The Price Of Humanity

Chapter Two

Arianna was dead. So dead, the void of nothingness lying being living and non-living was blurred and euphoric, as the memories drained from her brain like her blood through the plughole of her bathtub.

But then she awoke. She fell onto the concrete of a street. For a few moments, the palms of her hands stung from the sudden fall, but it eventually subsided. And there she lay, as dead as the living, with no recollection of anything except her name.

But as she lay, there was a voice. Using the little energy she had, she lifted her head and looked around. The street was unfamiliar, but deserted. The voice was inside her head. It was blurry at first, like the voice was speaking through water. But it got clearer:

'Your family deserve the truth.'

She knew nothing about a family. She had no family. She had nothing. The memories that she had had melted into an abyss of afterlife, and she had nothing except her name and the clothes she was wearing.

It is no longer 1989. The seemingly-neverending pulses of acid house had faded away a long time ago, and the sharp, violating neon tones had been diluted into sombre shades of brown, blue, back.

The year 2014. 25 years on.

Of course, Arianna had no recollection of this. She was absolutely alone. The only thing she felt she had to do was find her family, and tell them everything. But where was she? Who were her family? What was she to explain?

She was sitting on the edge of emptiness, a melancholic cacophony of silence.

And she embraced it.

She picked herself up.

And started walking.