Amnesia

1

 When he stopped screaming and finally looked up, the sky was dark with smoke so thick it blocked out the sun. It took him a minute, but he realized that he could no longer feel the flames licking against his skin. Numb. He was aware of everything, yet he felt nothing. He heard someone moaning softly, and he'd go to his grave never learning it was him.

He slowly tried to sit up, but his muscles screamed in response. That was the first bit of pain he had felt, and it would be just the beginning of the torrent he would have to endure. He slowly turned his head to the right, and began to take it all in. His vision blurred as he tried to focus. The first thing he saw through the blurry colored mess that was his line of sight, was sunlight glinting off of a mass of silver-colored metal. Then he saw trees, trees towering over him like skyscrapers. Then, in what he assumed was grass, was red. Red, coating the grass like dew on a cool november morning. Then, he saw another, different, red. Red jumping into the sky, reducing everything in its way to black that crumbled to the ground. But there was something different about the two reds. With a sudden jolt of shock, he realized what the difference was. The red rising from the trees was fire, but the red in the grass..... He could smell the red, the scent dank and coppery in his nose. It was blood.

His vision slowly began to clear up, and his hearing had started to return. In the grass, he noticed shapes inching away from the shining mass of metal which was torn to shreds at this point. The shapes were people, people with giant gashes across their faces, people missing arms or legs, people whose hearts have stopped beating. Are they really still people if their lungs have stopped breathing, if their brains are damaged beyond repair, beyond living; or are they just corpses waiting to be put in the ground? The thought was only in his head for a moment before the confused state of his mind snatched it away.

His ears began to tune in to his surroundings. He heard screaming. Screams of pain, of grief, of fear. His vision became sharper still, and he was able to make sense of the hunk of metal that lay in the grass, shredded by trees. It was a plane! He must have been on the plane, although, he only remembered the events that occured after he regained consciousness. His name and his family however, were still a mystery to him.

In the grass not far from him, was a young woman no more than 25. Below the midpoint of her forearm was just a bloody stump. Her long brown hair was plastered to her face with a mixture of blood and sweat. Gnats buzzed around her face and into her frozen blue eyes. She reached up her arm that was still intact and swatted at the gnats. She was lying flat on her back at the time, but then she began to slowly roll herself over. Once she was flat on her stomach in the blood smeared grass, she started crawling towards a small...... He couldn't tell what it was exactly. The woman reached it and turned it over. It was a little girl, her brown hair sticking up every which way, she couldn't have been more than 5!

He tried to stand up, determined to help them, but his legs just wouldn't cooperate. He lifted up his arm, and he saw it rise beside him. The other arm came up as well. He lifted his head and looked down at his feet and saw they were pinned to the ground by a giant tree branch. He then started to sit up, his muscles refusing the movement, but he powered through it. Once he was fully sat up, he took a moment to catch his breath, brushing his short black hair up off his forehead, and rubbing his hand across his tired brown eyes.

He reached forward and took hold of the branch, its rough broken edges scratching at his palms. He tightened his grip on the wood and shoved as hard as he could. The branch tore at his thighs as he shoved it farther down his legs. His eyes flicked back to the young woman, she was curled up on the ground next to the little girl, blood flowing from the stump of her arm. He glanced back at his legs, small cuts left in the path that the branch carved through his already burnt skin. The skin on his arms was burnt as well as his face. The cuts on his legs were relatively minor, but he knew if he had kept pushing that it'd get worse.

Then a bright thought crossed his mind, "But what if I....... tipped it over?" He moved both of his hands to the left side of the branch, and he lifted. The branch teetered on its end, and fell over away from his legs. He tried to gently lift his legs, and felt a white hot bolt of pain shoot up his leg.

"No," he thought, "they can't be broken." But they were, and there was nothing he could do about it. His eyes drifted back to the woman, and she was still curled up in the grass. He had to get over there. He didn't understand why, but he had to. His legs were free, and that was something, but it wasn't enough! He had to walk, didn't he? No, he didn't, he could crawl.

He rolled over in the grass, fire burning in his limbs with every movement. For a moment he lay on his stomach, feeling the cool earth against his cheek. The cold sweat trickled off of his face into the grass. He swung his arm in front of his body and started to drag himself forward. He switched arms, and kept dragging himself through the grass, chips of broken glass tearing at his stomach. He reached his hand down to remove the glass, and he slowly pulled the glass out of his abdomen. The blood began to slowly leak out of him.

The little girl was still laying next to the young woman, curled in the grass. They looked familiar to him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. The grass felt slick under his fingers, each blade coated with a mix of sweat, dew, and blood. Inch after inch his broken body slid through the foliage, leaving behind tattered pieces of his clothing. The young girl was within arms reach, but he couldn't force himself any farther. His vision started swimming, and his stomach was doing backflips inside of him.

The dull sounds of the flames roaring and the crickets screaming began to fade even farther into the background. His vision began to narrow, the woods and the grass around him turning to black. The last thing he saw before his eyes slipped shut was the young girl, curling closer to the woman, a single tear sliding down her face.

The doctor looked down at the newly admitted patient's chart. The man lay on the bed in the center of the room. His red skin stood out against the washed out white of the generic hospital blankets. Burns wreaked havoc on the patients face, making him nearly unrecognizable. Jackson Hall. He was initially identified by his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans, but that was questionable. The police had to test the victim's DNA compared to samples retrieved from his home.

Jackson Hall,

One of the only three survivors from the plane crash.