THROUGH THE ILLUSION / MINHO

₀₁ spitfire

  SHE HAD A HEADACHE. That much she knew. Her brain seemed to throb with every passing moment. She didn't know why. She just knew that every screech, every whir in machinery, made electricity spikes of pain shoot through her head. The thought of opening her eyes made her grimace, her only piece of solitude being the darkness behind her eyelids.

  "Where am I?" she realized with a jolt that she wasn't safely tucked into bed, a fluffy comforter laying over her relaxed body. Her hands pressed against the firm metal ⎼ metal ⎼ that made up wherever she was, pushing her body into a sitting position. Her hands were cold. Her whole body was cold. She had to open her eyes. She didn't know where she was.

  She didn't know who she was.

  Memories swirled around in her head behind a fog. They were there ⎼ right there ⎼, but no matter what she did, what she tried, she couldn't reach out and grab a solid one. The memories within her grasp were liquid, slipping through her fingers like ribbons. She was lost inside her own mind, painful reminders of who she was hidden behind a funhouse of mirrors. They were warped, and funny, not decipherable in any way shape or form. Small things stood out ⎼ such as her favorite color being purple, a green dinosaur hanging from a baby mobile ⎼ but most importantly, her name was coming in the flashes.

  Jackie.

  Her name was Jackie. So simple, yet so difficult to remember. ⎼ Jesus, why couldn't she remember anything else? Who was she? ⎼. No matter how hard she tried, she could not remember anything about her family, her last name, her friends. Everything was there, right there, but her arms couldn't stretch long enough to brush her fingers against anything useful.

  She opened her eyes, setting off fireworks of pain through her skull. The room was dim, only lit from the occasional lights passing the transparent box she was in. It wasn't a room in any way, no, it was definitely a box. Almost like an elevator. She didn't know what an elevator was. What really managed to inflate the panic in her chest was the realization that she was going up. Her fingers reached up above her to graze against the roof of whatever box of horror she was trapped within. They were doors. The roof of the box opened into doors. Meaning she didn't know what exactly she was going up towards.

  Jackie quickly shuffled to the other side of the box, a crate piquing her interest. She pressed her index and middle finger into her temple, trying to rid herself of the ever growing agony in her head. The other hand, her right hand, wrapped around the lid of the box and ripped the top of it open, not caring about how it looked or how loud it was. She set it on the floor of the room and her attention went back to the contents of the box. They were clothes. Specifically, women's clothes by the looks of it.

  For some reason, the cargo pants called to her, and she let her hands explore through the pockets. Her shoulders slumped in defeat when she realized it was a lost cause to find anything useful. At the last pocket, before she was about to abandon that crate altogether, her fingertips brushed against cool metal. Which, at first, didn't mean much, because the majority of things she had touched had been cold metal. She was in a metal box. She pulled the item out of the pants, it dawning on her that it was a knife. A pocket knife of sorts, actually. One that would flip open if you pressed a button on the side.

  Who would hide a pocket knife in a pair of pants?

  The room screeched and came to a sudden stop. Her body bent at the hip, blinding pain taking over her being once more. Her arm scraped against an askew piece of metal in the floor as she fell to the ground, and the familiar feeling of blood soaked through her sleeve. She still had the knife in her hand, somehow managing to not drop it through the holes in the floor. Jackie clutched onto her forearm. A chill traveled down her spine and kept its place in her lower back as she saw the blood covering her hand. I hope I don't need stitches.