Stolen Truth

15

Occasionally I'll get flashbacks. It wasn't like this sort of thing didn't happen before, it was just that there was no way of curing it now. The blanks could tell. Whenever one of us thought we might remember something, they knew what it was and they cured it before we could properly begin to analyse what those memories meant.

We always thought they were taken to avoid the trauma of what many of us had been put through as children, we actually believed they were helping us. The memories were traumatic though, I almost wish someone was still here to take them away.

It's mostly fire that I remember, sitting in a house as it burned around me. I remember screaming, crying out for someone to save me. I can't remember my parents faces, but I remember seeing them leave. I watched a girl get stabbed outside my home. I remember the first time I saw one of those creatures.

It wasn't just the bad stuff though. I had friends. I had a real home, and a real family, and real friends! I played in the gardens, I laughed, I smiled, I was happy.

The memories only serve to confuse me more. I'm disgusted by them, I hate them and I hate how they make me feel. It's like I've been missing out.

"Dove?" I asked, brushing my hand over hers, "Am I... Am I meant to hate myself for this."

"Hate yourself?" She questioned, looking at me with sad eyes, "What is there to hate?"

"Everything," I sighed, letting a tear roll down my cheek, "There's just so many things. And it... it's not even that it's just me, I hate all of you as well and then I just feel so terribly guilty about it that I manage to despise myself even more. I don't know what I'm doing here or... or why we even exist. How do I exist? How is it that all of us have to feel so much pain?"

"I don't know," Dove sighed, "And I can't bring myself to tell you that it's all going to be okay, because I'm honestly so sick of lying to people. And you... you don't deserve to be lied to. But you also don't deserve to live like this. It isn't healthy, it isn't good."

"So does that make me bad?"

"No... no, you could never be bad. You have this trauma, this burden from the past sixteen years that you have to carry with you, and although you've seen so much, you're also so innocent. You're innocent, and beautiful, and soft, and the complete opposite of bad."

"But I am bad. If I met you before I knew about this, if I saw you in war, I would've killed you. And the worst part is that I can still picture killing you. I have dreams that make me sick, dreams where I'm back with them and I'm forced to hurt you. I can't stand it!"

"The fact that it makes you sick is why you're good!" Dove exclaimed, clutching my hand in hers.

"But I still see it. I can still imagine doing it!"

"Only because that's what you've been conditioned to think. I'm not sure when it will stop, or even if it will stop entirely, but one day you'll understand that it isn't your fault, you can't just block these thoughts and you know that those thoughts don't define who you are."

"Will I ever know who I am?"

"You're Rat," Dove said, "The boy with fire powers who's terrible at controlling them. You're the boy who sees stars in my eyes. You're the new guy that all the kids love because you actually took the time to get to know them. You're the boy who knows nothing about romance but for some reason you think you like me, and I think I like you too."

"But that isn't all of me! It's like there's something more, I can feel it, there's something else inside of me that's begging for me to let it out, but I don't even know what it is. And because of what the blanks did I feel as though I'll never find out. How am I supposed to unlock something when I don't even have the key?"