The Beginning

Her muscles ached, she realised, as she rose gently from the unconscious state that had occupied her mind. She wished the gentle slumber would pull her back to that place of warm comfort. Then she notices. An itch. Just there between her shoulder blades. It persits. No use pretending....her eyes flickered open to greet the overwhelmingly small space she inhabited in the world. The terror rose inside of her gripping her stomach with an icy hand and threatening to make her scream out. Where was she, whose night clothes are these?

The tears bagan to pool within the blurry eyes that could not be trusted. Breathe, relax, you're alone, you're sleepy, you're not mad. There is an explanation. Each deafening heartbeat pounded out a consoling thought. Squeezing her eyes closed and using all available strength, she eased herself up against the headboard of this battered looking bed and drew her legs towards her, the aching in her limbs reminding her once more of her own frailty. Slowly, she dared to raise her eyelids, letting the morning sunlight greet her in measured slabs of brightness.

The beginning of the day. The start of a new mystery just waiting to unravel itself within her grubby flat. Her one single cell of a grey, derelict mass amidst the sprawl of North London.

She eased her weight onto her fragile bones and began to struggle nervously towards the door of the strangely daunting room. She felt claustrophobic in here, but the beginnings of a peculiar sense of adjustment to the strangeness of it all began to permeate. She was starting to feel comfortable with the fear, shirking its weight for a moment in order to seize instead upon the intrigue and determination that were creeping into her psyche. I will make sense of this. The world has science now. This much I know.

She gripped the door handle nervously and tentatively pulls. The creaking hinge invokes a shiver down the spine, its coarse declarations slicing through the silence. It reminds her of thriller movies she cannot remember watching. An embedded memory, unreachable but poignant.

As she gingerly makes her way through the maze flat she is greeted by odd sensations. Smells of magnolia waft through the room evoking a sense of happier times, somehow.Reaching for a vivid memory she finds blankness. A darkness as stifling as the silence that engulfs her.

This place is adorned with photos of smiling faces. Beautiful people with an indefinable familiarity that she longs to capture. The fear rises inside her again as she recognizes that feeling of being alone, alien to all. As confusion seeps in to neutralise her panic, disorientation descends, making her dizzy. I want to phone..somebody to help me. Without knowing where she was or why she was here, devoid of adequate clothing, her aging frame and wilting body seemed to her more useless and deplorable than usual.

She scanned the room with her disolving eyesight until she spotted a telephone. Reaching for the sleek plastic, a deja vous sensation rippled through her being, though the original event eluded her still. Standing with the phone receiver singing the dialling tone into her ear, promising help at the end of the line, she stiffened bony fingers with bewilderment as her mind refused to replay the familiar dance over the keypad. Who did she need to call? What would their number be? Her lifeline began to lose viability, collapsing into a steady high pitched moan.

Replacing the receiver, she staggered towards a rocking chair, noticing its intricate carving and delicate polish as she eased herself slowly into it, wishing its hard wood could engulf her and keep her safe.

Perhaps this is death. Endless rocking backwards and forwards with nothing but a vacuous mind and peculiar surroundings, taunting you with the vaguest of familiarity. Surounded onlooking pictures of smiling voyeurs, enhancing your lonliness, sneering at your misfortune.

The blanket of weariness, tiredness and confusion cradled her once more and she closed her eyes. A quick nap, a release before awakening once again to a whole new beginning. A new adventure; a new world of frightening and perplexing discoveries within her own tiny flat.