Chapter 1
Everything around me suddenly broke apart into disjointed images and blurs of color. It was like a child was fingerpainting, and the world was their canvas. Everything happened so fast. I was getting ready to crawl into bed. I remember pulling the covers back. Another memory surfaced, vague at first but became something firmer in my mind. More solid. I remembered hoping that I wouldn’t have trouble falling asleep. I’ve always had a problem in that department and even fought with insomnia for most of my life.
I stepped closer to my bed. Then I remembered putting a knee on my soft, cloud-like mattress. Then a hand. And then…then there was nothing. Things were frustratingly absent. I was about to lie down one second, and the next, my vision was a field of pure white. Then came those disjointed images and blurs of color. It happened so fast that I didn’t feel anything at first. I wish I could say things stayed that way. Unfortunately, that moment when pain couldn’t reach me was brief. Torturously so. After it was gone, the pain was my entire world. It thudded and pulsed, flared and stabbed at me.
It distracted me and made it hard to focus. Even so, I couldn’t help but ask…
Where was I?
What was going on?
Why did I hurt so bad?
Was I on the floor?
What was all that red liquid underneath me?
The questions flew through my mind so fast I couldn’t concentrate on any specific one. Not that it would have mattered. None of them had answers anyway, which only caused anxiety and fear to take root inside me, making my heart flutter erratically. Both emotions grew and grew, taking over my mind like a parasite. Soon, branches of fear and panic formed anchors into every fiber of my being.
As I lay there, face down, the blurs suddenly swirled nauseatingly. They became these…things—these nightmarish conjurations of my broken imagination. There were two of them, but they didn’t look human to me. They were too red. Their heads were too long. They had bleeding eyes and mouths saturated with wicked fangs. As I saw these things creep closer, my heart hammered against my chest, and my body shuddered violently. It was like I was stuck outside in the cold with no clothes.
The last question I remembered thinking before the colors and images disappeared under a merciful blanket of darkness was…
Where is my-
Everything was black, but it was peaceful. Not scary in the slightest. Wherever I found myself now, I wasn’t afraid there. I couldn’t even remember why I’d been afraid to begin with. The darkness enveloping me was so black I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open. I had no comprehension as to why it was so peaceful there. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but at the same time, it wasn’t like it had ever made me feel a sense of peace.
I wish I had not taken it for granted because the darkness didn’t last long. That was unfortunate because I had been enjoying that sense of tranquility. It had felt needed and desperately so. Like something cool against a hot cut or like a gulp of water after being thirsty for days. But then, an unquantifiable thing ruined it. A thing that came crashing in to blast that tranquility away from me. I felt bitter frustration that it was gone now. Hadn’t I earned it? Earned that peace? Didn’t I deserve to rest? Hadn’t we…
We? What we? I thought to myself.
…been through-
The question was cleanly amputated inside my mind before it finished. Not by the thing ruining my tranquility, though. It just died on its own. I thought that was weird, but I didn’t have time to contemplate it further. The thing intruding on my nirvana had grown more prominent and insistent. It was light, hazy, and peach-colored. Dim at first. Then it got brighter, but it took on a familiar shape as it did. The form of a person. They starkly contrasted against the extreme black all around the two of us. I could tell their back was turned to me, and at first, I thought it was another demonic creature trying to torment me for some unknown reason.
I was right. Or, at least, sort of right. Unfortunately.
As the figure gained more and more definition, it slowly turned around. It was like it, or instead, she (I could tell it was a woman now) finally noticed I was there.
A weird unease, small but rapidly growing more prominent, rose inside me. It only got worse the more of her I could see; for some reason, this woman terrified me more than the demonic creatures from…from…uh…from before.
She quit turning and stood there, facing me dead on now. This afforded me a perfect view of her, and I could see her entire face. As I did, something inside me snapped apart and broke. There was absolutely nothing where eyes, a nose, and a mouth should’ve been. She had no face. It was a blank, unetched slate. Worse still, I could see her jaw moving up and down. She was trying to talk to me, and I could sense a deep pain inside her. A pain that echoed inside my own heart.
“No,” I said.
A powerful sadness suddenly overtook me. It was strange, though. It didn’t feel connected to anything specific. I felt this deep, depressive grief, but no source was behind it. It was like my heart and soul shattered to pieces, but I had no idea why this blank woman would make them do that.
Then, without warning, she started fading away. She became increasingly ghostly until nothing was left but a receding memory.
“Don’t go!” I screamed. It was a loud, throat-ripping cry of pure anguish and loss.
The woman didn’t, or couldn’t, obey.
The smell of bacon filled my little apartment. I hadn’t thought about that dream in over a month. It was the dream I’d had while doctors were trying to piece me back together again. Apparently, and I had no memory of this, I’d been the victim of a brutal attack inside my home. My attacker, or attackers, came into my house and savagely beat me until I was damn near dead. That’s what they told me anyway.
I sustained multiple skull fractures, including fractures to my orbital bones, a dislocated jaw, and several missing teeth. Both arms got broken, my left arm so severely the doctors couldn’t salvage it. Maybe three or four days later, they amputated it right below the elbow. The bastards also broke my legs. Now I walk with a shiny silver cane and a severe limp. A broken rib had punctured one of my lungs. My spleen ruptured in the attack and had to be removed. There were other injuries, each of varying degrees of seriousness, but those were the major ones.
To make a long recovery story short, it was a painful and arduous journey back to a somewhat manageable form of life and one that I was still on. The severity of my injuries meant I was in almost constant pain. As if that weren’t enough, there was a veritable cesspool of anger, rage, self-hatred, depression, and other psychological and emotional problems I was still dealing with.
Oh. And, of course, there was the memory loss.
The night of the attack was a complete blank. I had no memory of what had happened. I couldn’t remember any face or faces. If my attacker was one person or more than one person. If they were big or small. Tall or short. What their eye color was. Not even a smell. It was like that night had been wholly wiped free of my mind. Because of that, the cops had nothing to go on. There was little in the way of forensic evidence and no DNA. Since my memory of the night was gone, my attacker or attackers managed to escape free and clear.
I blamed myself for that and despised that I couldn’t remember what had happened. It was my fault those assholes got away with it. It was my fault they were still out there, probably looking for other victims to maim or kill. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about that. The psychiatrist I was seeing tried to rationalize it for me. She said the memory loss was probably my mind’s way of dealing with my trauma.
I looked down at the food still cooking in my pan. My mind felt far away. Distant. The smell of burning bacon was what brought it back. I quickly transferred the blackened pieces to a plate and sat down. I ate absentmindedly. Part of my mind was still thinking about that dream. I often wondered what it meant, if it meant anything at all.
I finished my breakfast but barely tasted it. Which was a good thing considering the bacon was just shy of too burnt to be edible. I cleaned up after myself and went to get dressed. I took a long time looking at myself in the mirror. I was barely recognizable as the person I once was, at least from what I could tell when I looked at pictures of myself from before the attack. There were scars, of course. Ever present and always a reminder. It was hard to look at yourself when all you saw was the work of evil people etched into every facet of your face.
The doorbell rang, pulling me out of thoughts that would have sent me into a depression spiral. I was right in the middle of brushing my teeth. I spared a last glance at myself in the mirror, spit a wad of frothy toothpaste and saliva into the sink, rinsed out my mouth, and then toweled my face dry. I saw myself again, this scarred and distorted human, then tore my gaze from the mirror and went to my front door.
I opened it but cautiously. When my hand gripped the doorknob, a powerful wave of fear smacked into my body. Iciness and cold spread through me, and I could feel my heart thumping loudly in my ears.
“It’s me,” a voice said.
I felt my nervousness and fear drift away. It was just my brother, Owen.
I opened the door the rest of the way, and there he was—my person. The one, really the only one besides my mom, that helped me pick up the pieces after the attack. He’d been there through all of it, and there was nothing I could say or do to repay him for that.
“Hey, bro,” I hugged him as he walked in. “What are you doing here?”
“Mom, mostly,” he replied with a slight smile. “She wanted to make sure you were holding up ok.”
“I’m doing fine. I told her that at the airport before she left. Repeatedly.” I explained, somewhat exasperated. “Why’s she so worried?”
“She hasn’t heard from you in over a week,” Owen replied. “I tried to reassure her, but you know how mom is. Always the worrier.”
“Well, when you debrief her, make sure to let her know I love her,” I said.
“Call her yourself.” Owen smiled. “She’d rather hear from you anyway.”
“Fine. I will later tonight.”
“You bored? You’ve been cooped up inside your house for weeks now. You could use some time away from this place.” He grabbed my coat off the rack by the door and threw it at me.
I caught it and put it on.
“What did you have in mind?”
“How bout a movie?” Owen asked.
“Sure. That works,” I replied. It didn’t, though. It sounded like an absolute nightmare of a time, but my brother was right about one thing. I had to get out of the house. The longer I stayed inside it, the more the outside world would grow to be something feared. If I weren’t careful, I wouldn’t be able to leave it at all one day. So I forced myself to go anyway, even though that icy fear returned. It was either that or becoming a hermit for the rest of my life.
So we left, and it was probably for the best. My therapist would have agreed with my brother and my inner thoughts. She kept telling me I needed a social life, but every time I considered it, I would remember what my face looked like, and anxiety would overtake me. If Owen knew how I felt, he’d tell me to quit being ridiculous. I bet he’d even say something stupid like, “Chicks dig scars.”
To be honest, it wasn’t just about the scars. There was something else too. Something deeper. I had no way of quantifying that mysterious something, but that didn’t change the fact it was there.
“You ready?” Owen asked.
I shook my head as if to clear it. I hadn’t noticed Owen standing there watching me and waiting. I looked at him and didn’t like what I saw on his face. It was a weird mixture of outright fear and concern. But then he smiled, and the moment was over.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “Let’s go.”
