Who is Alice?

Waking

Sudden light streamed in through the darkness. Followed by a burning and scorching feeling inside my mouth. I blinked furiously, my eyes are heavy from the effort. I clutched at my throat desperately, the flames raking down my insides with every breath. Someone kill me, I thought madly. My ears feel as if they are underwater. Dull muted sounds reverberate back to me off unseen walls. My breath is loud as I gasp loudly to keep above the flames that rage inside me. My hands reach out in front of me blindly groping the cold hard stone floor that I'm crouching on. It feels rough, even to the rough worn skin of my hands.

The light disturbs me again. It's so bright it hurts to look now. Where am I? I don't remember where I am. Slowly things begin to focus in, and I can make out darker shapes within the white. The fuzzy image begins to sharpen with the more effort I put in. Suddenly it's not blinding white light anymore, the colours around me are dark with hard lined crevasses zigzagging along the wall in a pattern. I sat shakily, leaning on the nearest wall for support. It feels the same texture as the hard floor beneath me. Where am I? I think again feeling more and more puzzled. Nothing seems familiar.

In front of me is a large curved panel with a small bared hole in it. I stagger forward leaning onto and feeling its surface with my hands. It's smoother than the wall with tiny ingrained lines creating bumps along it. A different shade of colour, still dark but richer somehow. Wood, the word comes into my mind unbidden. A door, I think with a shock running through my body so strong that my knees buckle a little.

I don't even remember knowing that word. But I know somehow, this thing in front of me is, in fact, a door. I recall suddenly new information that doors open when pushed on. I have no idea what part of my brain this comes from, but I follow it instinctively. I outstretch both my hands and push my palms against the wood as hard as I can. The door gives way loudly, it's creaking a sudden sound piercing the silence.

I stumble forward into a long narrow hallway using the same rough walls for stability. As I get to the end, I go around the corner and a figure standing there startles me. Only for a moment though. Fire rips through me angrily and without a second thought, I launch towards them. In less than a second, my teeth have sunk deep into their exposed neck. Thick metallic blood pours into my mouth and I swallow as much of it as I can. No hesitation. Just pure animal instinct. I had no idea why I was acting this way and a small voice inside my head told me what I was doing wrong. But that voice was very, very small at this moment. All I could think about was wetting the flames that burned within me, and for whatever reason, my instincts told me this was what I needed to consume. Blood. This man's blood, I realised suddenly. As the dark liquid ceased to flow freely any longer, I dropped the hold I had around him in horror.

The fire was gone, and I couldn't have felt more relief. But in the same instant, a more overwhelming sense of anguish swept over me as I watched the man crumble lifelessly at my feet and the reality of what I'd just done set in. What had I done? Who in the hell had I become? I searched my scrambled brain for memories, but nothing came forward. Whoever I was, this didn't feel right, and I knew it.

A light-haired man with a kind face stands before me. His eyes are shining back at me in welcome. He gestures to those around him. A woman with a warm expression has a hand resting on his arm. A young boy with disheveled hair staring dejectedly away. A couple, stunning light-haired girl and strong looking boy, in love clearly, held in an embrace with guarded expressions directed at me. "Come, let us show you." The first light-haired man says. The sound rings in my ears with such clarity.

I clutch at the wall as my sight returns to me and I'm standing in the stone hallway with the dead man once more. My breath comes in hard and fast. What in the hell was that? It almost felt as though I was no longer standing in my place. But I knew somehow that that was still me standing before those beautiful light-eyed people.