//------------------------------// // World Gone Wrong // Story: Amnesia: To Err // by JLB //------------------------------// ”Beware lest you lose your substance by grasping at the shadow.” - A. The whole world had gone wrong. His chest was about to burst, the intricate web of veins and organs engulfed in a pure radiance of unstoppable dissolution. His lungs were aflame, threatening to burn the flesh and rip the coat. He fled, he fled as far as he could, as far as his worthless being would carry him. His mind was like a pincushion - soft, stabbed with needles. He coughed out blood as his muscles strained, frictional between the unstoppable force that tore him from inside and the immovable object of the outside reality. His limbs felt like they were being turned inside and out, stretched and shrunk again, and again. Sweat matted his coat and mane, clinging to his body like a new layer of skin, as if to replace the one that burned and rippled, but would not come off. It could no longer be mended. It was wrong. “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” he kept hearing it in his head. A broken, dissonant, screeching voice yelled the word at him. It was wrong. He thought it silenced, but still it screamed. Half a dozen blood-curdling, existence-defying voices, laughed at him in their wails… They were wrong. Errors, misactions, wrongdoings, they did not belong. They could not. He only did what he had to, and now he no longer had a place there, where everything was wrong. The thumping of blood in his ears obscured the sounds that chased him out of his own broken existence. Darkness dawned on his vision; his legs shook spasmodically. With a crude exhale, he gave up, his head meeting surface. He was not wrong: he could not be. If he was, his whole reality would not take it. Not a matter of sanity or pride anymore - existence itself would have fallen apart if what he did was wrong. But he could no longer fight. He felt his body giving way to gleaming thoughtlessness. So calming before. So terrifying now. He had no other choice but to embrace it. It was wrong. Grey and dead, it devoured all thought and matter, erasing that which once was. And it had come for him. - De… tec… tive? --- “De… tec… tive…” A gasp and a stifled shriek brought him to consciousness. Still in panic, he sprang up, tumbling onto the wooden floor. His head and legs ached from the impact, though perhaps for the better - actual pain washed over waves of phantom pain, bringing at least some clarity back. He attempted to open his eyes and quickly regretted that decision - not only was the dimly lit room too bright for his eyes, but absolutely everything was spinning. With strained breath, he helped himself up, supported by what seemed to be a bed, at least judging by the texture and the cold iron frame. He made haphazard guesses, a dozen at a time, swirling in the dull tornado of his mind. Now standing up, he turned away from the light and tried to open his eyes again. This time it was much more of a success - fighting off the dizziness, he had managed to keep them open. That way he finally saw what he fell from, and indeed, it was a bed. Not a normal bed, though - a hospital bed. A blanket was covering it, but not fully, as evidently he had knocked some of it off in his waking up. Letting out a muffled grunt, he leaned on the small chest that stood next to the bed, a wave of weakness briefly taking over his body. He had to think. Thinking, however, was difficult - thoughts crept and crawled like roaches in a room where the lights suddenly went on. “Hospital bed… No equipment nearby, though. Room’s far too big to be a hospital room, no, definitely not a hospital… wooden floors, high ceiling, the bed placement is off, the walls are far too far off. Where am I?” He looked around, shielding his eyes this time, trying to scan the room for more. It was a pretty big one - perhaps even a whole building. Around him, walls were stacked with bookshelves, all of them full of books - dusty books, clearly not well taken care of in the past couple of months or so. The dim light came through the blurry windows, coming down on the floor in sharp rays. “If not a hospital, then what? I’m feeling like death, there’s that, would make sense for me to be in one. Head’s like mashed potatoes. Something has got to be wrong. Where is everything?.. ” A stairwell to the left lead to another floor - probably the private quarters, most likely the librarian’s, whose desk was the only other item of furniture in the room, his bed aside. It was tumbled over near the entrance and covered in ink, an inkwell’s remains visible not far from it. Finally, right behind him was a big featureless wooden bust with a dent and some darkened blood marks. He wondered what had to have hit it so hard as to leave a dent - not a big one, but still. “Has to be a library of some sort. Abandoned, though… clearly nobody’s visited in weeks. Dust everywhere, but not on the bed. Brought me in with it? Why take the bed, though? What is going on? And wh- “NOTHING IS WRONG” He nearly fell down, yelping in pain as a hot poker went right into his head, burning images into his eyes, but burning so bright he could not see them. Fortunately, it only lasted a couple of seconds and left him conscious. It also left him with a new unsettling discovery. He did not know who he was. --- A more thorough search of the floor he was on did not yield a lot of results. For starters, the entrance was blocked dead - he had no idea what could be outside that could be so hard on the door. It was not locked - there was no way, the lock was plain torn out - but it would not budge. “This is wrong. Makes no sense. Has to be like a huge rock behind it. Who needs me here so much? Why take the bed here? Was I taken from somewhere? Why is it so hard to think?..” The books were your generic tomes of history, old novels, schoolbooks and everything else you would find in a library. If there was anything they told him, it was that he knew how to find a book switch (the book would need to look like the pages are glued together and feel more solid to the touch), of which there were none. He also knew how to find hidden compartments in walls - in fact, there actually was one, near the stairwell, though empty at that. The chest near his bed was not much of a discovery, either, though it also indirectly told him that he was a unicorn - a reflex made him telekinetically shake the thing to check if it was rigged to blow or do anything of the like. It was completely empty, but at least now he knew why exactly his head was aching that hard, owing to the extension. “Maybe it was something else. I can’t be in good health, whatever caused the amnesia had to have happened a short while ago. Head’s hurting like I hit it recently… repeatedly… and hard… Picked me up roughed, carried to an abandoned library, then set up a bed?” Finally, a wardrobe in a darker part of the library held a lot of dust and some clothes - relatively clean clothes, too. The dust on them was fresh, the dust never had the time to clog all the spaces where the threads connected. To be precise, it was a dark brown sleeveless stitched vest with several cuts on it. Proper and sturdy, it looked like a part of a uniform. It was only logical that he was the owner, as it could not have been in the wardrobe for long. An added argument was that the thought about the uniform made pictures sear before his eyes yet again. Looking at it hurt his head, bringing in another wave of dizziness. The assumption was cemented. “And then what, blocked the entrance? Unless they’re really good ports and just got me through like that, but that’s unlikely… ” Having shaken the dust off and done a check-up on important or dangerous items, finally putting it on after that fruitless effort, he also realized one other thing - a basic, one would think, but something that he had glanced over in the spur of the moment - he was brown. Light brown. It would have been funny if his aching head would allow him to think that. “Whatever the case, they’ve left now. Or they’re really silent. Actually…” - Hello? Anyone there? No response. In frankness, he should have done that when he just woke up, but the more investigative part of his mind evidently had a tendency of overlooking obvious things. - Anyone brought me here, by any chance? No? Just a faint echo, part in the building and part in his head, aching off his skull. At least now it was clear that this floor and the section above were all there was to the library. The echo would have been at least slightly different if there were more rooms. “Doesn't say much yet. May still be someone upstairs. Just be cautious. This isn't good... not even the best case scenario.” That had to be it for the ground floor. Having checked one last time and found out that there was nothing hidden in the bed linens or the pillow, he headed upwards, cautiously knocking on the sides and steps every now and then, using a particularly big book from one of the shelves. That was to identify if there was anything else hidden in the walls, or if the steps were faulty. It floated in the air, surrounded by a light bluish-white aura. Alas, no danger was to be found, as on the upper floor he only found a huge open window, a balcony entrance, a proper bed and a couple more bookshelves. Additionally there was a gaping void near the bed - it was clear that a table stood there before, it even left marks in the dust, but rather recently went missing. Violently so, judging by the dents on the railing right next to where it stood. It seemed that he had just missed the action. The balcony entrance showed even more signs of things having gone wrong - it was boarded up, from the outside, no less. The glass looked shattered and the door was not in the best of conditions - going through any of that was not an option, he was not even sure if he could bash through it all with what little strength he had. On the other side, the big window looked rather shoddy - like it was, with great effort, closed after something had probably crashed into it. Its frame seemed barely intact, and it appeared like it would swing open at a light touch. He looked around once more to see if he had missed anything. The shelves were as dull as the ones downstairs - less book-filled but lacking anything that you could not find on the lower floor. The bed was a normal kingsize with a rather large woven pet basket next to it. Dust was, as before, in full reign. Having checked everything and opened the drawers by the bed only to find a supply of quills and paper, he had concluded that nothing else was to be found. - Alright then, I’m leaving. Anyone want to show themselves, they do it now, - he said, fully realizing that he was talking to himself. A prod of a hoof sent the dusty, blurry window creaking open, and brought about something very unpleasant. Something very wrong. Behind the window, there was only greyness. Like the thickest fog, the plainest wall imaginable, but even more grey than that. It did not feel right. There was no wind, either. Absolutely no motions of air. Like if outside there was but a coat of grey paint, only paint would have been more… real? It was very, very, very wrong. That was not all - something had started to change with it. His vision had begun to swirl and blur. A small pattern of colors he could not quite describe emerged. It was not. “NOTHING” He yelled out in pain as mind refused to process what he was seeing, it was “IS” wrong “WRONG?” There was no more breath left in his lungs, he only stared ahead, trying to remain conscious. - Who DO YOU THInk we are we are ARE? He could not see anymore, he just felt. His lungs burned, his legs folded onto themselves. A gust of distorted wind blew right into his face. A ramming force hit him in the chest and sent him flying on the other floor. - why YOU who are you? He could see, his sight spinning and screaming. He just did not want to see what he saw. The empty noise he woke up with in his head began to take over again. - speak say TELL ME who speak SENT? - WHO? The memories burned bright again, a kaleidoscope of visions that hurt to think of. He could not see them. Even if he wanted to. “Nothing is wrong.” He was slipping again to thoughtlessness. The world went dark, not that he could notice. He only saw an Error. “Fixed everything.” --- The road was long and hard. The distant lights of the small town were a sight for sore eyes - and the eyes were sore enough, as the spores and the stinging weeds, omnipresent in the blasted forest, were all too eager to stick and swing at him. “Where…” It was getting hard to breathe. Watching the shapes of the small houses in the distance grow negligibly with each step, he was no longer sure if he felt sick because of the ridiculously bright colors on them or because of the trip through the forest that he had to take. Some shortcut. It defied expectation, that was for sure. “...are they?..” He became convinced that something was definitely wrong. It was as if his lungs were filled with slime, causing him to cough violently. While it probably was not a lethal infection, it was an infection nonetheless, it had to be. He lifted a letter from the bag and ran through the contents again. Then, he tore it to shreds. The same fate awaited a number of other papers. He only left photographs. “They’re… alright…” A small cottage on a hill, with some livestock kept nearby, was the closest. He stopped for a second in realization, and a pained sigh of relief left him. As much as the damned infection was becoming a problem, it was going to pay dividends in the end. He no longer had to worry about integration. His only immediate worries were getting to the door and not being contagious. That would not be very courteous to his future host. “…They’re fixed now.” --- He felt horrible. That was a surprise. He did not expect to feel anything at all. As his mind swirled, turning into a blank abyss, he simply conceded to the fact that it was the end of him. It was plain and simple - his mind was unraveling. Violently thrown on the floor, he was also probably subject to more than a few injures, some of them possibly fatal. But here he was, lying on his back, feeling the sticky wooden floor with his aching, yet wholly intact bones. “Possibly a death dream. Yes, most likely. Not particularly flashy, but I suppose I have my subconscious to fault for that.” As his thoughts slowly collided one into another and formed something that could be called a train of thought, he was reminded of what left him like this. That memory shot right through his head and made him jump up, the pain ignored, and open his eyes wide. - What?.. - he panted, recoiling from the horrible thought. The comment, however, was also applicable to the place he found himself in. It was still the library, yes, but it did not look like it did when… that happened. It did not look abandoned. The lamps that hung dead on the walls before now shone brightly, giving the place a warmer, more welcoming feeling - too bad his coat was still all but electrified from what he suffered. There was no dust laying in layers on every object in the library, either - granted, it being a library, a few books were not sparkling new, but nonetheless the difference was glaring. Rain could be heard banging on the walls - he even thought he heard thunder. Lastly, there was no hospital bed or chest standing in the middle of it. “No, not a death dream. Too stable. Too consistent. My subconscious can’t be that frigid. What then? Was it something… it did?” The thought of the encounter froze him up once again. It took good old fake comfort talk to get his brain to function again. “It’s left. Nothing is wrong. Everything’s safe, for now. If it was still here, I’d be dead. It didn’t kill me then, either. I’ll be fine. Back to looking. Think again.” Fighting through the static terror of the majority of his thoughts, he had managed to catch onto the fact the air was fresh, unlike before. There was a strange smell, though. He successfully looked around and found the source - the same old table from before, not too far from him, still tumbled over, but with fresh ink on it. Only that was not the main discovery he made as he turned around. - Ah, shit. He was standing in a pool of blood. He woke up in it, in fact. Drenched in blood he was, and it steadily dripped down on the floor, back to the pool. And yet he did not feel like someone who had lost that much blood. A splitting headache, a strange tingling in the lungs and a high-pitched noise in his ears - that was all present, yes, but having bled that much would have at least made everything go triple in his eyes. And he would not be able to stand up for that long. Lastly, he had no wounds that would bleed, not that much. An impact like this would have resulted in inner hemorrhaging, sure, but even that was evidently not the case. “It’s fresh. Hasn’t darkened yet. Smells fresh, too… this is sick.” He looked behind himself, at the door. - Ah, shit. The blood was not confined to the pool he stood in. It covered nearly all of the entrance, then slipped into a rich trail that lead to the pool - and then there were prints that lead to the stairwell and up to the other floor. “I remember ending up on the floor here. Not the door. Besides… that’s not what my blood smells like.” He paused for a second, eyeing the bloody shape on the door. “Why the hell do I know what my blood smells like?” Shaking his head, he fought off the sickness in his stomach and stepped out of the pool. That was also when he noted that the bust, which, as he had seen before, spotted a dent and old blood marks, now had fresh ones instead, either covering or - improbably - replacing the old ones. He sniffed again. “Same blood. Not mine. Got lucky, I guess… Could have hit it. Thing sure keeps getting hit a lot in recent times.” He made a couple of steps up the stairs, subconsciously knocking on each step with another random book he picked up and leaving a second trail of bloodied hoofprints next to the one already laid out for him in red. It could not escape the eye that the ones he left were nearly identical to the other ones, which were still fresh. While hoof size was more of a superfluous clue, it was rather unsettling. That was with his definition of “unsettling” having taken a rather big new high that day, too. The bright side to that was that he still understood the concept of “unsettling”, his amnesia only seeming to cover personal memories. At least that was the assumption. “At least the stairs are still safe.” That was reassuring, but not as much as he would hope. The upper floor was similarly renovated, for lack of a better word. The rails, however, were still damaged, and… “No, no, no, no, not again.” - Oh, fuck, don’t look, - he ordered himself. The window from before was flung open, and, same as before, did not let through any air - despite the storm clearly raging somewhere beyond the walls. The caricature of an outside was still completely grey. He neglected to notice that before, he did not want to think of it, but all the windows were still very much just like that. Now, though, he knew what would happen if he looked, or even thought of getting out through them. “I’m trapped.” A single brief look, however, was enough to make him hear the voice. It was faint, brief, but enough to make his skin freeze and crawl. The same dissonant, impossible voice that screamed, muttered and whispered broken, jumbled phrases. The same voice that was just wrong. - WHO you why WHO ouT? - Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up, - he panted, the headache taking a rise. He could not let it come through again. With what could pass for blunt force, he made himself stop thinking about it and concentrate on what he was doing. “Follow the trail. Nothing is wrong. You’re close. You’re doing okay.” One titanic effort later, his head turned and his eyes slowly rose up to see where the trail ended. The prints were not very solid there, the blood was mashed all over the floor, and ended near one of the bookshelves. On one of them, he found something that actually made it possible for him to move. “Yes.” A blood-stained, slightly torn saddlebag. It was his. He knew it. He was so close now. - WHO? Below, a sound that defied explanation non-echoed through the room. He was close now. He knew it. It did not want him to know. - you WHY? There was no time. He made the bag nearly pounce to him with a rough telekinetic pull, and quickly shuffled through the innards, doing his best to ignore the fact that the sound was getting louder and closer. - Where is it… where is it?.. With a raspy, panicked cough, he realized that what he was looking for was not going to be there. He had no idea what exactly that was, but he knew what happened to it. Now he was doomed. - whh wh shreds hw who who whahaha haha ha TORE His eyes no longer even blinked. That was it. - whhaha who do you HAHAHAHA who THINK WHO I AM think why? - I don’t have what you want, - he stated, his voice empty and bland, - I tore it to shreds. - WHO? The voice was so close now, it was right behind him. He didn’t want to know that it ever existed. - WHO? His head twitched. His jaw was shaking. His mouth could barely open. With effort, he looked down and stared at what was in the saddlebag. - WHO? His eyes widened. - PI Frame Fixer, “Fixer Offices”, stallion, unicorn, ex-DI in the LPPD, above average service record, resigned by choice, no living family members, not married, twenty six years old. The voice screamed in a distorted, incomprehensible rage. In the same broken pattern, he heard sounds of a struggle. Still, he just stared down at the documents inside his bag. Through the mind-twisting filters and sounds, there was a sound of something wooden breaking. Then, a loud thud. Then another. More screaming, yelling. A pained gasp, a cough. A creak of the door. - See? That’s who I am. That was not him talking. But then, it was. - I fix things that are wrong. He finally fell face down, with the rustling of the papers being the last sound he heard before the intolerable headache and the sheer mental strain finally took over. For once, a peaceful sound.