Survived Me: a Shatter Me fan-fiction (Warnette)

Chapter 57 - Who's There?

⚠️TW⚠️
Abandonment
Abuse
Being held captive
Hostage
Abusive parents
Memory loss
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JULIETTE'S POV:
I walk into the passageway - there's a small walkway then there are stairs leading downward. I walked back to my parents room taking out a flashlight I spotted in one of the bedside tables, I switched it on and then walked my way down the stairs.

When I reached the bottom in front of me was a door, an old rusting metal door.

What have I gotten myself into? I speak with my own conscience. This isn't a move, Juliette, this is real life - nothing about this situation is at all normal, and or okay.

Any sane, normal person would walk back up those steps and run out the door, never coming back down here again. That's what I should do, but I'm not going to. I don't know what I'm thinking, or if I'm thinking at all when I push down the door handle, opening the door.

Inside there are three cells, two which are occupied. On the left is a girl, she looks slightly older than me. Then the right one holds a boy, I'd say he looks to be around his mid twenties. The one directly in front of me is empty. The room is lit with yellow lights.

"Hello?" A woman's voice can be heard. I know that voice, I've heard it before. "Who's there?" She speaks again.

Then it clicks, I know that voice because that voice belongs to Suara.

"Suara?" My voice questions, "is that you?"

She gasps, shock etched on her face. "Juliette" she cried, "how? What?" She seems baffled, I am too. "What is this place?" I ask, she looks at me as if I'm crazy.
"Juliette, are you serious?" A boy's voice asked me.
"What? Who are you?" I ask him, looking back and forth at them both.
"Jules?" He let out a shaky breath. "You seriously don't remember us, remember this place?"
"I..." I stammer. "What?"
"Leo, remember what they did to her?" Suara asked him.
I'm just standing here in the middle of them, both locked in cells, yet I'm the one who feels imprisoned.
"Annie, should we tell her?" The boy - or as I've just learned, Leo - said.
"Tell me what?" I interrupted the two of them.

"Jules," the girl I knew as Suara, but according to Leo her name is Annie, spoke. "I am your sister and that boy over there, Leo, is your brother. That cell, the empty one, that was where you spent your early life before they took you to the asylum. They wiped your memories, that's the last time we saw you, until now."

Excuse me?

"What?" I mutter. "How... that's, what?"
"Look, this is a picture you drew me when you were younger." She rummages through her pillowcase and finds what she is looking for, she hands me - through metal bars - a sheet of paper, old and worn.
It's a drawing of my bird, the one that's in my dreams. "How..." I stammer, turning over the paper to see what I've written on the back:

Dream Birdie is the wisest of his friends, he knows everything about anything, but he has one flaw - one thing he can not do. He can't fly, he wishes to dance through the sky, feel the breeze against his open wings, but he can't. He has tried over and over, tested different techniques and methods, they have all failed him. Dream Birdie had given up until he noticed something strange. He found light in his darkness for when he fell asleep he could fly like he desperately wanted and dance through the sky anytime.
He realised that it's important to not have something in life because if you had everything, you'd have nothing to dream for.

I remember this. I wrote this, I dreamt of Dream Birdie and wrote this after the second time he appeared in my dreams. I know this place, I know these people, I don't understand how and why yet but I do. What they told me still doesn't seem real to me but the more I think the more I realise that they're right.

"I" I stutter. "I remember."
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Word count: 703