Forgetting You

A shiver runs up and down my spine, in the darkness I wake. Not even a hint of moonlight could light this room. It is like an underexposed photo, everything is just slightly out of focus and slightly too dark. Darkness envelopes my entire body, I cannot see a foot in front of me, wherever I am is cold and dark. I reach my hands out into the dark night air, waiting to feel something, anything, but only cold air grasps me back causing a scream to die in my throat.

It is only as I awake fully do I realise I have no idea where I am, that I am lost. I am sitting on a bed with a thin mattress and wire headboard and footboard. I know somewhere deep inside that I should be scared, it is like an inbuilt reaction to waking alone in a dark room, but I am not. I don’t feel fear, or really anything else for that matter. And I am almost content despite knowing something is wrong, very wrong.

I squint into the darkness once more noticing short wooden walls that surround me, I am in some sort of cabin. It is tiny with old furniture I can barely make out the patterns of. I am lying on a cot of some sort, and the mattress is lumpy and hard. I realise almost secondarily that there is a metal cuff tied from around my ankle to the bed footboard. Panic bubbles inside of me and then it hits me, the fear, the pain and the terror, it all hits me at once and I am left gasping in the dark for air.

I feel, all at once, the pain of the suffering of my own and I realise, so slowly that it physically hurts, that I am in some sort of trouble. I need to get out, I don’t know why or how but I need to leave here as soon as I can. I just need to get out. I sit up and fight dizziness from keeping me stationary. My head aches and I hold it in my hands for a brief moment letting the gravity of my pain, all of it, hit me and for a moment I feel it, it is the longest minute of my short life.

I reach down to my ankle and feel the cuff in the darkness. It is tight and my ankle is swollen, it must be cutting off my circulation I realise as my numb foot stares back at me. I need to get this cuff off of my ankle so I can escape, my nails are bit to the ends and they ache, but then again all of me aches. It all blends into one symphony of pain and I do my best to ignore it and instead figure out a way out of here. I scratch at the cuff frantically, panic gurgles inside of me, bubbling up and up until it is all I can focus on.

The pain is secondary, the terror first.

I am just scratching at my skin; and the ankle cuff is not budging. I am getting desperate with fear and panic, this overwhelming need to flee is all consuming. The moonlight, finally, hits the cabin window, opposite me, and I can see. It is the only light in the small cabin but it is enough. I look around taking in my surroundings, familiarising myself with this cabin.

There is a fireplace, in the middle of the longest wall, it is unlit, a chair faces it and I get a flash of something, something terrible but my brain cannot comprehend it in my current state. All I know is that something terrible happened here, bad things I simply cannot remember. Now that I am trying I realise that I cannot remember anything, the last thing I remember is a white car after that it is as dark as this room without the moonlight.

My wrists aches as if it has been carved into, hesitantly I look down squinting in the moonlight, noticing that written on it simply is the name ‘Riley’. I do not know what it means, I do not know who Riley is. I run my fingers over the raised skin and try to rub it and my confused heart away, but it does not move. It stares back at me haunting as ever, and I realise it is more permanent that a pen, it is a tattoo. Someone, maybe even myself, carved this name into my skin.

Myself,

What a strange concept to not know yourself, to not remember the person you have been. Tears slip down my eyes in frustration and I shake the confronting thoughts from my mind, I will have time to think about all that later right now I need to focus, I need to get out. Only I don’t know how, I wipe at my eyes frantically searching the room with my wide and tired eyes for something to unlock my cuff with.

It is at that moment that I notice something shining in the moonlight, a beacon of hope, a saviour, a little silver key. I stare at it for longer than necessary trying to comprehend why they key is there, especially if it fits the cuff on my ankle, why would they leave it out? I am suddenly on high alert; this is a trap. But if I don’t take this opportunity I will be forever stuck here waiting for someone to come save me and I don’t think I am the kind of girl who lets other people save her… at least I hope I am not.

I stand up at the end of the bed almost falling to my knees from the pain that erupts in my left ankle, it must be sprained I reason. I begin edging the bed, closer and closer, counting my lucky stars it is not bolted to the floor, to the mantle. I limp closer on my good leg hearing something familiar in the distance, a flash of something comes before my eyes, a memory maybe, but I am too intent to focus on anything other than the key and my escape. My side is on fire, I lift the t-shirt I am only wearing with a pair of panties, to see sloppily applied stitches, I gag. Pulling my shirt down I reach for the key ignoring all the pain that erupts in my body, the pain is enough to stop my dead in my tracks for a brief moment.

The sound I heard in the distance intensifies, it is a car I realise belatedly, I only have a few more minutes before whoever is out there comes in. Something tells me I am running from this person and they are evil. The key is cold in my hand and I bend quickly unlocking the heavy cuff, I am sure is dragging me down. I race to the front door my heart pounding before realising that is where the sound of the car is the loudest, moving back to the mantle place I survey the room.

The window is my only option, I move closer with determination and squeeze the window open as quietly as I can manage, glancing over my back every few seconds to make sure the front door doesn’t open and I am caught. The sound of the car stops me, and I know it is now or never. I will only get one shot at this and if I screw up I will be stuck here in the small cabin with this terrifying figure. I push the window open to its full capacity and shimmy my way through, catching my t-shirt on the window. I rip it but barely notice as I tumble out the other side of the window on the hard ground.

Once my feet hit the dirt I run.

I don’t even look back.

I run as fast as I can, my legs ache and my lungs beg for mouthfuls of fresh air but I don’t care. I just keep running as if my life depends on it, and I think it might. The cabin is surrounded by forest, thick trees and dark night skies. I am scared as I run tripping over branches and scrunching leaves under my bare feet. I didn’t even realise I wasn’t wearing shoes until my feet hit the dirt, it is soft and as cold as the cabin had been, sending a thick chill up and down my spine. I trip as I run and graze my hands on the dirt and grass, it stings but I hardly notice I am too intent on getting out, on getting free.

The trees blur into one dark shadow as I run and it frightens me like a child might be scared of the big bad wolf. I just keep running, because I know the second I stop it, all this, my life, is over and that is not a possibility I am willing to accept. So I run. I run as fast as I can, until my legs ache and my lungs feel like they are on fire, and I think they might be. I am sweating profusely as tree branches smack me in the face leaving scratches, my feet are bloodied from the leaves that crunch underfoot, covered in dirt and blood, stinging painfully. But I don’t stop, no I keep going ignoring the pain that erupts everywhere on my small body, urging me to go further faster.

Somewhere along the way I hit an intersection and I pause. Do I go left or right? I pause for a single moment but it feels like an eternity, this is the most important decision I ever recall making and that seems infinitely important, because I should remember something right? Something from before waking up?

I chose right and I am not sure why. I keep running my bare feet sting from the gravel and rocks on the road. My t-shirt is a little too tight and I have no idea if I was wearing this or more when I got to the cabin, I am not even sure if I went to the cabin willingly or this is some big cosmic misunderstand.

But something inside of me tells me it is not a misunderstanding, that something bad, something horrific, happened to me back at that cabin and I will never fully understand the multitude of that. I keep running, falling over my sore feet, my ankle is screaming in pain and I can no longer take it so I collapse on the gravel road. My adrenaline is wearing off and I realise I am tired, dead tired, as if I have lived a thousand lives in the span of one hour.

It starts out as a low rumble in the distance, so low and heavy I can feel it on the road around me. I think it is whoever showed up at the cabin, they have found me and I am terrified. I can’t help the terror that resides in my body making me fearful of everything all at once, the sky is too dark and the road too hard, the noise too loud.

I know I need to get up and keep moving, fan further out and away from that cabin. However, I simply cannot move, the adrenaline has worn off and I am in so much pain I don’t think I could move even if I wanted to. My ankle throbs and a terrifying thought shoots through my consciousness, is this how I die?

The headlights hit me first, then I hear the brakes, I am lying on the road waiting for whatever comes next. I tried and I failed, I just wish I were stronger I think with tears running down my eyes. My heart is beating a mile a minute and I am sure the person behind the headlights who is watching me carefully is the person at the cabin come to finish me off. I feel as if I am in a bad horror movie, only I can’t remember which one and I wish once more that I could just remember something, something that will make this all make some sort of sense to my tired brain.

Out of the light steps a figure and with all I have left within me I let out a blood curling scream. This is how I die I am now sure of it.