Waking Up

I am surrounded by darkness with no escape in sight. Unseen shapes flit through the emptiness, surrounding me, taunting me. They want to hurt me, that much I can tell.

I squeeze myself in their center as I try to ignore their taunting cries: 'no escape, no escape, no escape...'

After an indeterminate amount of time, I hear the voices. Two of them, arguing about something I can't make out. I stand up, sending the demons around me into a frenzy. I run towards the voices.

"Help me," I scream as I run after the voices. Don't leave me here. The demons behind me give chase.

Slowly, the voices begin to fade.

"No, no! Don't leave me here! Please!" Unfortunately, they take no note of me and disappear. I stumble and fall, and in the blink of an eye, my demons are upon me. Unable to take it, I fall into a deeper darkness as my mind goes to sleep.

Time passes. Slowly, I find myself floating under a sea of darkness. Once again, I can hear voices above me. Some part of me is drawn toward the voices. Soon, I can hear what they are saying.

"I think he's waking up," a male voice says.

"Should we wake his mum?" a female asks.

"Nah. Let her sleep. She needs it. Besides, we don't know for sure if he's going to wake up."

"You're right. It'd be a miracle if he did. I have no idea how anyone could have survived that. I wouldn't be surprised if he remains in a coma for the rest of his life. I wonder how it happened."

As the voices speak, I feel myself slowly rising out of the darkness. Soon, I stop rising.

I lie there unmoving as time slowly passes by, lost in thoughts of nothingness as I spin round and round in the void. Then, once again, I find myself rising, stirred by voices once more. This time, I don't stop, and finally, I break through the darkness. My eyes flutter open, and a bright, painful light pierces them. I shut my eyes quickly as tears begin to leak from the corners of my eyes. How could light be so painful?

It takes a moment for my groggy mind to notice that the room has suddenly gone quiet.

"Ian?" a voice says tentatively.

I try once again to open my eyes, but this time I take care to do it slowly. The light is still painful, making me feel as though my eyeballs are slowly burning, but still more bearable than before.

"Call the doctor," says the male voice, moving closer to me.

I turn my head and see a man of about thirty wearing a nurse's uniform coming towards me.

"Hello, Ian," he speaks in a soothing voice, "I'm Richard. I know you must be feeling a bit confused right now, but…"

I tune out the man as I turn my head to see more of the room. It takes quite a bit too long for me to realize that I am in a hospital ward. I try to sit up, and a sharp pain shoots up from my spine to the back of my head.

"Take it easy," says Richard as he gently but firmly forces me back down.

"What happened...?" I ask in a gravelly voice. My throat feels dry, and the air seems to make it worse.

I cough, and pain pulses from the back of my head as I do so. "Water?" I barely manage to ask.

Richard nods, seeming to understand what I'm going through. He leaves the room and returns with a glass of water. He gives it to me after cautioning me against guzzling it. I drink the water in a series of small sips, feeling much better once I am done.

The doctor enters the room not long after with a female nurse by his side. They begin to speak, but I ignore them, content to just close my eyes and ignore the ache at the back of my head. Soon, I drift off to deep sleep.

For a long period of time, I drift in and out of sleep. Once I spot my mum sitting beside me, eyes red as if she'd been crying but with a slight smile on her face. Finally, I suddenly find myself awake and with no desire to go back to sleep. For some moments, I lie still, feeling as though I am floating when all of a sudden I hear a ping.

I slowly open my eyes and turn my head. I see the blurry figure of a girl, her fingers flying swiftly across a phone in her hand. Slowly she comes into focus, and I recognize her. My sister, Emily.

"Hey, sleepy head," she says, not bothering to look up.

"You didn't go to school?" is the only thing I can think to say.

She snorts. "Why would I?"

"Why won't you?" I ask indignantly.

She finally looks up, an eyebrow raised and a perplexed expression on her face. "Today's Saturday."

I blink as what she says sinks in. "Oh."

She shakes her head slightly, a small smirk on her face, and goes back to using her phone. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that she was messing with me.

I try to sit up, but my effort is impeded by a sharp pain at the back of my head. I hiss in pain and slowly lower myself back to the bed.

"Are you okay? Should I call the doctor?" Emily asks, concerned.

"I'm fine," I say as the pain recedes. "How exactly did I get here?"

A conspicuous silence follows my question. I turn to see my sister looking at me curiously. "What?" I ask. Suddenly a thought pops into my head. "Did they ask you not to tell me?"

She shakes her head. "They didn't ask me not to tell you; it's just that no one knows how you got injured. Even the police don't know. They were hoping you'd be able to tell them what happened when you woke up. They managed to arrest the shooter, though. They think he might have done something to cause your accident, but so far, all the evidence shows that he was far, far away from you when you got injured. And there was no sign of anyone else at the scene of your injury."

Shooter? Police? What the heck is she talking about?

Emily notices my confused expression and a frown mars her otherwise calm face. "Don't you remember? You went to Cassandra's party. A man holding a gun appeared." She studies my expression. "You don't remember?"

I grow more and more confused the more she speaks. "What on earth are you talking about?" My head was beginning to hurt.

What did she mean by Cassandra's party? Why would Cassandra invite me to a party? It wasn't like I was popular or anything. And what was this about a shooter? Did I get shot in the head?

"Wow. You banged your head pretty hard, didn't you?"

"I banged my head? On what? Was I shot?" The ache in my head is getting worse. My eyes close involuntarily as I try to quell the pain.

"Ian, are you okay?" asks Emily, seeming to notice my state. "I think you should get some rest."

"Yeah," I say, my breathing ragged. "Maybe I should…"

I do my best to keep still, and soon I am overtaken by sleep.

Sometime later, in that strange place between sleep and being awake, I hear my mum talking to a man.

"He can't remember anything! That's bad, right?"

"Take it easy, ma'am. It's only to be expected. He'll most likely get his memory back. Just give him time, okay? His case isn't too uncommon for people who get injuries like his."

"Okay. If you say so."

"Good. Now…" I don't hear anything else as I sink deeper into sleep.