"Amnesia Spencer"
There was so much blood. That was the first clear thought he had as he opened his eyes. Blood was everywhere. The floors, the walls, the door. When he brought his hands forward, pressing them into the ground, pushing to try and lift himself, he saw it was all over him too. Blood was all over his skin. He could smell the copper tang of it in the air. As he woke a little more and a little more, he could feel the slickness of it coating him. What the hell was going on? What had happened here? The young man's arms shook and he fell with a thud that sent pain racing through every inch of him and jerked his brain to a startling clarity. A hoarse cry slid up his throat only to be ruthlessly choked off. Something in him demanded he not let it free. Don't scream. Don't let them hear you scream. Don't let them win like that. Don't scream. Let who hear him? Let who win? Who was 'them'? Who were they?
His eyes drifted open again, blinking to clear away the pain of the light. Who knew blood was so reflective? Who knew it could be so blinding? It took a long moment to blink past it before he could see enough. That was when he saw another body, not far from his own. Just barely he could see the form enough through all that blood to see that it was a woman and she was as naked as he was. Something in him stirred to life and he found his body moving, limbs pulling across the slick floor. He slipped and slid and fell over and over but he didn't stop. He had to reach her. Why? Who is she? What's going on here? He had no idea; he just knew that he had to get to her. But when he did, when he saw her face, when he saw the long gashes on her arms and across her throat, he knew it had been pointless. She was gone. Tears gathered in his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. No. No, don't let her be gone. No! I was supposed to protect her. Wait…who was she? Who was this woman? It was almost there, a faint echo in his mind. Then, the thought faded like smoke and there was nothing but the heartache at this loss of life. Grief swamped him for this woman. Bending, he bowed his head over her, his tears flowing faster.
Slowly the grief inside pushed back down to a manageable level. As it did, it left room for other things to be noticed. Pain brought the young man's attention back to his own body. He hurt everywhere. But more than that, more important than any of it, was this growing urgency inside of him. This small voice that was getting louder with each passing second. A voice that was screaming at him—Get out of here! Get out, get out, get out! Get out now, before they come back! Go, run! NOW! The voice was stronger now, demanding, overpowering every other urge. Everything else quickly became unimportant beside the need to get out of this place.
When he turned his body, seeking out a door, he saw two more bodies lying on the far side of the room. Instead of needing to go to them as he had with the girl, the sight of these two only fueled that screaming need to get far, far away. Grief was replaced with overwhelming terror. He couldn't even bring himself to move towards them to check if they were still alive. The idea of moving towards them had his heart racing and had him gasping for air. The young man barely noticed his own injuries as he scrabbled across the floor towards the door and away from the bodies. His only focus was on getting to that cracked open door. Go, go, go, faster! Faster! Get out of here, now! His body obeyed the screams of his mind and he moved faster and faster until he was at the door. Almost free! A sob threatened to slip past his lips, choked back by sheer will. He grabbed at the door and used it to pull himself up to his feet.
How he got upright and through the next room, he would never know. The voice inside was screaming so loudly that he couldn't deny it. Yet it was as if his brain blanked out. One moment he was dragging himself out of the brightly red room and into a darkened hallway. The next, he was stumbling through a darker room and out another door and suddenly he found himself outside in some dark forest area and he was running, moving as fast as his shaking legs would take him. Behind him was the hell he'd just escaped; ahead of him, he had no idea. All he knew was that he had to run.
Run he did. Time and time again he stumbled in the dark, occasionally falling to the hard forest ground only to pick himself back up and run again. What he was running from, he couldn't have said. All he knew was that he had to go as fast and as far as he could.
Up ahead he could hear something, a sound that didn't fit into the forest night, and he steered himself towards it and prayed that it would be some kind of help.
The trees broke suddenly and the young man stumbled as he was thrust out into the open. He couldn't stop his body from hitting the ground and a cry rose up as he connected with something flat and hard. Pavement. Another sound drowned out his cry, a screech of tires on pavement, the roar of an engine passing right by him, and then the squeal of brakes before the night went silent. The young man tried to push up off the ground when he heard a car door and someone rushing towards him. But his body, pushed too long and too hard, having gone through far too much tonight, had no more strength left to give. He vaguely registered a person kneeling down at his side. "Son of a bitch." Someone growled in a deep, gravelly voice. "Jesus, kid. What the hell happened to you?"
He managed to make himself whisper two words before the blackness in his vision finally sucked him under.
"Help me."
The world felt as if it were made up of fire. It was all around him, inside of him, burning him apart. Was this hell? Had he finally died and gone to hell? The last thing he remembered was running, running, don't stop, can't stop, got to run! Now, now there was pain and fire. His skin felt so tight, as if it were stretched over his body almost to the breaking point. Soon it was going to crack and tear and the fire inside would burst free. A wave of pain rolled through him and he couldn't stop the pained sound that bubbled up in his throat. Please, make it stop, I'm so sorry! Make it stop!
Something touched his face and he couldn't stop the way his whole body jerked. Immediately he tried to move away but his body was too sore, too spent, to do more than twitch lightly. Panic built and another moan slipped out. Then he heard something, a deep voice just barely there. "Hey, kid, calm down now." That voice…he'd heard it before, hadn't he? When he'd been by the road. It was warm and kind, soothing him down even before he realized it. "You've got a fever. We gotta get this down. I aint gonna hurt ya, I'm just trying to help. But I need you to calm down and hold still."
Like there was any choice in the matter? His body felt utterly drained. He doubted he could move if his life depended on it.
The voice washed over him, something to cling to in this pain, and he felt something cool wiping over his cheek. "That's it, kid. Just calm down. You've got a nasty fever, but you're gonna be fine."
The heat was building again and exhaustion was taking over. The warm voice was fading, getting further away. Slowly the exhaustion dragged him back down into the darkness and the blessed relief that he found there.
This time, when the young man woke, the world around him was a little easier to understand. There wasn't the great burning heat inside of him, though the pain was still there. Pain, he could handle. He had learned to live with pain. So many different parts of his body ached. Little by little his mind and body woke. As they did, he grew aware of his surroundings. He was lying on something soft—a bed, his brain supplied—in a room he didn't recognize. Where was he? And what the hell had happened to him? Slowly he blinked his eyes open, flinching at the bright light that blinded his eyes. Pain stabbed at them like white hot pokers and he slammed his eyes shut once more. One hand tried to lift, to block the light or rub at his head or anything to make the pain stop, but he found he didn't even have the strength to lift that hand. He got it only inches off the bed before it weakly dropped back down.
Panic started to build. What had happened to him? Why was it so hard to move? Instinct took over and his brain started an immediate mental inventory. All of his limbs moved, though it was hard to do. Not restrained though. Just, weak. He felt weak as a newborn. His stomach hurt in a way that told him there was damage to his ribs. There were random patches that throbbed and ached like they were bruised. As if his body had been given one hell of a beating. His throat felt raw and swollen and so very dry.
Okay, okay, no serious injuries. Next thing to figure out – what is going on here? What happened to me? His brain was fully awake now and he tried to think back, to see if he could remember what had happened. Something that left him injured like this, he should be able to remember it, right? But…he couldn't. Searching his mind produced nothing. No need to panic. Maybe you're just not thinking clearly yet. Sometimes a person can blank out an event that causes serious physical trauma. Think back. What's the last thing you remember? Okay, the last thing he could remember was…was that red room. Oh, God, the red room, the blood, the woman. No, no, no, he didn't want to think about that. Something else, anything else. Anything before that. But even as he shied away from that image and tried to think further back, his mind drew a blank. There was nothing. He couldn't seem to remember anything. Not where he'd been, not what he was doing, nothing. Something tight started to squeeze at his chest. All right, let's start easier. Name. My name is, is…Spencer. Spencer… Oh, God. Spencer what? What was his last name? His breath shuddered in and out of him and he tried to pull up a mental image of himself. That should be easy, right? Wrong. The panic grew stronger. Dammit, he couldn't even picture his own hair color! What color was his hair?
He recognized the feeling in his chest as the start of a panic attack. How much had he forgotten? How much was a blank in his mind? He could remember what the color blue looked like. A sunrise. Those memories popped up in his mind easily. But if he could remember those, why couldn't he remember his own last name? Or what he had been doing earlier? Or why was he so beat up? His panic grew higher.
The sound of footsteps alerted him someone was coming and Spencer's body reacted without thought. Despite the bright light, his eyes shot open again, scanning the room around him for any threat, bringing with it the realization that he was somehow in a motel room. Every muscle locked down tight as if in preparation to jump out of the bed and run. That one thought came through clear in his mind amidst the sudden terror that flared up—Run, run, need to run! Don't let them get you! Don't let them get you! Run, run, runrunrunrunrun!
He'd barely started to move his aching body when the door to the side of the room opened and someone came rushing out. That sight was enough to send Spencer into a full blown panic attack. The man that burst into the room seemed larger than life. Dressed only in a pair of boxers, it was easy to see the muscles in a body that Spencer knew could easily overpower his own. More terrifying than that, though, were the man's hands. From the end of each hand protruded three long, metal claws. Those hands were held out to either side as if in preparation to fight. Spencer couldn't stop the terrified gasp that broke free. With every bit of strength he possessed, he pushed the blankets off of him and tried to dive for the edge of the side of the bed opposite this man. The pain in his body multiplied as he practically fell out of bed. His body was just too weak to get up and run. The best he could do was scramble towards the corner. There, he curled his body into a ball, hands coming up to cover his head, making as small a target as possible. Not again, please! I can't do this again! I don't want to go back. I can't! I can't go back there!
Through the panic he heard a voice call out to him. "Hey, kid, calm down. It's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? Just calm down."
That voice! Spencer latched onto it. It was the voice from the road, the one from his fever dreams. That was the voice of the man who'd talked so kindly to him while his body had been burning with fever. The one that went with the hands that had tried to help cool him down. The guy that went with that voice had taken care of him. His touch had been kind, not painful. That voice belonged to this guy?
"Hey." The voice was closer now. Deeper, too, like he was worried about something. "It's okay, I aint gonna hurt ya. You're safe here, you hear me?"
Spencer's heart was slowing back down and his breathing started to even back out. There was something soothing about that voice. It relaxed him, helping to push the terror down. The words were meaningless, really, washing over him without really registering anymore. It was the voice itself and the caring behind it that he focused on. Those helped push down his panic until he once more had it under control. This guy hasn't hurt you so far. He got you off the road and apparently helped you through a fever. Right now, he's the safest bet if you want to figure out where you are and what's going on. With that pep talk, Spencer shifted a little and peeked out between his arms to try and see the man that was still calmly talking to him.
The guy noticed his movement and stopped his reassuring murmurs to smile at him. "That's it. Hey there, kid."
He licked lips that felt cracked and dry and he tried to gather enough moisture to make his throat work. "Hey." He croaked out.
"Why don't you let me help you back on up to bed? Doubt the floor's that comfortable." The guy offered.
The idea of hands on him was enough to have Spencer's heart racing again. A low whimper slipped free before he got himself under control again. The last thing he wanted was to be touched! Just the idea was enough to have him starting to shake a little. Drawing his arms down to curl against his chest instead of over him, he shook his head vehemently. "I'm fine." Please, please, don't touch me!
If the guy was surprised at all, he didn't show it. He just nodded his head. Then he took a single step back and shifted down from his crouch to sit cross legged right there on the ground. With one hand he reached back and grabbed one of the blankets off of the bed. "At least wrap up in this. I can see ya shiverin' from here!"
Though he didn't move to take the blanket, he didn't stop the man from draping it over him, either. Once it was on and the man's hands had pulled back, Spencer let himself grab the edge and clutch it a little closer, beyond grateful for the warmth and protection. "Who are you?" He found the courage to ask.
"Name's Logan." He tipped his head and sharp blue eyes fixed on Spencer. "You jumped out in front of my truck. After you passed out, I got ya back here and cleaned ya up. There was a ton of blood on ya, kid, but no real bad open wounds. Least, not enough to bleed like that. Can ya tell me what happened?"
The panic was growing again. Something pushed in Spencer's mind, a pulse that throbbed worse than any migraine. He brought his hands up, shaking his head. He pushed that something away, fighting back the quick images that flashed through his mind. When he pushed them away, the headache faded. Then it was gone and there was nothing there anymore. No images, no something, no headache. Just a blankness that was chilling. "I don't know." He tried to think, tried to look back and figure out what had happened, but his mind was as empty as it had been earlier. He couldn't remember! "I don't know!"
"Hey, it's okay, kid. It's all right. We'll come back to that later, okay?" Logan suggested. "Why don't we start with something simple? Can ya tell me your name?"
That, he knew. "Spencer." But why can I remember my first name and nothing else? Why is it that I know my first name but not my last? Why can't I remember anything that happened to me? Why can't I remember ANYTHING? His mouth trembled and, though he didn't know it, his eyes widened slightly, the lost look in them reaching out to Logan. "I don't know my last name. I c-can't remember anything else." He stammered out. "Why can't I remember anything else?"
Something passed over Logan's face, there and gone again before Spencer could recognize it. Their eyes locked and Spencer couldn't help but lean a little on the strength he saw there. When Logan's hand reached out and rested on Spencer's upturned knee, he still jumped, but nowhere near as hard as before. "Calm down, Spencer. Just take a deep breath. We're gonna figure this out." He gave a light squeeze to Spencer's knee before letting go. "For now, why don't we get you up in that bed? Your body needs to rest."
Right now there was nothing and no one in this world that Spencer remembered. He had no idea if he had any family, any friends, anyone at all looking for him. He had no clue who had hurt him or if they were going to come after him again. He didn't know any of that. But he knew that, right now, he needed to trust someone. Because he was alone, injured, and weak. There was no way he could defend himself or really do anything for himself in this condition. And if he was going to trust, who better than this man? Logan had rescued him and Spencer had vague, fever drenched memories of that voice murmuring soothingly to him that he was going to be okay, that he was safe. This man had rescued him and tended to him. Add on that really, he was the only person Spencer knew right now as well as the only person here, and there wasn't much of a choice.
Locking eyes with Logan, he took a deep breath and handed over one of the most fragile things he had. His trust. "Okay."