Remember the Night You Were Born Ch. 1

A headache pounded. A draft blew in. It stung. From the arms, to the torso, and finally the legs. The breeze caused a sensation too strange and painful for him to understand. The lights were on. Something was deeply, unshakably wrong.

His eyes opened. The ceiling greeted him. The room was dusty and cold, two realizations that came with an even more disturbing one: he wasn't wearing clothes.

This wasn't where he was meant to be. Nothing about the bed he was lying in was familiar to him.

No. It was more than just the room that felt wrong. There was something much more significant tearing at him. Not even the pain felt like something worth worrying about, in comparison to the real problem.

Yet he couldn't quite place what it was.

Finding himself unable to react in any other way, he laughed. He laughed a deep, gravelly chuckle, punctuated by a twinge at the surface of his thoughts; a sickening sense of unfamiliarity. His own voice sounded alien to him.

He had no idea who he was.

Terrified, he held back his breath in a desperate attempt to keep control of his emotions. As unsettled as he was, he knew that he couldn't let his thoughts spiral out of control. The moment he panicked could be the last moment he ever had.

He had to find something to latch onto. There had to be some beginning to what brought him here.

Doing everything he could to pull himself back together, he thought back, and tried to remember. He fell into his mind, and pulled out the most recent memory he held.

The thought of a restaurant appeared in his mind's eye. An elegantly dressed table, set with high-end dishes and candles, sat at the center of the scene. The room was romantically lit, and quiet, save for the casual conversation a woman, young and attractive, was contributing to. At the end of her sentence, she smiled, and lifted a drink to her lips.

It was like watching television. None of that happened to him. Someone else was holding the camera.

He shot up in the bed, and put a hand to his forehead, desperately trying to snap his mind back into the present. As his wrist moved, he noticed a pain flare through his arm, but found himself  discouraged to concern himself with it. It felt far too similar to the memories. The memories that weren't his own.

As a few more seconds passed in detached uncertainty, a single thought drifted into his mind: nothing was going to to change alone. All that could alter his position were his own actions.

So he lifted his head.

At the moment his eyes flicked up, they met with the face of another man. A black haired man of middle age, looking tired, naked, and disheveled. His skin was tanned, and etched with intertwining lines of red. Blood smears dotted the edges, still a little wet, as his skin was carved into recently, but not with intent to kill. Most notably, however, he looked just as scared as he was.

It quickly dawned on him why. He was looking in a mirror. The eyes he was looking into were the same ones he was viewing them with.

They weren't his own. The entire body he was in belonged to someone else.

As every thought sunk into him, his fingers dug into the sheets of the bed, desperate to feel something that they intended to feel. Yet, somehow, even that seemed wrong. No sensation that went through his body belonged. He could act, but it wouldn't ever mean anything to him. Not as he felt now.

Even so, he knew he had to get out. If he stayed in the room, he couldn't even begin to imagine what would happen.

With slow, careful, and yet seemingly meaningless steps to the ground, he brought the body to its feet. For a moment he considered examining the room, but, when his vision settled on the door, just behind the mirror, he lost all interest. Even if there was something worth paying attention to, where he was now, there was no single piece of him that could bring himself to focus. All he wanted to do was leave.

With a shaky hand on the doorknob, he did just that.

As it creaked open, passage to a crude hallway was revealed. The poor lighting from a single, naked bulb illuminated nothing but worn, wooden floor paneling, stairs, and closed doors to other, likely desolate rooms. His breath was assaulted with the dry, musty air of housekeeping neglect, and his vision felt blurred from the dust kicked up by the opening door.

Either that, or from his own disassociation.

No longer allowing himself to think past the surface, he continued making his way forward, heading toward the stairs. As he traveled down them, he held the body close to the paint chipped wall, fearing that he would stumble and fall from the puppet-like movements he was forced to cope with.

It was pure luck that kept him steady until the bottom floor. Luck that didn't last long enough to keep him from stumbling at the moment he hit level ground.

Yet his own reflexes somehow kicked in at the face of danger. As he lost his balance, his hands shot out, locking onto a tabletop in front of him. It was that one moment of self control that finally pulled his senses together again. It was a single reminder that there might, by some chance, be a way for him to live.

It was enough to give him will to continue. It brought him a desire to pay attention.

That and the realization that there were clothes folded on the table he was clinging to.

He let his hand drift to the fabric of the shirt set on top, and he found it crisp. When he rose it to eye level, the first thing he noticed was its color: white. It was a perfectly clean, white, button up shirt, of just the right size to fit, and just the right color to stain with the still fragile wounds covering his body.

Even so, that knowledge was far from enough to keep him from putting it on. If there was one thing he could feel certain of right now, it was that remaining unclothed was careless, at best.  For just that moment, it didn't matter who put the clothing there, and why.

After slipping into the shirt, and the equally store-fresh boxers and jeans, he felt a light poke at the top of his thigh. He originally considered passing it off as nothing more than the cuts acting up again, but when it happened again with another shift, he suddenly felt driven to check the closest pocket.

As soon as his fingers drifted to the opening, he felt a cold, metallic spiral of wire. The moment he pried it from the pocket, he realized what it was.

It was a notebook. A small, cheap, wire-bound notebook. As he took it into his hands, he flipped it open, betting on the uncomfortably likely chance that it contained something.

It did. In messy, recklessly scrawled handwriting, a single note was left on the first page.

"Felicia Maessen – 623 Arbour St."

The rest of the pages were blank.

The address didn't feel at all familiar to him, like most of the things he'd experienced within the past hour, but something seemed oddly notable about the name. He actually felt like he'd heard it before.

It was enough to make him want to slam it shut. He couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of acquaintance anymore. It felt so out of place among everything else that it stung.

To try to take his mind off of what he just read, he decided to finally take a proper look around the room. Like the rest of the building he saw, it was old and broken down, but, at least in the dining room where he was standing, it seemed a little more lived in. There was a small, frayed rug under the cheap, wooden table he was next to, and a number of crumbs and papers scattered across the wood floors surrounding. The room was lit in the same, dull way that the hall was, using only a single light bulb in a hanging socket, but the glow coming from it was strong enough to hint that it was changed recently. There were only two chairs, and just one of them was pulled toward the table, tilted slightly to suggest it was used and left the last time the house's occupant came by. It was at least enough to show that someone, at some point within the past year, had come by. Someone other than him.

A dull pair of clicks resonated from behind the arch to the living room, startling him out of thought.

Someone who was already here.

His body tensed, and his first instinct told him to hide. He felt fairly certain that he had arrived here because someone else forced him, and, if that was the case, it was more than a little likely that the homeowner was the one responsible.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the time. Before he could even try to move, a woman, the arrival, stepped into view, and met startled, intent eyes with him. It seemed to take a second for her to process what was happening. A second she made up for by pulling a handgun from her purse, and pointing it directly toward his forehead.

"Who are you!? What the hell are you doing here!?" She demanded, her voice strong, but also laced with fear.

He stared back at her, not quite able to process her actions immediately. There was something else, much more notable, that he couldn't tear his eyes from: her face.

She was mildly attractive, with black, wavy hair, and dark, smooth skin. Her face had a stiffness to it, as if she hadn't let herself relax in days. He'd seen it before. He'd heard her name.

Felicia Maessen; she was the woman from the unfamiliar memory.

As he processed the fact, he eventually started to take notice of what she was actually doing and saying. He knew full well that he should feel threatened by the firearm, but, for some reason, it hardly even left him shaken. He didn't do so much as move a muscle.

The questions, however, were much more off-putting. He didn't have answers for either of them.

"Not sure." He answered, lacking the capability to come up with a lie, and with his voice cracking from exhaustion.

"Not sure? You say you're not sure!? Like hell!" She shouted back, keeping steady aim, and slowly becoming more angry as time went on.

It actually calmed him. Felicia's startled, violent reaction meant that she previously had no idea that he was here. It struck him that, if he managed to prove himself as a non-threat, she could even be his only ally, right now. One that could, perhaps, know a small bit about what was going on.

Putting his bets on the chance, he spoke up, "Listen--"

Suddenly, his words stopped. His entire vocal system seized up. An intense pain flared through his body. His reflexes forced his hands to his throat. His legs completely gave in. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move.

Everything occurring around him became a blur. Whether the woman calmed down, or panicked more in response to his fit, he couldn't tell. He could hardly even focus on thought of her being there.

"W-what are you--"

At the sound of her voice, however, the pain in his body started to ebb away. He coughed as his airways started to return to normal, and he desperately tried to get back to his feet. In his mind, when he was finally allowed clear thought, he tried to piece together what was going on, and if he was dying.

Unfortunately, his ascent back to his feet was interrupted by the cold, hard end of a gun barrel. In the uncertain amount of time he lost to the pain, Felicia had stepped up closer, and taken advantage of his position. He could hear her heavy, angered breathing by his ear, but was deprived of a view of her face.

"You... you're doing one of two things right now. You're either trying to trick me with some absurd attempt at getting me to sympathize with you, or you're some crazed, drugged up freak overdosing in my apartment. Which is it?" She hissed, lightly rattling the barrel against his forehead with her shaking fingers. She was scared, but that only made her more dangerous.

He paused for several seconds, still trying to collect his thoughts, and feeling blindly for an acceptable answer to Felicia's accusations. As much as he wished he came off as nothing but startled, a flickering sense of frustration and annoyance slipped into his head.

"It's neither." He rasped, lowering his eyes to hide his impatience.

"Oh, really? Care to elaborate?"

"It's not easy--" He began in response, only to feel the shudder of pain again as he attempted to say the following word. He managed to stop himself this time, before collapsing again, but only with the disturbing realization of what, exactly, was causing it:

The word "I". Any attempts to refer to himself would lead to nothing but pain. Somehow, his entire body was rejecting the statement.

This wasn't his body, after all. This wasn't him. He's only a guest.

Seemingly recognizing that he was in pain again, Felicia released one of her hands to steady him by the shoulder. The momentary act of kindness was, however, punctuated by the sharp digging of her fingernails into his shirt. The pressure reopened one of his wounds, leaking blood onto the fresh sleeve. She didn't notice, or she didn't care.

A few seconds pass in awkward silence, before he recognized her intent. She wasn't going to make a single other move until he answered in full.

"Don't mean to hurt you. Just... listen." He quietly reassured her, struggling to avoid using any personal pronouns for himself in the process.

"I'm listening." Her voice didn't soften. It was already clear that she didn't believe him.

"Look, it's..." He stumbled, trying to find a way to explain the situation without using any problem words. "Don't know how this happened. Don't know where this is. Someone did this."

"Someone? 'How this happened'? What are you talking about?" Her pitched raised as her patience dropped.

With a sigh of frustration and all around distress, he pointed to himself to get the start of his sentence through. "Woke up here, and don't know why." Another point. "Don't have any memory of entering."

"Then my second guess was true. You came into my apartment, overdosed on some serious shit, then passed out in here. You're pathetic." She snapped.

Overdose. He wanted to be able to brush the idea off as ridiculous and impossible, but as he let himself sit on the statement for a while, it started to seem more and more plausible. He woke up in a strange bed, with a blurry head, strong feeling of disassociation, and lasting pain. The fact that he didn't remember what he was doing beforehand only gave the idea more credibility. Yet something still didn't seem right about it. If it was a drug that caused his current position, then why was he covered in wounds? Why was he completely alone in the house of someone who didn't seem to recognize him? Most of all, why was he unable to refer to himself? No drug could alter his reaction to such a specific thing. None that he could think of, at least.

Slowly, he shook his head as much as he could with the weapon in the way. Felicia's grip on his shoulder loosened.

"You could be right..." He mumbled, his voice filled with hesitation. "There's no memory of it, but it's more than... more likely than anything else."

After a short period of disgusted doubt, Felicia lowered her handgun, and stood up. She kept the weapon pointed at his legs, but the look that his now lifted eyes could see on her face showed that she was more torn and uncomfortable than scared anymore. She almost looked a little sorry for him.

"You know what? I'm calling the hospital." She sighed, backing up toward her purse again, presumably to retrieve her cellphone. "You stay still, and don't even think of making a move. Got it?"

He regretfully nodded in surrender, lacking the energy or confidence to defy her. Really, the hospital could be the best place for him, right now. Maybe they could give him answers.

Once she got a hold of her phone, she hit a button, and waited for it to turn on. Several seconds passed. It remained silent as her eyebrow raised. She tried again. Nothing happened.

"Are you kidding me? Of all things for this damn thing to do..." She grumbled, her frustration from all the day's events passing on to the rest of her mood. After a couple of quick fiddles with the battery and keys, her temper got the best of her, and drove her to toss the phone to the floor. She shouted incomprehensibly in now uncontrollable rage, before turning back to face him directly.

"Are you in good enough shape to walk, you sick, sad bastard?" She practically spat, lifting her purse over her shoulder to sign that she was planning to leave.

He nodded as his own frustration began to trickle back. He wasn't about to go against her, but being completely at her condescending mercy was irritating, at best.

"Then get up. We're heading to a doctor."

As she backed up to put her sandals back on her feet, she continued to keep her aim trained at him. It was clear to him that he had no choice but to cave in to her demands.

With a groan of lingering pain, he forced himself fully to his feet, and slowly began to follow her. By instinct, he gave the living room he entered a short look around, but he quickly found himself sneering at the first sight of the decades old television. He still couldn't shake its similarities to his own memories.

"Hey." Felicia spoke up again, snapping his attention back to her stern, black eyes. "Don't think I don't see that look on your face. Are you thinking something?"

He breathed out, averting his eyes. "Sorry. Just don't feel right here. Don't feel right with anything."

A wry smile crossed Felicia's lips as she stepped into his space. As she lifted her arm to realign the gun with his head, the edge of a  long, flowing sleeve of her over-shirt brushed his neck.

"Don't worry about it. I hate this place, too."