The Anomaly

Can you hear me?

I've been having more strange dreams. Honestly, they're on the edge of being nightmares. I can't describe them, I can't see anything, hear anything, even feel anything. Yet I know it's my body, and I know something is happening. I can't tell if I'm moving or if someone else is moving. One thing is certain however in my mind. I don't want this, and whatever is happening is horribly horribly wrong. 

I startle awake and knock the book on my stomach down to the floor. The sudden thud of the book hitting the floor causes me to spring up and latch to the wall near my bed. I look up and see Doctor Paul standing in front of the door to my cell. He seems... concerned. I had regressed a bit in my memory, I was forgetting even basic questions that I constantly got correct. He'd given me a study guide to help me learn in my spare time but that honestly made things worse I think. Every time I tried to remember something it felt wrong.

"Is everything alright Samantha?" Doctor Paul asked as he stepped into the cell. After a few scared breaths, I calm myself and climb off the bed. 

"I'm okay, just a bad dream." I proclaim though I was still thinking about it.

"The same as before?" He asks. As this wasn't the first, or second... or even the third time I've had the dream so he's aware of my predicament. He assures me it'll pass in time. He suspects as my memory tries to return memories of the incident arrive with it. Then my brain regresses to prevent remembering the experience. 

Regardless, I have to try again today. Brain activity test, put their weird little thing on my head and let them look at whatever it is their looking at. Some greyness passes their faces, that's encouraging. I sigh down the hallway where they want to show me images again.

"What is your first name?"

"Samantha."

"Your last name?"

"Mi-" I stop dead in my tracks. I had almost blurted out an answer without even thinking. Professor Isaac looks up from his clipboard at me. What was I going to say? What was the question?

"Your last name Samantha, what is it?" He asks again. Also again the wrong name comes to mind but I know what the actual answer is so why is something else coming to mind?

"B-Barns." I stutter out, my head was starting to hurt. 

"Your parents' names?" The image of them pops up and they don't look as familiar as I remember.

"Ja-" Again the wrong name almost escapes me. What is happening to me today? Before I couldn't think of the answers, now I had them but I knew they were wrong. Were they? 

"Your father's name, Samantha."

"Darrel. Darrel Barns." I have to say it several times afterward in my head to convince myself that's the correct answer.

"And your mother?"

"Jessica... wait no it's..." Professor Isaac looks up at me again curiously. 

"You had the right answer, Samantha." Professor Isaac states.

"Oh... Right." I rub the top of my head, it feels tingly. The front of my head hurts, I can't think straight, and nothing is making sense. I wander the halls and I feel like I've seen them before. The cells remind me of things I know I've never seen before.

"That'll be all from us today." Professor Isaac says as he clicks his pen and locks it into the top of his clipboard. I realize the rubbing of the top of my head turned into me holding my temples as I tried to make sense of everything.

My head is spinning as Doctor Paul guides me down a hallway again. The others in the cells make me anxious. I can recognize the tags around their necks, it's how they classify the dark spirits here. All of the ones in this area are green, the safest to be around. Yet when I see the tags around their necks it makes my neck itchy. I keep thinking I hear one of them laughing behind me, but when I glance there's nothing there. I swear I can hear a deep and rumbling sound in my head, it tries to speak, but its voice is drowned out.