#oneaday Day 664: Wasteland Diaries, Part 12

When I regained my senses, I was crouched on the floor, curled up in a ball, my hands clasped over the back of my head. My body was panicking. My heart was racing. Breathing was difficult. But I was alive.

All was silent in the area, so I tentatively looked up and saw what I expected — most of the building in ruins. This was becoming an all too familiar sight now, but it was still faintly horrifying every time it happened. I now had no doubt in my mind: the destruction everywhere was something to do with me. I was causing it. I didn’t understand this power that I had, but evidently using it I had left a trail of death and destruction across the world, with no memory of how it happened or even why.

Memories were starting to creep back, but any time I felt myself getting closer to the truth, something terrible like this happened again, and I was back to square one. Was this journey even worth it? If and when I ever found this “Evie” woman, would whatever dark force caused this chaos not just strike out and destroy her?

It didn’t bear thinking about. Although I still didn’t know why she was important, I felt a fondness in my heart for this woman when I thought of her. I guessed that she must have been the flame-haired woman I saw in the house, and also the little girl. And if they were both “her,” then that must mean that I’d known her for a long time. Perhaps she was–

I stopped myself thinking any further, not wanting to provoke the frightening sense of rage once again by probing too deep into the memories. Scavenging for supplies in the building hadn’t been too successful, so I couldn’t afford to waste more time. I decided that the time had come to move on.

I glanced at the map and decided to rejoin the main road. If I was where I thought I was, I was making good progress. But what would I find when I eventually got there?

After another hour or two of walking, my mind had fell into a trance, and I found myself veering off the road into dry, featureless fields of dead grass. Before long, I’d left the road far behind and was surrounded on all sides by almost identical scenery. But still I kept walking, with a strange sense of purpose. There was something I had to do.

As I’d been half-expecting, before long I saw the familiar sight of the house. To my surprise, though, it looked alive. It was surrounded by green grass and trees, which slowly faded into the yellow of the dead wilderness around it. But there, like a beacon, it stood as a defiant symbol that not everything had perished.

I broke into a run as I approached it. It was a familiar and welcome sight. I knew that I was letting my mental defences weaken, and that this strange, euphoric feeling I was experiencing right now would doubtless cause problems — but I didn’t care. Here was something I recognised, something I could latch onto, something which might have some answers.

Despite the fact it was intact and surrounded by life, the house itself was strangely quiet and empty. The door had been left ajar, so I had let myself in to take a look around — I figured the occupants probably weren’t something I needed to worry about.

This was definitely familiar. As in the dream, still fresh in my mind, this house felt like a “home away from home.” I had no memories of my actual home or my family, but this house had been important to me, I knew that much.

I walked through into the living room and examined the shelves thoughtfully. There were a range of unmarked, leather-bound books on them; I picked one up curiously and opened it.

It was a photograph album. The photographs looked like they’d been taken a good few years ago now, but I instantly recognised the people in them — the mother, father and little girl I’d seen in my most recent chaotic recollection.

I felt a twinge in the back of my mind, but grit my teeth and tried to remain in control. My grasp on reality held for the moment as I pored over the old photographs.

There was a young boy in many of these pictures, too. I wasn’t sure who he was, but he seemed on good terms with the little girl. He didn’t seem to be part of the family, though, for in many of the highly-posed family photographs scattered throughout the album, he was nowhere to be seen.

I replaced the album and picked up another from further along the shelf. I assumed that these had been filed in chronological order, so perhaps a later one would offer some more recent clues?

The first picture was instantly familiar from another repressed memory — the flame-haired woman. She looked as beautiful as I remembered, and her smile was enchanting. She looked much happier than when I had seen her in that memory, her head in her hands — crying? I couldn’t be sure — the chaos that ensued the last time I had remembered this had meant I had no idea if the memory went any further.

I felt strangely calm. I’d been uneasy since I started looking at the pictures, expecting the now-familiar rumbling, pain and destruction. But it had not come.

I continued to flip through these photographs, which looked quite recent. There were a few of the flame-haired woman with a man of a similar age. They looked happy together — I felt a pang of jealousy as I guessed that they were a couple from the way they stood together and looked at one another.

I glanced around the room to give my eyes a break from looking at the photographs and my gaze happened to catch an attractive oval mirror on one wall of the room. I gave a start as I noticed my own reflection.

I looked at myself, then down to the photographs, then back to the reflection again.

I blinked.

Underneath my unkempt hair; my dirty, scarred face; my unwashed, overgrown beard — the man in the mirror was, without doubt, the man in the photographs.