AMNESIA
A short story by Hickory Cole
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PUBLISHED BY:
Amnesia
Copyright © 2012 by Hickory Cole
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
I hear the low hum of a florescent light fixture just before I blink open my eyes. I’m lying on my back. The room slowly comes into focus. I have no idea where I am. The room is sparsely furnished and the four concrete walls surrounding me are bare. I sit up. The room is a small square, the walls extending maybe ten feet in each direction. There are no windows except for a small one about eye level on the only door. The bed I am now sitting on consists of a twin mattress resting on an open bed spring stretched across a small white metal frame. I look at my clothes, a plain white cloth uniform; pull over shirt, pants with a draw string waist. I am bare foot.
I stand. To my surprise, I have to steady myself, but I am able to do it quickly. I feel a bit woozy, not quite myself, but I can walk. I do so, approaching the door, and peer out the small window. I check the steel door knob. It doesn’t budge. Where am I? What am I doing here? Why am I locked inside this tiny room? I search my memory to recall where I had recently been. I am only seeing vague images, nothing specific. Something is not right. Who am I?
The doorknob begins to turn from the outside. The door pushes open and a woman in a white lab coat quickly pushes her way through the door, closing it hurriedly behind her. She stands about five and a half feet tall. Her auburn hair is pulled tightly into a bun and she is wearing thick framed glasses which contrast starkly against her milky white complexion.
She is out of breath and appears more unnerved than I am. “We have to move quickly.”
Confused by my situation I reply. “What? Where are we going?”
“I can’t answer that now. You have to trust me.”
“Trust you? I don’t even know…”
“Shhh!” She raises her hand and touches my lips to silence me abruptly. “I think someone is coming.”
Her diminutive fingers remain pressed gently against my lips. They smell pleasant, from her perfume or hand lotion or body wash. She is not looking at me at the moment though. She listens intently to the sounds from the corridor just outside this room. She hears something and turns back toward me. I see panic in her eyes.
She silently pushes me back toward the bed. In my weakened condition she easily moves me back and down onto the bed. She pushes me down and lifts my legs onto the foot of the bed before she moves away, positioning herself against the far wall. We both stare at each other as the sound of footsteps draws near. The knob turns and the door swings open, obscuring the mysterious woman from my view. A woman dressed in nursing scrubs pushes a small cart into the room. She pauses, surprised to see that I am awake.
“Well, hello there sleepy head.”
The door slowly begins to swing closed. The auburn haired woman slides out from behind the door silently. My eyes react and draw the woman attendant’s attention behind her, but before she can react a hypodermic needle plunges into her neck and a hand is clamped tightly across her mouth before a scream can escape. Within seconds the terror in her eyes fades along with her lucidity. The woman in scrubs falls into a pile on the floor, slipping from the arms of the woman holding the empty syringe in the air as if she were as surprised by her actions as her victim.
She looks at me. “We have to go now.”
I am unsure what to think. “Why? Where am I? And who are you?”
“There’s no time for this, not right now, not here.”
I remain unconvinced. “I’m not going anywhere without an explanation.”
She looks at me and sighs. “If you stay here they will kill you.”
I stare into her eyes. I can gather a lot of information from someone’s eyes. Eyes will betray the soul who is lying. I don’t know my own name but I know this, and her eyes tell me that I am in danger. With a knowing nod I stumble to my feet.
She leads me out into the long corridor. There are dozens of doors identical to the one I was behind lining the hallway. We turn left at the first opportunity. The next corridor is behind two large doors. I can’t tell if I am in a medical facility or a prison. It shares common elements of both. We pause as the woman peers through the thick glass in one of the doors until she is satisfied. She swipes an id card across a scanner and a small green light illuminates, granting us passage. We continue down this hallway. It looks eerily identical to the one we just left, but near the end of it a third corridor leads off to the right, barricaded again by a pair of thick doors controlled by another access panel. We pass through these doors but we stop immediately at a gurney parked on the side of the hallway.
She speaks to me in a hushed tone. “Get up on this and lay down. This is how I get you out of here.”
I do as she asks and climb up on the gurney. Once I am lying flat on my back she pulls a sheet up over my body but pauses before covering my face. I look inquisitively into her eyes. She says nothing but her eyes tell me she is sorry as I feel a needle plunge into my neck, and a warm cocktail of drugs is forced into my body. I can smell it as it overtakes me, but only for a moment. The low light in the corridor fades to black.
A few seconds pass.
I can faintly hear the sound of a car racing down the street and then a crashing noise followed by voices. My eyes blink open again but this time I am lying on a sofa. The noise I am hearing is coming from a television. I hear footsteps against a hardwood surface walking behind the sofa.
I pull myself up onto my elbows. I see the mysterious auburn haired woman, but this time she is dressed in blue jeans with a pull over sweater. Her hair falls freely around her face onto her shoulders. The glasses are the same.
“Right on schedule,” she says to me with a smile.
“On schedule?” I ask.
“The drug I gave you… It should be wearing off about now.”
I try to sit up but the blood drains quickly from my head and I nearly fall off the couch. She quickly grabs my shoulders steadying me.
“Easy there big guy. You need to take it slow for now.”
“How long have I been out?”
She checked her watch. “A little over six hours.”
I slowly pull myself up into an upright position and rub my head.
The woman walks off for a moment. I look around at my new surroundings. None of it is familiar, yet it feels very warm and inviting. Sunlight pours in through windows on two ends of the room between the open slats of the wood blinds covering them. The room is furnished and decorated with rich earth tones and the smell of leather intermingles with the faint aroma of coffee brewing in another room. I fantasize for a moment that I belong here. The thought settles well with me. On the surface this looks like a nice life.
My wandering imagination is interrupted by the clinking noise of a spoon rattling momentarily on the side of a saucer as a cup of hot coffee is extended my way. “Here,” she says. “I thought you could use a cup of coffee.”
“Oh, thank you.” I take the saucer and cup. I look at the warm brew swirling in the cup. It has had creamer added without asking. Is this how I like it? I have no idea myself. Presumably she does. Regardless it smells delicious and I take a few sips. It is perfect. She appears to have g
otten it right.
“So are you going to tell me now, who you are, where I am… who I am?”
She smiles but has a hint of sadness in her eyes. “So you remember nothing.”
“I’m totally blank. I remember nothing prior to you entering my room last night.”
She extends her hand. I set the saucer down on the coffee table in front of me. I stand and wobble only slightly, taking her hand in mine. She leads me around the edge of the sofa, through the kitchen behind it, and down a short hallway. We enter a bedroom. It is warm and inviting as well. The bedroom set is constructed of thick cherry wood and stained a deep red tone. Picture frames sit atop the tall dresser on my right as she leads me by it. Most of the photos feature pictures of an older couple, but a few have pictures of the auburn haired woman, some with her and a man. I look inquisitively at her unsure what this means.
“I don’t…”
She presses her fingers to my lips once again to silence them. She continues to the bathroom. We stand in front of the mirror. I see the beautiful woman holding my hand. I see myself, a strange face I don’t remember, the face of the man in the photos.
She turns me toward her and draws close to me. I stare into her eyes. I see desire, a desperate desire for me to understand and accept the truth, maybe a desire beyond that, more primal. I embrace her. Her face is all I know. I notice the diamond ring and wedding band set on her left hand. She is very beautiful and more than I could ever want in terms of physical attraction in a wife. I hold her, confused by my situation, but I draw comfort from her embrace. My emotions stir within as I begin to accept her for what she claims to be.
“So what is going on? Why don’t I remember anything? What happened to me?”
She leads me out to the bedroom and we sit side by side on the edge of the bed. Tears threaten to escape from the corners of her eyes. “You were part of an experiment.”
“An experiment? What kind of experiment?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t tell me everything. You wrote me a note, a very long and detailed note. It didn’t say much about the experiment, just that you suspected you were in danger and how I could find you.”
“Wait, wait, wait… I left you a note? So I knew about the experiment?”
“Yes. You knew something about it.”
“You had access to that facility. Do you work there? What is that place?”
“That facility is run by a company called Paramour Industries, and no I don’t work for them. You do, or did, I guess. They are a defense contractor, a big one. You left me an access card and specific instructions of how to get into the facility and get you out of there. It was all your plan.”
“My plan. I don’t even know my own name.”
“Eli.”
“Eli?”
“Your name… It’s Eli Hoffman.”
I sit there and digest the name. “Eli. Huh. I had hoped when I heard it that it would have triggered something inside, some kind of recognition. But it’s just another name.”
She looks at me as tears roll down her face. “I had hoped for the same.”
“I… I don’t know what to say. So you… You and I…”
She smiles through her tears. “Meg, Meg Hoffman.”
I return the smile. “And you’re not my sister.”
She laughs. “No, I am definitely not your sister.”
“So we are…”
“Yes, we are.”
I let out a big sigh. “Wow. Sorry, this is a lot to take in.”
She gently caresses my shoulder. “Yes, it’s a lot for me to handle as well.”
“Well, I suppose it would be, Meg Hoffman.”
We both sit on the edge of the bed awkwardly for a moment. A thousand questions are racing through my head, but I feel that this moment needs to settle itself out before I move past it. As confused and unnerved as I am about the whole situation, I can’t help noticing how attractive my wife is. My wife, wow! That’s so overwhelming.
Meg looks at me with a quizzical look on her face. I don’t realize it at first but I’ve been staring at her with a slight grin. “What is going on in that head of yours?”
I feel my face flushing from embarrassment. “What? Oh, nothing.”
“No, I’m pretty sure you were thinking about something.”
“Well… It’s just that… You’re …”
“I’m what?”
“You are… very beautiful.”
I’ve turned the tables, and now Meg is blushing. “Now you’ve embarrassed me.”
“Sorry, I just can’t help staring at you. You’re my wife. But I don’t know anything about you.”
Meg takes my hand and stands in front of me. She rests her hand on my chest. I glance down for a second just before she pushes, gently forcing me onto my back and climbing on top of me. She hovers over me staring into my eyes, looking for something. I try to conceal the panic from within. I know she is trying to find a connection. I want to foster that as well, even if I have to force it. She is a remarkably beautiful woman and she is coming on to her husband, all very normal. I should be excited and part of me is. She goes for it and falls on me, kissing me softly at first until I kiss her back, and then with more fervor. I feel the moment accelerating and I push her back. It is too much, too soon.
“Sorry, I just want to take it a little slower.”
Meg rolls off, landing on her side next to me. “Sure, that’s okay. I just got a little carried away I guess.”
I struggle to sit up. I’m still a little weak. “So, we need to talk more about what all has happened.”
For the next thirty minutes Meg fills me in on the details of my recent experience at Paramour. I was working on a classified project that involved something with neural implants. I left detailed information scrawled onto a legal pad that she found in my sock drawer. It had been updated several times. Apparently, I had a routine where I would move the location of the notepad on laundry day so as not to alarm her unnecessarily if my suspicions of foul play at Paramour were unfounded. It wasn’t until I had gone missing that she discovered the notepad. On the top of the first page of my notepad I had written the note “Meg, if you find this and you cannot contact me, I may be in danger.” On the subsequent pages I had provided detailed notes with numbers to call using assumed names, complete with company protocols to get information on test subject 17. I also left detailed instructions about where she could obtain a valid access card, building schematics and when and how she could perform the extraction. She had executed it flawlessly.
I am sitting on the bed, digesting everything Meg is explaining when the doorbell sounds and a sense of panic fills my gut. “I just vanished from the Paramour facility. They are probably looking for me. We aren’t safe here.”
“Relax. I don’t think they’ll find us here. This is my parent’s cabin. You left very specific instructions.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just sit here. I’ll go get it.”
Meg leaves the bedroom and walks down the hall to the front door. I move to the edge of the doorway. I can see Meg as she opens the door. She smiles at the person standing outside and gives them a casual greeting, nothing alarming so far. She is handed a package and is signing for it. It’s a delivery man. I let out a sigh. She turns and notices me standing in the bedroom doorway and gives me a knowing grin just before she reaches up to scratch her neck and then collapses in the entry way. The door remains open. I rush to her side. The delivery man is nowhere to be seen. I step outside and there is no accompanying delivery van in sight.
I rush back inside to Meg. She is unconscious, lying on the floor. I push the door closed and pick her up, taking her over to the sofa. I notice a small dart in her neck and pull it out. I check her breathing. It is shallow but she is definitely alive, just unconscious, knocked out by whatever was in that dart.
I look over at the packa
ge lying on the ground in the entryway. It is a large soft sided package. I go pick it up. It is addressed to Eli Hoffmann. According to Meg we don’t live here. My only link to the real world is lying unconscious on the sofa and someone, able to find us in a secluded cabin belonging to her parents, knows where we are. My heart races, trying to keep pace with the wild thoughts flying through my head. The only clue I have is in that package.
I tear it open. It contains three colored envelopes. The large padded green envelope instructs me to open it first. There are two smaller envelopes, one red and one blue. Both have instructions written on them to open only after the green envelope has been opened. I do as instructed. The green envelope has a Nook E-reader device in it. It has only one document loaded; a letter. I click to open the letter and it prompts me for a password. For some reason a set of random characters appear in the back of my mind. I stare at the blinking prompt requesting the password. I have no idea why but I keep seeing the same characters over and over in my head so I finally type them, “E5x#gL973d” in the password field and to my surprise it works. The file opens. I read slowly, digesting every word carefully. With every sentence my heart falls a little more. Midway through I find it hard to finish, but I labor through it, even though I am disturbed by what it reveals. I set it down on the counter along with the blue and red envelopes still sealed. I stare at Meg lying on the sofa. I am torn between two realities, unsure how to proceed.
For now I push the envelopes aside and grab the hot pot of coffee. I freshen up my cup that has cooled, adding a touch of creamer, returning it to the balance when first handed to me by Meg. It brings me comfort, sipping the warm brew as I stare at the colored envelopes lying on the kitchen countertop. I have a decision to make, one that will shape the rest of my life as well as Meg’s. But for now all I can handle is the coffee.