Project 142

She woke up dazed and groggy. She rubbed her temples and groaned as a dull headache throbbed behind her eyes.

Gasping, she sat up on an unfamiliar purple bedspread and looked around the room with blurry eyes. Madeleine remembered nothing. Her memory was a dark void. With her heart racing with fear, she grabbed a silver framed photo from the bedside table.

Her reflection in the mirrored surface told her the girl in the picture was her but she didn’t recognise the other two. They must be her parents, though. But why couldn’t she remember them? Or herself?

Putting the picture back, she rose to her feet and listened for any noise. She heard the ticking of a neon green clock on her wall and the chirp of a bird outside but nothing else. No cars outside, no one walking by.

Where was everyone? Where was she?

Her room was unfamiliar. She remembered nothing and it terrified her. Scanning her room she saw nothing to tell her who she was or what was happening. She didn’t appear to be in a hospital. No tubes, no machinery, no clinical smell or a lonely jug of water on the side. This was a bedroom, her bedroom.

She stood still, planted to the floor with fear, watching the hands of the clock tick. She waited and waited, until an hour had almost past. No one came. No one called her, whoever she was. No car passed. Something was very wrong, past the obvious.

She didn’t want to call out through fear of what could come in the room but she couldn’t stay locked away forever. Taking a few deep breaths, she gathered as much courage as she could and grabbed a hairbrush off the bedside table.

Gripping the handle until her knuckles turned white, she slowly turned the door handle and opened the door. Across from her room was a door and another one down the hall past the stairs. Walking into a closed room wasn’t a good idea so she made her way downstairs.

It was only when she got to the bottom that she heard voices. She froze, regretting her decision to leave her room. Her heart slammed in her chest and she wanted nothing more than to run back upstairs but she had to know what was going on.

Rounding the corner, she saw the silhouette of a person through the archway into what looked like a living room. She couldn’t make out what was being said over he sound of her blood pumping in her ears.

Taking another half a step forwards she finally caught the attention of whoever was in the house. “Hey,” a tall, brunette said. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you.”

We’re?

She took another cautious step and saw a man a few inches taller than the woman. He smiled.

“Who’re you?” Madeleine asked, holding her hands out at arms length, keeping them back.

The man and woman raised theirs, too. “I don’t know,” the woman said. “I woke up on the sofa a few minutes ago next to him.”

“Okay, we all need to calm down and think about what’s going on here. Now, there’s no need to be afraid of each other, look on the walls,” the man said, tilting his jaw to the wall.

Photos of the three of them were dotted around in miss matching frames.

“We’re family?” the woman said. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know my name.”

“Driving licence. Do you have those?” Madeleine asked. She patted her own pockets but found nothing.

“Rick Weeks,” the man said.

“And I’m Sally Weeks. Let’s look around, see if anything’s familiar and if we can find your name,” Sally said, putting her hand on Madeleine’s shoulder.