Chapter 1
The girl woke up in the dark. Metal creaked and clanked, and she could
tell she was moving upward. An elevator. She began to panic as the
memories drained away from her, one by one, like a leaking faucet.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
She couldn't remember anything specific
that she definitely should have remembered--her mom, her dad, her
brother, her dog. She knew she had them, but she didn't remember a
thing. Except--her name. Amelia. She knew it wasn't her real name, or maybe it was her real name, but
she didn't know her real name, or what was real, or what was being replaced. Her memories! She tried to grasp at them
as they fell away, tried to hold on to them and pull them back in, like an insult you verbalize but regret and want to take back, like the doves people released into the sky on special occasions. The frightened girl desperately focused on her brother-her older brother, a tall lanky
boy about a year or two older than her, with blonde hair and brown
eyes, and a pale complexion, reading a passage from a book aloud to her
as a black Labrador retriever lay silently next to him, head on his
paws. But that last image of her older brother slipped away, leaving only darkness and confusion and nothingness. Those memories were freed from their cages, her mind, but she didn't want them to be freed, she wanted to find the key and drag them back by the tails, throwing them back in and locking the door, throwing the key down a well into the deepest parts of hell, never to be seen again. Giving up, Amelia screamed until her throat was raw and banged on the top and sides of the
metal cage. She wanted to be free, free of the disgusting metal scraping that was making her teeth and hair stand on end, making her skin crawl, free of the absolute pure terror consuming her and threatening tears at the corners of her stinging eyes. Suddenly, as if answering her prayers, the box screeched to a halt with a deafening CLANG! She stopped her
frenzy and stared apprehensively upwards, throwing her arms over her eyes as the doors flew open and light blinded her.
