Transformers Prime - Hazy

Tabula Rasa

    He just looked down at me curiously.

Jason: “Watching that Brookes lady again, eh Orion?”

    I grumbled as I got up from the mat in the private gym.

Orion: “Shut up, Jason.”

Jason: “Hey man! Don’t get like that! I’m just saying! She’s back on the market and everything, too!”

    I sighed, frustrated.

Orion: “What does that matter, Jason? She doesn’t even know I exist, unless she watches a fair amount of MMA. Which I highly doubt, by the way.”

    Somehow, she didn’t strike me as the violent type. She seemed too sophisticated, high-end, and if that were the case, it was likely she would never know my name outside of utterances on the streets.

    How I wished she would know my name.

    How I wished she just knew me.

   

~First-Person Narration: Jasmine~

    It was one of those nights again.

    I woke up around three, maybe four a.m., breathing heavily, hand on my chest, having sat up straight without a thought.

    I was in a cold sweat again. Sadly enough, this happened most nights. I woke up, sweating and shivering, with little to no memory of what had just happened.

    But I remembered tonight.

    I’d seen a man’s face. A cruel, hate-filled face. He’d pinned me down, saying I’d been elusive long enough, and . . . and . . . I haven’t a clue where any of that had come from!

    I was just grateful Akane had come in tonight. That was a sign I hadn’t screamed this time. I tried to calm myself, desperately. I took a  deep breath, but it was ragged and strained.

    A small body jumped up next to me. I barely made out the gray form.

    It made me smile.

Jasmine: “Hey, Rocky. How are you, Baby?”

    The small American Shorthair cat just curled up in my lap, kneading before she laid down. I laughed lightly. She was often my ‘first responder’ in these situations, if Akane wasn’t bursting in the room, that is.

    I’d had her for so long, I couldn’t imagine being without her. She was such a sweetheart. Very timid, but a total sweetheart. And I loved her to death.

    She was one of the four animals I had. Another cat and two dogs.

    The dogs, a husky and a golden retriever, I guessed were at the foot of my bed. They usually were at night. The other cat, though? I was never sure where she was. She wandered day in and out. But at night, if I really wanted, I could lift the blankets when she was around and she’d immediately prance over, crawling under them, and she’d stay there until well after I was asleep, but she was always gone by the time I woke up.

    Thankfully, Rocky was enough to calm me tonight.

    Unfortunately, most of my nights were categorized three ways: the ones where I woke up crying, the ones where I woke up screaming, and the ones where I was lucky enough to escape having any troubling dreams at all.

    But those ones were rare.

    The worst part was being upset when I woke and having absolutely no idea why. I normally can’t recall anything. The dreams are always so vivid, but once I’m awake, poof. They’re just . . . gone. And it’s so, so troubling to have those.

    Angela said they were night terrors, and perfectly normal considering my situation, but I doubted her.

    I may have done some research of my own, and what I found didn’t align with her insistences. Night terrors occur in the early hours of sleep, not five hours after beginning rest. And that’s when I was having them, which is when the actual dream cycles begin. I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with me that these things were happening.

    I shook my head and laid my head back down on the pillow. I’d worry about it some other time. We were shooting another scene tomorrow, and I had to be rested.

    I just wish I knew what was so unusual about me, besides what I already knew, obviously, but for the moment, I was unknowing.

~First-Person Narration: Angela~

    Another eventful night. And I hadn’t been fully prepared. She’d woken before I could wipe her memory, but I was thankful it was a Alpha dream instead of a Beta. Yes, I’d now categorized her dreams. Because, well, for the most part, they fell into two categories.

    Jasmine knows me as Angela, but my name, preferred until now, is Angel. I refuse to use that one around her, though, just to keep things . . . subtle, I guess. I don’t want to trigger anything for her. She has no idea what she’s been through, and I’m not about to change that. She has to find out for herself.

    A theory comes to mind whenever I think about how incredibly lost she is without her memories, one from a long time ago, developed by a man named John Locke. Tabula Rasa: the blank slate.

    Because quite frankly, without her memories of the world she gave everything for, that’s pretty much all she was, and I hoped so dearly that she wouldn’t etch too many new things into her mind before she was found by those who would uncover the old engravings. I just couldn’t help her by myself.