Chapter One: I Understand Nothing
I didn't know who I was. I woke up in a strange house. I was confused.
There was someone else in the room that I had never seen before, a young girl. She had naturally curly golden hair framing her tanned skin, and storm grey eyes. She wore jeans covered with various stains and tears along with an orange T-shirt I was pretty sure I'd seen before. Everything about her seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place where it was from. I focused hard, struggling to read the words printed on her shirt.
I was suddenly aware that my whole body ached, my head most of all; but I managed to make out the letters.
Cpma hfla bodlo? My headache wasn't helping; and I somehow knew that I was dyslexic, though I didn't think I had been before. I tried focusing harder, only to achieve more pain behind my eyes, causing them to squeeze shut.
"Are you okay?" The mystery girl asked "Who are you? How did you get here? What was with those creatures that came with you?"
Each question swirled in my mind like leaves in the wind. Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? The unanswered questions continued to overwhelm my mind like dandelions in the summer.
"It doesn't matter, you probably don't know any of the answers anyway." She added.
After a few minutes, I heard her get up to leave. I opened my mouth to try and stop her, but my mouth felt dry as sandpaper, so all that came out was a raspy "Wait!"
She stopped in her tracks, turning to look at me with an expression of annoyance, tinged with disgust. "What? If you don't have answers then I don't want to hear it, get more rest, and talk later." With that she walked out, leaving me to sort out my thoughts on my own.
I sat in silence for several minutes, laying down on the bed in an attempt to stop the pain. I fell asleep for a few hours but when I awoke the girl was still missing.
The pain had stopped, but the soreness had not. My arms and legs felt heavy as lead, and I was starving. I wasn't sure what day it was, and I still wasn't sure who I was, but the information was in my brain somewhere. Fragments of memories floated in my dreams, taunting me, but staying just out of reach. Images of activities and places I must have done and seen. Any kind of name or face was scribbled out of existence. My memories had been tampered with. It was like a toddler covering a drawing with crayon, obscuring the picture beneath.
I searched my brain, daring it to show me something, some reason for what was going on.
C'mon, give me something to work with! A name, a place, a reason, something! I screamed in my thoughts. Eventually, the effort would tire me out and I'd fall asleep.
This may have continued for days, and I felt helpless.
I woke up with the soreness finally almost completely gone and took in my surroundings.
There was a chair by the bed and a cart with medicines and strange-looking drinks on it next to that. There was a door in front of me on my left, and a window on my right. It was a small room, cozy-looking, and something in the back of my head nagged me, saying I knew what this was. Where I was. But again it evaded me.
I shook my head to clear it and walked to the door. Carefully turning the handle, I opened the door and walked out into another room. This one was much bigger, and more like a hospital, but there was no one in it.
It was filled with neatly made cots, but nothing else. With a start, an image flashed through my head. I saw a room like this filled with young kids, injured, bandaged, bloody and weak. Another group of kids tending to their wounds in a flurry of panic.
As quickly as it had appeared it disappeared, leaving me stunned and more confused than ever. Where did that come from? Who were those kids? I sat there dazed for a few minutes, trying to replay the image, but it was gone, and I couldn't remember anything from it. I wasn't even sure it had happened anymore. But it did happen, I did see that, I know I did! I convinced myself, but I was less sure by the second.
Shaky, I walked towards the only exit I saw and found myself in a hallway. There was the room I had come from behind me, stairs in front of me, and a few more rooms down to my left. But I was most interested in the open door a few yards to my right, leading to a porch.
It was the front of a wrap-around porch, facing a large hill and some strawberry fields. I walked around to the back, searching for people. There were answers to my questions out there, and I was going to find them.