Leigh-Scarlett led me through some lanes to a small cottage by the park. It had large overhanging ivy growing down the walls and many shrubs of wisteria, foxgloves, lillies, and other english flowers proliferating throughout the entire garden. The dusk of night did nothing to damp the otherwise heavenly scent, wet and damp closer to the slick ground and leaves, soften padded under a husk of rain from perhaps some hours ago, and towards the skies where the height of my face was and possibly above, the mix of dew with crisp night air radiated upwards.
"Don't you think the garden is beautiful at midnight?" said Leigh-Scarlett as she lead me through a path of uneven cobblestones that did indeed have a few twists and turns even in the bit of distance between the front gate to the cottage.
"I think it's a bit past midnight," I said, remembering the feeling I had that I woke up at midnight on my birthday.
"I wish I had a button that could pause time," said Leigh-Scarlett as she headed to the door which I noticed was left slightly ajar. She moved the door stopper a little way with her foot, I heard the slick of it sliding across the tiled floors in the silence of the darkness before she gestured for me to come in.
"I wish I did too," I said.
I could catch Leigh-Scarlett's strange stare of me before she shut the door and the moonlight slid of her face. "The non-corporeal you would've said you could," she said.
"That's your imagination. I'm real," I said.
Leigh-Scarlett stayed staring at me for a few more moments before leading me up. She picked out a new nightdress for me to change into, and selected some clothes from her wardrobe which was considerably large for what looked like a humble middle-class cottage that she wanted to play about in the woods with.
"Just stay the day. Meet me at the same spot tomorrow night," she said.
"What about food and water?" I asked her.
"I'll bring a bottle and something small from the kitchen," said Leigh, "I don't eat very much because I'm sick a lot and have low appetite. I'm used to it."
"I believe you," I said.
After that she left and I slept in her bed.
The moment my head touched the pillow I couldn't exactly fall asleep, lying there under the sweltering covers staring at the ceiling, my head spinning. I felt that it was so hard to fall asleep I even considered getting out of bed, opening the window for a bite of fresh air, then sneaking outside where the crisper scents of the breeze blew, holding the promise of a better place to be at midnight. I wondered if that was how Leigh-Scarlett began her nightly escapades, through being unable to fall asleep and then sneaking out.
Who was I? Where had my memories gone?
I could talk and think at what seemed like an eleven year old age. Quickly I ran my head through the mess of conversations I'd have with Leigh-Scarlett, the sprawling questions, confusions, hidden meanings, they were all with the depth and significance an eleven year old child would have. Even though I had not a single memory to call mine, I was well and truly talking and acting like an eleven year old. This meant time, time I spent alive, talking to other people through the years, learning things, in order to feel familiar with this age. This meant it wasn't like my life had been paused from age 3 to 11, for otherwise I would've woken up a scared little 3 year old person in an 11 year old body. No, it was likely there was something between 3 years old and 11 years old that looked like a normal life, or perhaps the ghost of a normal life. Even though I knew not my parents or any adults during that time, or any other kids my age, there must've been something within those years resembling normalcy for me to think and talk like this now but...
Could I have had amnesia? Could I have had a blow to the head so bad it I was put in some mental ward from the ages of 3 to 11, awake enough to talk to others and talk and act like a normal 11 year old ultimately in the end, but not mentally awake enough to remember anything more? To remember people, faces, but just about enough to talk and act like a normal person, without the memories? Could I have been kidnapped and kept as some science experiment in a basement somewhere, released when I was 11 years old?
I made a mental note that there was something that happened between 3 and 11, I didn't blink out of existence then back into existence, but it wasn't currently in my mind. Yes, memory loss...was something that I suffered.
I ran my fingers over the back of my head, underneath my hair, combing each and every inch thoroughly for what felt like an eternity that night. But for all my efforts, every inch of scalp revealed nothing but a healthy smoothness, and the absence of any marks, pockmarks or scratches. Nowhere did pain erupt when I pressed it, explored all the crevices and corners with the sharp side of my nails and then the dull but more spread out back side of them as well. There was no spark of pain at all to suggest any head injury.
I probably wasn't hit over the head with anything. Poison?
The more I thought about it the more likely it seemed. When I awoke on the grass just a few hours ago I wasn't dehydrated or starving, which meant I must've had food and water quite recently, most likely within the past day. I didn't think it was possible to get hit over the head with something, pass out long enough for the marks to heal, and then wake up and not be dehydrated or hungry. Poison seemed the more likely answer the more and more I thought of it. Fast-acting, some poisons could be used for short periods only, intending to work only for the few hours that I was supposed to lie there for before I woke up, it was enough to do the trick once I ate it, but it was also close enough to the human body to not do any true harm once it was out of my system.
Perhaps I drank poison or medicine of some sort, passed out for a brief period of time, and then woke up there. But my lack of memories suggested they had been tampered with as well, possibly a darker route than the poison that must've knocked me out and made me lie there. Perhaps there were two different types of poisons, or medicines, or even potions I thought, some mystical and lore-ish sense coming to mind, that were responsible for the very strange fate I found myself in. I felt well now, probably better than Leigh-Scarlett did most days if going by what she said about feeling ill was true. It was ironic that even despite the traumaticising way I'd woken up, in the middle of nowhere with nothing to my name and no memories to call my own, I was still more healthier or ready for things, than some other people. That was a slow happy thought that gave me a mild kickstarter feeling and made me feel like I could do something about my situation.
No sooner had I puzzled out these thoughts it seemed the heavy events of the evening finally caught up to me, my eyelids felt heavy and lights went out almost immediately after as I slipped into a dull and long sleep.
I woke up next morning with a tall skinny blonde-haired woman bringing a tea-tray of breakfast to Leigh-Scarlett's room. She threw open the curtains, letting the sun stream in to fall upon what was an ornate wooden desk, one such that the drawers underneath had tiny lace curtains around the base of each one and a frilly ring around each delicately carved wooden handle, the spires of the tree rings that the wood was made of was handsomely visible upon the furniture and very delicate to see. A mass of stationery, books, diaries, dolls, toys, make-up and fashion, children's things, tucked into almost every nook and corner of Leigh-Scarlett's room revealed a very well-cared for person; spoiled a little possibly, by parents who wanted to compensate for the poorness of her physical health perhaps. Even though her room was of a delicate size and could not truly hold all that many items.
Her mother looked at me. "Breakfast time. Sleeping in? Go and get your teeth brushed, then have breakfast-" she murmured, reaching over to pull the covers back and offer a hand to pull me out of bed. Was Leigh-Scarlett usually this weak? No wonder why she hated it at home. As nice as it was to be waited on, the draw of independence and doing things for oneself was very thrilling. I put up with it for a little while before I was able to finally locate the bathroom - alone and by myself. I didn't want to use her toothbrush, that seemed unhygienic, so I opened some drawers and was pleasantly surprised to see a few spares lying around. I brushed my teeth with the new one and when I was done, slipped it into the pocket of my nightdress to keep for later. Leigh-Scarlett seemed to want me around and I figured she would probably like it if I had the means to have nice teeth whilst we talked, and well, I didn't exactly appear with a toothbrush did I? It wasn't like I didn't have the need for one.
I'd have to mention it to Leigh-Scarlett otherwise it would truly be theft. A jolt came to my stomach as I imagined myself getting arrested, pulled into the small county jail somehow. Although Leigh-Scarlett was doppelganger whose situation was somewhat familiar to me, she was still very much so a complete stranger and I didn't want to risk anything, or her truly thinking I was mad, or just...not a figment of her imagination she wanted to entertain anymore. I could feel a frown meet my face again as I headed back to my room and tried to eat breakfast. What would happen if Leigh-Scarlett no longer wanted me around? She still didn't entirely believe I wasn't quite real?
Her mother insisted on feeding me. It was a mess of trying to eat myself and her trying to help half the time, making brief conversations about daily topics and little things here and there it seemed were frequent and often between Leigh-Scarlett and her. Soon it became evident that it wasn't because Leigh-Scarlett truly needed help eating, as her mother did leave gaps for me to feed myself, but it was merely just habitual. I didn't know how her mother came to have such a ... tight and so so cosy relationship with her, but it was just the reality of this girl's life I found myself switching into. Her mother commented that I looked tired or like I had something on my mind, but the quickness she transitioned into the next lines of conversation suggested this was somewhat commonplace for the girl.
After I was done her mother asked me what I wanted to do. I said to play by myself. Luckily I got the whole day of after her mother gave me a few lectures on how not to get hurt or injured, and then I...found myself crawling through the boxes in Leigh-Scarlett's room. Photographs, newspaper clippings, articles, trying to find anything that could clue me in about a Sally-Anne Perks that may be tucked in Leigh-Scarlett's room.