Below The Black Sun

Chapter 1 - Wake

My head hurt; it felt as though my skull was being pounded from the inside.

I reached up to my forehead. The cold of my hand soothed the heat of my head. But the stickiness-wait stickiness?

In a squint, my eyelids crept up and were seared by blinding daylight. All I could see was bright blinding whiteness. My eyes watered, and it was getting harder and harder to keep them open. I had to let my eyes adjust to the light level, and closing them wouldn't help.

I gave in. I blinked, once, twice, again and again. With each blink, the blinding whiteness gave way to a gore-smeared blur.

The musky air stank of a copper smell-it was blood, a lot of it. My hand was covered in it-is it my own blood? I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the viscosity of the blood-it hadn't dried yet; it must have just gotten there...

My eyes focused on the scene beyond my hand. Blood covered the walls of the-is this an alley? Blood covered the alley I was in. The upper half of some man's body was embedded inside a wooden wall; the man's intestines hung loosely out of the bottom of the torso. He held a perfectly circular black metal rod in his hand-the circle seems big enough to fit on a head. I looked further down the alley and saw the intestines were connected to the lower half of a body a dozen feet away-that must be the other half of the man's body.

I looked over to the opposite side of the alley and saw-why are there so many body parts scattered around me? I glanced at the head next to me... that was ripped off. The base of the head was a tangled mess of muscle and flesh. The eyes seemed to have gone missing recently as blood leaked from the loose sockets.

Well, this is just a mess.

I winced as I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my head. It was a reminder of the mallet my brain was hitting my skull with. I felt around my head. No lumps or bruises; that's good. I rolled over and leaned against the nearby wall. I looked over the rest of my body; it seemed fine-covered in blood, but healthy nonetheless. If anything, maybe slightly concussed.

So the blood isn't mine, that's good! Well... not good for the dead guys, but better them than me.

I sat there for a while.

"Who am I?" I whispered to no one in particular. Something felt wrong; I couldn't explain it. Something was missing, some crucial connections that I couldn't connect in my brain. I felt that I had everything I needed to figure out who I was, but I just couldn't remember any pieces to the puzzle. I searched my mind, I pushed to remember something, anything, but there was just nothing there. I felt no recognition of the body I was in. Its hands-my hands-felt utterly foreign. I felt my teeth with my tongue; I wiggled my toes and made fists with my fingers. These arms, limbs, everything felt alien-I didn't even know if this body belonged to me. Did I have a parent? A brother or sister? Family? Was there anyone who loved me? Was there anyone who cared about me? Deep down though, despite my desperation to know something about myself, some history I could ground myself to, I felt... disgusted that I would be so desperate, so needy. But I still sat there, searching, growing more distant from the need.

"My name is Crystal!" I shouted. It was a complete euphoric shock. My mind raced with exuberance, a mix of relief that I managed to claw onto something about myself, and a ravenous rage that scorned this trivial gain. Nothing could placate my ferocious yearning for more. I thought harder, my mind prowling for more clues. I looked back at the man's lower half, at his FEET! I thought in feet! That's another clue, only a few intelligent species use feet as a measurement.

I looked back to my hand; red blood, and my skin is a whitish olive color. I'm human, I concluded, sure of myself. Then I touched my round ears and look back to the dismembered bodies. Yep, definitely human.