My life was a beautiful lie. And beneath the beautiful lie lurked an ugly truth. I wanted to ignore it, to start over and let go of whatever brought me here.
People here knew more than they would say. I was in the dark, kept out of my own life.
The look on Eddie's face when I walked away was almost enough to make me stay.
Just like my plea was almost enough to make him talk.
Almost wasn't good enough. Not from him.
I wanted desperately to trust him. But I couldn’t, not when he all but admitted he was lying.
If I was going to use my blank memory as a clean slate to start over, it had to remain clean. Eddie’s lies were dirty. I felt dirty now. Dirty and filled with sorrow.
I wondered if the entire town knew what I didn't. Maggie? Dr. Beck? Even Dr. Kline? They all acted as if they were trying to help, but deceiving me wasn’t help.
The entire walk to Maggie’s was a blur, my thoughts too loud for me to really pay attention to anything. Her car wasn’t in the driveway when I walked up. Relief nearly made me sag. I wasn’t up to facing her right now, confronting her about what she might or might not know.
Using the key she gave me, I let myself in. The house was quiet when I walked through the living room. Wherever she was, she must have taken Elmo. In my room, I flopped across the bed belly first. I thought about burying my head in the pillow to cry, but tears didn’t come because I didn’t know what I would be crying about.
I shoved up away from the bed, rubbing my hands over my dry face. I really did feel dirty. My skin felt taut over my muscles, as if the tension in my body were making me tight. After rummaging around in the dresser for some clean clothes, I went across the hall to shower. Maybe the water would help wash away the worst of how I was feeling.
Just the sound of the falling spray soothed some of the tension away, making me eager to step beneath it. Where did I go from here? I wanted to stay in Lake Loch. Even though I didn’t technically have a home here, the place itself still felt like home. Was it because it was all I really knew or something else?
Like Eddie?
I shied away from thoughts of him, turned, and pushed my head beneath the spray. The gentle massage of the jets above made me feel I was melting. Sighing, I propped one hand on the shower wall and let the spray pelt me until my mind began to numb.
I was tired of thinking. Tired of feeling. Tired of being confused.
Not wanting the water to run cold before I washed, I snagged the body wash off the shelf and forced myself to stand up. The glass on the shower door was steamed up, the entire bathroom sort of hazy with humidity. Water dripped off the tip of my nose and clung to my lashes when I gazed down at the plastic bottle gripped in my hand.
Suddenly, it was hard to focus, hard to remember what I was doing. Blinking, I fixated on the body wash again. I was showering… using soap.
I continued to stare down, water rushing across my bare skin, my eyes not really seeing anything. A high-pitched whistling noise filled my ears and everything around me tilted. I grappled for balance, throwing my hand out against the tiles.
Involuntarily, I left the shower, even though my body remained. My brain, my eyes, my ears all abandoned my wet and naked form until it seemed I wasn’t even in my body at all.
Thoughts and images were forced upon me; they came in flashes like a movie screen suddenly flickering to life. The quality was grainy and dull like an old horror movie on an old-school projector.
The smell of must assaulted my nose, so strong, so potent my eyes watered. I wondered if I would ever get used to the unnatural scent. I wondered if perhaps I would start to stink of it, too.
My cheek lay against cold, uneven dirt so dry it scraped against my skin. I was thirsty, so thirsty. I didn’t dare move, though, for right now I was invisible. Right now, I was forgotten in this corner of dirt and filth.
The sound of chains rattling turned my stomach. I couldn’t stop the trembles violently assaulting my body, though I begged and pleaded for them to quit. He would know I was awake. He would come for me.
A door opened and a sliver of bright light stretched across the ground. Unable to stop myself, I moved toward it, my dirty, bloody fingers reaching for the light as if it were heaven come to hell.
When the light was gone, my hand dropped out of the air onto the dirt floor, and tears drenched my face. Heavy footfalls made me cringe. Forgetting to play asleep, I scurried backward, pressing against the cold, rough wall. Its uneven edges cut into my flesh, but I barely noticed. Small pricks of pain like that were nothing.
“S-aaaa-deee,” a terrible voice sang.
I started to cry.
He was coming for me.
Even though my fist was dirty and bloody, I shoved it into my mouth, trying to stifle my sobs. Maybe if I was very quiet, he would go away.
“Sssss-aadeee,” he sang again.
The tell-tale click of a flashlight broke through the darkness. The beam of light wasn’t at all like the one I saw just moments before. This wasn’t the rays of heaven.
This was the fires of hell.
I watched the round spotlight it created on the floor, waiting as it swerved around, searching, playing games… as if it didn’t know where I sat plastered as far away as possible.
Too soon, the beam found me. I blinked and squinted against the harsh, blinding light, throwing up my forearm to try and block the worst of it.
“There ya are,” said the voice.
My knees knocked together.
The light swung away, and something reached through the dark to snatch me by the arm and squeeze. I cried, though I didn’t want to. The hand was like a vise, my bones groaning, wanting so badly to break.
My body was dragged across the rough floor. My skin ripped and gashed as I went. I didn’t fight, not anymore. It only made it worse.
A large, heavy figure pushed me down, straddling my bare waist. The sound the flashlight made against the floor as it was tossed aside echoed inside my chest. I turned my head, watching it roll away, the light facing the opposite wall.
Rough, calloused hands seized me. I knew what was coming next.
“This is your fault,” he told me as he began. “This is all your fault, Sadie.”
I gasped loudly; the force of it hurt my ribs, and instantly my body folded in on itself. Awareness was slow to return despite the violence of the awakening. My teeth chattered, the sharp clapping sound loud to my ears. I was freezing, trembling so much I could barely control my movements.
Loud banging broke through whatever haze I was in. I blinked. My vision was blurry, something that scared me at first, but then I realized where I was. I was in the shower, lying on the floor, huddled in a fetal position. Water sliced over me in icy spikes, causing pain with every contact.
How long had I been lying here? Oh my God, did I faint?
“Amnesia!” a woman’s muffled yell filtered into the room. More loud banging. “Amnesia, I’m going to break the door down!”
“Maggie,” I called out, but my voice was pathetic. I sounded like a mewling newborn kitten. I pushed up onto my hand, elevating my shoulders off the shower floor. “Maggie!” I yelled out, stronger this time.
It took all my strength, and my arm gave out on me. I collapsed against the wet, cold tile.
“Amnesia, are you okay? I’ve been calling for you. I’m very worried.”
“I’m fine. I just slipped,” I yelled, blinking and looking up at the ceiling. The water was icy, but I barely felt it.
I was numb.
The memory assaulted me again, just flashes this time, not a full-on takeover. Realizing what just happened horrified me.
I bit down on my lip so hard the metallic taste of blood spread across my tongue.
“I’m coming in!” Maggie yelled.
“No!” I said, dismayed at the thought of her seeing me in this condition. “I’ll be right out. I’m coming out!”
“I’m waiting right here!” she announced, and her insistence brought me back a little more into the moment.
My present and past were warring. It felt like the good and the bad battling it out. Dear God, the past was beyond bad. Just that little glimpse was so very horrifying.
My fingers felt like ice and creaked when I sat up and flexed them. My toes looked blue. I must have been lying there a long time.
I shut off the shower, bringing quiet to the room. The only sound was the slow dripping of water into the drain on the floor. My legs were wobbly, my teeth still chattering. Holding on tight to the shower door, I stepped out and snatched up the fluffy towel waiting for me. Warmth seeped into my limbs, making them tingle with pinpricks of discomfort.
The mirror over the sink was fogged. Using my hand, I wiped away a streak and glanced at myself. I drew back, barely recognizing the woman who stared back.
Tears filled my eyes, and I turned away. If those were the kind of memories waiting for me, if that was what my life was like before I became Amnesia… then I was right.
I was better off not knowing. I didn’t want to remember.
A low knock came on the door. “Amnesia, please.”
The door cracked open, and I peered out.
Maggie gasped. “Honey! What happened?”
Water droplets fell from the ends of my saturated hair and trailed over my shoulders, between my shoulder blades, and down my back.
“I remembered something,” I said, hollow, wishing to God I could forget again.
Her face mirrored the terror I felt. “What did you remember?”
“A name,” I told her. My chin wobbled. “My name.”