The Forgotten

Chapter 2: Faded Memory

Hugo woke up abruptly laying on a grassy surface, and sat up quickly with a sharp breath. He instinctively patted himself, finding no injury, as well as the fact that his body was no longer in pain. He looked up again and took a look at his surroundings. It appeared that he was laying on a small patch of grass, and all around him was a dark, warping void. Then he heard a click to his left, and his head shot in that direction. In front of him appeared an image, bordered by something like what a mystic portal would have been bordered like. Inside the image, there was a boy that looked like himself, as well as a boy that looked like Karl, fighting with each other in an alleyway. Karl had a knife, Hugo, unarmed. Then, the image started to move and play out like a movie that was just unpaused. Hugo and Karl exchanged back and forth attacks, neither getting a hit on the other. Then, Hugo missed an attack and lunged too far, and Karl brought his hand up and stabbed Hugo in the chest, then quickly removed the knife and jabbed it into Hugo's neck. Hugo could hear the faint sound of a girl screaming his name in the background somewhere. Then, as Hugo dropped to the floor, the scene and portal-looking screen faded away, leaving only Hugo's bloody body laying down in the void, his eyes wide open and skin gone pale. Suddenly, as if it formed out of the darkness of the void, a dark hooded figure loomed out of the void, looking over Hugo. This figure had red outlines all along his hood and robe, holding a crude-looking scythe in his left hand. The figure raised his scythe, then brought it down on Hugo's dead body, penetrating his chest. As the figure performed this action, Hugo suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, and he raised his hand up to hold it. The body of the other Hugo shook for a moment, then it suddenly started to light up, then burst into tiny particles of red essence, which then flowed into the figure's scythe, causing his cloak and scythe to flash red. When the figure did this, Hugo suddenly felt a jolt of pain and an outward pull, as though a piece of himself had just been removed from the inside. The figure stood still for a moment, then slowly raised his head towards Hugo just enough that Hugo could see a sneer of jagged teeth on his face. Hugo felt his breathing quicken, but there came a very strange feeling with that. Something was most definitely missing. The figure opened his mouth, letting out a screech and raised his hood so that Hugo caught a glimpse of a red eye. There was a jolt of spinning in his head as whispers started rattling around him for just a brief moment, then everything went quiet again as he jolted awake in a cold sweat, back in his bed in his room at his uncle's house. At first, he couldn't even bear to say something. He was in too much shock. Then, when he looked around, he noticed something. The sunlight seemed to be darker as it shone through his window and into his room. Looking around his own room, everything he laid eyes on seemed to have somewhat of a gloomier look that he couldn't explain. It almost seemed like he had some kind of lens over his eyes that changed the colors he saw things in into gray. He looked over to his bedside stand, the clock read 6:43am, but instead of seeing it in its normal red numbers, they seemed to be more distorted in an orange color. He reached for the picture of his mother and father, looking at it in its distorted colors.

"What... happened?" Hugo asked aloud, replacing the picture on his bedside stand. Then, as he got out of bed and stood up, normally, he would take a moment to breathe. This time, when he tried, his chest did rise. He quickly placed his hand on his chest, and quickly realized with horror...

He could no longer feel his heart beating.

August 14th, 2018

Nobody else resided in the house at the moment when Hugo went downstairs, to his good fortune anyways. He didn't have time to try to explain what happened to his uncle. He got into his car and drove to campus, hoping that one of his friends would know what to do. He could only vaguely remember the last time they'd seen each other. They had been in a fight in an alleyway behind a bowling alley, and then something had happened to him and he blacked out. He arrived at the campus and hopped out of his car, looking around, there were already a number of other cars, and looking at his watch, he saw that it was already 8:05.