Run
A story by F. W. B. Duck
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He woke up face down in the dust, staring at his outstretched left hand which twitched as he watched it, seemingly of its own accord. He rolled onto his back, groaning as forgotten pains sprang into life all over his body, and a thumping headache firmly settled itself into his temples. A single shaft of light streamed down from a crack in the rocks above, straight into his eyes, and deepened his already sickeningly painful headache.
Letting out an involuntary groan, he sat up and surveyed his surroundings, making sure his eyes let in as little light as possible to try and alleviate the pounding in his skull. He saw that he was sitting in a small cave with no discernible entrance or exit, the only break in the surrounding rock provided by the crack up above through which the light poured. Absentmindedly he brushed the dust off his fingers as his brow furrowed. How did I get in here? he thought, scratching the back of his head as he searched his mind for the answer.
Instantly, however, he realised that there was no point in searching; he had no memories. At all. His general knowledge of how the world worked remained, but as far as personal memories went, there was only one: waking up face down in the dust. He had no name, no family, no home. He realised that he could guess his age, however, and stood up to examine his body, working out from its size and proportion that he had just entered adulthood.
In doing so he looked down at his hands, which seemed strange to him, for he didn’t recognise them as his own, and something in the dust on the floor caught his eye, the only other noticeable feature of the cave apart from the crack. Writing. A single word.
Run.
His breath caught in his throat and then returned quickly and lightly, heart rate accelerating as his eyes darted around the cave, head turning to examine every crack and crevice in the rock.
Run from what? he thought desperately. The cave seemed to darken as he stopped looking, trying to calm himself down. There was nothing in there with him; he would have seen it. He stood facing away from the crack in the roof, staring at the shadow he cast onto the floor. The shadow didn’t share his panic or his nervousness, wasn’t scared of anything as he was; a calming influence on him in that moment. Then it moved.
His shadow elongated across the floor and then climbed up the opposite wall, growing to over twice his height as its head came nearly to the roof.
Run from my own shadow? he despaired, as a low buzz filled his ears from behind, making him once more aware of the painful throb in his head. The shadow stopped growing as the buzzing grew louder behind him. A shiver ran up the back of his neck, and some primal urge within him made him tear his eyes away from the shadow and he turned... and was instantly blinded by a piercing white light.
He yelped as he covered his face with his arm and turned to the side, but the image of what he had seen stayed imprinted on his eyelids, even from just a split-second glance. A single point of white light was floating in front of him, impossibly small yet blindingly bright, surrounded by a swirling vortex of thick, black smoke that spewed tendrils out all over the cave, tendrils that dissipated if they strayed too far from the central core that housed the light.
He thought back to his moving shadow. The light, he thought, it must have dropped from the roof.
A small tendril of smoke drifted under his arm and into his line of sight, lightly brushing his wrist and causing the surrounding skin to feel unbearably cold, as if the area it had touched had been covered in ice.
Suddenly the tendril flexed with incredible speed, wrapping itself around his wrist, the seemingly insubstantial smoke biting into his skin like rope as he gasped in wordless pain. The thing had no eyes, so he had no real way of telling where it was looking, but as soon as the tendril tensed around his wrist, he felt its focus shift entirely onto him.
A second tendril shot out and wrapped itself around his chest, crushing the breath out of him, and before he could react two more had tied his legs together. With his free hand, he tried to pull them off, but they flowed around it as it passed through them before reforming to bind him tightly again.
A final trail of smoke grasped his arm, and he was trapped, unable to move, as he was lifted off his feet, and the point of light began slowly drifting towards him. He struggled, but there was nothing he could do, nowhere he could run to.
How could I have run? he thought despairingly, as the point of light reached him, as the black smoke tightened all over his body, as the light seemed to pass straight through his chest... and he remembered.
Not everything, but flashes of his life came back to him all at once, too fast to make out more than minor details; running through small streets with other people he didn’t recognise, play sword fighting with his friends using practice swords, his sister... his sister. Of everything, of all the memories that came back to him in that one instant, she featured the most, and the one emotion he felt most strongly was a deep affection for her. He remembered one moment more vividly than the rest; him walking into their kitchen in their family home, and warmly greeting her with smiles and hugs. It wasn’t much, but that memory meant everything to him; that memory was him. In that moment, all he had to define himself was his closeness to his sister. Her face was the last thing he saw before black smoke obscured his vision and he fell.
He didn’t remember hitting the floor, but when he woke up, once more face down in the dust and once more facing his outstretched left hand, his headache had returned with an even more potent throb, this time emanating from the right side of his skull, the side that was pressed against the floor. He groaned as he rolled over and once more pain shot through his body, but this time, as he sat upright, at least he remembered. He remembered his sister. Memories of friends and swords and... some other things he could not quite remember were fading, alarmingly quickly, but not his sister. She stayed shining in the forefront of his mind as he stood up, looking around the cave. The only features of his surroundings remained the same; a crack in the rock above and the word Run in the dust on the floor.
He walked over and positioned himself so that he was directly underneath the crack and arched his neck backwards, to try and work out where that... thing had come from, but all he could see was a blinding light that only served to worsen his headache.
Feeling angry and somewhat dejected, he turned his gaze away from the crack and it came to rest on the word. Run. How? he thought, anger building. How am I supposed to run from that? And to where? Run. The word mocked him, laughed at him from the floor in the sheer pointlessness of its request. In a fit of anger, he stormed over to it and kicked at the floor, rendering the word unreadable, but despite the small sense of personal satisfaction he now felt, this had not achieved anything practical; anger still wracked his body and mind, and he could still see no way out of the cave.
But if that thing made him remember, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to run anymore. He wanted to remember, he needed to, for most of the memories had all but faded. Mercifully his sister’s face stayed fresh in his mind, brown hair flowing in an unknown wind and... or was it blonde hair? His face scrunched up in thought. While the affection he felt for her remained, her face was slipping. Slowly, but as the seconds lengthened into minutes, he retained less and less of her face until only a basic outline remained, and his sister was unrecognisable as an individual. As anger transformed into panic, he hurried back over to the crack and stared up into it. No sign of black smoke.
“Come on.” He muttered to no one in particular, wishing the point of light to descend and make him remember again.
“Come on.” He muttered, louder this time, as he walked back over to the crack.
“Come on come on COME ON!” He shouted up, hoping that the thing would descend and make him remember... what? A person, he knew that, a person he loved, but who? He clutched his hair and turned away, racking his brains as he tried desperately to remember, when his shadow moved, stretching away from him as the light changed position behind him.
He span around as black smoke poured into the cave through the crack, followed by a single point of light in a core of smoke so thick it almost seemed solid, black fingers creeping their way across the roof of the cave, searching.
“Come on.” He ushered again, standing directly underneath it. Slowly it dropped towards him, so slowly he could hardly bear it. The tendrils extended further, closer to him, still searching.
“Come on.” He said, louder, as an arm of smoke grabbed his elbow and once more he felt the focus shift onto him. More tendrils shot out, snaking around his entire body and rendering him incapable of moving once again, lifting him off his feet as the point of light once more passed into his chest, and once more he remembered his sister’s face. Brown hair, he noted, not blonde, and he almost felt like laughing, but then the other memories returned and something about them made him stop. His sister remained unchanged, but the people who ran through the streets with him were no longer indifferent as they had been before, but exuded hatred and anger with a ferocious passion. His friends that he playfully fought with swords were no longer just playing, being far too aggressive to be friends, surely? The final memory, the defining memory of him greeting his sister in the kitchen returned too, only now there were no smiles, the hug was awkward and...he had a knife in his hand. Confusion swirled throughout him as black smoke rose up around him, obscuring his sister and the kitchen and the knife, and he fell to the floor.
He woke with a start, gasping for air, rolling onto his back and clutching his chest, breaths heavy and rasping. Those memories had not been good ones, of that he was sure, but his affection for his sister remained, the only thing that he had now to hold on to. But the knife... he thought. Why had he had the knife?
He sat up, breaths levelling out and heart rate slowing as he looked around. Still in the cave, still with the crack above, still with the word Run on the floor. He frowned in confusion. Hadn’t he ruined that with his foot? He got up and walked over to it cautiously, as one would approach a wounded beast, confusion and curiosity making the pains almost unnoticeable, but it was just the same as it had always been; three letters drawn into the dust, slightly lopsided as though they had been written hurriedly, but otherwise undisturbed by anything, let alone his foot.
With his memories as they were, he couldn’t really be certain of anything, but he was almost certain that he had kicked it, rendering it unreadable. He massaged his temples in an attempt to relieve his ever present headache as he stared back up at the crack in the rock, wondering... if that thing could get in, then maybe, just maybe, he could get out. The walls were by no means flat, and were covered in potential hand and footholds that he could use to get up there, but it was a question of if he was physically able to do so. From what he could tell, he seemed fairly fit and healthy, but he wasn’t sure if his arms could sustain his bodyweight for a prolonged period of time; as far he remembered, they never had.
Only one way to find out, he thought, stepping over to the nearest wall and placing both hands and his right foot in crevices in the rock, preparing to lift his body so that his left foot would could be placed on a small ledge that currently lay just above his knees. He tensed his muscles and heaved himself upward with surprising ease, slotting his left foot onto the ledge without really straining himself at all. This isn’t so hard, he grinned, as he lifted himself up another six inches or so, and continued up the wall in this fashion, closing on the crack all the time.
When he was about halfway up, his shadow on the rock directly in front of him began to move, pivoting around his body from a point somewhere above and behind him. Straining his neck, he turned and saw a point of light dropping from the crack, black smoke seeping its way into the cave, seeking for its prey, for him. He returned his focus to the wall, climbing with reinstated vigour. If I can get past it, he thought, if I can just get past it I can escape. Now that he was closer, he could see that the crack was easily large enough for him to get through, and at that moment he didn’t care what was on the other side, as long as it wasn’t...
Something unbearably cold snapped around his ankle, halting his progress instantly, and no matter how much he struggled and strained, there was no way he was ever going to overcome the sheer strength of the thing.
But I’m so close, he thought, as tendrils condensed around his chest. So close, as he was pulled off the wall and towards the core of the smoke once more...
Flashes came again, flashes of running, terrified, through tiny back streets, running from men that wanted to hurt him. Why? Flashes of people he once considered friends slashing at him with swords, not practice ones, real ones, using them as if they intended to hurt him. Why? Flashes of his sister, his sister, his sister. In all the bad memories, all the conflict against him and people trying to hurt him, his sister was always there, smiling and loving and... and then it changed. He remembered that day in the kitchen. That one definitive moment. He remembered entering the room filled with hate. Why hate? He remembered grabbing the knife. Why the knife? He remembered walking up to his sister, he remembered her tears. Don’t cry, he had said, he remembered now, I love you. I’m doing this to protect you. He remembered... black smoke obscured the memory and he fell, losing consciousness.
He sat up instantly when he awoke, breathing harder and more harshly than he ever thought he could, at the memory, the sheer horror of the memory of what he did, what he did to his sister... the thought of it caused him to roll over and empty his stomach all over the dusty floor, causing his throat to burn even more, and his lungs to almost stop working.
Gasping for breath, he stood up, panic well and truly set in now. Run, taunted the word on the floor. How? he thought, How am I supposed to run? Desperately he tried to remember the last time, how close he had come to escaping. How did I do that? he thought, pulling at his hair in a desperate attempt to remember. I got so close, but how?
Something cold grabbed his wrist.
“NO!” he screamed, wrenching his arm away, and this time actually succeeded in breaking the tendril of black smoke which dissipated before him and fell back into the core that surrounded the light. Its focus shifted towards him, black trails of smoke edging closer to him.
“What do you want from me?” He asked it. Silently, no reply given, tendrils shot out and pinned his arms to his sides. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” he screamed as black smoke wrapped itself around him from head to toe, and he was pulled towards the core and forced to remember... everything. He remembered the deep affection he had felt towards his sister, the love that had existed between them, the connection they had had... and then he remembered how it had felt to be betrayed. To find out she had been with that farm boy. To find out she had lied to him. She promised, he had thought, she promised she would stay away from him. He remembered the kitchen, and her tears, and his apology, and the knife... the sheer madness of the moment. I’m sorry, he thought.
He remembered running, after that. Running from people he had once called friends, stealing a sword from the blacksmiths, fighting the people he had grown up with. I’m sorry, he thought again. He remembered something hard hitting the back of his head, and then waking up in prison. He remembered his punishment; doomed to forget and remember, forget and remember for the rest of his life, the black smoke enforcing this upon him again and again and again. He remembered the last time that he had forgotten, and the time before that, and the time before, and he remembered how he had forgotten. Not black smoke, but a grey smoke that made him repeatedly forget everything, including its own existence so he was convinced there was only one, only black. The vortexes, they were called; grey to forget, black to remember.
He remembered trying to help his future self, trying to ensure that this never happened again, he remembered dropping to the floor, writing in the dust, writing a message to try and help, just a single word, that’s all he had time for.
He remembered the shame, the pain. I’m sorry, he sobbed to his sister, even though she could never hear him. I’m sorry, he sobbed to his family, even though they would never know he was. I’m sorry, he sobbed to himself, for enforcing this endless torture upon himself, I’m sorry he sobbed, as grey smoke billowed through the memories, burning them as though they never existed, and he fell, always falling, never hitting the floor.
He woke up face down in the dust, staring at his outstretched left hand which twitched as he watched it, seemingly of its own accord. He groaned as he rolled over and forgotten pains sprang back into life all over his body. He remembered nothing of how or why he had come to be in this place, he realised with a panicked start as he sat up; he had no memories at all; no name, no family, no home.
A single crack in the rock above let a single stream of light down through the dust-filled air and illuminated something on the floor in front of him; a disturbance in the settled dust and dirt.
A single word.
Run.
