Shrouded Mind

[meboeck]

I randomly wrote this about a week ago. I don't generally write short stories, but this just came to me. It's too long for one post, so don't think the end of this post is the end of the story.

Clang.

The sound of metal jars my mind from its trance-like state. Somehow I am completely unaware of where I am or what I am doing. I can barely recall who I am, but now that I think about it, that at least is coming back to me. The room—I think I’m indoors—is dark and foggy, just like my thoughts and memory. I feel afraid. Or am I just apprehensive because I am unsure of this situation? I try to take things in, but as I try to focus my eyes, my vision becomes more clouded instead of less. Now everything is shrouded in an eerie grey mist, or at least that’s how it seems. I’m sure that’s not really the case; I’m just not correctly perceiving the situation. It’s as if my mind is very distant from my body. My eyes try to see what is around me, but my mind cannot comprehend something so foreign and far away.

Now I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts that I’m going into that trance-like state again. What was it that jarred me out of it? I pause and try to recall. Oh, yes. The sound of clanking metal. I stoop down to the floor to look for the object among the mists of my mind. There. Something laying on the floor near my feet. My vision is still hazy, so I try to pick up the object. As I touch it, a wave of something flows through me and I quickly jerk my hand away. Was that fear? Yes, I think it was. As I feel the emotion, the haze begins to lift. I look more closely and see that the item is a dagger. It’s bloody. Again I feel a wave of emotion. Fear? Perhaps a little. But I also feel something else. Betrayal? Anger? Loneliness? Why can’t I just remember what happened? Why is this all so foreign to me? I feel like I don’t belong in this scene, and yet I feel like the main character. I don’t understand my role.

Looking at the dagger, the realization sets in that the blood may be my own. Am I in pain? I don’t feel pain right now. Is that because I am unscathed or because my mind is disconnected? I try to focus in on my body, but I feel numb. Suddenly a tiny piece of memory rockets to the forefront of my thoughts. Pain. Yes, I was stabbed. Where? I look down at myself and quickly see that my right hand is bloody. The memory surges through my mind again, this time more clearly. My right hand was indeed stabbed. There is a diagonal slash mark across my palm. For some reason, blood does not spill from the wound. As I focus on the wound, I begin to feel the pain. My mind is instantaneously brought much more into my body as the pain brings me out of my numbness. The excruciating pain brings me to my knees. I finally take in what has happened. I have been stabbed in the hand. Who stabbed me? I heard the dagger fall, but I didn’t hear footsteps. Why can’t I just remember? Why is this process like assembling the scattered pieces of a puzzle?

There have to be more clues about what has happened here. I need to see more of my surroundings. As I look around, I find that my vision is clearing, but only the vision of things near me. It’s as if there’s a spotlight on me but everything else is shrouded in darkness. If I move, I think the spotlight will follow me, but for some reason I am afraid to move. I close my eyes and try to take a step with my right foot. Opening my eyes again, I see that I have barely even moved, and yet that slight movement absolutely terrified me as if I was delving deep into the unknown. I step with my left foot and then with my right—no! I just touched something with my shoe, something that paralyzed me with fear. Part of my brain definitely knows what this object is and is telling me to be afraid. But this goes beyond fear. I can’t even describe this feeling except that it feels like I’m going to die.

I realize that I have once again closed my eyes; in fact, they are squeezed shut, muscles completely tense. I slowly try to relax the muscles and open my eyes. The process feels like it’s taking hours although it’s probably just seconds. Or is it? I’m so unsure of my perception right now that I just don’t know. My eyes are finally open. Now I have to force myself to look down. I glance down, gasp, and turn away. There’s a dead body at my feet. I just walked into a dead body. Getting my nerves up, I stoop down next to him. I can’t bear to look at his face. He has been stabbed in the heart—by that same dagger? Now I see two victims—him and myself—and no assailant. I’m so lost and confused in this situation I’ve been thrown into. And my hand hurts horribly. And my mind aches.

I feel compelled to once again examine the dagger. Two people’s blood are on the dagger, but who held it? Is there something about the handle that will make everything clear? The spotlight around me has grown brighter. As I turn from the body I see the dagger—what? How did I not see that before? There’s blood on the handle—my blood? A horrible thought comes into my mind. What if—? No, it’s not possible. But as I think things through I realize that I never mourned for the dead body at my feet. I was not sad that he was dead. What if I killed him? We struggled, and in the struggle he managed to get the dagger from me and cut my hand. But I retrieved the dagger and completely my mission, to kill this poor soul. Is that really what happened? The idea terrifies me. And right now I don’t know what evidence there is against that theory. At first I’m compelled to just judge myself guilty, but I push past that feeling.

I return to the victim’s body. If I missed the body on the dagger’s handle, maybe I missed something here too. The more my mind returns to my body, the more details I see. And the more my right hand hurts. As I look at the body, I still can’t bring myself to look at his face. I walk slowly and carefully around the body, not wanting to disturb anything. I cringe at the sight of the blood next to his body. Again I have that feeling like I’m dying inside. Trying to expand my realm of vision, I see something not too far away from the body. More blood—a shoeprint. I put my foot next to the shoeprint in comparison. I think it’s a woman’s shoe. But that would put a third person at the scene. Suddenly a wave of memory washes over me. There was a woman! I remember her! And there is a feeling associated with her. Happiness? Friendship? I’m not exactly sure, but it’s definitely positive.

Where did this woman go? She fled the scene. Was she wounded too? But if so, why did she leave me behind? Did she hold the dagger? Is she the one who cut my hand? Memory floods my mind again, this time more vividly. I can see her outline, her dark hair. Somehow the thought makes me happy. And yet we struggled. Yes, she and I struggled, and in the midst of the struggle, she cut my hand. I try to once again fit together the puzzle pieces. She came to kill the other man, but I tried to stop her. She managed to wound me, but I kept struggling, getting the dagger’s handle bloody. Then, she finally pushed me away as I fell in pain, and she stabbed the man. But this doesn’t make sense. I think she was my friend, so why did we struggle? And I don’t recall any feelings toward the man, so why did I try to protect him? A clue is still missing—the most important clue.

I need to search for that clue, the one that will bring closure to my mind. I venture away from the mental spotlight around me and into the unknown. This time there is less trepidation. I feel more at home now in my body and in this environment, like I do belong here. This place is smaller than it seemed. At first, when all I saw was fog, I thought I might be in a huge warehouse, but now I see that that cannot be. The walls are wooden, and closer than I expected. This place has been abandoned for a while—and old barn or shack, perhaps? I like it here, or at least I used to. This is not the first time I have been here, but I am not sure when I have been here before or why I came. No, that’s not true. I came because I liked being alone here. It gave me peace and solitude. The woman—the one I struggled with—came here with me, but only a few times. The man on the floor does not fit into my memories at all. The more I look at the simple, dilapidated wooden walls, the more I feel comfortable and at home, even though this is not my house. I think even though my body lived and rested in a house with my family, my mind and soul lived and rested right here.

I have remembered a lot of things, but I haven’t found the clue I was looking for, the one that would reveal everything. But I think I need to set that aside for now and just take in the familiarity of this setting. So I close my eyes and breathe the familiar air and take in the smell. I smile a little and lift my hand to place it over my heart—what?! My heart. There’s a hole there; I was stabbed in the heart. My shirt has blood all over it. My eyes widen as I feel pain more awful and excruciating than any I could ever imagine. I collapse into a ball on the floor, writhing in horrific pain. Then the pain subsides; the pain in my hand is gone as well. I don’t feel numb, though; this sensation is different. I recall the feeling I had twice earlier, like I was dying. Now I realize what I’m feeling right now. I feel dead.

[meboeck]

This isn’t exactly the kind of clue I was expecting. I’m a dead man walking. Is that why my mind felt disconnected from my body? But then why has it returned to me? I feel my chest again, feeling the wound that killed me. I feel my shirt, soaked with blood. Why does that seem familiar? I look at the slash mark on my right palm. A startling idea hits me, and I run to the dead body on the floor. The stab wound to the heart, the blood-soaked shirt. My eyes widen, and I feel supreme apprehension. I look at his right palm, his bloody right palm. And I finally force myself to look at his face—my face. Feelings and memories and emotions swirl into my mind like a backwards whirlwind, taking the scattered pieces and putting them back where they belong. Now I remember everything.

Everything was over, it was all lost. I walked into my sanctuary, my soul’s home, dagger in hand. This was the only place I felt peace, so this was where I would give myself eternal peace. Somehow the girl had figured out I was coming here and ambushed me, coming out of the shadows. She told me not to do it, let go, stop, but I just held the dagger tighter. She tried to take it away from me, and we struggled. As she tried to rip the dagger out of my hand, my palm was cut and I felt searing pain. The pain just added to all the pain I was trying to get rid of. When the girl dropped the dagger in shock, I picked it up and stabbed myself in the heart. Still in shock, the girl stood there until I had died. She walked over to me, knelt down, and cried profusely, stroking my hair. When she finally stood up to leave, she stepped in the pool of blood, making shoeprints as she left. She opened her cell phone and dialed 911, still crying as she made the phone call. After she left, I stood up, my dead body still on the ground. Seeing her cry, I suddenly felt so horribly guilty. I picked up the dagger, wondering if there could have been another way to escape the pain. My mind and soul were trying to pull away, but for some reason, they were still slightly attached. Then I dropped the dagger and started picking up the pieces.

I wish I could have done that when I was alive—drop the dagger and start picking up the pieces. The girl is now standing in the doorway, and police and paramedics file in. I see my body examined and carried away. Suddenly I feel so distant; the mists are once again clouding my vision. I feel extinguished. If only I had let her love me and let people help me, maybe I wouldn’t have had to do this. If only…. Now everything is quickly fading…

Clang.

The sound of metal jars my mind from its trance-like state. I look around and see that I am in my favorite place. There’s a girl standing not too far from me. She’s starting to cry, and she looks like she just saw something awful happen. The fierce reality of excruciating pain draws my attention to my right hand. It’s bleeding profusely. I want to pick the dagger up and finish what I had planned. But I think my plans have changed. I run and hug the girl, my blood getting all over the back of her shirt. After standing and crying together a little, we pull away. She runs with me back to my house where she does her best to clean and bandage me up a little. Then we get in her car and drive to the hospital. The pain in my hand will last for a while, as will the pain in my heart. But my heart is still intact because I let the dagger fall. Now it’s time to pick up the pieces.

[aalenfae]

Has nobody replied to this? I can't believe it, because this is extremely well done! It kept me intrigued all the way through. All the writing was worded amazingly, and the whole thing was just too interesting to stop reading.

[USSRGirl]

I missed this one two (haven't skimmed the writing section in awhile actually) unfortunately. But having just read it, I love the psychological thriller style, Meboek. Your descriptions really let me get inside the main character's head. Very interesting perspectives, and great way of confusing the reader between what actually happened and what was imagined subconsciously.

[fairyprincess90]

very well done