Stolen Memories [Meg]

Have you ever felt so hollow, that you can even hear your thought's echo against the enclosures of your mind? I know that feeling. It's the feeling that I get when I first open my eyes, and all I see is white staring back at me. Dreams begin to slip away before I even have time to reach for them, and the white begins to consume me. My eyes close. My hands reach out, yet my thoughts stay just out of reach, over the wall that is just too tall to climb. It's at this moment when confusion steadily spills through my veins and changes into the form of a question. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? My thoughts continue to echo.

I feel empty. To me, it's the feeling of being completely and utterly alone, in the most literal form. I sit in this white bed as I wake up, and only the beeping on the heart monitor finds my ears, yet even that doesn't make sense to me. Eyes scan the scene around me, yet nothing is registered in my mind but the hollowness I feel. White finds me - the color that seems to drip through my skin and envelop my thoughts in a sea of nothingness, and encase my bones in a block of everlasting cement. My hands run up to my hair as frustration seethes through me, fingers running over the long red lines that cover my scalp.

I scream. The sound causes even me to cringe. It bounces against the white walls (the walls of this room I'm trapped in, along with my mind) and chatters my teeth. My fingers grab hold of my hair and pull, pull, pull until my screams grown louder. I yell not only at the prospect of fear, but because I long to hear something other than the beeping that signals this torture of a life still remains. Suddenly, men stare down at me and they whisper words of comfort, the sounds barely making it through the barrier of sound that erupts from my lungs. Somehow, they scare me more than the realization that I don't remember anything. A strange feeling forces me to believe that they are the ones who did this to me (or maybe it's the twinge of remembrance, yet I will never know).

"Calm down Abily, it's okay," they say calmly. The sound of their quiet voices seems to offend me. How dare they look me in the eyes, and tell me that containing no memories is... okay. My head shakes quickly and anger finds it way through the confusion. I immediately try to stand up, yet something around my middle is holding me down - like the barrier that seems to keep my memories from surfacing. I panic. "Who am I? Where am I? Who are you?" I ask quickly, the words being the thoughts that formerly echoed across my mind, each question seeming to find it's way out of my memory - similar to the way my dreams simply found it's way out of my body - and fall from my dry tongue.

They talk slowly, as if they are trying to let each word sink in (If only they knew the longer they wait... the faster it leaves) and process. I only catch a few words, for the rest falls deeper into the abyss of distorted images, a place where I know they will never surface again. A place where memories are kept, waiting for the perfect moment to attack it's prey, then leave once more. "Abily Markova... from the forest... Long-Term Memory Loss... hospital... trying to help." I listen to them, yet all I hear is dead, dead, dead. In a world where my memories are stripped from me, I'd rather be dead. Without them, I am naked; a chicken who has been stripped of all it's feathers, just waiting to be slaughtered

They are the ones who stole my memories. I'm forced to believe this thought, for what other reason would my thoughts suddenly be stripped away from my enclosed brain? The idea forces more panic to seethe through my veins, my thin body suddenly finding it's way through the strap that keeps me tied to the bed. In an instant, I am flying away like the images that fly from my grasp. Color suddenly finds me, the distorted sounds of voices and the blurs of faces overwhelming as I run through the winding halls.

Yelling is all around me as eyes catch my white blur - as prominent as a white cloud against a blue sky -, alarms going off as arms stretch out to catch my running form. In a way, their frustration is amusing. I am like a memory that they cannot grab hold of; a thought that simply flies from your grasp. "Abily!" people yell from all around me, yet it all fades away the moment I push open the doors to a new world. The scene takes my breath away. Tall buildings that stretch to the sky that threatens to pour, colors other than white that are freckled across the land, people that, for once, walk by without a glance in my direction.

I don't have long enough to take it all in. An arm grabs onto my white gown that flutters in the breeze, forcing instinct to kick in. My hand balls into a fist as it makes contact with the man behind me, and suddenly, an image is brought back before my eyes.

A fist stares down at me, curling with hatred as it comes down toward my eyes. I scream before pain explodes through my vision. Black clouds storm through my pupils, the last image being one of a sneer of satisfaction beneath a white mask.

I run. Tears are somehow streaming down my cheeks as I stumble down the road. I try to hold onto what I just saw, yet my hands are too sweaty. It is disappearing before my eyes. "Please, don't go," I cry, yet as soon as the words leave my mouth, it is gone. It's like getting the greatest present of all, followed by the happiness at the thought of everything you can do with it... only to have it stripped away from your outstretched fingers, leaving an empty palm and a fallen spirit. Despair is all I feel.

I fall down to the ground, my back scraping against the brick alley wall as I slide down. My eyes close as I whimper slightly, my body curling into a ball that tightens with each breath I take. I can hear nothing around me as I sit in the shadows of the tall buildings. I lost them. For the first time today... I am alone. Or at least that's what I think.