2.1.53

Chapter Six : Bruises

I woke up to a bright orange sky. It was almost sundown, I saw a fleet of birds flying across the sky, probably returning to their home. It took me some time to collect myself, after all not everyday you wake up from a bad dream that feels so real. I realized I was lying on the grass and the air around me had a faint smell of autumn.

There was a sharp pain in my head, possibly due to walking up suddenly from the bad dream. In the dream, I was tied to a chair and random numbers appeared and disappeared before my eyes and there was this bright green glow and a faint humming sound of a machine but then complete darkness. It was all a stretched out and twisted part of my unconscious brain's imaginations but it felt so real, almost too real.

I sat up and could saw the almost identical line of houses in the distance. I recognized the place. It was Redwater park. When I was little, dad used to bring us all here on one of the Sundays of each month. It used to be like a family picnic. I and Shruti used to play with our golden retriever, Brutus, nearby the pond. The water of the pond was red in color because of high iron quantities in it and thus the park was named after it. And afterwards we all used to eat chicken sandwiches as our lunch and returned home after sunset.

I didn't remember why I was in the park at the first place. I tried to remember when I came here, or what I ate in the morning but nothing came to mind. I tried remembering anything that happened in a few days but I couldn't. My head hurt more intensely in return.

I looked around myself and found my phone. I tapped to see the time. 5.34 pm it showed and just below it in a slightly smaller font showed the date 13th May, 2147. I recognized my laptop lying within a hand's reach. I opened it to find a text file already opened in it.

My head started hurting again, but I recognized the text file. It was a chapter from the book I was writing. It was in the editing phase. I scrolled through the whole text file. I don't remember writing any of this, but it was my story, it was my words.

"Oh, you woke up?" I heard a familiar voice.

I turned back and saw her, walking towards me. Prinita, the only girl in the world whose voice I can recognize in the chaos of a thousand others. She was wearing a blue top and loose cotton pants. She sat by my side and untied her hair.

"Have you finished editing the chapter?" She asked.

"No" I muttered out.

"Still?" she asked, "You remember right that the submission is in three days? They even announced when it will hit the shelf. Shri this is your one shot; they accepted the previous ending, why do you have to change it now?"

I remained silent, I didn't remember anything and the pain in my head won't even turn down a bit.

"I am sorry, I know I shouldn't be talking to you about that after what happened last night" she said and looked away in the distance.

"What?" I blurted out the question. To be fair, I can't think of a single thing that happened in the last few weeks or days or months.

"Nothing. I don't want to go over it again" A teardrop formed in her eyes, which told me whatever happened last night wasn't a pretty memory.

I stayed silent and she did too. She just looked away from me. I tried concentrating about the night before, but the only thing that came to mind was our first date, how she was looking like an angel and how we hugged on her doorstep.

Am I losing my memories? But I still have memories of our first date and the first time I saw Prinita on the park, I still remember some parts of my childhood.

I moved closer to her, the dying sunlight falling on her face. She wasn't smiling, nor she was sad. She had this stern look on her face. I tried to take her hand in mine but she jerked it off and proceeded to stand up.