He wakes in utter darkness, with his memory and identity stolen.
Subjected to strange experiments and visited by spirits, he must not only find a way to escape the cage he's trapped in, but discover both his identity and the truth of who is behind t...
Ryan was leaning out of his bedroom window, looking down at his friend, Ian.
"Dunno... Queen?"
Ryan should have known. Ian was a long time Queen fan, and rarely listened to anyone else. Occasionally, the main song from the latest Disney film would filter into the mix, but they, he said, were there to confuse people, not because he liked them.
As if!?
Even though he knew all the words and grinned when they came on.
Ryan pressed play on the small cassette player on the windowsill next to him. He was smiling himself. The tape had as many songs recorded onto it as its length would allow, and he, unlike his friend, had more eclectic tastes. He'd regularly be sitting beside the radio at 7pm on a Sunday evening, when the Official Top 40 would come on. His fingers would be ready to push down the record button, while his heart would beat as fast as the drums in some of the songs, hoping the DJ wouldn't talk over the end.
They never used to. You could record almost a full song at one time. That was when the Top 40 was listened to by millions. That was when records and cassettes were all anyone knew. Before CDs has lived and died and, from their ashes rose downloads. Before VHS became DVD became Blu-ray became streaming.
On the tape were around twenty-five of those songs. The ones he liked, or wanted to say he liked because they were popular. Probably half of them were complete. For Ryan, that was plenty. He didn't mind the missing few seconds of some. He'd often fast forward before the song ended, eager to listen to the next one. His ability to recall the lyrics was well developed. It was a pity his singing voice didn't match that standard. He didn't mind that either, and was happy to sing to anything within earshot wherever he was. It showed he was happy and, usually, he was.
He pressed the play button. Three songs had already been played, though he couldn't have been sure that was the case. The next could have been anything.
The driving guitar of Queen's 'Hammer to Fall' began. Ryan and Ian's shocked expressions matched, the former surprised it was coincidentally just what had been asked for, and the latter briefly thinking his friend had some sort of music related magic power.
Both sang. Ian's voice wasn't exactly melodic, but it was an improvement on Ryan's. Neither cared. They were friends 'rocking out.' That one would one day be the singer of a local band who would have a brief run of success playing at local venues while the other would never graduate above karaoke didn't, and would never, matter. Queen was playing and the air guitars were out.
"Here we stand or here we fall, history won't care at all..."
They were both channelling their inner Freddie Mercury and Brian May. Ryan would have preferred to have been the band's drummer, Roger Taylor, but the moment called for guitar and song.
"Food's ready, son!"
Ian's mother, calling him for their evening meal, brought the impromptu concert to an abrupt end, and the music stopped filling the arena in their imaginations and shrank back down to the window ledge. He waved, turned and ran across the road towards his house. Ryan, still mumbling the words to himself, went to press the stop button.
And froze.
It wasn't stop. It was play.
It wasn't the window ledge of his old box-room bedroom, where he could see his breath in the winter until his parents put rolls of polystyrene on the walls for insulation and papered over them. It was the Records Room of a bizarre institution where they killed you repeatedly. And themselves.
The hammer falling was that of a gun against the firing pin. History didn't give a shit because it didn't exist. They'd stolen it.
Ryan had pushed the open lid of the cassette player down. His finger hovered, ready to set the tape in motion so its contents could be heard, but he no longer had the strength to do so. The memory hadn't simply seeped back into his mind. It had assaulted him like a mugger in an alleyway at night. There was no warning, and he was left staggered. It was more than a recollection. He was transported back to his childhood as if a plutonium fuelled DeLorean had slammed into him.
The song lyrics were still in his head. The sound of Ian's mum lingered in his ears. It felt ripped from him when he saw he was back, or still in the archive. Somewhere, an alarm was blaring. Somewhere, someone was shouting. Or was it screaming?
Ian and Queen dissolved. Reality was real once more, but the memory hadn't disappeared too. It had settled onto the appropriate shelf of his mind. Though lonely, it stood proud and seemed to be waiting for its siblings to join.
Ryan shuddered, but turned the shudder into a shake. He wasn't going to allow himself to succumb to emotional darkness when he'd been subjected to the physical variant for so long. He extended the shaking along his now outstretched hands, visualising the dread dissipating from his fingertips. The move was familiar. He was sure it was something he'd done before, and often.
And Ian, and Clara and Brioni!
He mentally called out to his past.
"I'm coming for you!"
They were waiting, he was certain. And they were close. His memories were within touching distance, he just wasn't sure in which direction he needed to go. But he would find out!
Push, click, whirr.
Silence...? A blank...? No. Wait.
A cough. A shuffle of papers.
And then Dad.
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