Ignorance Is Bliss

                I awake in my bed. My bed, that’s an interesting thought. How do I know that? Well of course it's my bed, why would I be sleeping in it otherwise? I should get up. The sun was high in the sky, but it was winter. I guessed it should be around nine thirty. I glanced at my clock off of pure instinct, without actually registering that it was there. I was dead on… Very interesting indeed.

                I rolled off the bed, my feet catching the floor after a surprisingly high drop. I hadn't expected it, but my body had. I remembered reading something about muscle memory in memory loss patients… But I pushed the thought to the edge of my mind. I wandered out of my room to the bathroom across the hall to meet my morning relief.

                The next thing I know, I'm already down the stairs. There was definitely some sort of gap in time between walking into the bathroom and walking into the kitchen, but before I could be bothered to ponder it, I found a hot cup of coffee. My nose had picked it up the moment I woke up, only it hadn’t registered until now. I picked it up and breathed in deep through my nostrils. Only… when I had first seen it, I was on the other side of the room. I stood there dumbfounded at my calm outlook on this strange situation.

                I'd like to think I took the time to mull that over for a little while, but I was already outside in the backyard, in midstride, heading toward a trail into the woods. I peered behind me, halting for just a moment, seeing the house I had come from. Nothing special about it, guess I'll keep moving.

                I guess that's just what I did, because now I was hiking my way up a trail. A rock formation covered my view from the path I had taken here, but I could see the fork where I had gone left. The right trail was under what appeared to be a few feet of water. Even if I can't remember them, at least my decisions are still logical. My expressionless face cracked into a warm grin as the idea brought me comfort.

                It was a short lived comfort though, another memory blank had brought me a little further into the woods. Only now, my left hand wasn't empty. My right hand still held my mug, only half full now, while my left caressed a long, white, paper cylinder. The stick was filled with some sort of plant, the name of which was on the edge of my tongue, and ended in a small ember leaking smoke.

                Before I could manage another thought, I was on a cliff overlooking my street. The strangest part was not how I got there, or how I was pulling smoke out of the small cylinder of tobacco resting gently between my fingers, but that I was afraid. The height and steepness of the hill couldn't make me budge anymore than an ant could push a Mercedes. But for whatever reason… I was terrified.

                It was the first time I had had a thought that could shake the feeling of calm bliss from my body, and hadn't been thrust into another length of blank memory. I turned, following a force I don't think I will ever be able to describe, and I saw thorns covering the path I must have followed up to my perch.

                Fear struck my heart more fiercely than any blade could have accomplished, and my head burst into an agonizing pain. Thorns! The only thought my mind could form. Thorns! My body shook at the word being screamed from my lips, even though my ears could not hear such a broken whisper. "Thorns!" My lungs pushed away all their air in that horrifying word. Images flashed before my clenched eyes. The full moon. Running. An inescapable death. The light fading.

                My lungs had managed to grasp enough air to let one final cry of agony be heard everywhere as the last image captured my mind. "Thorns!" The picture was one of a grave. The grave of my maker. A crater, surrounded by cliffs that looked as if they would tear through your skin should you try to leave. It was certain they would consume you should you try to enter. A single, old sycamore tree, with roots gnarled deep into the earth of the only outlook in the entire hellscape. Tears streaked from my eyes as I forced them to see the truth. A field of bloodstained thorns, alive in the moonlight, consuming the thing that had killed me, and created me, in the same motion.