, flipping page after page. Find out what truly happened behind the curtain while I was out on stage.

I flop down FALCON: FRAMED AND FREE! WHAT REALLY HAPPENED! And drop my head in my hands.

But then something hits the sole of my foot. I look over and a stack of VHS tapes are sitting there, gazing up at me.

"No one's home," Fedora says, getting really quiet all of a sudden. "Watch them."

He's calm and kind, but there's some sort of undetected urgency as he says it. His hands are shoved awkwardly in his pockets. And he looks less cocky now, less like he knows everything. No, he just looks like he's pitying me. Something strikes me then and I burst up an charge at him, full speed ahead, arm and hand outstretched, going in for the slap. But then, he grabs my wrist, but it doesn't faze him in the slightest.

"PITY ME, WHY DONTCHA! JUST SIT AND FEEL SORRY WELL YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME!" I scream at the top of my lungs, trying to break him as I am. But he only looks at me, face collected.

"Watch them," He only repeats. I yank my wrist from his grasp and rub it. I back away slightly only to find myself tripping and falling to the ground. I glance away and bite away at my lip. I'm still rubbing my wrist.

"Tell me this then, who are you, why the hell are you here, and what are you?"

"You've really forgotten," He says softly then looks at me with kind eyes.

"Several years ago, I was taken into the care of a experimental and insanely evil group of people, who turned me into something not even Einstein himself could comprehend, therefore in this state you would have absolutely no idea or even know what to do if I attempted to explain what I am, but for the most part, I can tell that yes I am a ghost. And somewhere along the way, you got tangled up in everything. I'm here to make sure you understand what happened, and to tell you everything you think went on from June to September was a big fat lie."

He stops pacing and bends down, offering me his hand and he gives me smile like someone would give if they were giving you you're Starbucks.

"Hi, Ari Batcheleder. Nice to meet ya."