It’s cold here, in my dark mind.I can’t escape it no matter how hard I try.But I’m not sure I want to leave from it.Perhaps I should delve deeper into its depth,And focus intently on it instead of running.Or maybe I should forget it completely,And live in the world apart from myself.But the world is cold and dim too,And with neither choice could I live.So I linger on the brink of them,Both immensely important and influential.Both so familiarly foreign.Both filled with unique fears and joys.This is where I truly live,Between fantasy and reality.Only I can’t tell which is the reality.
“Kayla?” Christy asked, her voice carrying through the soft nighttime breeze. “Can I ask you a question?”
The fire seemed to flicker in rhythm with Kayla’s laughter as she put another log on it. “Stargazing causing you to get philosophical? It does that to me too. Looking out at billions of billions of stars, and thinking just how amazing it is that we’re here, that we can see them and question things. That we actually are alive.” Entering into her own thoughts of wonder and life, she lied down next to Christy to take it the wonder of the stars.
“That’s sort of my question,” Christy laughed. “How do you know that we’re really alive? I mean, are we even real?”
Kayla studied the question over in her mind. “Well I don’t think being alive is the same thing as being real. I’d define being alive as in having a functioning body here. Even if we aren’t real, we definitely fall into the ‘alive’ category, and besides, I know I’m real. I feel real enough to me and I can think and feel, so yeah, I’m fairly positive I’m real.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“Then nothing really changes, since I can still think and feel. If that’s not being real, I don’t see a point to wanting to be real.”
“Ok, fair enough. I really exist, but…. How do I know if anything else is real or not? For some ludicrous reason I can’t seem to find we all hold the idea that this,” she made a big, wide, hand gesture, indicting the world around her, “is what’s real. That’d be okay, if it weren’t for the accompanying thoughts. Everyone also seems to agree that dreams aren’t real. And then there’s the reality of heaven and hell, and other spiritual forces. And some people have those theories about other dimensions, and parallel universes...” Christy slowly trailed off, worried she might overwhelm Kayla.
“It’s not that strange to think this world, or universe, or dimension, or whatever, is real. We can feel it. We can observe it. It’s affected by factors and systems. It’s all we know, and we can’t control it all. Reality’s hard to define, but I think if millions of people physically feel and observe it, it has to be real. At least, real to the people that feel it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“It’s not subjective. If it’s real, it’s real period. Something can’t just cease to have ever existed for a different person. I’m sure of it. I’ve never seen the ocean, but it’s not more real to some swimmer than it is to me.”
“Maybe,” Kayla allotted.
“But then what about dreams? You feel them when you’re in them? If the world is real, then they should be too.”
“Now you’re wrong, dreams aren’t actually felt. They’re merely thought and thought’s might be real, but they’re just that; thoughts. You can think wrong; you can think false. A reality couldn’t be false, or it would cease to be a reality.”
“I guess…”
“Are you ready for things to get more confusing? Because now you’ve got me thinking about heaven and hell.”
“Sure,” Christy yawned as the fire shrunk.
“Do you think they exist, heaven and hell?”
“Maybe.”
“Well I do. I know they do. They’re real, but not real like here. I don’t mean that they’re metaphorical or anything like that. I mean they’re more real. We know this place exists only through the senses and logic, but there’s more proof of heaven existing, although we only see shards of that proof now. Really useful shards that can still do so much down here, but shards none the less. Think about it, heaven was made first. Heaven knows our existence more than we know their’s. We’re a part of their reality, but only a fragment. Can you imagine what else is there? How certain they must be in everything? And hell is equally as real. They’re all realities! Now as for alternate dimensions…” the diming fire went out as a mild breeze passed. Kayla groaned. “That stupid fire takes so much work. Christy? Are you actually asleep?”
Turning over on the hard ground, Kayla realized tiredness was upon her too. “Fine, Goodnight.”
Bright lights shine down on n me, drowning my half open eyes. I open my mouth to ask someone to turn them off, only to realize that I don’t know who I’m asking, and I don’t know why the lights are so bright. That’s when it hits me; I don’t remember anything.
Then the doctor comes in and explains things, he doesn’t know how I got here and doesn’t offer me any real answers. Then he hands me a bag, he says its mine, and it might have answers. But it doesn’t. It holds questions.
My cell phone has three contacts; Kelly, Chris, and Diane. I’ll call them later. Next I pull out a note with an address written on top. “You live here now,” was scribbled under that with a key attached.
I go there, into the building that’s surrounded by trees, and finish sorting through my bag. Someone left me a note; someone picked these objects to give to me. There’s a lot of cash, breath mints, and another key.
I call Diane first, but she doesn’t pick up. I call Kelly, and she rushes over. I show her my few items and explain everything I can remember. We do our nails and she doesn’t stop talking. But nothing she says is helpful; none of it’s about my past. I have a feeling we were best friends though. She’s 15 and told her parents she’d be spending the night here. She told me she wasn’t going to abandon me when I was so confused. I thank her, although I honestly don’t care either way.
“Kelly?” I ask, interrupting some rant about jeans or something, “Tell me about my past? Who am I?” She hasn’t even used my name once.
“I can’t,” she explains calmly, “I was told not to.”
“Told by whom?” I ask sharply, seeing my answers on the water’s edge, but the metaphorically wave refuses to rise to my level. “And so what? We were friends, right? Who cares what someone told you.”
“I can’t tell you that either,” she laughed, “look, I know it must be annoying not knowing anything, but have you ever considered that knowing the past might not help you at all. Trust me; this is a secret you want to keep buried.”
I ask her to leave, and she does. The house feels empty in its silence. I can’t sleep that night, and call my last contact; Chris. The clock said 2:00 am and I felt guilty for calling, but I need someone right now. He picks up.
“Hello?” his voice greets, pleasant and smooth.
“um, hi,” I stumbled with my words, “I don’t actually know who I am, or who you are, but you’re in my contact list, so I figured maybe, you would know something, or we might be friends, or,”
“Can I come over?” He interrupts.
“If you bring food,” I smile, my stomach growling.
“Bye,” he hangs up and I go into the living room to wait.
He brings his favorite pizza and refuses to tell me what my favorite is. He’s cute, but his features are hard. He knows things, I can tell.
“Here,” he says after avoiding about fifty questions about my past, “I can’t tell you anything about the past, but I can talk to you about now. So how about we talk about now? About today, about now. What did you do?”
I tell him about everything from me waking up that morning to now.
“That was the most factual and boring thing I’ve ever heard,” he says, although he seems interested when I was speaking, “tell me about it personally. Are you scared?”
“Should I be?”
“No,” he shakes his head and finishes off the pizza.
“Well how about you? How’s your life? Are you facing any confusing dilemmas too?” I take back my questions, “sorry, am I being too personal, I don’t really know how close we are so I don’t know if I’ll accidently cross a boundary.
“Relax,” he says, “since you have amnesia, I think we’ll have to redefine our boundaries. Don’t worry about crossing them.”
We talk all night, laughing and learning about each other. Well, I’m learning about him at least, since he might already know me. Although he does ask me a lot of questions to. I really like him.
In the next week, we become a couple. I really do love him, and he says he does too. It seems perfect.
Then he gets a phone call when he’s talking to me. All he says to them is okay, but he looks at my urgently and says, “Your life’s in danger. We need to run. Permission to keep you safe?”
“Sure,” I say, confused. He grabs me and rapidly drags me out of my house. On the sidewalk, a man dressed in all black drops out of nowhere and talks to Chris. They know each other; they’re working together. We jump into his truck and he speeds away from what was my home.
“What’s going on?!?” I demand.
“That was one of my men. I sort of run a unit, group, thing. I’ll explain everything when we get to the hotel. Keeping it hidden isn’t working. If you still want, I’ll explain everything about your past.”
We get to the hotel and meet up with around 10 other guys that are under his orders. They all have one hotel room, and I have my own. Chris and one of them walk into my room to explain things. They shut the door behind them.
“Where to start,” Chris hesitates, then jumps into an explanation for everything, “you’re name’s Cassidy. You’re fifteen and there are people out to kill you right now. Okay, that definitely wasn’t the right place to start, I’ll try again. There’s a war going on. It has two sides. Oh, wait, I know where to start. There are people that can do things most people can’t, some people have a power. You know, like teleportation or mindreading. You are not one of this people,” Chris adds, seeing my hopeful, excited expression, “but I am. I don’t use my power anymore though. For morals, and reasons I’ll explain later. Anyway, most people with powers live in secret. But there are people that want to tell the world about people with powers. They think the world deserves to know, and are mostly people without powers. These people are on one side of the war, your side of the war. The other side, the one I was on, knew that all hell would break loose if people found out about our powers. Most people aren’t understanding, and once they found out, bad things would follow. And then there’s a third side that wants to conquer everyone without powers, but they don’t have many followers and aren’t really that important.
“So anyway, you were like really up in the ranks on your side and it was the same for me on my side. We were complete enemies and I came really close to killing like thousands of times. And you came close too, a few times,” Chris reluctantly admitted. “Then we started like this secret relationship thing, and stuff got really complicated. I’m still pretty sure you were just playing with me all those times, but whatever.”
“So the people coming to kill me?”
“Hold on, I’m getting to it. There are actually a lot of people coming to kill you, and I really mean a lot. I gave you the amnesia with a drug, potion thing so that they could all think you were dead and wouldn’t be after you anymore. Well, technically Steve did it without my permission,” he gestured to the other man in the room, who just shrugged apathetically. “Although, I would have done the same thing in like one day, and was actually planning it all out at the time. You can hate me for that later. So there’s this scientist guy looking for you who wants you to fix some fancy weapon thing because although you don’t have a power, you’re really smart and know a lot of stuff. Then there’s another scientist looking for revenge because for reasons you’ve never told me you tricked him into thinking you have powers and he tested and experimented on you, and once he found out you didn’t actually have any, he got really pissed at you. So he’s looking for revenge, I guess. Plus, there’s like a ton of people from my side of the war that have their problems with you and want you died. And then there’s this shape shifter….”
“Why does he want to kill me?”
“She’s looking for revenge. She thinks you murdered the love of her life.”
“Did I?”
“I don’t know. He was never your enemy, and was a really nice guy.”
“Oh my god, I was a horrible person.”
“You don’t even remember; you might have had good enough reasons.”
“No reasons justify murder.”
“She thinks you didn’t just murder the love of her life. She claims you murdered her whole family.”
“Yeah, I suck”
Truth is a hard thing to find, and it can destroy a person when they forget it, when they no longer know false from true. Soon they can’t tell wrong from right, and at that point, gaining back all that knowledge is usually almost impossible. When so much knowledge is lost, almost everything seems like there is no way to understand it. But then again, maybe nothing is ever truly able to be understood.
so you probably don't care, but it ends something like this; the scientist guy finds me and I act like I still have my memory and actually know how to do things. I trade me helping him with the weapon for knowledge about where my family is now (although that basically gives away that I don't remember everything. Oh, and Chris refuses to tell me anything deeper than what he already said about my past.) Right when he's about to declare me useless and kill me, Chris and the other people with him save me. And I somehow figure out that my family's completely jerks that try to kill people with powers. Then the shapeshifter comes as Chris and basically destroys me emotionally. She's about to kill me, and we have this intense talk before she actually tries. I don't blame her for wanting to kill me, and I'm about to let her, but then she has some epiphany and leaves. Eventually i found out (as a third person thing, not Cassidy) that the night her husband had died I was with him, but i didn't kill him. there was some sort of accident with a dangerous project we were working on to save humanly. I didn't save him either though. I still have no clue what was up with her family though, and I don't get my memory back. Yeah, and that's about it.
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