THE AWAKENING
A Novel by Richard Eyre
Exculsive version available only through Wattpad....installments will be weekly, usually on Sundays
Soon to be made into a major motion picture.
"Life is a search for who we really are….and for what we really love"
"The Goal of Life: To discover who you really are.....before you remember."
Prologue
His brown eyes fixed, unblinking, on the blinking red light on the instrument panel. Engine on fire!
A deep breath, an unspoken prayer, and his finger touched the yellow ejection button. No response. He jabbed it again, harder. Nothing.
The eyes were wider now, not in panic but in honest fear. The right hand found the manual ejection lever under the seat. The thumb released the safety catch. A hard jerk. The whole seat recoiled violently, up and back and out into the frigid air...a split second before the explosion.
If there had been an observer below on the flat desert of Mexico's Baja, he would first have seen the explosion, then felt it, then heard it. The flash was like a Fourth of July crowd-pleaser, fragments bursting symmetrically outward. At the top edge of the burst, one fragment was a man, hurled higher by the explosion's force, intact but spinning, skipping on the broken air, the parachute not yet open.
Saturday, May 3 (I do know what day it is), Revera, Mexico (somewhere south of Ensenada)
I woke up in the air, only a few hundred feet above the desert, floating down. My head hurt. I knew I saw a desert below, with a dirt road going through it. I knew I hung from a parachute and I knew how to pull the straps to steer it a little. I knew how to bend my knees at impace, and I knew how to unclip the chute. But I didn't know who I was!
I walked to the road and waited. I could read my watch--2:30, May 1. I searched myself. No wallet, no papers of any kind--just a plain red flight suit with no markings, and a tiny medallion on a gold chain around my neck. A gold medallion inscried with the words, "To experience is to live."
A car came at 3:40 and stopped. I got in and asked to go to the nearest town. (I knew about cars and towns. I knew to try some broken Spanish when the driver didn't seem to understand my requet in English. Apparently I can remember everything except anything that's personal--about me, about who I am.
The driver told me his name was Sanchez. He didn’t seem interested in who I was. (I’ve since decided he thought I was a motorcyclist, broken down.) I was hungry when we got to town. There was one cantina, and Sanchez owned it. We went in and he brought me a plate of food. When I told him I had no money, he let me wash dishes. I asked him if he had any work for me. He said no, but there was board and room for two weeks if I would teach his daughter some basic English (she was going to California to see her older sister). That was the day before yesterday. Since then I’ve stayed here, taught English, and read newspapers looking for a story about a plane crash or a missing person.
Today I got Sanchez to let me us the phone. I called the Coast Guard in San Diego. Then I called the Air Force. Both said they’d never heard of a plain red flight suit like the one I described, and that there was no report of any plane crash, any missing plane, any missing person.
After the calls I came up to my little room, wondering what page to turn next. There is a little desk in the corner, the only thing in the room other than the bed. In the drawer I found an old leather portfolio that says “Paul Woodcock Insurance” on the cover. In it was this piece of paper and two others, and a pencil. I started writing. It has helped – I feel better now. When the headache goes away, the memory will return. I’ll wait. For now I’ll just stay calm and wait.
