Chapter 5: Mixed up memories

More dreams came to me at night. All involved violence and death, a lot involved fire. What was I some kind of pyromaniac? I saw a lot of fires in my dreams. I saw a church burning. I wondered if these were just random dreams or actual memories. Had I witnessed a church being burned? The dreams made me realize one thing though. I wasn't going to get my memories back the normal way. If there was a way that I was going to get my memories back easy I would have known something by now. Anything about my past but instead it was all a mystery. It was as if it was still there but just locked away. How could that have happened? Wondering about it wasn't going to help obviously but what else could I do? Evie had to help me, I had to get her to give me my memories back. I made my way to the outer omega of cabins and looked around. Finding the Hypnos cabin was pretty much impossible. All the cabins were different and had something to do with its patron god but I had no clue how a cabin would look like sleep. Eventually though, I saw Evie herself coming out of the Hephaestus cabin. Maybe she had been talking to Luke or any other Hephaestus kids. I didn't even know if there were any others, Luke had said that many of his siblings had died or disappeared. Were there any left? Evie spotted me too. Immediately she looked like she wanted to hurt me really bad. I walked up to her, I needed to get my memories back and she would give them back!

"I'm not giving you you're memories." She said. I wondered how she guessed, well...maybe it was kind of predictable.

"They're not yours to give, their mine! I don't even want to know how they ended up in your head but I want them back." I sounded determined, maybe obsessive. I don't think you hear the difference in your own voice.

"But its me who has to put them back in you and I won't. With the things you've done I think we're all better of with you not knowing." I couldn't believe this girl. She wouldn't give me what was mine in the first place? I felt myself filling with anger. I wanted to get seriously berserk on her but I controlled my rage.

"You can't hold my own past from me! You can't!" I guess she could see I was getting angry. She didn't flinch though, apparently she had been through worse than some guy screaming at her. Well she was a demigod and after fighting the manticore I didn't believe I would be scared of a regular bloke any time soon. My guess was, she had seen a lot more than one manticore.

"I damn well..." She stopped. Her face was twitching, she seemed to be in excruciating pain. Her face was turning pale. She put her hands on her temples, people often did that with extreme headaches. I had no idea what was wrong with her, was she having a migraine attack or something? Eventually she collapsed, she was screaming in pain. Now a simple bloke like me, doesn't really have a clue what to do when something like that happens. I had some medical knowledge planted in my head. But they were mostly on the lethal side of things. The location of main arteries, what to do if one got cut, but migraine's. That was something else. That was neurological, the art of the brain. I knew every single way to penetrate the skull and hit the brain but that was it. When I first woke up and knew these things I figured one of my parents had to be a doctor or something. But Evie telling me I was a killer made me wonder if I learned these things...for other reasons.

"Aaaaaahhhhhhh" Still she screamed, I couldn't imagine what kind of pain she felt. I was crouching down next to her asking what what wrong, trying to help her but she pushed me away. I knew she hated me for whatever I had done in my past. And the more she showed that she hated me, the more I wondered what my crimes were. I stood there without purpose, without knowing how to help her. That moment I realized my hate for being helpless, or in this case being unable to help someone in pain. It was something I dreaded all my life, but only in a moment like this I could remember it.

Then the cries stopped. Evie seemed fine now. She was as pale as a dead man but the pain seemed to have disappeared. She got back up and looked me straight in the eyes with intense fury. "You burned down a church!" She said something about visions, I guess that's what had just happened. I didn't think they would hurt her so much. It made sense in a way though. After all she was housing two sets of memories, could a demigod's brain handle that? Apparently it could, but it cost Evie much. What she said had worried me though. The night before I had dreamt about a burning church and here she was telling me I burned one down. Was this coincidence? Was she really speaking the truth? "You burned down a church, for your own sick amusement. How could you do something like that? I know you're lying about your amnesia so tell me! How could you do that?" She seemed to be in tears, well nearly anyway. She seemed hopeless. I wondered why, most people were very simple when they stood eye to eye with a murder. They were relentless to them, they weren't looking at a person. They were looking at an animal. But Evie seemed doubtful about that. Didn't she believe in the black and white theory on good and evil? Or had she seen more than just bad things? Had I in some sort of way shown her a good side in my past. I wondered for a moment if I had a reason for all these murders but I could answer that easily. There was never a reason to kill someone, never a way to make it less monstrous and primal than it was. But there was a way to make it understandable. Not forgiveable, but understandable. Had I done that? Did something happen to me that made her understand? I didn't have the answer to the question, nor to any other question that burned in my mind. She did though, yet she refused to give them to me. I understood why, but that didn't mean I agreed.

"Does it really hurt so much? Getting my memories I mean?" I asked. Of course I knew the answer. I had just seen her pain with my own two eyes.

"Yes! You cannot imagine it, then again, maybe you're pain is worse. After all, you have the scars to prove that you know pain." She said. I wondered if she knew how I got my scars. She knew some that's for sure. I thought about the burning mark I had. I wondered if that happened in this fire.

"Did I get burned? I have a burning mark on my right shoulder did I get it here?" Of course in the dream it didn't look anything like a church, but maybe the dream was a load of bollocks. I couldn't be sure until I got my memories back.

"No, that was a different fire, I guess that's where your obsession with fire began I think." She sounded calm, nice in a way. Maybe even...sympathetic. Did she know about the girl in my dreams? Did she watch her die like I did? Was it my fault? "Yeah Michael, you're a real pyromaniac." There was the hatred again. Not a single drop of sympathy. No sympathy for the devil I suppose. "Get out of here Michael, I don't want to see you at all. I'm not giving you your memories back, and I can't look at you without hating you. And holding grudges like that, it isn't good for me." She said. I decided to do as she wished. I wanted my memories back as I think you can understand. But I understood how she must have felt. So I was going to leave her alone, and maybe eventually she would see that whoever I was. I'm not that person anymore. I couldn't imagine myself killing, I didn't believe I could deliberately end someone's life. So maybe if I proved that to her she wouldn't see a threat in me getting my memories back. Maybe she would change her mind.

I wondered camp for a while before setting myself down on the beach. I sat there looking at the waves crash in the sand for about an hour before a girl of about my age joined me. She sat next to me in the sand. She had long black hair and a pretty face, her eyes were...special. She had a weird look in her eyes. A sort of darkness that I couldn't place. I had seen the same in my own eyes yet different. Hers seemed stronger yet there was also something warm and kind about her. She was hard to figure out. We sat there in silence for a while, eventually we both looked up and caught each others eyes. She smiled and spoke for the first time.

"Hi, are you all right? You seem bothered?" She asked. She seemed nice enough. I decided to tell her some things, it would probably be better if I left out the Evie believes me to be a murderer part.

"Yeah I'm all right. I have amnesia and sometimes...it just really bugs me you know." I said. Of course if she hadn't done anything stupid she probably never had amnesia. So she probably didn't know.

"Well I can't say I do, but I get why it bugs you. I would go crazy without my memories." She said. "What's your name anyway?" She asked me. I thought it was a stupid question, I just told her I had amnesia.

"Well my real name's supposed to be Michael but most people call me Angel. Nice to meet you...?" I left on obvious blank, a rude way of asking her name I suppose but I didn't care.

"I'm Jeni Carter, daughter of Hades." I couldn't figure out if she said that with pride or shame. For me it would be shame. I wouldn't be able to bear being the kid of the god that lorded over people's dead loved ones. Then again if what Evie said was true it would fit me just fine.

"So how does it fare being the daughter of the god of the underworld?" I didn't really know what else to ask. It was a simple question I guess.

"I don't know. Some powers are cool I guess. I can't say I use them a lot. I just try to live normally you know. I had a job until I came back for Christmas. I gave it up cause I missed being around here. But I'm still finishing the last few years of school next year." She said rapidly. I didn't really know what to say. I wasn't one for words.

"Cool." I said simply. Lack of words was very common for me. I wondered if it made me look shy. I didn't know for sure. Maybe it did maybe it didn't, I didn't care either way.

"You're not a talker are you?" She said chuckling a bit.

"Not really. I guess I have nothing to talk about." I said. It was true. What could I tell about myself? I knew as much about me as she did and I met her a minute ago.

"Of course you do. I mean you might not remember your past but you're still the same person." If she knew what I was being accused off she would know that was a very bad choice of words.

"I guess. But I can't remember that person. I don't know anything that I've been through. I have these scars that I can't place, I have a name that means nothing to me. I barely feel like I am a real person." I had never lied about having amnesia. But Jeni was the first one I told about how it felt. I don't know why I told her specifically. Maybe because she was the only one that seemed interested.

"He's in there somewhere." She said smiling. For a daughter of Hades she was quite upbeat. I always imagined children of the darker gods to be darker but Jeni Carter proved that I was wrong. She was nice and a good listener. I liked her.

"I guess so." I was being quiet as per usual. It might not have been very nice for the person who I was talking to but I didn't have anything interesting to say in my opinion. "I should get going." I said.

"Oh okay, I'll see you around okay?" She said smiling.

"Yeah sure." I started walking towards the cabins. I waved my hands as a sort of goodbye gesture and said: "Later." She said something, I didn't understand it. I was tired and felt horrible. I needed to get some sleep. Sadly I could rarely find any in the Hermes cabin. I couldn't believe how anyone did. For a second I considered some of them taking some serious sleeping pills but I would have noticed something like that. I guessed some people just slept easier then others. It was something only Hypnos could decide on. Apparently he didn't like me very much. It didn't matter. I didn't need to gods to like me. The only bad thing was that when the gods don't like you, things mess up. After all every god controls their own little part. Mess with one and something will always go wrong in your life. I wondered what I had done to piss off Hypnos. But he really had it in for me. After all he was also the god of memories, the sleep was a small torture compared to the amnesia. Hypnos had me good, I guess that's where my grudge for the gods began. And I guess that's the first of many enemies I would make on Olympus. And one alone was already giving me hell. If I knew then what hell I was going to go through. I probably would have run from destiny as far as I could. Sadly it would catch up. For some reason destiny always did.