Author's Note: The production of chapters at such a rapid rate will not occur after tonight. I just happen to have a work-free night, which is a rare occasion. I apologize for brevity, but I do believe the story remains effective, at least right now. Warnings for this chapter: Disturbing themes
There was a faint sound: a door slamming shut, quite a distance away. I opened my mouth. I took a long swallow of air. Smaller sounds were beginning to grow in clarity, and a light bore through my eyelids, prying my eyes open. My vision was blurry, but it had returned to me, all the same. I saw a shiny surface beneath me – I'd guess steel if I had to. Directly in front of my face, there was a wire fence.
The shock of the object so close to me sent me shooting up into a sitting position, immediately falling back against another wall of the wire. I took another gulp of air. As the empty seconds ticked by, I became painfully aware of several things. First, I was a captive. The wire which surrounded me told me so – I was in a cage, something similar to a dog's kennel. There was a door, padlocked shut. And I was being held in some sort of larger storage facility; there were large brown boxes everywhere in the room, but apart from that, the area was bare and grey. There was nothing in my cage except for a bottle of spring water.
Second, I had terrible aches, all over my body. Upon examining my arms, I witnessed two large bruises on either of my elbows. My legs were the same, bruised at the joints. I imagined my face to be cut up as well, judging from the stinging sensation which ran rampant around my eyes and nose. My backbone felt as though it'd been recently crushed, and my head was pounding as well. It was more miserable than any feeling I'd had b-…
Before?
The third and final thing I became aware of: I had no idea who I was. I searched and searched for memories, from any time, recent or old, but there was nothing. My brain was an empty vault, everything I'd known stolen from it. I had no name. I had no age. No family, no friends, and no personal identity whatsoever. The only memories I held were of those waking up, not three minutes ago. This was terrible… Think! Think! You have to remember!
"Something wrong?" The voice startled me, but I did not jump, did not physically flinch. I calmly turned my head toward the sound of the man who'd spoken. He was dressed in a rather extravagant brown suit, complete with golden pocket watch and cane; he had flowing ebony hair, which covered one side of his face – his visible eye was a lustrous hazel in color. I blinked, trying to imagine if I'd seen this man before. Perhaps he was my captor. But I would not jump to a conclusion… not when I had nothing to draw conclusions from. Instead, I stared blankly back at him, trying as best I could to ignore the intense pain in my head.
"You seem a little…lost," he remarked, leaning on his cane for support. Surely, my eyes were alive and swimming with confusion. What did he mean by that? Surely it made sense that he spoke of my current captive situation; he was right – I had absolutely no idea where I was. But the words tore deeper into my brain than that. I was aware of my sudden suspiciousness, that perhaps this man had something to do with my missing memories. When he said that I was "lost", did he mean it in more than one way? He chuckled, and stepped toward my cage, gripping onto the other side of the chain links. I swallowed hard, for there was something unsettling about his presence so close to my own.
"W-who are you?" I asked shakily, backing into the wired wall furthest from him. He threw his head back in a thundering, lion-like laughter. I cringed at the sound, a new feeling quickly radiating throughout my body: the tension of terror. But it was more than that; seemingly endless amounts of adrenaline were running wild in my bloodstream, causing my muscles to rapidly tighten and relax, as though I subconsciously was awaiting action. I clung to the wire behind me, until I'd realized I'd squeezed so hard that the tiny links began cutting into my skin.
"My name is Pegasus, Pegasus Crawford." He turned away from me momentarily, withdrawing a small metal top from his pocket. The object dropped to the concrete floor with a metallic clank, spinning endlessly round and round. My eyes were transfixed upon the small spinning thing, because it provoked such curiosity. Why anyone would carry such an object on their person was a mystery to me, except for perhaps the excuse that you were a child, and it was a play-thing. It seemed oddly familiar, but I could place no exact image of ever seeing it before.
"Do I… know you?" I murmured, unsure of the words as they left my mouth. Pegasus laughed, kneeling so that he was on my level, and turning to face me. He too watched the metal top spin on the floor, and silent seconds passed, before the toy slowed, and fell onto its side. It rolled toward my cage, but he clamped a fist over the object before I had the chance to examine it in any greater detail. Some part of me yearned to hold the object. He spun the top again, closer to him. We watched it do the same as it had before, until he allowed it to roll within the range of my grasp. I gestured at the silvery toy, and he nodded in approval. I reached two skinny fingers through a hole in the wire, and retrieved the object of my interests.
The sides of the toy had been engraved with intricate images. A dragon flying over a forest was depicted, and as I turned it, a young boy holding a crystal, and finally, a magnificent bird. I turned it over in my palm several times, looking for other markings. The tip of the metallic top had been designed in a spiral shape. The base had not been carved as the rest of the toy had been. Instead, the letters "SK" had been roughly rubbed into its shiny surface, dulling the area where the letters had been written. It looked as though someone had completed this etching sometime after the top's intimal creation, with a dull knife or perhaps a pen. The letters made no sense to me; I pondered for a moment if they could be my own initials.
"SK. Are those my initials?" I mused, glancing up at Pegasus. He shook his head no, and I frowned as I looked back at the tiny object in my hands. I felt as though the top which I held in my hands held with it some sort of clue to my past. What exactly it was I was uncertain of. I had the dawning idea that perhaps the man kneeling in front of me might know something about the object, considering he was the one in possession of it. I looked back up at him, and he raised an eyebrow at me.
"I think I've seen this before, somewhere. I just can't-" Pegasus grinned slyly, motioning for me to be silent. He let out a long hiss of air, and checked his pocket watch halfheartedly.
"You just can't remember," he agreed, completing my statement. He extended a hand, and I silently plopped the top back into the center of his outstretched palm. "I know you can't remember." He rolled his fingers backward, concealing the toy from my eyes once more.
"In fact, it was I who so politely removed the burden of your memories from you."