The Good-For-Nothing Society | Completed

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Hello?" I hear someone say but I'm not sure who. It sounds too deep, too broken to be me. It's as though I'm out of my body, looking down at the girl who lays on an unfamiliar bed, and she says, "Is anyone here?"

No one answers. My eyes adjust to the room around me. It's barren, bare. The bed I'm laid on doesn't even have a mattress. It's just springs and coils and metal. I try to sit up and it's as if my head is exploding. I fight back a scream, and force myself upright. There's pangs all down my side and in my legs. I perch on the end of the metal for a bit, trying to catch my breath against the pain.

I swivel my eyes around, trying to take in the room before me and even that hurts. It's familiar and not at the same time. Four walls of cold stone, a broken window letting in a cold draft to my right, it looks like a room in an abandoned hospital. It's something from a horror film.

There's a cracked mirror in the corner of the room and I want to make my way over to it but my legs feel far thinner then I remember, weaker. Still, I grit my teeth and stand. Pain sears through me with each movement, my head feels as though it's going to pop off my shoulders with every step. But I still manage to hobble over, gripping onto the stone wall as I move. 

"What happened to me?" I ask myself, unable to look in the mirror.

Something, my head tells me. Something bad happened to you. Then I glance up, my eyes catching my own. I'm shocked to see my hair shorter, it's been long all my life and now it's not, it's thinner too. My face is gaunt and my eyes hallow and black rimmed. My ribs are protruding from my skin, I'm far thinner then I ever have been. I'm covered head-to-toe in gashes, welts and bruises. What the hell happened to me? I think of my dad and my mum. They wouldn't leave me some place like this, not even mum. It's cold, derelict and I'm all alone.

That's when I hear it, at the end of the hall outside my room. Shuffling feet. I am too weak to fight and far too unsteady to run. I have no choice but to face whoever is coming down that hall for me. I might have to meet my maker today. I turn towards the noise, clutching at my bruised, and possibly broken, ribs and wait for them to arrive.

I see them shine a torch down the hall, searching from left to right, my heart quickens as they get closer. I'm no better then a fly in a spiders web. Finally they make it to the room I'm stood in. They spin and shine the light in my face, then drop it immediately, allowing me to see them.

There's a boy stood before me. He can't be much older than I, if not the same age. He's handsome, burley. Blonde hair and green eyes. He stops dead in his tracks and stares at me, his mouth bobbing open and closed as if he can't quite believe his eyes.

"Hello," I whisper, because it feels like something needs to be said.

Three strides and he's across the room, engulfing me into his arms. I don't fight him off, I don't have the power to, and even if I did he doesn't strike me as someone who is here to hurt me. This is my rescuer. He's come to save me.

"Amelia," He says, his face buried into my hair. His voice is tight and full of emotion.

For me? But he's never met me. At least I don't think he has. He takes a step back and stares at me for a long while, then he reaches out and strokes my arm as if he can't quite believe I'm in front of him. He can't quite believe I'm real. But I suppose I can't quite believe he's real either. Even though I have never met this man, I somehow think I have.

"Do I know you?" I ask him.

His eyes search mine, "It's me."

It's incredibly embarrassing, even in my state, to be stood in front of a boy who not only looks like that, but is looking at me the way he is, and rescuing me, and seemingly knows me, and I'm none the wiser as to who he is. He clearly expects me to know him, it's in the way he's touching me, the way he's looking at me. I know he and I are friends, maybe even more. But I have no idea who this boy is.

"I'm sorry," I say, my voice a whisper. "I don't... I don't remember."

He takes a step away from me, I can see the hurt in his face but he masks it well. He straightens his back, "I'm Elijah."

"Elijah?" I repeat.

My brain muddles through everyone I've ever met but I don't ever recall meeting an Elijah. I stare at him, waiting for something, anything to come back to me. But it doesn't. I'm at a total loss as to who he is, yet I trust him anyway. I do know him, without actually knowing him. I don't know how that makes sense.

He swallows hard. This is as hard for him as it is for me, that much is obvious. "What do you last remember?"

I try and think but my brain feels fuzzy, like I've been drinking and it doesn't want me to remember what I did. The last thing I remember is... "The police. They were at the door. They told us about dad. My dad. He's dead. Then we had the funeral and... and... that's it."

I look at the boy before me, waiting for him
to say something and when he does it's not what I am expecting, "Amelia, that was almost a year ago."

The world stops. Everything stops. I can't comprehend what's happening. A year? An entire year? I've lost a year? How does that happen? What the hell happened to me?

"I think I'm going to be sick."

The boy grabs me by the arm and spins me to the broken sink, I gag and retch but nothing comes up. My stomach is empty. Finally, after a few minutes, a bit of bile flies out of my mouth and my stomach calms. I close my eyes, my head feels like it's going to spin right off my neck any second.

"Here," Elijah says, pressing a black bottle to my lips.

I lift it and drink the water, suddenly aware of how thirsty I am. The water is cool and delightful. I guzzle it down and he doesn't stop me.

"Are you okay to walk?" He asks, once i've finished. I nod but he drapes an arm over one of his shoulders anyway, helping me limp towards the door of the bare room.

"Elijah?" A male voice booms down the end of the hall.

"We're here," He calls back. "I've got her. We've got her."

He and I shuffle towards the male figure in the doorway, and I realise this is an abandoned hospital. I don't congratulate myself for guessing right. I don't want to think about how I got here. Why I am here. Who these people are. I've listened to enough True Crime to know what my brain is trying to block out. Some wounds aren't meant to be picked at, and this is probably one of them.

The man in the doorway looks exactly like the boy holding me, except older and with more hair. It occurs to me that maybe they're my captors and this is part of their sick game, but the way they're looking at me; worry, relief, it isn't the look of people who don't care about me.

"Jesus," an irish accent rings out, a female voice. "You look like shit."

My eyes land on a very pretty girl, stood in all black, like a woman on a mission she's prepared to fight on. She's looking right at me, smiling.

"Thanks," I mumble. "I feel it."

"She doesn't remember." Elijah says quickly. "Us. She doesn't remember us. She doesn't remember anything after her dad died."

I can see by the way they all look at each other, the way they become very still, that this is a bad thing. A very bad thing indeed.