Spoiler! :
Waking
I awoke with a start, my head swimming and my mind thick with fog. I lay on dirty concrete, the filth getting on my clothes. But that wasn’t important. I didn’t know what I was doing; I didn’t know where I was.
I didn’t know who I was.
The ground shook with a thudding explosion and I was suddenly gripped with fear. What was going on? My mind whizzed with questions but I pushed them back. Survival first. I leapt to my feet and was hit with a wave of vertigo. I shook it off and looked at my surroundings. The sky was a blood red and screams pierced the still, hot air. Flames rose up in the air to my left so I decided right was the way to go.
The air was so thick that it was like running through soup. I couldn’t hear anything but the explosions and my heartbeat. I wasn’t sure if the screams had stopped, or were just drowned out. I looked over my shoulder as I ran and just ended up running into someone.
“What’s your name girl?” he asked. He was young, sixteen, seventeen maybe. How old was I?
“I –uh –I,” I stammered. Then another deep boom went off in the distance. The boy looked over my head, horror written across his expression.
“C’mon! We have to get out of here!” he grabbed my hand and began to tow me through the humid air.
“What’s going on?” I asked, shouting to be heard above the cacophony of screams and explosions. “Where are we?”
“It’s the end of the world,” the boy replied. “And we’re in a warzone.”
“That’s comforting,” I murmured. I didn’t know who I was, but at least my sarcasm was intact.
As we moved we saw other people running too. At first I was too scared to look back at what was behind but curiosity won me over and I stole a glance. The sky was decorated with flames and people seemed to float above the ground, wreaking havoc. It must’ve been the smoke because I could’ve sworn I saw wings.
The boy ran to a car and tried the handle, it wouldn’t open. He took a deep breath and punched his fist through the glass on the driver’s side. He reached around and unlocked the door.
“Get in,” he ordered. I obeyed without hesitation, slipping into the passenger side as he buckled himself into the driver’s seat.
“Can you drive?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted. “But now’s as good a time to learn as any.” He chuckled a little hysterically and quickly hotwired the car.
“You can’t drive but you can hotwire?” I asked disbelievingly.
“Judge me later,” he said, pulling the car away from the curb and onto the deserted road. “Now, I need to concentrate.” I tried to gaze out the window, but found the blurring houses and fearful people dizzying, so I stared down at my lap while I held on for dear life.
“You’re not a very good driver,” I observed as I peered back over my shoulder. The red sky was lit up in flashes as more explosives went off, destroying all the civilization that stood in its way. Who could do such a thing? Who were those floating people?
“Do you want to drive?” the boy asked through gritted teeth. He seemed to be struggling to keep control of the car. It looked like a great feat.
“Not particularly.”
“Then let me be. I’m Jason, my friends call me Jay,” he said, swerving the car manically. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. Jay laughed but when he realized I wasn’t, his smile faded.
“Serious? You don’t know?”
“I just woke up to explosions and I didn’t know what was happening. I’d only been conscious for a few minutes when I ran into you.”
“That must’ve been scary for you.” I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact.
“Why were those… things attacking us?” I asked.
“Wow, you really have lost your memory. Don’t you know? Those are angels. We’re at war with them.” Another explosion sounded in the background and a scream caught in my throat. “They don’t usually attack suburbia, away from the front line. This is bad.”
“You think?” I asked. “We’re at war with angels. I think that’s pretty bad. How could people do that? Angels are so pure and good.”
“Evidently not,” Jay replied. Outside the window, people lay bleeding in the gutter and children cried for their mothers. “What purity do you see in that? They started this war. They’re not our guardian angels anymore.” This spurred some defiance in me. Despite what I’d seen, I thought guardian angels were good. They had to be. He didn’t make evil; He made beauty. His creations had been corrupted and twisted but this was not His work. I closed my eyes to avoid the horrors beyond the window pane and slipped into sleep.
“Wake up, girl,” a voice called, a hand shook my shoulder and I started awake. Jay was still driving, though more confidently now. We were no longer in civilization, desert stretched out around us, barren and safe. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I muttered. The sky was no longer red. It was a deep black-blue, the shade of a fresh bruise, above the desert which was the same red-brown as dried blood.
“We need to give you a name until you remember your real one. ‘Girl’ isn’t a very good name,” Jay said matter-of-factly. I looked down at my grimy slept-in clothes for a clue. My plain white shirt and faded denim jeans didn’t give me any ideas so I looked around the car. From the mirror hung something that looked like a necklace; it was a cross surrounded by beads. It rang a bell but I couldn’t quite name it.
“That’s pretty,” I said.
“That’s a rosary. I know! I’ll call you Rose!” Jay seemed genuinely proud of his new name for me.
“Rose,” I whispered, rolling it around on my tongue. It was foreign in my mouth but I liked the sound. “Where are we going?”
“Well, Rose,” he proudly emphasized the name. “We’re heading to meet up with some friends.” I looked out the window and caught my reflection in the side mirror of the car. I had full, curvy lips, high cheekbones, pale skin and big, deep blue eyes framed with thick lashes. My hair was long, wavy and golden, I looked about seventeen. It was a shock, looking at myself. It was weird to not know what I looked like, too. It was like gazing at a stranger. I was a stranger to myself.
“Is that what I look like?” I gasped.
“Yeah, you’re not too bad,” Jay smiled. He had ink-black hair that was loose and effortless. He had gold-brown eyes, like caramel and his skin had a light tan. He also had a goofy, yet warm, smile. He was the only other person I knew now. He was, in a strange way, my world.
We came to a halt that night. The desert chill hit us quickly and we couldn’t let the car run, in case we ran out of fuel. So we sat there, shivering with visible clouds of breath. With nothing else to do, Jay told me about his brother, Adam. Adam lived with their father; he had since their parents had divorced. His father was a military officer and Jay believed that the man could do anything. “They’re probably at his base, probably left before the attack,” he told me. “Dad always warned us about being prepared. He said we never knew who could attack us, or what could happen. He was right. Nobody saw this coming.”
“I wonder if I have a family,” I said through chattering teeth. “I wonder if they’re alive… if they miss me.”
“Of course they miss you, Rose,” Jay said. “You’re an amazing person. Of course they miss you.”
“Thanks,” I said with a weak smile. But what if I had changed since losing my memory? What if I used to be a horrible person? After all, if I’d been loved, why had I been left, discarded, laying on the filthy concrete while the world went up in flames? I forced back the horrible thoughts and tried to distract myself. “It’s freezing,” I chattered.
“Here, I’ll warm you up,” Jay held out one arm and I huddled against him. I was in an uncomfortable position, the gear stick digging into me, but I was warm.
“Thanks,” I whispered a little sleepily.
“No problem,” Jay yawned. “We have to stick by one another, Rose. Because like it or not, we’re in this together now.”
“Together,” I agreed. I was pulled into the black waters of sleep and poured into a very strange dream.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded a faceless figure. I looked like myself, terrified and in my white shirt and jeans, but the disturbing thing was the wings that sprouted from my back. They were long and white with golden-tipped feathers. They were beautiful.
“You’re a traitor,” the faceless figure replied in a blurry, genderless voice. “You cannot be allowed to remain.”
“I’m not the traitor!” I snapped. “You are!”
“Any last words?” they asked tauntingly.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Go to Hell!” the figure reached out and tore off my wings and I fell, bleeding, screaming and cursing into the abyss.
I sat up abruptly. What a weird dream. It’s all this angel stuff. It was getting to me. I massaged my temples and looked at Jay, still asleep soundly. The desert was seeing signs of pre-dawn light but it was still early, so I leant back down on Jay and fell into a wondrously dreamless sleep.
“Are you hungry?” Jay asked.
“No,” I lied. Then as if on cue, my stomach growled loudly. Jay burst into laughter.
“Sounds like you are. My dear Rose, what am I going to do with you?” Jay chuckled. I like the way he said ‘my dear Rose’ as if I was as much his world as he was mine. He was all I knew, was I getting too attached? He grabbed a backpack from the back seat of the car and pulled out a packet of potato chips. He opened them and gave them to me.
“Do you have any more of these?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then we share.”
“Rose… I…” Jay trailed. I took a mouthful of chips and offered them to him, shaking the packet impatiently.
“Eat.”
“But…”
“Eat Jason,” I insisted. Jay sighed and grabbed a handful of chips for himself.
“For a girl with amnesia, you’re awfully stubborn,” he grumbled.
“I lost my memory, not my personality… I think…” I crunched the food thoughtfully. “What if I’m different to how I used to be? What if I become my old self again?”
“That’d be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”
“But what if you don’t like me? What if I don’t like me?”
“I can’t imagine anyone not liking you, Rose. Especially me.” I’d noticed that Jay liked to say the name he gave me. He liked calling me his Rose.
“If I remember…” I began.
“When you remember,” Jay corrected.
“Right, when I remember, I think I’ll keep the name Rose.”
“Really?” Jay sounded genuinely touched.
“Yeah, it’s gotten so I can’t imagine being called anything else. It’s become my name. I’ve become Rose.”
“‘A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’” Jay quoted. I smiled. We sat there, eating snacks and talking. It was as if the world wasn’t crumbling around us.
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