Don't Forget About Me | TØP

Prologue // Tyler

Darkness.

Numb and crushing darkness. That's all I can figure out from my vague memory. The only thing that seems to surface my mind besides the horrible static.

It all happened so fast: silence, then voices, pain, confusion. It seemed almost as if I had just returned from somewhere. Like if I was just introduced to this strange world of lights and coldness.

Like if I had just been born.

I could only feel one thing: desperation. I wanted to scream, to go back to whatever the hell I had come from. I didn't like those lights, I didn't like the voice of the people around me, I didn't like the feeling of being watched by hundreds of eyes, all of them focused on me, waiting for me to do something.

Nothing happened, though, because I didn't move. Because my head was so damn overwhelmed and my whole body was in pain and not even my eyes wanted to move. I just wanted to disappear forever.

But now that I'm here - even though I don't really know where I am - things are very puzzled out. The first thing my eyes could draw inside my mind was the face of a woman, whose hair was as bright as the lights that stabbed my eyes without mercy. She was crying, and I wanted to do the exact same thing, but then more people came and all of them could do the only thing I couldn't do: cry.

Bloodshot eyes and euphoric screams were things that filled my mind. Things I wanted out of it because they filled my mind with thin, black lines that I knew were going to get drowned by the static in my head. Who are you, people? What do you want from me?

But who the hell is me? Why can't I even recognize myself?

I refused to move. I stayed still while new memories rolled down my mind, while I stared at those sad faces that filled my head. All of them new and unrecognizable, even the woman's face and those two others - another woman and a man - that mumbled words like some or song or son. I don't know, I couldn't understand a single word every person said to me.

Until he came.

I swear he was the most confusing of them all. A pink mess of hair flopped down a white thing that I recognize as his nose as if he had been running earlier, and his eyes were small and filled with sadness and excitement at the same time. They sparkle as much as the freaking lights and make my eyes go all dizzied up.

Look, when I said I couldn't say a word or move or do anything an useful person would do I meant it. My body was in too much pain to do all of that. But there's something about him that made me feel things. Things like anger, for example. But why?

His face was full of hope, but mine was all anger and confusion. I don't know him. I don't know anyone, in fact. So why did he made me feel so angry?

Then he said those words - the first words I could understand perfectly -: "It's me, Josh. Your best friend."

So his name was Josh, huh? Nice, is not like I care. Or maybe I care, but I'm angry at the fact that he makes me angry.

Then that anger turned into laughter - my first laugh - and the laughter turned into a mess of emotions that came out of my chest like an explosion. This "Josh" turned on a switch that I couldn't switch off ever again.

So who the hell is Josh?

Who the hell am I?

As soon as he left, as soon as all the hope from his face had disappeared and he had ran away from me, I understood something: he was calling me by a name.

A name that sounded just like something everyone else had said before. A name that I had heard before, I don't know when or where or why.

Something like Tyler. Yes, I think it was Tyler. I don't remember why I have heard it before. 

So that's it. My name's Tyler.

And I'm pretty sure that Josh and the anger he caused me will stay planted in my memory forever.