Notes

11

For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I had a flashback from when I was a toddler. It hadn't happened since the night of my letter being received, so I assumed they were now a part of my brain that my memory chose to forget. My body was surrounded by a black abyss, a feeling of weightlessness carrying me away from grounded reality. But, I could see, or more so dream, not feel, fragments of a memory; the event itself acting as a message I needed to decode. My eyes had been resurrected by a memory that I once believed to have been buried with them.

I was only a small child, looking through the eyes of someone who lived in a world much bigger than I was. In my hands I held the most fluorescent purple teddy bear I could ever imagine, her soft coating of fur tickling my nose each time I squished her in my arms and held her protectively in my chest. Her, it was a her, I remember her, "Pippa". I held Pippa against my chest, attempting to shield her from the dangers I didn't even know existed. I was her hero. The memory itself was framed by a blurred coating, laminating my younger self with it's foggy surface. I could see myself, holding my beloved possession as if it were the only thing that mattered. And, at the time, it was. A strong smell of grapes emanated from her stomach, and suddenly I was whisked away to a garden, full of colours and objects I could no longer recognise.

My eyes drifted in an unorganised pattern, soaking in the sun while I played in the garden I thought I had forgotten. My pupils focused on an array of flowers, growing in all kinds of directions, showing off their colours that burst through the air. The bright green grass below me was alive, swaying in the gentle wind and scratching gently at the heels of my feet. But in the centre, stood one lone tree, with a man climbing up a rusted ladder, holding all sorts of wooden planks. He beaconed me to follow him. I jumped towards him, turning my head to see mum, sitting gracefully in a chair next to her garden, reading a book and watching her son play with his father. His father, my father. I knew this place. This is my house, the backyard I burnt my letter. I live here. That is my tree house, left unfinished and alone in a state of decay and destruction. That is her garden, left dying in the soil as their colours faded to ash. Why was I here?

Now, I was being wheeled towards an unknown location, faces of people I didn't know peering down at me, and I was a deer caught in their headlight. Voices boomed over me, the sound of screeching metal and crying women echoing throughout the building. I was laying down. I couldn't move. I tried to scream but nothing came out. A pinch in my arm sent tears streaming down my face. My heart was beating out of my chest as the world began to slow down, my eyes feeling as if weights had been clipped onto my eyelids. My eyes. The last thing I saw was my mum's face, her eyes blackened from crying and lack of sleep, tears drifting down her face as her hand reach out and brushed against my cheek. She was so beautiful, yet she looked poisoned, as if something harmful had possessed her body and broke her. I could feel her helplessness, as if her body was a mirror being smashed against the floor, and all of her pieces had been sent tumbling to the ground.

She began to fade away, the memory caught in a net being control by a puppeteer I called reality. I tried to move towards her, trying to reach for her hand, to speak "Mum" one last time, to catch a glimpse of the world I didn't understand. Yet, I was being held back, unable to escape the grasp of the unknown force that held me hostage in my own body. I was stuck in an oblivion, for no matter how much I thought I moved, the darkness that engulfed me was two steps ahead. Always.

My ears were attacked by different sounds coming from sources I my disorientated mind could not identify. My breathing quickened, my lungs feeling as weights had been hung onto them, making each exhale heavier than the last. I could feel sweat trickling down the side of my face as I tried to figure out where I was, a feeling of uneasiness and confusion ballooning in my stomach. My head throbbed a dull pain as I tried to listen for mum or Kyra, my mind consumed by fuzz that severed my ability to remember anything that had happened. The beach. I was at the beach. Pain punched through my stomach, making me groan in agony. Footsteps etched closer to me, until I could hear the breathing of someone I didn't know. I recognised the smell, the smell of cleanliness and metal that reeked of sterility. What happened?