Waking Up Dead

Two

Can't I remember something normal? Like my first day of high school or blowing out my birthday candles on my sixteenth birthday? I must have done that. Can't I rememer my parents? I must have had them. But it's like I'm shoving a hand into the file drawers of my mind and only finding cobwebs. So far all I have is my name and a vague memory of my favorite jeans...and apparently the last smile of a nameless girl.

I groan without meaning to again as my thoughts begin to overtake me. Her teeth, dentist straight, and then the shock in her eyes as I came for her, mouth open wide, ready to take a bite of her. I don't want the memories from when I was a flesh-eating monster. Memories from a time that I wasn't me, but somehow I was still me. It doesn't seem right to be in recovery knowing that I basically ate some girl's face. Can you even come back from something like that? Is there redemption? The worst part is that I know she couldn't have been the only one. How many could there have been?

"How did I die?" I ask.

"Looks like you've been shot." Pryce says. Before I had thought of her as stony. Uptight. But her profile right now, as she approaches her Jeep is somehow softer. I can see a couple strands of her brown hair that had come loose from her updo as she had navigated the swamp. She hasn't tried to smooth them back as she had while we were walking. "Don't get inside yet."

She's probably just glad to be out of that swamp, I think. 

She goes to the trunk and lifts it, pulls out and unfolds a large plastic square. She opens the back door and lays it over the back seat. Then I notice that the Jeep has a divider installed inside, like a cop car. I suppose in her line of work, you can't drive safely with a threat on the loose. I'm the threat. It feels weird to think it, because I've never thought of myself as threatening before.

"There. We've got to get you to a shower. I think I have something you can wear. Honestly you smell like death."

"Well, I was dead, so..." I say. "How long did you say I was dead?"

"You disappeared six months ago. We don't know if you died then or if you were held somewhere and tortured beforehand."

My breath catches. Six whole months. I've been killing people for six whole months. How many per day? How many per hour? My eyes sting. I don't want to think about it. All of the lives--I just can't. If I think about it, I'll go insane. How is it fair that I'm here and all those people are gone because of me? How is it fair that I'm not behind bars?

"Am I going to go to jail?" I ask. "After you get the memory you need?"

Pryce stares at me a moment before replying. "Anything you did while in the full zombie state will not be held against you now that you're treated. Anything you do while treated will be held against you and could result in prison time."

"Why would someone torture me?" I ask.

She doesn't answer at first. She's staring at her phone screen, swiping her thumbs across things I can't see. Can she tell me that information? I feel like I have a right to know everything they know.

She shoves her phone in a pocket in her camouflage jacket.

"Do you remember where you worked?" she asks.

"No," I say.

I'm in a blue room. The walls are blue, at least, and I hate it. It's not a shade of blue that I would paint anything, so I feel like it's not mine, right away. I see a cuckoo clock on the wall, a globe, but it's open and there are glasses and a bottle inside, bourbon. A mohogany desk. Brown leather couch. Doesn't feel like my style. Too tidy. There's a man behind the desk and I instantly know that's my father. I see the resemblance, how his eyes and lips are shaped like mine. The shape of his chin, same as mine.