Finding Scarlet

Chapter One

Chapter One

It was dark, and I couldn't see anything, but that didn't mean I couldn't hear the voices.

These unfamiliar voices jumbled up together in a mass of chaotic sounds and words, making it practically impossible to understand and decipher. Many spoke in hushed tones; others spoke with a strong sense of authority; some voices were racked with sobs. It was all muffled somehow, like my head was submerged underwater. All of this seemed to shatter after a woman screamed, amplifying the sounds around me. Her high pitch of a cry rang loudly through my ears, making my head throb and eardrums ache.

It was then that I realized that I had a body.

Why did I not know that?

As I searched through the corners of my mind to confirm that yes, I am a real person, I realized that there was nothing. Blank. Like a painting drained of its color.

Why couldn't I remember anything? I swear that I had a life, that I was someone, but who was I?

Wait... who am I?

As I pondered this, I became more aware of my body. I could feel pain running up and down my limbs, and the heaviness of my eyelids that were closed tight against my skin. I tried to pry them open, but it was like I had lost all sense of control.

Did I forget how to do that too?

I felt a warm color brush against my eyelids, but I was unable to figure out what it was, where it came from—and most importantly—what was happening to me. I felt the heat of the colors in quick flashes on my skin, from warmth to cold to warmth again in a strong, continuous rhythm. My head throbbed in tune with the unknown colors, the pain becoming more unbearable by the second.

I heard someone say a word, over and over again. It wasn't very clear, but the voice held so much urgency and tenderness that it instantly caught my attention. They must have been close to my ear, because I wouldn't have been able to make it out over the other sounds thrumming through my head.

I felt a band of tingles cover my arms and legs for a moment before they quickly disappeared. I thought that maybe I was getting the life back into them again, but after trying to move my arms and legs—even trying to flex a toe— I realized that nothing had changed, and that my body appears to have a mind of its own; one that will not take orders and would rather sit in a heap. Or lay in a heap... I don't know. I don't know anything.

The voices were becoming louder and more chaotic by the second, coming up at my sides and sliding effortlessly through my brain. The noises piled one after another inside my skull, filling it up quickly to its capacity until I couldn't take it anymore. My mind was about to explode.

Make it stop, make it stop. It's too much.

I became more confused by the minute, until I had the strangest sensation that my body was floating, spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning.

The voices started to fade away now, but a blaring noise took its place, surrounding my body like a blanket. Someone was speaking to me, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. All I knew was that the person was scared by the way their voice changed an octave after every other word.

I don't understand. I don't—I can't—please make it stop. It hurts my ears. It hurts my head. It hurts everywhere.

Then the voices stopped.

Everything stopped.

I couldn't feel anymore. The pain slowly started to ebb away, until the throb in my brain became just a ghost of a reminder. Then there was nothing.

I was nothing.

And just like that—like a switch turned on inside my mind—I could see again. There was a thin beam of light, floating in the vast space of darkness like a twirling breeze in the wind. I reached toward it, curling my fingers around the stream of light, before I pulled myself up and out of the darkness.

As I emerged out from the emptiness I was in, I found myself in a place that I had never seen before.

Or maybe I had seen it before, but I don't remember.

I don't remember anything.

Except one thing: My name was Scarlet.