Inescapable Game of Tag

Rehabilitation

Blake

Juliet Hart, huh?

I just looked down at my shoes.

God, this ringing in my ears was getting louder and annoying...

With a heavy sigh, I rubbed the side of my head, my hair ruffling.

Juliet watched me for a second, "And, about your earlier question of how I got such personal information, I've gone farther to get some information that the hospital doesn't bother putting in main files. I'd like to have everything I have about you. And well, it did deem interesting, since we have a minor tie. Even if none of us deemed it impressionable. Not enough for you to remember it now." I can't remember the most important of things, why would you be above that category?

I scrunched up my nose. "Why?"

"Hm?"

"Why go that far?"

She paused, "Blake, I'm with this program, you see. I want to help bring this up to the higher level and... Anyway, what we've wanted to do was stabilize a patient to go back to the outside, and I thought-"

"I can't do that-"

"Yes, you could. We just have to do some treatments, but it will be over in a flash. Getting any patient isn't something worth such a hassle. What we wanted to find was someone this place deemed incurable, someone they deemed dangerous. Someone who went over the boundaries of the law. You're exactly that."

I didn't answer.

"... Take a look at these." She took out one of the folders in the piles of papers, leaning over to hand it to me. I got up, taking the folder and sitting back down. I was expecting all those tedious little references and signatures, but printed words were not inside the folder.

Tilting my head, I took the papers out, the folder falling down my lap. The thick photographs ranging from different environments and subjects, most tilted as to get good composition and angles. Classrooms, cities, streets, though there weren't many where a lone person was a subject. I kept going in and out of a trance as I flipped through every single photograph. My chest itched, my head pounding just a little more.

It was getting difficult to focus. Images were layering upon images in my vision. Voices layering voices in my ears. With narrowed eyes, I looked up at this Juliet, "What about these?"

She seemed to be waiting for my question, speaking up instantly, "You're the one who took those. You had a, well, normal hobby before all this. It came into the main hobby, but that's no matter. You even shadowed a wedding photographer."

"I... I didn't..."

"Yes, you did." More flipping through papers. "Ten years ago. Hank Pittman. He was a speaker in your AP Photography class, and after talking to your teacher and looking at your works, offered to let you tag along to a wedding to shadow him."

"... I don't... Remember..."

'Well, I'm telling you now that it did happen. And now, it's up to you to remember and recollect all of these events and photographs."

I tried. Looking at each and every photograph, trying to recognize the places, the people. Many of the places did seem to ring some sort of bell in my mind, but it only gave me a bigger headache as I tried to remember what it was. I flipped to the next photo, one where people were of a subject, and a weight left my shoulders, only to get heavier in my chest.

I didn't get much visitors. Only three, that I was coherent of in that moment. Two of those three were present in the photo. Even if their faces weren't visible, it struck me as those two instantly. And the environment, it was something just as familiar and striking to me as well.