Somewhere, a lonely journal sat, gathering dust, neglected since Dares was forced to attend school. He had no memory of it, and no memory of writing it.

While he was in detention, the drab book fell open onto an undated entry, and alien eyes poured over the memory within.

Undated Entry:

Flashing lights. Sirens. My introduction to Home. I toured Riverview aboard a fire truck, a ferry ship across the urban ocean. The stars, thousands of blinking lights, stared down at me. The wind was cool on my face, and I was wrapped in a warm blanket. My parents were on either side of me, us, along with twenty other people on top of the truck. This tour was the traditional welcome to the town. I was too young to remember anything before it, and no memories since have risen to supplant its definition of “Home” in my mind. My mother, father, and I - the three of us, a happy family. I was maybe three or four years old.

I remember chasing squirrels in the backyard. I remember long summer days at the beach. I remember playing in my parents’ closet, pretending it was a store I owned. But mostly, I remember walking along the back wall, that brown brick path that seemed to extend infinitely out in front of me. I knew its cracks and grooves by heart. I followed that path hypnotically. I don’t know what it was I was looking for, what I expected to find at the end of it, if anything. The important thing wasn’t that I find something at the end though, but that I follow that path. It was compelling, like it defined some cornerstone of my being. Eventually I’d be yelled at by the managers, or some neighbor. I remember sometimes, a man on the other side of the wall, someone who lived in one of the forest houses, would throw his empty beer bottles at me. But I didn’t care.

I was happy there. Home was all around me, and would always be there. That’s what I thought back then.

-

“I can’t believe I have to lug water home from the store. This freaking sucks. Figures the pipes would bust right at the start of the hottest week in history! Man, what a drag.”

I see myself with a large water jug. I’m dragging it behind me in a red wagon. I’m ten years old.

“Jun’s no help. ‘When’s cousin getting back?’ God, if you have time to worry, you have time to help me out. Geez, acting like a little sister when we’re the same age, give me a break. Oh well, I guess it can’t be helped. She’s been a bit withdrawn since auntie got hurt. I guess I can’t really blame her. She’s still pissed at me for leaving our last game hanging, I’ll bet.”

I shrug.

“Oh well. I’ll play with her as soon as I’m done.”

I park the wagon outside my door. Apartment #24, Raintree. Mine is the unit on the very right of the middle chain. I’m about to open my front door when something catches my attention. A note is taped to the front. My eyes flit over what the note has to say.

“Party at Steve’s, huh? And no one told me. Great. Why am I always the last to know these things?”

I sigh and hang my head. I drop the handle of the wagon. The water can wait. Steve probably rigged something up in his house for water anyway. He always was the tinkering type. I look forward to the probable plate of his signature fried chicken, greasy and overcooked though it may be. The comforts of home, I guess. Steve’s always been a good family friend. His kids are pretty cool I guess, but I doubt they’re too enthused about having a little kid hang around. They keep it to themselves, though. None of them know I can get a pretty good feel for what they’re thinking without ever having to trade words. I never figured I was all that special, just more perceptive, I guess. You could call me a good listener.

I make my way to the unit. Steve’s is the rightmost on the right chain of units, kitty corner to mine. It’s about a twenty meter walk. But, when I get there…

“Kid… Run…”

Steve, shirt soaked with blood, throws up on the ground in front of me. At first I think it’s coffee grounds, but I slowly realize that he’s just thrown up more blood from deep inside his body.

“Hey… what’s going on? ...This is…”

This is some kind of a joke, right? Is that what I mean to say?

I don’t get that far. Steve collapses in front of me, face-first in a growing pool of his own blood. The sickly-sweet smell of iron mingles with the smell of grease that always clings to him. This doesn’t make any sense - one moment, I’m heading to a party, the next, this.

“Dares.” a soft voice calls my name.

“Mother…” I reply.

I try to get her to act. Her face is strange. Waxy.

I feel like I’ve been punched and I hear something squish. I look down slowly, and see a butcher knife buried in my chest up to the hilt. Blood is running down the blade, dripping at the handle and my mother’s hand. I look up and see her eyes are empty and lifeless. A strange, serene smile tugs at her lips.

“M...Mother…?” I tilt my head at her in confusion.

“You were never supposed to be born.”

I don’t understand any of it. I hear a sickening squelch as the blade is wrenched out of my chest. Blood pours out of the wound like a waterfall. Why? Why is this happening?

“It’s all your fault, cousin.” Jun says to me, as if in a trance.

“She’s right, you know.” says a hooded man. He drapes an arm over Jun’s shoulders. “This lovely little peach is absolutely correct about you. The weak aren’t entitled to anything. For you see, they cannot protect anything. The harder you struggle, the truer this will become. Like sand through your fingers, everything will slip away, and you will be left with nothing. Remember this day. When everything falls apart, look back on this day and realize that it was the beginning of the end.” says the man.

“You… bastard… is this… your doing?” I demand of the wraith in black.

He looks offended, even under the blackness of his hood. “Me? I told you already. You have only yourself to blame.”

I don’t know where my mother is. She vanishes from sight after stabbing me. My blood runs down my body, pooling on the sidewalk.

“I’m taking the girl. She’ll be returned to you when it is time.” says the man.

“Goodbye, cousin.” says Jun.

They both turn and I watch them go. The earth shakes and the world erupts into flame. Both figures disappear through the smoke, and I’m left standing in the circle of fire. An earthquake? Did it rupture the gas line beneath the ground? I don’t fully process what’s going on. Somehow, I make it through the flames, into the backyard. The grass and trees are beginning to catch flame. Dimly, I think of the brown brick wall, the dividing line between here, and the forests. The wall will stop the flames. I’m halfway up when I realize that it won’t. Instead of vaulting over into the woodlands, I walk along that wall to my left, where the docks wait, towards the river. As I follow that brown brick path, I leave a trail of blood behind me. I’m freezing despite the flames licking the left side of my body. I don’t even feel the heat. “Make it to the water, make it to the water.” I chant to myself, over and over. I feel faint and dizzy. Did she puncture my heart?

I collapse between the wall and fence. The bottom that should have been there doesn’t greet me. I plummet between them into a canyon, into darkness, wind whipping past my face. I’m falling for minutes past clouds and stars, the walls giving way to azure sky. And then, I’m no longer falling. The sky shifts onto its side and I feel myself sinking through water, an expansive black abyss of ocean. I see falling stars above the sea’s surface, falling towards islands in the distance, whose bottoms I can’t see beneath the waves. Miles above me waits a bridge. I’m sinking down, into the unknown, when I hear a voice calling to me.

“Don’t give up.” the voice says.

But why? I’ve lost everything already, haven’t I? I close my eyes and welcome the end. But the end doesn’t come. I’m adrift in nowhere. I slowly open my eyes and see that I rest upon a lake, surrounded by swirling pink petals. In the distance, through the trees, lays a rouge mansion, lined with pink flames on either side.

I wake up. I’m between the walls, bleeding out into the dead leaves and garbage. I’m not dead yet, for whatever reason. In my mind, I can still see that mansion. Then I realize that the board in front of me hangs loose from the fence. I push through the gap and find myself in a tunnel of trees, dragging my bloody form to the mansion I know waits there. The trees aren’t pink, that must have been a construct of my mind. The fire wasn’t, at least not entirely. The heat woke me up. Despite my blood loss, I can feel the flames again, and thank goodness for it - had they not woken me, what were the odds I would have just laid there and died? In my surprise at still drawing breath, I forget that I’ve already lost. At the end of that tunnel, the mansion greets me. A feminine figure stands there in the shadowed doorway. She whispers to me, but even across the distance I can hear her in my mind.

“Do you want to live?”

There isn’t time to think about it. My mouth falls open, leaking blood down my chin. I hear a raspy “yes” trail off my blue lips.

Subsequent Entry:

I saw myself embrace her. And the fire engulfed us both. When the crimson tide died away, and the units were left in burnt out wrecks… I knew… something about me had changed forever. I could feel everything. And so, I felt nothing. Four years later… I came back to that town. I don’t know where I had been, or what I was doing since then. I was only ten that night. And that night - it was my first memory.

(End of Entries)

The figure chuckled in dry amusement and closed the book, returning it to its shelf.

"Memories are fickle things. This book cannot help you. You'll remember only what she wants you to."

The figure willed itself elsewhere, and stepped through the door into the fields of windmills.