By Another Name (Editing)

Phoenix

Dedicated to my friend and proofreader Nikki

When I woke I was lying on my back on an invisible platform, surrounded by white mist. Groggily I sat up. What had happened? I vaguely remembered being hit in the face. Lightly I lifted my hand to my forehead. No bruising, nothing. I continued moving my hand backwards to run it through my hair, but was met with surprise when my hand hit long hair, but I wasn’t sure why... Shouldn’t it be short? I remember it being short before. But hair can’t grow that fast can it.

I needed to find the walls of this place. I got up and started to move forward. Or maybe it was backward, everywhere looked the same. There was no way to judge distance, one second the mist was right in front of me, another several miles away.

Suddenly I knew, that if I took one more step I'd reach the edge of the platform and topple over it into the mist and die when I hit the ground, or worse, the mist really went on forever and I'd be falling, falling through endless whiteness till the end of time.

I froze, slowly backed up, then sat down, taking up as little space as possible...

I don't know how long I spent staring into the mist, it could have been five minutes, five hours or five months. I tried counting heartbeats for a time, but I soon grew bored and started staring at the mist again...

I was forgetting things- I was sure of it- the memories of my life seeping out and joining the mist. Maybe that's what the mist is made of, stolen memories. The more it memories it gets, the more it can steal...

The mist was all that existed. It always had been, and always would; it never changes. And I was nothing but a short lived entity, dying in the same instant that I was am born, but the mist could make that instant last forever. All that time really is, is just a way of measuring change, and the mist makes sure there is none...

I felt... strange. Something was changing in my universe, and I didn't like it. Part of me which I had no name for felt like nothing I'd ever felt before. I needed a word for it.

Ache. That's a good word, it feels right. And that part of my body? Stomach. Yes.

My stomach ached.

And what about the rest of me. That needed names too. Hair, head, toes, ears, arms, knees, lips.

I felt the strange sensation of something coming up my throat and leaving my lips. I clamped them shut. I hadn't realised my ears were any use until that... noise was as good a word as any. Until that noise had left my lips. I frowned. There were other noises, I could remember, the one that came from my lips was called a 'giggle'. But nothing had existed before the mist... had it?

I closed my eyes and focused all my concentration on retrieving these memories.

I was with my parents, my mother, and my father. They love me. They would always keep me safe. But a part of me was panicking trying to leave this memory, and I didn't understand why. I was seven, and it was dark. We were in our ground floor apartment.

"Out of the window!" whispered my mother, her hair was a mess and we we're both in our pyjamas. My dad came in from their bedroom, holding a gun.

"What's happening?" I asked, terrified, I could hear loud bangs coming from the corridor.

"We were going to tell you when you were older." Pleaded my mother sounding desperate, eyes full of guilt.

"I'm scared mummy" I told her.

"Shh, please, just get out and run, there's no time."

"But-" I was cut off by a loud thump as the door was rammed, but it held. My father bodily grabbed me and chucked me out of the window. I landed painfully on the pavement, scraping my body, but I was so scared I stayed silent.