Flashes

Chapter Four

The gray building is back- my old school. A dull sign rests before the building; Maple High School. I sigh and look down at the sidewalk, my black shoes carrying me towards the doors. Upon entering, an overpowering smell of coffee and eraser shavings envelops my nose. A middle-aged lady, dressed in professional pants and a blouse, sits at the desk. I walk through the office and into the hallways of Maple; it all smells like bleach and lemon. Specks of red -blood, possibly- spatter on the floor, probably a result of a fight. A part of me has a sense that those happen a lot here.

            My eyes shoot open and I am greeted by the ceiling of my cell.  It’s comforting in a way, there’s never anything to surprise me, to scare me. Glancing around the room, I begin to notice the abundance of drawings. A passion of mine, I suppose.

            Noticing things like this make me feel real; they make me feel alive. As if things from whatever my life used to be have transferred over to me, that I haven’t become a completely different person. I don’t know who I was, or what my personality was, but I know that I wouldn’t want to change that. I mean, would you?

            Someone loses their memory and they lose everything. The only things that stay are basic knowledge, how to eat, walk, talk. And sometimes, not even that. I’ve just received this information very recently. The crackly voice has told me, I may lose who I was in my life-before-tragic-accident-or-whatever-happened. 

Apparently I was very lucky to have retained as much as I have. Apparently I am a rare case; most people have to be taught over and over again.  Most people never remember anything, but here I am with my flashes. How great for me.

            I have become angry, most recently. Lonely, as well. Feelings are resurfacing with the flashbacks and I almost wish I could go back, way, way back, to before I knew of anything, before I was even real. I begin to wish I had never woken up in this troubling room, with blank walls and empty words. I begin to wish I were dead.

            Quite a few times, I consider the idea of boycotting food altogether, to let myself starve, waste away and die. But then Alex’s ocean blue eyes, somehow burnt beneath my eyelids, always surface. Alex, always Alex. Shock registers deep inside me, for I have remembered a piece of him. His eyes, flecks of gold swimming about the sea of blue, and the brown and green seaweed, and I know exactly what a beach is, with no memory of ever being there.

            I guess that’s what it’s like to know Alex. Even without the memory of truly knowing him, somehow, I know he made me whole.