There's nothing you're forced to trust more than your own mind. You're dependent on it, it stores the memories that make up your world.
But what if it could be stolen from you?
Aspen's world is growing, from the boundaries of her country farm to...
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Somewhere between when my brain had decided on my words and when they expelled from my mouth, I realised that the information I'd released was something I was much safer keeping to myself.
Because the curious grin, and the dangerous expression that crossed his face told me that I was most certainly not supposed to remember.
The thud of my heart bellowed loud in my ears, which had started ringing acutely in the absence of the pain which had been searing through my head. My face was hot with the blood pooling beneath my cheeks. I considered running for the door, and just as my instincts started to break me from my confusion and I took a step away, free from the pain that had been binding me, he broke the air and spoke.
"Is that so?"
Our eyes locked, and I was frozen.
"And what exactly is it you do remember?" he quizzed, his face, though nonchalant on the outside, slightly shadowed with what something within me identified as worry.
I paused. Something about the charisma which was oozing from the way he tried to reassure me with a pleasant smile made me feel as if I could tell him everything, and he'd somehow make sure things ended up okay. But it was him. And I wasn't quite sure whether putting the target on my forehead by being honest was a good idea.
What I remembered was an unsettling silence filling the room, an invisible blanket hushing the gathered students. I remember not a voice instructing us, but more a force, breaking through into our minds and compelling our muscles, making us puppets on strings as he tested whatever he'd done to us.
He'd made sure the doors were shut, locking us into the room for no other eyes to see.
That was when he'd told the boy to climb the service ladder.
With ceilings spread metres tall and ornate fixtures older than the university itself, the cleaners needed some way to reach the highest parts of the roof. A thin metal ladder, easily concealed by a heavy satin curtain, stretched almost to the top.
Everyone was deadly silent. Even the boy.
I remember my pulse racing, and not just because of Isaac behind me anymore. It was the fact that I was waiting for everyone to laugh, to make a joke. To remind me it wasn't real by snickering about how crazy the professor was. Maybe the ones truly scared would call the police.
But I couldn't move. Nobody laughed. And the boy clutched the rungs of the ladder as if it were simply his duty.
By then, my breath was held in my throat, the functions needed for sustaining my life long forgotten. Everything was an incredibly conscious decision, even blinking. My eyes, wide with terror as they watched the boy unevenly place his feet one above the other, found Isobel beside me, her cheeks still pink from her brisk walk in the morning cold.
