Trying To Remember

Chapter 1

Rhianen’s POV

Have you ever woken up and not known where you are? Or been disoriented when you wake up in the morning? Well that is what I am experiencing.

I open my eyes to a dim, dark room. As my vision clears, I can see the sparse room better. It consists of four gray walls, a gray ceiling, and a gray floor. There’s also a small air vent above me on the wall and a lone toilet in one of the corners. There is no door in sight. Where am I? What am I doing here? My mind’s beginning to clear, and I realize there is a far more important question to be asking. Who am I?

I sit on the cold floor and try to think. The only thing I end up extracting from my mind is a name. Rhianen. It is an irregular name, to me at least. It must be mine, because I can’t think or even begin to recall anything from my past. Immediately I’m wary of the situation. I still have sensibleness; just anything from my personal experiences is like a blank space in my mind. I know about schools and parks and other public facilities; it’s just as if I experienced it from some one else’s perspective. Moreover, all faces of people that I might have known are just a blur. However, I still know enough to wonder who in their right state of mind would capture a young girl (I think I’m young…the number seventeen seems right) and take her to wherever this place happened to be. No one in the right state of mind would, and that’s exactly what concerns me.

            I sit in the grayish prison-room for what seems like an interminable amount of time. I figure someone must be monitoring me and would eventually come to tell me what was going on, but I have no such luck. They don’t even come to feed me for what seems like an eternity, and when they do, a slot just appears in the wall and a food tray comes out of it. I don’t see a hand or anything, so I assume it’s an automated thing. Damn. I have way too much time to think about what’s happening.

            Of course I am anxious of what’s to come, and curious. I wonder who and why I was kidnapped, and why they would have had to wipe my memory. If they wiped my memory, that is. Is that even possible outside of Sci-Fi movies?

I examine myself a little more closely. I’m wearing jeans and a ratty sweatshirt, and have long-ish, dark brown hair. There’s no mirror in the cell so I can’t see any of my facial features but I have relatively pale skin. I have no idea how long I’ve been here though, so maybe I’m tanner normally? I laugh at myself…I’m worrying about a tan after I’ve been kidnapped. What’s wrong with me?

I realize suddenly that I’m strangely calm considering the circumstances. Am I in some sort of shock? Or maybe I’m just a natural calm and rational thinker? Or who knows, maybe I’m some sort of teenage spy and I’m just used to getting kidnapped all the time. I think it as a joke, but it gets me wondering. What had I been like before and what had I done to have this happen to me? I mean, if someone took the time to kidnap me, I might’ve done something pretty bad…or something really good? Maybe it’s terrorists! I shudder, I’m not sure I want to find out. Then again, I really don’t want to sit in this damn room for the rest of my life either.

            I settle into a routine after a while. Eat. Sleep. Think. At first it was agonizing, wasn’t someone going to tell me what the hell was going on? Apparently not. I screamed and shouted for someone, anyone, and threw myself against the door-less walls repeatedly, until my whole body ached. Still no one ever came.  After a while, I gave up any hope that this would be explained to me. Time becomes a blur and everything seems far away. I can’t tell if it’s been hours or days or weeks or years.

The blood crawls at a slow pace through my veins. What are my captors waiting for? Do they want me to remember something? I search my mind for something, anything, to no success until I am completely mentally drained.