Below is the story I wrote for fun and my own entertainment. I shared it on this blog. I would like your thoughts and opinions on it. This is an area specifically for discussion on the story (and/or remind you what happens in it without you having to dig it up).
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I woke up in a hotel room. I knew it was a hotel room; I just knew. But I didn’t remember getting here or checking in. In fact, I didn’t remember… me. I had no idea who I was. I remembered everything except details about me. It was very surreal, but it was reality.
I sat up and scanned my surroundings. Two beds, a TV, bedside table, sink, and bathroom. The usual things. Sitting on the bedside table was a wallet. I scrambled to get the wallet. There was money, a lot of money, and a paper with some numbers on it, but nothing else. No ID, no credit cards, no pictures, not even a library card. Sighing, I pulled on my jeans, and found two keys in my pocket. One looked like it was to an automobile; the other I guessed was to my hotel room. I went to the mirror to wash up. My face was neither familiar nor unfamiliar; it just was.
Okay, I thought, I’ll see this car of mine. In the small parking lot there were two cars and one motorcycle. I tried the key in all of them; the bike was mine. I checked out of my room and headed for a gas station. I can get a map there, I thought. I don’t even know where I am.
At the gas station I talked to the man behind the counter. His name was Jorge, and he got me a state map. Eagerly I poured over it while he told me the lay of the land. Turns out I was in Nebraska near the northwest border. It was when I thanked him and turned to leave things began happening.
“That’s a right nice locket you have.”
“Hmm? What?”
“Your locket. Most unusual. Does it have a picture in it?” Jorge asked.
“Uh…”
I hadn’t even noticed it before. The picture in my locket was of a young man; he was handsome, had brown hair, blue eyes, and a nice smile.
“He your boyfriend?” Jorge asked me.
Suddenly two men both in their twenties burst in with guns pointed at us.
“You!” one shouted at me, “Hands in the air, and you, open the register!”
I don’t know what came over me, but I stepped in the way. “C’mon, you guys don’t really want to do that,” I said.
“Move!” he screamed. “Move or I shoot!”
“No.” They both shot at me; three bullets hit. I grabbed at the counter as I fell.
“Now, hand over the money,” the other man spoke slowly and very calmly to Jorge.
I could feel blood on my shirt. It was warm, but I was cold. I knew I was going to die. Jorge was stalling, then I heard one, two, three pieces of metal hit the floor near me. I was warm again; the bleeding had stopped. I stood up and faced the robbers. They were dumbstruck at the sight of me. Then I attacked. I hit them with my fists, hard. One in the meat of the shoulder, the other blocked, but I hit his arm. They yelled in agony, one screamed, “Let’s get outta here!” and scrambled out the door immediately followed by the other.
I was breathing hard, but felt fine. I watched them run, and asked Jorge if he was okay. He didn’t answer, so I looked over to him. He was standing where he had been before, but he was looking at my hands in shock and terror.
I looked down at my hands. There was blood on them, and protruding out of each one were two five or six inch pieces of metal that were sharp at the end. I gasped, unable to believe my eyes. I looked quickly from my hands, to Jorge standing there, to my hands again. I was afraid.
I relaxed my hands from the fists I had made; the blades retracted under my skin, which healed from the slits inbetween my knuckles, right in front of my eyes. I found my breath again, and scrambled out of the station in shock.
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I hopped onto my motorcycle and headed north. I didn’t know where I was going; I only knew I had to get away from there. There was blood on my shirt and hands, I had no memory, I had just been shot and healed, and I had stabbed two men with things that were in my hands.
What was wrong with me? Why was I like this? What happened to me? Why did I have no memory? Why did I have no ID? Who was the young man in my locket?
That was it. Somehow I knew the man in the picture had to be the answer to my questions. He was the key. He knows me. Or at least, knew me. I had to find him.
I pulled off the road to have a closer look at the picture. Night was falling, and it was hard to read, but there was definitely something on the back of the picture. Maybe it was his name? I didn’t know. Could’ve been something else entirely. Sighing, I put the picture back and got back on the road.
Now what? Somehow, I had to find him. That’s great, I thought. How am I going to find a guy I know nothing about when he could be anywhere in the world? Well, I could go about it intelligently by finding a place to find people, although I wanted to stay away from police and detectives; or I could go to random places. I was drawn northwest; I just felt like I was being pulled from there. So, shrugging, I decided to go to Montana, and if I didn’t find him there, I’d… well I’d think about that when I got there.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Montana’s a big state. True, but I was drawn there. I can’t explain it, but I figured it was worth checking out. Maybe he was there.
After a couple more hours of driving, I pulled off the empty road next to a stream in nearby woods, did what I could to wash my hands and shirt, and spent the night there.
I woke up to Jorge’s question. “He your boyfriend?” kept running in my head. “I wish I knew the answer to that,” I said aloud. I smiled, “When I find him,” but didn’t finish the thought because a new one had occurred to me. What if I left because he knew about my claws? It was an unsettling idea. But I don’t have anything else to go on, I thought. I still have to find him.
I stopped at a food and gas station to fill up my tank and grab a bite to eat. It wasn’t until I smelled the food that I realized how hungry I was. I suppose that’s what distracted me from the goon who was watching me as I paid for my order. I got my breakfast, sat down in a booth, took another look at the locket, and remembered the paper in my wallet. I had looked at it before but only briefly. I pulled it out of my wallet and woke up slumped onto the table with a small gathering of people looking at me. When I inquired what happened, someone told me a man hit me on the back of my head, grabbed my wallet, and ran out the door. I hadn’t been unconscious long.
“Don’t worry, my sister called 911 and the police are on their way here.”
“What?”
They thought I didn’t understand, but I did. I had to get out of there. I stood up and ran out of the building. Seems like I’ve been doing that a lot lately, I thought to myself. Fortunately I had filled up my bike before I came in to eat. Unfortunately, in my haste to leave I didn’t think to grab my food.
Without much direction in mind, I headed out of there as quickly as I could. If the police find out about me, I thought, that’s it. They’ll put me into some crazy research program, and for the rest of my life they’ll poke me and prod me and I’ll never get out.
All day I kept driving. I stopped maybe once for a fifteen-minute nap. Finally I was in Montana. It was near sundown, and I could see it was a nice area I was in. It was quiet, there were trees, and a fence with a gate on one side of the road; somebody lived there.
Well, I was mighty hungry and had food on my mind. I also thought I’d ask if they’d hire me for a day or two, doing what I wasn’t sure, but I needed money. It was worth a shot. I pulled up to the gate, and saw a man leaning against the fence looking into the distance. He heard me and looked at me warmly. It set me at ease; my troubles just melted away.
He spoke first. “Well, hello, WC. Didn’t think you’d come back.”
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