Of Life, Death, and Madness

1. Awakening

        My first thought upon waking, was "Ouch." I felt like... well I felt like I couldn't think of metaphors at that moment. I groaned and put a hand to the back of my head. There was a cut roughly an inch across, swollen and caked in blood. I sat up, and then forced myself to my feet. After a moment of dizziness I was righted. My second thought was: "Where the hell am I?" That was a good question. I looked around.

         This was a cage of some sort. Directly in front of where I had been lying was a metal gate. The whole wall was a fence covered in a blue tarp. Below me was a puddle of dried blood with a face-shaped clean spot in the middle. Behind me were two large filing cabinets and several large shelves. Tools and tool boxes were scattered about. My eye was drawn to two particular things. First, the hatchet that lay on the metal floor next to my blood. There was little to no reason there should be a hatchet on the floor. Everything was made of metal.

         The second thing that caught my eye was the top edge of one of the filing cabinets. There was some blood and hair stuck to it. Words like "momentum, trajectory, and force of impact" went through my head, and I could see several imaginary white lines showing how I had smashed into the ...

        He charged in and slapped the padlock on the cage door. He leaned close to the gate to see through the small crack. Something slammed into the other side of it and caused him to jump backwards. His head slammed into the filing cabinet. He staggered for a moment before collapsing to the floor. There was little to no room for him to fit in the cage so he was slumped over, rather than lying flat.

         The vision or hallucination was startling. "Was that me? Wait... who am I?" The thought was perhaps the most alarming of the three. No one should go around without knowledge of who they are. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a military uniform, blue and gray camouflage. My name was on the front, I was either U. S. Navy or Phillips. The latter sounded better, as far as names were considered, but Phillips didn't feel right. It didn't fit.

         I started searching through the pockets on my uniform pants. There was a set of keys in the right front pocket. There was a Toyota key, a house key, and a small brass key for something, maybe a padlock? I looked at the gate and saw the padlock the man in my vision had put on the gate. "Maybe later." I thought and continued looking through my pockets. I put the keys back into my right front pocket, and then checked the left pocket. There was a cellphone and a lighter. I struck the lighter and it sprang to life... after a few strikes anyway. I slid it into the right front pocket and turned my attention to the phone. While I tried to focus on the cell phone, I felt weird...unbalanced. Something was wrong. I shifted from foot to foot trying to understand the source of my discomfort. There was something wrong with my right hip. I reached into my pocket and pulled the lighter out and put it back into my left pocket. The sensation faded. "That was weird." I returned my attention to the phone.

         After a few experimental button pushes, the screen came to life. The indicator saying "slide up to unlock" seemed to be a reasonable prompt. Using my thumb, I slid it up. There was a picture that gave me a feeling of both warmth and sadness. There was a little girl in a pink and black dress, wearing her back pack and smiling up at the camera. Who was she? And more importantly where was she? Your daughter. The voice was mine, but at the same time, it wasn't. I looked around to see if the voice had a physical source.

         After I was convinced I was still alone, I checked to see if I could make a phone call. There was no service. I returned the phone to the left front pocket. It apparently had to go back where it came from. Then I looked in the back pockets. Success! I found a wallet. My wallet, I hoped. I opened it and was greeted by a sad looking fellow in the picture of an ID. The ID identified him as Phillips, Stephen A. PO3. The name matched the uniform, so I was either Stephen A. Phillips or I had stolen his clothes.