"Where are you?" I awake to Frank's questions. Everything's starting to come back into focus. I remember everything now; how I got here, where I went, everything that's happened. The clarity of it all is deafening. I open my eyes and see the burn of the flourescent lights and the barred windows and the white washed walls. Too much color means too much excitement. I climb back up on my bed, slowly regaining conciousness to reality. "Do you know who you are?" Frank asked with a tinge of hope in his voice, seeing that the haze of confusion is gone from my eyes.
"Patient 271, Seattle Hospital, Mental ward." Frank smiles at me.
"Do you know why you're here?" Frank still seemed concerened. "Will you walk me through it."
"Funny way of phrasing that really," I said halfway giggling, "walk me through it. It seems a bit ironic with this journey we just took."
"We didn't take a journey," Frank looked hopeless, "we never left this room."
"I remember it all, Frank." I begin to explain how I got in the mental hospital, and my entire journey. I let my memories speak for me, and let them guide me through. I let my mind finish its journey, and find my long, lost memories that were repressed for so long.
When I was a small child, my mom and brother and I lived in that small house on the corner of that street. My mother was no angel, she was a heroine addict who was beginning to lose control of her life. She pushed away her mother toward the end, and the only thing that became important to her was her next fix. The incident happened on Christmas Eve. We set up the tree with the beautiful silver angel on top, and my brother, being two years older than I, accidentally knocked down the whole tree while he was running around. My mother, waiting to shoot up her drugs until after the tree was set was out of her mind. In a crazed, drug-feening state, she beat my brother with a shovel that was sitting by the fireplace in the house. I watched her kill him. I watched it happen. I was only five years old.
"Yes. Then what happened?" Frank interrupted my thought process as I flashed back into reality. "I know it's painful."
She yelled at me to clean up the mess. She made me drag him into the backyard, enclosed in a fence, with that terrifying rotweiler she got to scare her drug dealers when they came over. She never fed it. Its eyes pierced through your soul when it looked at you. It just looked at you like you were its next meal. Mom couldn't afford to feed it, let alone pay the heating bill. So here I am, five years old, burying a hole in the backyard to bury my murdered brother. I was just doing what momma said. I didn't know it was wrong. There's blood all over the dirt and snow. I drag him in the shallow grave dug from a child. As I'm getting out, I feel a sharp sting in my right shoulder.
I snap back into reality for a second and look down at my shoulder. It's completely mangled. The skin never healed together properly, and there are chucks of muscle detatched under my torn, stretched skin. No wonder it hurts all the time.
I crawled away from this savage beast. I made it back into the house. My mother was on the couch, with a tourniquette around her arm and she's slumped in her usual position. I remember being so cold, all I could do was take my left arm and try to pull her passed out, barely concious body over me so I could keep warm. "You're a good boy," she mumbled in her inebriated state, "and good boys get their presents at Christmas." I passed out from exhaustion and cold. When I woke in the morning, I was covered in vomit from my mothers overdose. She was dead. I thought she was just still sleeping. She would sleep for days sometimes. I opened the only present under the tree. Then I remember walking outside, down the street, and my grandmother found me covered in blood and vomit.
"And now I'm here." I said. "I'm here because of how long I searched for those memories."
"Yes." Frank said relieved. "Welcome back to reality."
I hate sleeping on busses. You never know the person next to you, and it takes a certain amount of trust that I don't have in that person to be unconcious around them. I didn't care this time, it was just Frank and I in this seat, though I was a little worried he wasn't going to wake me when we got there. I figured he might just keep on riding until he got home, (wherever that is). When we got to Seattle, Frank woke me up and we got off the bus. It's like any other day, but today I know we come to the end of our journey. I know my answer lies here. When I was sleeping, I dreamt of a small house, sort-of dreary, covered in moss from all of the rain here. It's a perfect little house in a terrible neighborhood. It looked dangerous, but I've survived it once. It has to be my final destination. It has to be where my treasure lies. We begin the final stretch of our journey after failing inspecting another locker in the bus station.
"So where are we now?" Frank asked. Of course, I took it as a child asking, are we there yet?, but I know that's not what he meant. I'm just a little irritated because my shoulder is screaming in pain. It seems worse now that we're closer to the goal. It's like the closer we get, the more my brain is telling my shoulder to hurt. Maybe it's because I know we're near the end, but I wish the pain wasn't so present.
"It's right around this corner," I said, "we're so close now." Frank knows I'm excited.
"Are you remembering any of this?" There's a strange question. Frank has some doozies, but this one seemed a bit more direct.
"Of course I do," I say as we round the corner, "I grew up here." Then it dawned on me. I grew up here. I lived here. I was a child here. I started running toward this broken down shack of a house. The roof is sagging and the windows are all boarded up. I start pacing around the front yard frantically, wondering what's become of the place where I used to live. Wasn't it thriving? What of the perfect little house I dreamt of? Now it looks as run down as the rest of this neighborhood.
"What do you see?" Frank asked. "What can you remember? What is this place?" Frank's questions all cut me very deep. Suddenly, I felt like a sharp knife ripped through my shoulder and into my brain. There's pain here, in this place. I run to the door and find a small lock that looks like a lock you would put on a train locker. I reach into my bag and pull that little locker key out. Did the woman on the train know I was her grandson? Did she single me out, knowing where I was going?
"Where are you?" Frank seems like he's yelling from the end of a tunnel. I turn the key and the lock opens.
"What is this place?" Frank yells again. I push open the door. "WHERE ARE YOU?" Frank yells as I walk through the front door. My brain feels like its being ripped from my head. I take a couple steps in and everything starts turning. I can feel my feet go numb. "Where are you?" His questions feel as loud as my heartbeat. I can't breathe. Everything's turning white. I fall to my knees. I feel like every ounce of blood has been drained from my body.
"I remember everything Frank." I say with my last bit of strength. My face hits the ground and I fade back out of consciousness. At least I'm home.
