Forgetting to Remember

The Attack

I breathe in the night that smells so familiar yet so different. I’m standing in the middle of the diner in the dark with the moonlight my only company in the emptiness. It’s the perfect scene for a wolf to howl or for eerie music to start up. But there is only the wind.

With a new breath, my skin tingles as if I have stepped out of the ocean into a cold winter breeze. I feel my eyes close as my chest drifts forward. I’m no longer standing, but floating.

I stop. I force my mind to freeze. My jaw and face are clenched and my body tenses up. For right now, I am just going to breathe. I swirl of memories had begun with this one, and I was going to embrace it. I refuse to panic. I refuse to contain myself so I let myself go.

I turn around in my floating, ghostlike state and see myself, petrified. My image flinches to the left, though some sixth sense guides me to look towards the right. A flash of cyan blue mixes with the darkness. I follow the shadow that my real self is too alarmed to notice. Another flash in the moonlight as the shadow passes where my back is facing my scared self. An empty glass left on the counter. I allow myself to drift forward, ever so slightly. Two cherry stems rest at the bottom of the malt glass. Cherries…

A quick breath jumps from behind me but I turn only to see myself again, but this time staring at the floor. I allow myself to study the frightening red mark more intently. It looks as though someone had been in a hurry. Surely it didn’t look like blood anymore. More like someone had stepped in paint or-

No. I refuse to let myself believe it or think that far. I retort my attention back to me-the living, scared stiff me. I am frantic and I can feel my mind still churning as it had. I can tell I am just about ready to run. I can hear my real thoughts echoing inside my real head.

“Alright Talia, this would be a good time to run out of here…!” I’m on the lookout now; I know what’s going to happen next. Three, two…

A blue eye appeared over my real self’s right shoulder, menacing and cold from what had once been so warm and inviting. At that moment I knew. Even before I felt the pain of the blow again, I knew.

Whether I blacked out from shock or from the blow again, I have no idea.