I could feel the tears running down my cheeks as the mist encroached further, blotting out one desk after another, closing in on all sides.
I leaped back, shuffling into the middle of the room.
I looked up at the emergency fire escape but it’d already been subsumed.
“Please! Don’t eat me!”
I spun, frantic, as the last vestiges of the memory were erased one fine line at a time.
It washed over me.
I peered down at my hands.
They turned translucent before fading away altogether.
I peered at the cloudy whiteness that surrounded me on every side.
I was a ghost’s consciousness floating in this world.
White walls on every side like I’d been swept up in a blizzard.
It’s okay, I told myself. It’s okay. I can figure this out. I can…
The thought broke apart beneath my fingers like breadcrumbs.
What’s going on? Why can’t I remember any…
Another thought evaporated like water moisture in the atmosphere.
I turned and ran on silent footsteps.
I no longer had feet and couldn’t feel the ground beneath me.
Was I really moving?
Or just jogging in place?
The thought evaporated and I forgot what I was doing.
I hadn’t entirely disappeared.
Not yet.
I was still alive.
I could recall my early memories.
The mist couldn’t take that from me…
And then it did.
It swept over each of my memories, and there were more than I thought.
Many tucked away in the crevices of my mind, never to be remembered or recalled ever again.
An enormous database experienced only once, each one a fragment of who I was.
The mist chipped away at it piece by piece.
One after another…
Playing with Klop back home and him licking my face…
My mom in the kitchen, cooking something sweet and tasty.
I reached up to grab a piece of it…
And that too was swept from my mind.
I need to stop thinking of these memories, needed to think of nothing so I could preserve what remained of myself.
But I felt it wiping my past from all existence, like a robber in the back room.
It didn’t matter if I was thinking about them or not, they were still disappearing one by one.
Startled by the accelerating speed, I reached for them, clutching them tighter to my chest than I had ever held Jirax.
My father with a big grin on his face, reaching into his transporter for the present he bought me…
I eased up onto the balls of my feet to see it the moment he brought it out…
He held his hands out, grasping something heavy in them…
But his arms were empty.
I reached for the invisible gift, to feel it, touch it, recall something about it…
But it was already gone.
I tried to speak.
The words came out as mumbles.
I’d forgotten even how to talk.
I had lost my voice.
I was left with nothing but my terror of being in this place, knowing I would soon disappear and exist no more.
I bolted upright, a yelp half-formed on my lips.
I panicked and cast around.
I was surrounded by white walls, and the mist lay draped over my lap, consuming me.
I kicked at it and was surprised when I felt something solid.
It was a blanket, not mist.
Immense relief washed over me as I ran my hands through my hair.
It’d been a nightmare, nothing more.
I chuckled and shook my head and flopped back on the bed.
Somewhere over my shoulder, a machine beeped in perfect time with my racing heart.
I ran a hand over my forehead and a cold sweat dampened my fingertips.
I was alive.
I hadn’t been consumed by the white mist.
Then where was I?
I was in a hospital of some sort.
I tried to recall what happened for me to end up in this place.
I’d been…
Where?
What had I been doing?
If I was in a hospital, it must have gone wrong somehow.
Was I injured?
I ran my hands over my legs, chest, and arms.
I hissed through my teeth at the pain in my right tricep.
I gently prodded it and felt the same pain again.
I had a deep gash there.
It’d been cleaned and dressed.
Beneath the gown that felt like paper, I sported a dozen other marks and burns.
What was going on?
What was I doing in this place?
Had I been captured?
That didn’t seem right.
If someone had captured me, why would they waste good medical resources on me?
And where was the armed guard?
The room was small and plain, with a row of mismatched chairs along one wall, the blue leather worn from thousands of concerned asses.
I put a hand to my temple.
Surely I could remember what happened to me?
Surely this dull white mist that swept over my mind couldn’t be permanent.
I focused as hard as I could but not a single memory traced a gnarled finger over my mind.
I remembered the nightmare, but before that…
Nothing.
It was a terrifying thought.
I was a non-entity without a past.
How could I have any hope of having a future?
I moved to swing my legs over the side of the bed.
They felt weak and could barely brace my weight.
Then the door swung open.
Loud noises erupted from behind the figure standing in the doorway.
I spied long corridors and harsh overhead lights.
Figures rushed to and fro and some kind of speaker system rattled garbled announcements.
A trolley with a figure on top was rapidly rushed past nurses with frenzied expressions on their faces.
I blinked at that.
Nurses.
Yes, nurses.
That was what they were.
Just like the woman who had stepped into my room.
How could I know what they were but not know who I was?
“Ah. I see you’re finally awake,” the nurse said.
She had a pleasant smile and cradled a clipboard in one arm.
“You took quite a nasty blow to the head. We hoped it wouldn’t take long for you to wake up.”
“Why… Why am I here?” I said, surprised the words could even form on my lips.
“You were involved in an accident. You were in an airplane and it crashed.”
“Airplane?”
I racked my brain for any hint of an airplane but nothing came to mind.
“What was I doing on an airplane? Was I a passenger?”
“No, dear. You were the pilot.”
Pilot?
I couldn’t recall being a pilot.
“You crashed into Phoenix Lake out by Ashbourne,” the nurse said.
She shut the door behind herself and approached
