The Awakening

Chapter 3 - Edited

*Edited Sept. 15, 2017 (First published June 19, 2015)

It felt like days, maybe even weeks had passed as I sat in that dark room, my mind growing numb after I finally stopped crying. I had quit caring for a time as to why the figure left me here alone, I even quit caring about why and how I was whatever I had become. It no longer seemed to matter, not when there was nothing I could do about anything and there was nobody here who could or would answer the questions that sprang up from time to time.

Instead, I just sat there, pulling air into my lungs and talking to myself just to combat the constant silence that otherwise surrounded me. Not that I had much I could talk about, my memory just as hidden from me as it had been when I first woke up, if not more so. But there were some things that I could recall, useless in this situation as they might be, and anything was better than sitting quietly as the world seemed to shrink to nothing but the room around me. The quieter I sat, the more I began questioning if the world outside that door really did exist. If I myself really existed.

And so I talked about what I remembered, anything at all. Like strangely familiar recipes to meals that I figure I must have made enough times that it was more instinct than actual memory, impossible now to NOT remember all the steps from start to finish. The strangely detailed list of spices and their uses that went along with the random recipes that popped into my head when I tried to recall anything.

Then there was the random list of colors I could rattle off if I drew in enough breaths to name them all, odd as it was to actually be able to remember the names of colors and be able to tell the stuff growing in the far corner was Enchanted Forest green and not Holiday Wreath green was odd, if not completely useless. But it kept my mind busy and for that I was thankful.

I was unsure if I was bothered or not that I never seemed to grow hungry during the long hours that passed, never hearing the sound of footsteps again nor seeing the flickering light of a torch passing by. At random times I would take time to explore an area of the room, running my hands across the floor and over the walls, not looking for a way out so much as just trying to keep myself busy during the times when my mind grew weary of recalling so many useless things. I began to wonder if whoever was holding me here had forgotten about my existence or perhaps even simply didn't care to deal with me. I could understand being forgotten as I figured that I was nothing special, just another corpse that refused to stay dead.

The only question I had that nagged my mind was, why hold me in this room? Why had they put me here like this? What had I done that even caught their eye? Unless it was my silent screaming that caught their eye. None of the others had screamed out, voiceless or not. Was it unusual for someone to react like that upon realizing they weren't alive anymore? I find it far more unusual that the others were not reacting at all, other than gathering around that lake.

My mind began spinning with thoughts and questions just like these until, finally, I found myself sinking back into the numbing darkness.