Awakened

The plane rumbled through the air, climbing above the trees spread out below. From such a height, you couldn't know how they towered above the few humans beneath them, mocking their inability to conquer.

Milton looked through the murky window and stuck out his lower lip. He watched the plane's shadow chasing over the different shades of green. Then, there it was. Straight ahead of them; a perfect circle of about half a mile's radius where no trees grew. Nothing grew there. The ground was cracked and dry and were there a wind it would blow dust right across the barren wilderness.

Barely distinguishable in the golden ground was a symbol. You wouldn't notice it if you didn't know to look but sure enough if you were told; three interlinking ellipses framed in a circle. Milton had lain in the centre of that circle for fifteen days.

He was conscious for hours before he moved. The first thing he noticed was the pain; a stiff aching throughout his body. It took a while longer to realise it was his skin burning. Eventually, he rolled over as if to make for some shade but there wasn't any. Instead, his body was seared by the hot ground. He jerked back to his previous position, lying on his back, which was used to the heat. Finding the same position was impossible; he shifted around for minutes, maybe hours, but there was always an ankle, the side of an arm, the top of a shoulder burning where it touched the earth. In his frustration, he lifted his arm up across his face and pushed his eyelids open, then jammed them shut again as the sun blinded him. He pushed them open again, squinting. Then closed them. Open, closed, open, closed, until they had adjusted. They were dry and itchy – blinking them was irresistible. There was no moisture left in him. The sun no longer beat down on him, there was no beating. It was continuous.

After a day, he realised that he could not move; bending an arm or a leg was the most he could manage. So, each night, once it got cool enough, he would roll onto his other side, allowing both to be equally protected, equally exposed. And each night he prayed that somebody would come and rescue him. He prayed for a familiar face, at first. After a while, any face would do.

After a week, Milton realised that no-one was coming. And, that with each day that passed, he grew weaker. That night he got up. He lifted his head first and, as stabbing pains shot through it and an overwhelming sense of gravity pulled it downwards, he pulled his back up off the ground as well. It took him all night and he fell, more than once. He fell in every direction a man can but at sunrise, there he was, with his head drooping into his chest, his arms spread out in front of him and his legs and back bent like a child that is unsure how to walk. He took his first step.

It was then that he realised he did not know where to go. At first he had just been struck with the urge to move; to move his arms, his legs, his head and his toes. Then, to move on from where he was: to leave this hostile ground with the sun that kept him prisoner. It was not until he was stood, set to go, that he realised he did not know where. It was on his seventh day of waking that Milton realised he did not know who he was. All he craved was the familiar but to him nothing was.

Milton and his wife lived the perfect suburban life, The Revised Edition. Instead of a 1950s dress, his wife wore an almost see-through, white shirt that clung to the black bra beneath and slid down her chest as she walked. She accompanied this with a tight black skirt that silhouetted her figure perfectly. Milton, being a modern man, did not expect dinner prepared and on the table when he got home. His wife did, nonetheless, have a bowl of Frosties ready every afternoon at six o'clock. And, had she not dug it up, they would also have had that extremely sought after white picket fence.

Every Sunday afternoon, Milton and Jennifer went bowling with their four best friends, two equally happily married couples. Despite having no particular technique, Milton always bowled a strike. And, despite often being on the opposing team, everybody was always thrilled. It was during one such afternoon that he raised the issue of the accident. Everybody went silent, averting their eyes.

'Honey, I don't understand,' smiled Jennifer. 'You think you can remember things?'

Milton sighed. 'No. Well, yes.' He rubbed his forehead, self-consciously. 'Not people, or events. Habits. I think I can remember habits.'

'Like what?' Harvey was the Budweiser man, the guy that Milton could always confide in. He was also his doctor, which made him indispensable after the accident.

'I got in a fight, yesterday, on the train.' All five of those surrounding him gasped – amongst such happy people, fights were rare. Milton swallowed and continued, 'anyway, I had to use the emergency axe to defend myself.'

As he re-told the story of the tramps and the man, he realised how absurd it sounded. He continually back-tracked -changing a detail here, a detail there, leaving out the bit about the balls of energy - in order to try and convince his friends he was justified in wielding an axe against a stranger on the Newark Light Rail.

'Oh god, I don't know. The thing is… Well, what really struck me was how familiar it felt, how I knew what to do, how to hold it – the axe, I mean' Milton stopped himself and looked down, embarrassed. He was always the troubled one.

Ever since the accident in the jungle, when he had lost his memory, he was the one with problems – he couldn't sleep, he didn't feel right, he didn't know who he was, he wanted a different job, a different house, he wanted to do something different with his Sunday afternoons. He remembered that conversation in particular:

'So, guys, I was thinking we might go sailing next Sunday. A guy at work's got a boat we could use.'

'Sunday? But it's bowling on Sundays.'

'Yeah, I know, but I thought we could try something different, just this once.'

'But why? Don't you like bowling? You always win.'

'Yeah, I know, but wouldn't you like to do something else for once? Something where maybe I didn't win?'

'Don't you like winning?' They never went sailing.

So, amongst his friends, Milton couldn't help feeling like the problem child. Luckily, they were always willing to see him through it.

'It's highly possible.' Harvey nodded. 'Maybe you fenced as a kid. You may have forgotten the lessons, the teachers and so on but you'd still have the ability to fence – or axe wield.' At this, he grinned and turned back to the scoreboard. 'Well, it looks like I'm coming up behind you buddy, better get your act together, because your about to get what they call an ass whipping.'

Of course, Milton won. Milton always won. What troubled him for the rest of the afternoon was; if, in spite of his amnesia, he was able to retain the ability to fence why had he never remembered how to programme computers or put up shelves or bowl or do any of those things that he had been doing for years before the accident and had had to re-learn? He did not ask. He felt a creeping sense of unease when faced with the question and so he tried to forget about it and enjoy the 'ass whipping' he was not receiving.