Author's Note: Second Chance Horse Rescue Ranch is a real place in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. Its staff is dedicated to the rehabilitation of mistreated and abused horses. For more information on their tireless work to protect horses, some 235 of which have already been been adopted out into loving homes by this non-profit organization, please visit http://www.washingtonhorserescue.org
VIA MEMORIUS - SUSURROS DEL TIEMPO
Adam brushed his short, dirty-blond hair out of his face and hefted another bag of hay, carrying it out to the paddock for the more skittish horses to eat. Alyssa followed him, her green eyes twinkling with likely yet another mischievous plot to tease him. She seemed to always be cooking those things up.
Alyssa was a girl whom Adam instinctively knew was pretty. The thirty-two-year-old had short auburn hair in springy curls that framed her pixie face, there was a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her emerald green eyes were always dancing with cheeriness. When she smiled, her whole face beamed and she carried herself with the air of childlike playfulness.
Adam also instinctively knew that he had seen pretty girls before- no, make that beautiful girls- but that looks really didn't matter very much to him. He had an odd feeling that he believed beauty was unimportant and even commonplace, though he didn't have any facts from his life to hypothesize why he might feel this way.
"Something wrong?" Alyssa asked him, bringing him out of his thoughts. He smiled at her.
"Nope."
"Thought you might be remembering something." she said, gazing at him thoughtfully. Adam had noticed that she seemed to be fascinated by the idea of him regaining his memories. Alyssa had been hired on, Buddy told him, just before he came home from his stay at the hospital, to help around until he could manage what he used to again.
"For someone who's just met me, you seem pretty eager to have me back to my old self." he said, then added, "Whoever that is."
"Well, I don't want you to think I'm stealing your job or anything. Buddy said you used to do most of what he's hired me for. It's just, well, you know... He says it was a pretty bad accident, that you've lost a lot, so of course you're not just going to be jumping back into your old duties." she smiled kindly and opened the bag of hay that he'd put by the paddock fence. "So, here I am. To help you out until you remember. I do want you to remember, Adam." She looked at him and shrugged. "Even if it means I'll be fired."
"I doubt it." Adam answered, somewhat glumly. "At least, not for a long time. I haven't remembered anything yet, not even a tiny flash of familiarity. It's like I've never been here before in my life."
"Don't worry. It'll happen." she said, touching his arm. Suddenly she smiled mischievously, then tossed a bit of hay at him. He laughed, enjoyed the feeling as though he hadn't done it in a long time, and threw a handful of hay back at her. Within a few moments, they were having an all-out war, Alyssa shrieking and running around the paddock, eliciting strange looks from the horses. Soon, Adam had cornered her on one side and proceeded to pour hay over her head. She fell to her knees to escape, and grabbed his jacket to pull him down with her. They laid on the grass, laughing and breathing hard. Adam sat up and brushed the hay out of his hair.
"Hey, what's that on your neck?" she asked suddenly, sitting up with him.
"What?" Adam asked, conscientiously touching his throat but finding nothing.
"No, on the back." Alyssa said, looking closely where he couldn't see. She reached out to pull the collar of his shirt down.
"It looks like a tattoo."
"Huh." Adam smiled. "Didn't know I had a tattoo. Kind of a weird place to get one."
"Maybe you're a rebel and you just don't know it yet." she said, grinning at him.
"What's it of?" he asked.
"It looks like a barcode. You know, like they have on food labels and stuff? What an odd idea for a tattoo, don't you think?" But Adam wasn't listening; an onslaught of memory had suddenly hit him.
"Ahhg!" Adam grunted, gritting his teeth and trying not to yell out.
The man behind him told him to hold still as he positioned the laser again.
"Almost done soon." he said in halting English. "More than half is done."
The room was dark, musty, and smelled of a mixture of Chinese food and a dank basement. Adam clenched his fists as the burst of the laser hit him, searing his skin and making lights dance before his eyes. He willed himself not to pass out, but the pain was almost unbearable.
"Adam? Adam!" Alyssa was shaking his shoulder. He stood up, running a
hand through his hair. "What's wrong?" she asked, her green eyes concerned.
"I think I remember something." he breathed. "Getting the tattoo." He winced anew at the memory and touched the back of his neck. "It hurt like hell."
"I've heard they do. I don't know. I've never had one." she giggled to herself, sounded a little nervous, as though his sudden trance had frightened her. "Afraid, I guess. Either that or I don't want to have it all stretched into nothing when I'm a wrinkled old lady." she smiled, but Adam tensed as another barrage of images assaulted him.
Adam was in a jail cell. He was looking at a woman; an old woman. Her
skin was wrinkled, her hair streaked with grey. She was Asian, and it looked to
Adam that she had once been beautiful. But there was something strange about
her, too. She was old, yet she looked young at the same time. It didn't make
sense, but it's how she looked. The Asian woman was two cells away from him; he
shouldn't have been able to see her as well as he did, but he could. There was
another woman, too, in the cell between his and the old woman's. Her back was to
him but there was something oddly familiar about her.
"What's wrong with her?" He heard her ask, turning with Adam to see several military soldiers with machine guns standing guard. The girl was directing her question to a man whom Adam felt very hostile against, and there was an odd familiarity about him, too.
Adam's head reeled as the memory faded. Alyssa stood up, looking almost
nervous. She reached a hand out to steady him, and it was only then that he
realized he was about to fall over. She managed to help him to the fence, which
he leaned against thankfully.
"Adam, are you okay? Should I get Mary, I think she's just inside."
"No, I'm fine." he told her, swallowing hard. "I'm remembering."
"What?" she asked eagerly.
"I don't know. I... was in a jail cell. There were two girls with me, in other cells. One of them was old."
"Old?"
"Yes. But young, too. I can't explain it. I don't understand. But I think she was..." he swallowed hard. "I think she was my sister."
"I didn't know you had a sister."
"Neither did I." he muttered, stepping away from the fence and pacing nervously, trying to shake the images and their strange familiarity. Those memories weren't of working as a peaceful truck-driver on Second Chance Horse Rescue Ranch. They had been of a different life, an exciting life, a dangerous life... a life he somehow knew had been his.
"Adam, are you okay?" Alyssa asked for the thousandth time, staring at him, looking extremely concerned and a little frightened.
"I have to go." he said and then, without waiting for an answer, turned and bolted toward the ranch-house.
He made a beeline for the bathroom and searched the drawers for one of Mary's hand mirrors. Finding one, he set it down on the counter and closed the bathroom door, pulling off his jacket and shirt. Taking a huge breath and holding the mirror out behind him, he brushed his dirty-blond hair from the nape of his neck and stared at the barcode tattooed on it. He felt another burst of memory flooding his mind and this time welcomed the answers it might bring.
"Yours is nicer than mine." a young girl said, no older than ten or
eleven, though it was hard to tell with her head shaved. She touched the back of
Adam's neck. Somehow he knew that he was twelve and that he had no hair.
"They're all pretty much the same, Jondy." he heard himself say. "Black, vertical lines. Besides, what does it matter?"
"Yours is prettier. I want mine to be prettier." she said softly, her large blue eyes looking at him thoughtfully. "I want to be pretty like the nurses who watch over us."
"You will be. It's in the genes." he said, causing her to shrug and turn away from him.
They were in some kind of hospital, it looked like, or dormitory, or barracks. There were fourteen other beds besides his, he noticed, most of which were occupied by sleeping children, all with shaved heads and many of them, he noticed, with barcodes that matched his. One of the beds was missing its mattress. A girl, nine years old, also with her head shaved, was lying on her stomach two beds down from his, on a bed next to the stripped one, staring at the wall and smiling. He caught sight of her barcode as she turned her head slightly, but his memory-self didn't seem to think it was odd for her to have one, just as he didn't think it was odd for the girl called Jondy to have one either.
Somehow, Adam knew she was the same girl he'd seen standing with her back to him in the jail cell in the other memory. She was smiling at a sign posted above her bed that said MISSION, he noticed, and thought this was odd. Then he realized that she wasn't staring at the sign, but at a shadow on it, a shadow in the shape of a butterfly that was being projected by a boy sitting on her bed with her. The child Jondy had joined them and was also smiling at the show. Adam looked at the boy, and he looked back.
"You should go to bed." Adam heard himself say.
"I don't mind." the young boy said. He was about the same age as Jondy, with the same shaved head and tattooed neck as all of them. "You know they don't sleep."
"You do, though."
"We didn't go to the High Place tonight." Ben's hands were still making shadows for his sisters but he was looking at Adam.
"It's okay." he told the younger boy. "The Blue Lady will understand."
"I don't think she will." he protested softly. Adam tensed up at having what he said challenged.
"I told you, don't let her interfere with your duties. We'll go up there tomorrow."
"She's already been shaking all day." Ben said, looking at the nine-year-old. "We don't want what happened to Jack to happen to her." He turned and looked at the stripped bed, and the girl turned to Adam with concerned brown eyes. He felt an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness for her; for all of the children in the room.
"It's okay, I won't let that happen to you." he said to her, and he knew the next words he spoke wouldn't be a suggestion, but an order. "Go to bed, Ben."
Now Adam was more confused than ever. Who were Ben and Jondy, and where
had they been? Who was the girl that he seemed to have known for many years,
given that he saw her on two separate occasions, one as a nine-year-old and one
as an adult? Why were all their heads shaved, and why did they all have
barcodes? What had Ben meant, that the unnamed girl had been shaking all day?
Who was Jack? Who was the Blue Lady, and what was the High Place? He picked the
hand mirror up from where it had dropped to the floor during his flashback, and
again examined his tattoo.
"There." the man said, switching the laser off. Adam let his breath
out long and hard, not realizing he'd been holding it until this moment. He
touched the back of his neck gingerly and came back with blood on his fingers.
"I not seen such hard one." the man said. Adam stood up, he turned to the man, who was Chinese, and handed him a wad of cash.
"You will never see again." the man told him. "Tattoo gone now, forever. Not coming back."
"Good, that's the idea." Adam heard himself saying, though he could feel that his memory-self was doubtful. He turned and left the tattoo parlour, emerging onto a sunny street bustling with activity and the smells of spice and exotic food. Every building was labeled with Chinese characters, and he seemed to be the only white person for miles around.
So, he'd been getting the tattoo taken off, not put on, as he'd
originally thought. But how, he wondered, could he have been getting it taken
off if it was still on there now? Yet Adam knew in his gut that this was the
case; however, like so many of his newly-regained memories, he didn't know why.
Had he been in China, or in a Chinatown somewhere?
There was a knock at the door. He turned and heard Alyssa, calling him, asking if he was alright. He opened the door and she seemed surprised by his half-nude state.
"No, I'm not alright." he said, pulling his shirt back on as he rushed out into the living room with her following quickly behind. He sat on the sofa, then jumped to his feet and started pacing. He felt like moving; couldn't sit still. Again she looked frightened and he found that it annoyed him.
"Adam, do you need to sit down? You don't look so good. Are you sure you're alright?"
"I have to get out of here." he said, hurrying past her. She grabbed his arm, but suddenly he had her own and twisted it behind her back. She stared at him with a mixture of fear and pain on her face.
"Adam!" she gasped.
"Stay out of this." he hissed at her angrily.
"Stay out of this." A young man, hair brown tinted blond from the sun,
eyes looking troubled and sleepless, face tired and drawn.
"Charlie, wait." It was a beautiful young woman, her hair done up in a long braid, her lips full, her eyes dark and almond-shaped. Adam found her very familiar, and he knew he cared for her. But at this moment he was angry- no, disappointed- with her.
"We've got to do something, Penny." Charlie said to the girl, causing a wave of hostility to rise in Adam.
"Tinga." he corrected icily. The guy stood up and started moving toward him.
"Listen, you son of a-" As Charlie reached him, Adam grabbed him around the neck. He hated this man, hated everything he represented, wished to kill him for the sake of the woman Tinga.
Adam swallowed hard as he let go of Alyssa, his eyes wide with fear at
his own actions and memories of past violence.
"Another one?" She asked gently, touching his arm. He was surprised she was coming near him; sensing this, she smiled slightly. "It's okay, you're not you right now." He brushed her off and paced across the room as before.
"You can't say that; you don't know me. I don't even know who I am!" he snapped, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I have to figure out what's going on, here. I have to get out of here," he muttered, mostly to himself. He moved toward the door.
"Wait!" she called him back. "You can't just leave. You have to do that run into town in about ten minutes! Buddy needs you, Adam." He knew this, and sighed inwardly. He would do the run, but as soon as he got back he would get to the bottom of these strange memories.
Alyssa was holding out her hands placatingly, but he noticed she didn't approach him as she had last time. For some reason, he got smug satisfaction from this. Somehow, she didn't matter; no one mattered, suddenly, except those children from his memories. They're grown now, he realized. I have to find them.
"Please, Adam." Alyssa said gently. "What do you see?"
"What do you see?" the voice that came from behind him was young,
melodic, adoring. The owner of this voice believed in him in a way that Adam
didn't think he had ever experienced before. Yet, his memory-self found it
normal that such trust would be placed on his shoulders. He turned away from the
barred window of the barracks to lay eyes on the same brown-eyed girl who had
watched Ben's shadow puppet shows with Jondy. Except now she was younger; four
or five. Adam knew somehow that he was eight.
"Dogs." he said, looking out the window again. She came to stand next to him; he glanced down at her, saw her standing on tip toes, struggling to see, and lifted her soft body into his arms. "Look," he said, and pointed out into the yard. "There."
The German Shepards to which he was referring must have been a hundred metres away, yet he could see them clearly, in great detail. A full moon hung over the forest at whose edges the dogs were being marched back and forth by their trainers.
"What are they for?" the child asked him, also seeming to have no trouble seeing across the distance.
"I don't know." he said. "Maybe a new training exercise for us. Maybe looking for something."
"They're scary." she said, laying her head on his shoulder.
"Don't worry." It was more than natural to console her, protect her from her fears. It was pure instinct; it was the essence of who he was.
"I like them." A young boy's voice chirped from the other side of Adam, and he turned to see a boy of seven years old joining them, grinning out at the dogs with a cheerful shine in his eyes.
"You like everything, Zane." Adam said.
"Well, I like dogs most of all." the boy told him, then turned away from the window. "Brin wants us to come and see the picture she drew with the crayons the nurse gave her yesterday."
"Let's go." The little girl said, and jumped down from Adam's arms, taking his hand and dragging him along as she followed Zane back to the barracks. He felt a swell of love gazing at her little bald head and chubby hand squeezing his as they walked along. She was the littlest of all of them, he knew, and needed to be protected. They went into the barracks, where thirteen children of various ages were crowded around Brin, none older than he was or younger than the girl whose hand was still clasped in his. Brin had drawn a picture on the wall behind her bed so the guards wouldn't see it, and Adam was proud of her cleverness.
"What is it?" the youngest asked, crouching down to get a closer look at the drawing and pulling him down with her. Adam looked at the picture; it was colourful, with buildings and people on the street, people he realized belatedly were himself and his siblings. He hadn't recognized them because they all had hair and were wearing civilian clothing.
"It's us in the Good Place." Ben answered, but Brin shook her head.
"No, it's the Real World. This is where we'll go when we run away from here." she said. Ben frowned, but said nothing, and Adam felt himself tense as he reflected on her words. He sub-consciously tightened his hand around his smallest sister's protectively. She shook too much, his memory-self knew, though Adam experiencing the flashback didn't understand this. The eight-year-old Adam shook the thought away and concentrated on the drawing.
"That's a beautiful drawing, Brin." He said, and his little sister beamed up at him. It was then that the present-day Adam recognized her as the old woman in the cell who had been somehow young at the same time, and he shivered. Her soft voice was so sweet, so innocent, as she spoke:
"Thank you, Zack."
"Adam!" Alyssa's voice hauled him once again out of his reverie. "What
did you see?"
"I just had another one. I was in some sort of boarding school, or military school or something. I was with my sister."
"The old woman again?"
"No, a different sister."
"Another one?"
"Yes, my youngest... I think I have a lot of siblings, about fourteen or so." At this, Alyssa raised her eyebrows, but he barreled on. "We were looking at some soldiers out in the yard behind the building where we slept leading some dogs around. Then one of my brothers came and told me to come back to the barracks to see a picture that Brin had drawn."
"Who's Brin?"
"My sister. The old woman. Only she was a child in this flashback. We all were."
"Go on." Alyssa said, looking more interested than frightened now.
"I went with my littlest sister to see Brin's drawing-"
"What's her name, your youngest sister?"
"I don't know." Adam frowned for a moment, then shrugged off this momentary setback and continued to explain. "We went to see Brin's drawing, and she said it was of the real world, where we would go when we escaped. I didn't understand what she meant, but I remember it had something to do with my littlest sister. I was afraid for her for some reason. It also had something to do with Jack."
"Who?"
"I don't know. Another brother, maybe? Ben mentioned him in a memory I had before. I never saw him."
"Who's Ben?"
"My brother, Ben. He made puppet shows for Jondy and my smallest sister because they didn't sleep." Before she could ask, he quickly added, "Jondy's another one of my sisters."
"What strange things you're remembering." Alyssa smiled, seeming almost amused, and this annoyed him. "Barracks and military school for eight-year-olds and younger? I've never heard of that."
"Neither have I, but that's not the weirdest part." he told her. "They all had barcodes like mine on the back of their necks. And Brin said something to me at the end of the last memory. I told her that her drawing was beautiful and she said thank you. But she didn't call me Adam."
"What did she call you?" Alyssa asked; Adam raised his head to look at her and narrowed his eyes in confusion at the memory.
"Zack..." he said slowly. "She called me Zack."
