The Awakening

The First Memories

He immediately acted. He quickly but quietly moved back into the room and acquired one of the broken pieces of glass from the vase he saw on the floor next to his bed. The piece of glass was about the length of a pencil, but it was big enough so he could hold it as if he was holding a knife.

He walked back to the open door and stared at the man eating the little girl. Rage filled his veins and his vision turned red. He didn't know why or where this rage came from, but all he could do is keep staring at the little girl and at the man. Part of him was mad because he felt like he knew the little girl. He was mad with himself because he couldn't remember her no matter how hard he tried. The other part of him part of him was frustrated because he couldn't remember anything at all. He didn't know why this man was eating the little girl, or why there were bullet holes and blood on the door, or who the "J" person was who left the note... He didn't know anything at all, and that frustrated him and angered him to his core.

Then, in a sudden and fluent movement, he stabbed the man in the back of the head with the piece of glass. He pushed it further inside the man's skull while twisting the glass slowly but violently. He felt cold blood gush out of the man's head and wet his hand. Once he felt that all his rage and frustration had left his body, he let go of the piece of glass inside the man's skull and let his body fall lifeless next to his feet.

He stared at the body. Then he gasped in slight fear and disbelief. The man looked as if he had been eaten and ripped to shreds. Parts of his skin was missing, and the parts that weren't had a mix of fresh and dried blood all over it. His clothes were tattered, torn, dirty, and they reeked. There were cuts all over his body and he was even missing some fingers from his hands. Suddenly, he remembered a word and spoke it: "Zombie." He jumped startled by hearing his own voice, realizing that he didn't recognize it and that he hadn't spoken since he woke up. He had no clue how he knew how what he had killed was a zombie, but something inside him knew that he was right about the meaning of the word.

He turned around to go back to the room to see if he could find anything useful, but he accidentally knocked down a couple of frames hanging from the wall. "Shit, I hope nobody heard that.", he said. Then he looked at one of the pictures and recognized that the little girl who was being eaten was in it. He saw that she was with a man, a woman, and a guy that he guessed was around his own age. He felt a sense of familiarity with those people in the picture, as if he knew them very closely and personally. Then he was able to his reflection from the frame.

He dropped the picture again with a stunned expression in his face. He slowly picked it while his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He stared at himself, then at the picture in disbelief. The guy, the guy in the picture. Looked exactly like him. Same dark brown hair, same black eyes, same everything. "How?" He thought. "He could that be me? How can I not remember those people.. My family. Why can't I remember them?".

He looked at the two lifeless bodies next to him in the hallway, and tears started to run down his face. He shook uncontrollably at the realization of who they were. The zombie who he had stabbed with a piece of glass in the back of the head was his father, Dominic. The little girl who was laying in a pool of her own blood and half eaten was his 9 year old little sister, Hope. He had no idea how he could forget them, but it felt as if a door had opened in his mind and he could suddenly remember everything about them. Every memory, every experience, everything he had lived with them.

He shook as more and more tears ran down his face. He fell to his knees and gripped his hair in frustration and anger. He laid on his side, curled into a ball, and cried. He cried and cried until his eyes felt dry. Then he felt his eyelids get heavy. He felt sleep and tiredness wash over his body like a warm and cozy blanket. Then he closed his eyes and fell into deep sleep away from zombies, away from his dead father and sister, away from his lost memories, and away from this cruel world he awoke in.