The End

I opened my eyes to see a bright, pale blue light. I was lying down on my back on something hard. Everything felt a lot brighter, and even though the surface I was lying on seemed like a metal table, it wasn’t cold. I tried to move my arm to lift it to block the light. But I couldn’t move anything. I started to panic. Where am I? Who am I? Didn’t I just die, why am I here? Something came closer to where I found myself and I panicked even more. Their shadow blocked the bright light, even though their shadow seemed to give off some light of its own.

“Hello Carson.”

So that is who I am. So who is this person speaking to me? The voice sounded male and soothing for some reason since it calmed me. I tried to respond but I didn’t know how to speak, or to move my mouth. It was like I was somehow not connected. I tried to open my eyes wider so I could get a view of some of my surroundings but the light was too bright for my eyes.

“I know that you are probably in a state of shock. Do not worry about your movements, you just woke up. It usually takes a little time to get into the swing of things.”

His words eased my mind. I could feel now, I could feel with my fingertips. There were wires. Everywhere. This made me go right back into the state of panic I had been drowning in earlier.

“Do not fret about the wires, they are here to help you. You have been asleep for a very long time.”

I tried to move my mouth.

“Your speech will return in time. You have not used any of your muscles before, so you need to calm yourself Carson.”

“Who… you?” That is not what I wanted to say, but at least it got the main point out.

“My name is Dr. Hilgado. I have been assigned to you and a couple of the other patients in sleep. Tell me if you feel this.”

He lifted up my hand and pinched my wrist. There was a slight tingle but other than that there was no real feeling. I tried to tell him what I felt

“Tingle.”

My brain had been a quiet room up until this point and I was trying to push through the locked door. Suddenly the door burst open and names flew back into my memory like rapid gunfire and I tried to assess them. Obsidian, Willow, Damian, Peridot, Mason, and Cindy. I didn’t understand the importance of these names but I feel that in time and adjustment I will. The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows with curiosity.

“Well Carson you are showing remarkable recovery time. Are you sure you just woke up today. Most of the people don’t get their feeling back until they start to remember.”

I sighed, obviously my body was as impatient as I was with my recovery speed. I tried to say more.

“Names, I remember.”

“Now there’s a mouthful for you, mighty big words coming from someone who just awoke. I am just going to give you a quick brain scan to see how far you have uncovered. It shouldn’t hurt since the numbness you feel will overshadow any pain that could accompany it. However with the rate you are going at, I wouldn’t put it past you to have a little discomfort.”

I nodded. He zapped me and pain flashed inside my head, zooming and bouncing around the inside of my skull, I let out a cry of pain and this had shocked the doctor so much he seemed not to know how to respond. He stopped the brain scan immediately and stared, eyes wide, as I sat up to look him in the face.

*Peridot*

I stared at the clock, my eyelids slowly closing as it ticked on endlessly. Class was never an enjoyable time for me even though I am extremely intelligent.

“And then you add the negative…”

My boring science teacher droned on about atoms. Five more minutes of this class and then I can go try out for the schools volleyball team. I almost never get excited about things anymore, ever since we moved. My family had died when I was younger, leaving me to my own wit to keep myself alive. However my father had the fortune of having an ability to time travel to different time periods, even the future. He would visit once in a while when I was younger, but now I never see him anymore. It’s been about ten years since I last saw him in the mansion where my older cousin Obsidian had brought me. I was about five back then. Now being fifteen and in grade nine, I understand and I have a little more to worry about than the typical teenage girl.

“Do you have an eraser?”

The boy Tristan who sat beside me who was drastically enamoured with me would always “forget” to bring his eraser so that he could ask me for mine. I didn’t mind though, I enjoyed the attention and for the most part, I could tell his feelings were true. I was always more than aware of the feelings of the people surrounding me daily. It’s a gift of mine. I can sense the emotions of others just by being around them. I have had this gift since I was about five years old, yet it wasn’t entirely developed; I never knew how to focus it or control whose emotions I would link with. I looked at the round faced blue eyed boy and smiled, offering him my eraser. His heart fluttered as he let off the scents of gratitude and joy. Both very similar but each had their own specific scent.

That is how I do it, how I sense the emotions. My brain registers emotion as if it was a scent. They are all like specific smells, as if human beings are all flowers to me. Gratitude smells like when you come home and your bed linen has been changed and you lie down and take a huge whiff of the clean sheets. Joy smells like a brand new pack of bubble-gum that you can’t wait to chew, your favourite flavour. I like being around people that really like me, mostly because I don’t exactly have an off switch to my gift. Just like the good emotions smell good, the bad emotions smell worse. Jealousy seems to be the most common scent around me. I try to avoid it as much as possible but it always lingers wherever I go. Not as strong as the emotional scents I specifically focus on, but it’s always around. Jealousy smells like a smoke, the kind that seems to spread everywhere it shouldn’t be, invading your nostrils like an unwelcome bandit. It had different levels of intensity based exactly on how jealous the person was.

Finally the bell rang, the teacher assigned the class the rest of the sheet to do for homework and an extra one on the theory of the atom. Something I hadn’t been paying much attention to. I picked up my book bag and ran for the door. I continued running down the hallway straight to my tall thin blue locker that was a little dented from a fight two older boys had from earlier years; I always have to jiggle it just right to get it open without it getting stuck. I grabbed my black heavy gym bag and thrust it onto my shoulder then slammed my locker shut, only because it was the only way to get the darn thing closed. Behind my locker door was someone that caught me off guard making me squeak. It was a boy. Odd, I was never startled by anyone as I could always feel the intention of their emotion coming toward me. I sometimes even startled people that were approaching me. The boy seemed alarmed by my squeak. He was about my age and very new around here.

“Hey, my name is Dustin.” He seemed to talk with a slight accent. I looked at the boy curiously since I didn’t get a scent off of him. He was somehow hiding his emotions from me.

“Hello Dustin, I’m Peridot.”

“I know.”

He grinned at me. He wore thick glasses, and had fuzzy brown hair, he would probably grow up to be considerably attractive, if he grew his hair a little longer, and maybe grew a beard. His eyebrows where dark brown and his eyes were too; they seemed guarded and curious at the same time. The last bell rang and I flashed him a smile.

“It was nice meeting you, Dustin, but I have to go to Volleyball tryouts.”

He changed expression and his eyes grew a little desperate. “Can I come?”

I side-glanced down the long hallway which seemed all but deserted now.

“Sure why not, I could use a friend to cheer me on. These volleyball girls could get a little brutal now and then.”

He beamed, his eyes crinkling just as Carson’s used to. Remembering him reminded me of exactly what day this actually was. This was the day ten years ago that Carson died. I stopped in my tracks, thinking over that day in the past. Dustin suddenly grew tense, like I do when I sense emotions that are clearly none of my business. He took out his phone which was pretty prehistoric.

“Oh, sorry I have to go home.”

His speech pattern wasn’t consistent which made me suspicious, but I realized, it was anxiety that he got around me, which is probably why I didn’t notice him coming my way earlier. Anxiety seems like the most difficult scent to make out with it not smelling that good either. However contrary to the physical signs someone gives off when they are nervous, the emotion in itself is so hidden that I don’t make it out as quickly as I would any other emotion. Anxiety smelled like a kitten’s breath. Quick and smelly, but gone within an instant, and with so many other lingering smells around me, unless I was majorly focused on a certain person, I wouldn’t detect it as often. I shrugged off the encounter with the strange boy and went straight to the gym for the tryouts.

*Carson*

I sat up and looked the doctor straight in the eyes. He was dumbfounded obviously never dealt having with a case like mine before. He took an object that looked a cellphone out of his pocket and dialed a number and in about two seconds the room was filled with people dressed in white coats all coming toward me. I now could see my surroundings. There were about a thousand people lying in beds all attached to wires and what looked like medical drips attached to them. All of the people had clear masks on their noses and mouths, pumping air into their lungs most likely. They were all sleeping. All of them. There was a door on the other side of the room, and I’m sure there were more sleeping bodies on the other side. Every person around me however seemed to be in the opposite state of the resting bodies, as they were all panicking, and some looked like their heads were going to explode.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed I was sitting on and silently started to remove the now useless wires, my body having caught up to speed function wise. Physically I was the same as I normally was, mentally I had no idea where I was and why those same six names kept replaying in my mind. I wanted answers but I didn’t want to make the lab coats get all in a tizzy because I start speaking in full blown sentences after about five minutes of being “awake”. Plus they all looked extremely frazzled and ready to do anything so I just sat and calmly plucked at each wire attached to my skin until they were all removed. I looked at the now gathering audience growing around me, watching me in awe. I opened my mouth to speak and it was like each and every lab coat held their breath to listen to the freak of nature that is me.

“Can I get a drink of water?”

Every one gasped most likely because of how clearly that sentence poured into the air in front of me. I just need to stay calm and remember what I know about myself. I know that I am awake. I know that I am thirsty. Right now I need to stick to my physical needs until my brain catches up. A little short man, whose coat was just a little too long for his arms, ran out of the room and came back with a cup of what I think was water. His hands were shaking as he handed the cup to me. I gladly took it and downed it within a second. They all gasped once again; this was starting to piss me off. I slid off the bed and stood up straight, I felt stronger than how I remembered myself, and taller. I looked for the first doctor, the one who actually spoke to me.

“Doctor? I need some questions answered, is there anywhere we could do that,” I looked around and continued “In private?”

Every single lab coat in the room other than the one I was addressing flinched at every word that escaped my lips. I rolled my eyes. The doctor stepped out of the crowd, nodded, turned and started to walk. So I guess he is going to give me the silent treatment too. Then something happened that I didn’t expect, we stepped out of the room and someone stepped around the corner as if taking a stroll down the hallway. Someone who seemed to somehow jog my memory yet I couldn’t for the life of me place a name. He was tall and broad, his hair was black and his eyes were very blue, about as blue as an ocean would be. At least from what I can recall. He had a hard look about him and he had a dark coat on, and jeans. It seemed so out of place, his dark appearance was completely contrasting the “everything white” theme they seem to have around here. Everything about him seemed to not match, except his gaze because the way he looked at me was kind, and smart. He must have placed me in his memory too for he stopped in his tracks and let out a breath. The strange man from my memory spoke my name.

“Carson?”

My mind tried to make the connection, I know this man, I just don’t remember how.

“I don’t know who you are. I am sorry.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something, he even opened his mouth but I guess the doctor didn’t appreciate waiting and he looked sternly at the man. The man closed his mouth again and continued down the hallway just as he had before. I have a feeling this won’t be my last encounter with the mystery man from my memory.