Opening one eye at a time, I blinked several times to adjust my eyes and get rid of the blurriness. I glanced around the room, trying to decipher where I was. Muddy walls, muddy ground, a round open doorway at the end of the room where a certain brightness shined through. The same brightness I witnessed on new earth. The colony. I was lying on top of the entrance to my home.

Instinctively, I cried for my mother. “Mom!” My voice was hoarse, soft, and weak. There was no way that she would be able to hear me. But maybe if I tried to move the rock, I’d be able to get back inside. I tried fanning my fingers on each side so I could gi

ve myself a good push, but I couldn’t move my arms. Then I tried digging my knees into the rock to hoist myself up and that wasn’t working either. What the hell happened to me? And why couldn’t I remember?

Paralyzed. Could I have been paralyzed? It was either that or my whole body was extremely locked up. A part from the minor movement I made with my head, no other part of my body was budging. I went as far as trying to wiggle my toes. No movement. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to move, none of my limbs were cooperating.

Now, I was truly terrified. My body wouldn’t move. My head had to be split in half. And I had no recollection of how I got home. I felt like a science experiment gone bad. The person who put me here should have inserted bolts into my neck and painted my face green. I could have been Frankenstein. Oh, wait. Frankenstein could walk.

I was going to die on top of this stupid boulder. I had no protection, no way of defending myself. Any monster that lived out there could waltz right through the open door and find me, Georgina Carver, bleeding, paralyzed, and ready to be consumed. I’d die without ever seeing my family again. And I’d die without ever fully living my life.

It wasn’t like me to feel sorry for myself or ever want any type of self-pity, but even though most of the time I was a logical person, I was still human and humans were flawed. They made mistakes. I made a mistake. I had to have made a stupid decision that led me to where I was. And that stupid decision was going to end with some kind of consequences. If only I knew what kind.

I began to drift in and out of consciousness. I’d pass out for a minute, maybe two, and every time I woke up the same questions replayed in my mind. Who did this to me? And how did I end up at home? Amnesia sucked.

I mentally drilled myself over and over again. I’d done this so many times since I had realized where I was, my brain was throbbing again. For a while, the pain had died down but now, I felt the inside of my head pounding, rippling, and sending shooting pains all across the top of my head.

Closing my eyes, I sobbed, “Why me?” I placed my cheek flat on the cool rock as puddle of my tears formed. Snot dripped down my nose and I couldn’t even wipe it. “I might as well be a vegetable.” I’d seen a human other people called a vegetable once. When my grandmother was in the hospital I passed her room and saw a man hooked up to a ton of machines. “He’s a vegetable,” my mother said.

“A vegetable?” I questioned. “Like a carrot?”

My mother shook her head. “No dear, like a person who can’t function. He’s only alive because of those machines.” She grabbed my tiny fingers and walked me down the hospital corridor.

“Mommy, what happens when they take him off of the machines?”

My mother smiled. “He’ll go to a beautiful place.”

No… I didn’t want to be a vegetable. I wished thatwhoever did this to me would have just killed me instead. Then again,maybe the paralyzed feeling would wear off? My attacker did crack me pretty hard on the head. And I was certain the liquid running down my face was blood, because some got into my mouth.

When I glanced around the room for the umpteenth time, all of my depressing thoughts were interrupted. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my knapsack, positioned in the right corner of the room, just beside the opening. All of the zippers were undone.

The top had been left opened so I assumed someone had rooted through it and stole some of the items in it. The only things I could make out that were in it from where I was, the black tarp I found earlier and a white piece of paper.

I squinted, trying to get a better glimpse of the new object that was obviously added to my knapsack. Even though it was pretty dark in the room, I could see some writing that was leaking through the flimsy piece of parchment. What was on that damn paper? Maybe it was a clue that would help me figure everything out.

Desperate to get to my knapsack, I rocked myself back and forth, realizing that since I was on a bit of a slope, I would be able to roll off of the rock. I swayed to the right, then to the left. Finally, I flipped onto my back and rolled several times, landing right at the foot of my knapsack.

Now that I was closer, I confirmed that there was definitely writing on that paper. A crimson red color leaked through the top and bottom of the paper in splotches. Whoever had written this letter, didn’t write in red ink. They wrote it in blood. And I assumed that the blood they used was mine.

Some of the mobility in my body was starting to return. I could wiggle my fingers and wiggle my toes. But that wasn’t good enough. Ugh, I needed to see that paper.

Arching my back as much as I could, I lifted my head and clamped my teeth down on the side of the paper. After I’d removed it from the knapsack, I laid it out in front of me and read what was written on it out loud. “Hello, dinner. It’s me, I’m starving. And I know where you live.”

Chapter 11: You Found Me

Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.~Psalms85:10

Dinner? Was I dinner? And who was, I’m starving? I wished Colin were here. Maybe he’d be able to fill in some of the gaps in my memory. The last vivid recollection I had of him was when he played that joke on me and I left him at the rock mountain. Thinking about it now, yeah, it still wasn’t funny. And I didn’t know what happened to him after that. He disappeared. I wondered if we ever made amends or if he made it back safely.

The chunk of my memory that was missing was weighing heavily on me. There were certain parts that played out in my mind like a movie. So why was I having so much difficultyremembering this tiny, little portion of my memory? It was so frustrating, especially because everything else was still so fresh in my mind.

Planting my head against the white paper, I let out a long, ragged sigh. When I woke up, I immediately assumed that I had gone through something traumatic. That was obvious, and I’d heard plenty of stories where some of the same things happened to other people. Rape victims. Men and women who witnessed murder. In a lot of those stories, their memories were jarred or altered. And the human body could also be affected. That had to be what was going on with me.

A sudden, repetitive scraping startled me. I tensed, and rolled my head to the side and watched as the rock that I was previously on moved. Inch by inch, scrape by scrape, it slid against the muddy ground and someone beneath it pushed it. Then the entire thing flipped over. An excited feeling swirled through my insides, someone was coming to look for me.

“Doug, I don’t care what you or Mark Baker has to say,” my mother snapped as she hoisted her body up out of the hole. “I’m going to look for Georgie!”

“Mom,” I called elated, but my voice wouldn’t come out above a whisper.

Tags: Lauren Hammond Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net