Anna Hielma, "Phi"'s Story

Pounding… Pounding. That was all she felt. Nothing but darkness, and pain. Urrgh… ow… what… what happened to me? No, no, forget that. Just open your eyes. Just, open… open your- Her eyes snapped open and she let out a long gasp. She was lying on a very strange floor. Nothing she had ever felt before. Facing a wall, she immediately tried to thrust herself up onto her knees, but was stopped halfway.

“Aaahh! My head!” she moaned, suddenly stopping as she reached her knees. She knelt over in almost a prayer position, covering her head. “What… what happened to me?” she whispered softly. Think, think. You were… what had she been doing? Sitting at home? No… Walking to her boyfriend’s place? No… she didn’t know she even had a boyfriend. What had… where did she live? What was her job? Who… who was she? The supposedly nineteen year old girl slowly rolled back onto her side and opened her eyes to the blank wall in front of her.

“Think… think…” she murmured to herself. “What… who am I?” she racked her brain, but it was a clean slate. Nothing was there. Just a throbbing pain in the center of it, like a virus that had eaten everything she knew about her life. Her breathing quickened. Amnesia seemed like the most logical reason for her forgetting everything, but even the thought of that… it made her feel like a spider being held by one leg over a bottomless pit. Like anything could happen, a gust of wind to push her from the human’s grip and drop her into the terrifying unknown.

It’s alright. Just… don’t think about that. Her eyes slowly examined herself, and she gave another start. Blood. All over her. And her favorite clothes, too! Wait… those were her favorite clothes? She couldn’t remember that she liked striped shirts and jeans… at least the tennis shoes were untouched. Maybe she had been walking around when she was… kidnapped? Wait… next question. Where was she?

Slowly she rolled over to her other side and lifted herself up on one weak arm, carefully making sure her brain didn’t explode into any more pain. There… her eyes widened. She had never seen this room before, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. Immediately her eyes were drawn to the girl over in that… Quickly she threw her free hand over her mouth and looked away, trying hard not to gag or puke. That girl was dead, and covered in blood. Is her blood on my clothes…? slowly she looked at the ten or so other people in the room. Most of them appeared to be unconscious, except there was one person standing up. Who is he…?

Once the rest of the people had woken up, they had better not think that her bloodstained clothes gave her the mark of guilt. The door was over there, but obviously it was locked. Otherwise why would that man be staying here? Any normal person would run from a room with a bunch of unconscious people, one dead. Slowly, without so much as acknowledging anything on the outside, she rolled onto her bottom in a sitting position and scooted back to the wall, leaning her aching head against it. This needed to be a dream. It needed to, it needed to… This couldn’t be real. There was no possible way in the world. Her chest rose quickly as she drew in large breaths. Calm down, she just needed to calm down. Wait for it to end, and then go back to whatever normal life she had.

In the dark, in her mind, everything was out of focus. The longer she concentrated on the moment, a humming sound grew louder until a soft high pitched voice could be heard. A child's voice, echoing in song through her head hauntingly. Trying to make out the song, she faintly realized that it wasn't in English but rather just full of weird sounds mashed together. Her head, now light with air, focused onto the light that slowly brightened in the atmosphere, a little more at every interval, at the glow of a heartbeat.

Then all at once, just as the light was slowly burning at a modest shade, it burst out into a stinging fluorescent white and burned into her vision.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Her eyes, still closed, shone with stars and her body impulsively jerked forward. With her consciousness already seeping back into her body, she felt completely surprised at the stimuli of this new environment; which was so different from the fluffy hanging atmosphere in her head. A second passed and her eyes opened, and her vision fixed on her right toe, neatly tucked into her strappy footwear. The pupils of her eyes hurriedly dilated and her mind flooded into reality.

'What time is it?'

At the corner of her eye, she spotted an accident; a dark brown patch on the far right corner of her foot. Without much of a thought, she felt herself lurch forward over her knees as she tucked them upwards so that she could reach her right foot better. She grazed her finger over the brown patch, only to realize that it was some sort of dried crusty substance.

And just as she turned, she noticed the smell. The smell of rust coated with a slick scent rose into her nostrils. Automatically, she turned to the sourced of the smell, darting from right to left. Her elbow was stained in red from the smudged pool of blood on her right, and on her left, bodies laid on the floor, possibly about 6 or 7, and a few others slugging around, all strangers, not seeming to know what is going on.

She slowly slid her right leg upwards and pushed herself up onto her feet. Just then, did she realize that she was wearing 4-inch heels, sewed with comfortable blue material. Glancing to her left, she trudged towards the person closest to her when the corpse caught her sight. She instantly knew something was wrong with that one body. All the other bodies were somehow apparent of live whereas this one girl was completely still, covered with a large amount of blood, and her skin, pale like cold marble.

She did not need to go closer to confirm this and she did not want to. Her eyes scanned around the room and locked on the two young men who were reaching for the other people on the floor. Picking up speed, she rushed towards them, discovering the throbbing pain in her ankle. She whimpered softly under her breath before continuing on towards the other people. About 5 steps forward, she tripped and landed on her knees. Furiously, she tore at her heels and knotted the straps together before wrapping it around her wrist.

At that moment, she caught sight of another body sitting up against the wall. She walked closer to the girl and tapped her shoulder.

"Are you alright?"

Phi

There were some noises as she just sat there, waiting for this dream to end. Movement, obviously by some other people wakening. She didn't care. There was no way she was interacting with the phantoms of her mind. Someone started cursing, and it made her jump when the loud smack of fist hitting window sounded out. Curling up, she squeezed her eyes further shut.

It's just a dream, it's just.... just a dream. Don't worry, it'll all... all be over soon. The pounding in her head sounded like a huge bass drum in her ears and felt like an elephant was sitting on her skull. This was the most realistic dream she had ever seen. What plagued her mind was not that it was a dream- she had figred that much out already.

Who am I? Where could this possibly be? And, why am I dreaming about a place I've obviously never been to? could this be some weird place she had visited as a child, but didn't remember regrardless? Or perhaps she had been here, and it had changed dramatically. In any case it wasn't a friendly place.

She jumped as someone tapped her on the shoulder. Are you alright? she heard a female voice speak to her. Jerking her gaze up, she automatically opened her teary eyes to see a dark-haired woman looking at her. The other seemed to be just as worn out and as much in pain as she was. Could this be for real? Was it not a dream?

The girl couldn't help herself. Blinking back the tears in her eyes, she spoke as loudly as her screaming head would allow her, which was, in reality, not very loud at all. "Of course I'm not all right! Do you realize what... what situation we're in? There's a .... a dead girl over there and... and... we could... we could be next!" Forced to bite her lip to keep from crying, she turned her face away from the woman, down into her knees. This was all too much. This dream needed to end. now.

She jerked back when the girl snapped. For some reason, she felt the need to maintain control of herself, reasoning that if she freaked out, she'll only make things worse. In her head, thoughts flurried to explain what's happening. She tried recalling information from before the accident when she realized that she couldn't summon any memories at all. There was no recollection of this place, or of the other people in the room, or even her name.

She nervously glanced down at her arms before her, trying to picture herself.

'I don't even know my face..'
'What's my name?'

Straining her brain for some information about herself, she tried to recall what she was doing or where she was before she woke up in this dodgy room. Her eyes darted around the room, consciously avoiding the dead body. Inside, she was shaking. All she really wanted to do was curl into a ball in some corner until someone came for them.

'Is that what we are? Are we prisoners in this place? Who knows we're here? Are we all here to die?' she thought to herself as she watched the two other people in the room. She had not checked the door, or the windows but she was so sure that something was wrong... apart from the dead girl and unconscious people in the room.

Her thoughts trailed off for a few minutes before her attention abruptly focused on the girl once more.

"You don't know that for sure..." She bent down in front of the girl and shared a reassuring smile. Deep inside, she felt desperate to be reassured herself, fear suddenly creeping into her body, from the dead girl in the corner and her memory loss. For minutes, she stared at the girl in front of her. With her face deeply tucked into her knees, the girl was trying hard to hold back tears.
"We just need to find a way out of here. We need to stay calm and collected. Nothing good will come out of fear. Come on." She said, trying to summon strength and bravery, for the girl and herself, but mostly for herself.

With whatever was left, she pushed the thoughts of darkness and fear away from thought, like as though her life depended on it. But for some reason, she was convinced that her life did depend on something, but it was not something she herself could alter or affect.

She stood up and looked down at the girl, her hand stretched out towards her, palm upwards and open.

For several minutes, all she did on the outside was shake and desperately choke back her tears. Nothing about any of this dream made sense. In a room she didn't know, with total amnesia, and even though one girl was trying to help her, she had at first refused to play with the phantoms in her dream. At least... at least when she woke up, she could just tell herself it was all something her mind made up, and she could go back to normal.

And, what was most disconcerting to her was that she couldn't even picture her own face. What did she look like? Was she ugly and hideous, or a beautiful young woman? Could that play as a factor assuming that the other people in her dream saw her and weighed her as a possible killer of that other girl? REally, no matter what she looked like that would be a possibility...

"We just need to find a way out of here. We need to stay calm and collected. Nothing good will come out of fear. Come on." Wait... had she just said something logical and rational...? No one in her dreams ever did that.... they usually spouted strange nonsense that made sense in the context, but never when projected against reality. Slowly she looked up at the woman to find her holding a hand toward her. This caused her tearstained eyes to widen.

This... could this be real? No. It wasn't. There was no way she was going to accept that. But, it seemed her dream wasn't going to have her sit against a wall and wait it out. Perhaps playing along with her dream would help it end sooner... With a shaky, slow hand, she reached out and took the woman's hand, surprised at how cold her own felt against the other woman's.

"I..." she licked her lips and took a deep breath, trying to calm her shaking body. Her head still beat a tattoo inside her head, but she managed to speak quietly to the other woman. "C-can... can y-y-ou not r-r-remember yo-ur name to-oo?" the nineteen year old stammered out, now squeezing the other woman's hand hard to stop herself from trembling.