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CHAPTER 4
Who Are You
The blaring of an alarm woke me and I stretched out across my pillow. My heavy arm slammed down
on the clock to silence it, returning my home to its quite peacefulness. I lifted the covers, my body
protesting as I groaned. My head pounded, my memory of the night before was
fuzzy
.
I sat up in bed, feeling like a ton of bricks had collapsed onto my head. The faint smell of coffee crept
into my senses and I wondered whether I had fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes. A haze of
confusion filled my mind as if a part of my memory had been stolen. As I recalled the events of
yesterday, I always stopped short at one point. It was like my memory was a broken disc that
continually skipped at the same place. No matter how hard I tried to remember that missing puzzle
piece, it was useless. It was gone and there was nothing I could do. But I could not let it go. It felt
important, as if I had forgotten that I had found something special, something that meant the world
to me. I remembered only going to work yesterday morning and returning that evening. My head
pulsed painfully with the effort of thinking.
As I gazed around the room, my head whirred with a strange sensation and my eyes mindlessly
wandered, unfocused and distant. An unusual earthy scent masked the room, an unfamiliar one.
Dragging my feet across the soft carpet of my house, I entered my bathroom and stared at my
reflection. The man who looked back at me was a dishevelled mess. My clothes looked unclean, red
dirt splattered onto my black jeans and jacket and my jet-black hair sticking up in all the wrong
angles. I knew I was messy, but I was not
that
messy. Quickly, I stepped into the shower and under
the steaming stream of hot water, I closed my eyes. I traced back the events of yesterday in more
detail this time. Again and again, there was a roadblock in my memory levery time that I tried to
remember that one thing. Something so significant that would be unforgettable, seemed to be long
forgotten. I Woke up. Went to work. Came home. Then what? I must be losing my mind.
I hopped out of the shower and examined my clothes again.
Seriously,
I thought to myself,
how did
my clothes become so dirty? What happened?
I dusted off the dirt from my jacket, and leant down to
pick up my beaten up backpack from the floor of my bedroom and return it to its hook. As I picked it
up, I saw the edge of what looked like a piece of paper sticking out of the front pocket. I reached
inside and pulled the object out. It was a faded photo, torn at the edges, of what appeared to be a
picture of a boy and a girl with his arms around the girl’s shoulders. Looking closer, I saw that it was
me, but I wondered who the girl was. She had blonde hair that looked like the colour of honey. High