Burning Bones

Chapter 3

I must have fallen asleep. I cussed myself out under my breath for losing track of time. At the moment, it could have been day, night, Halloween, Christmas, or the year 2098. How should I have known?

The walls' brightness burnt into my eyes, as I was still accustomed to the dark safety of my imagination.

I questioned what I saw, when I was sleeping. My eyes were surely shut, yet I knew I wasn't seeing the void, as I was now in it, awakened.

Could I have been seeing the outside world? Something beyond these walls?

I did not know. I did not know if there was anything I wasn't seeing at that moment. Because for all I knew, the only chair that existed was in front of me. And the only sound that existed was the beating of my heart, the cooler of the computer and the echoes of my feet hitting the floor.

I approached the laptop, still affected by the peace of my dreams.

Flipping the screen, I saw Morgan Kade had replied. After all of my begging, she must have taken pity on me.

"Calm down. You need to be calm."

Morgan Kade was a motherly type, I had learned from that message. She was firm, but soothing and soft at the same time.

"Are you there?" I asked out loud. Sitting down to the desk, I typed the question, the clicks of the keys sounding like music to my ears.

"Yes. Are you ready for me to help you?" Morgan Kade replied, and I could hear a voice, sounding like my own, reading the message out loud in my thoughts.

I took a deep breath and sent an affirmative message.

"To escape, you need to remember and piece together the night of your arrival here," she said.

All that I could remember at the moment was what I had learned in the void. I knee how to speak and walk, I knew how to use a computer. That was all I remembered. All of my knowledge. I didn't even know my name or how I looked.

I let my hand wonder to my head, curiously, caressing my hair and bringing it in front of my eyes.

It was a dark colour, somewhere between black and brown. It was soft, slightly curved, when I didn't pull it too hard.

So that was established. My hair colour and texture. I also knew that my skin was barley tanned.

"Interesting information," I said to myself, wanting to include my name at the end of the sentence. But I couldn't, not knowing what it was.

I closed the computer, and walked away from the desk, until I was standing at the wall.

My face was barely an inch or two away from the border of my prison, as I examined the texture and material of it. There were no bumps, no small holes. No stains, scratches, marks, no imperfection was to be seen. The surface was completely flat.

I put my hand on it, and for the first time, I recognized that the walls were radiating heat. My face felt warm, but the skin of my fingertips was scolding hot.

I didn't mind. The high temperature was something I'd never felt since I had woken up in the void. Closing my eyes, I let my skin, mind, whole body and entire existance swim in the warmth of my surroundings.

When my hand felt like it was burning, I opened my eyes, quickly detaching my body from the wall completely. I turned away from it, and looked to the ceiling. I was like a young child, wondering and experiencing everything around me. The ceiling was undiscovered territory, a mystery to the touch.

Stepping first on the chair, and then on the table, I avoided the precious machine and reached up to the heights. The ceiling was the same temperature as the walls, and my hand traveled away from the heat unconciously. Was there fire beyond these walls? Could it have been hell?

I asked myself if I had sinned so much in the life I did not remember. That was the problem, wasn't it? I didn't remember anything. Not even a glimpse of light, a colour, a sound. I knew nothing.

I carefully squated on the table, then slid my feet off, finding myself in a sitting position. My feet were dangeling off the table, but I could reach the floor with my toes, if I stretched.

I got off the furniture, and twirled around to sit on the chair. Opening the laptop once again, my smile faded away, getting back to the reality I was living in.

"But, I don't remember anything," I typed, Morgan Kade answering me almost immediatly.

"I know. I'm here to help you remember. I know everything that ever happened to you," she said, and I could hear the certainty in my voice, when I read the message out loud, as if her attitude suddenly possessed my vocal chords, but not my heart and mind.

I didn't reply. I didn't know what to say. What do you say to someone, who says they know you perfectly? In this case, who says they know you better than you know yourself?

Luckily, the awkward silence was filled by another message by Morgan Kade.

"Click here," she said, the second word being underlines and barely a shade bolder than the first one in my eyes.

I obeyed, and the screen opened a smaller window. It was a video.

Afraid, I clicked the play button, and half expected for the film to suddenly be accompanied by scary music, violins highlighting the sound.

However, that was not the case. The sounds were first loud, as if the people were screaming, yet their voices were filled with joy and hope. I recoginzed a few words.

"Just a little more, baby, you can do it!" A woman's voiced screamed, and the video went from a pitch dark space to a white room, where two men and three women were standing. When my view expanded, the people threw their arms up in the air, or shrieked in euphoria. I, or the camera, was then picked up, and put into the arms of a woman lying down.

I'd realized, this was someone's, or rather, my birth. From my own perspective.

I hadn't understood half the stuff, as I skipped ahead the scenes of the film. But recognizing the other half, I knew this was a video of my own life.

A/N:

Hello, my pretties!

Yes, I know, this chapter is freakishly short (not that's anything special for my work), and I probably update the cover more often than the actual story, for which I deeply, and from the very bottom of my heart, apologize. I'm still distracted by the very sudden death of my favourite Pretty Little Liars character (Not mentioning the names for the sake of the people who haven't watched the Fatal Finale yet) and learning every guitar solo from RENT.

But, I do promise that the next chapter holds answers (and probably even more questions. Ha, look at that, Marlene King taught me something!), so please stick around! Don't lose hope, even though I take a long time, I actually do update the book. I work on the chapters for a really long time to get up to enough words for a decent one, and when you've nothing but a plain white room to work with, it's pretty hard to get pass 800 words (unless you wrote the Breakfast Club).

Panic now, because Bohemia is dead!

Z.J.