(November '16) Prompt #3- "Remember November"

[Kris]

November's 3rd prompt is "Remember November"



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[ArtisticVicu]

He woke up to a pounding headache and a view of the room from the floor. He groaned, not at all recalling how he had ended up on his stomach passed out in a room that was a wreck. He dragged his hands up to press flat against the floor near his shoulders, pushing against the unrelenting surface to counter his current position.

He hissed as his body complained but he managed to at least get himself up to sit on his heels. The room around him was too dim for him to discern any details of the mess around him but it appeared he was in some sort of office or lab. He wasn’t sure which he preferred.

Rubbing at his face, he got up only to discover his legs were really not happy with him. He nearly connected his face with the table he had grabbed at to keep himself upright. Grumbling, he put his weight on the flat surface and at least got his feet underneath him.

There were papers strewn everywhere over the surface, books lying open and on top one another and random objects all about. Some objects were even buried under the mess. He squinted, trying to gain better sight in the darkness but it did little. He reached about, looking for anything to give light. His hand brushed over something that rolled off the table and clattered to the floor. He cursed under his breath, stepping away from the table and feeling about the floor before his hands curled around a cold cylinder. He frowned, running his fingers over it. Seemed he was in luck as he clicked the flashlight on. He winced at the sudden light but swept the light beam over the room, discovering it was indeed a lab. And if he was being honest, it looked like a tornado had swept through.

He frowned, spying shattered glass and broken machinery along with tattered pages and disheveled books. There were stains everywhere of all sorts of colors and he really didn’t want to know what had happened here. Something reflected the light of his flashlight and his frown deepened as confusion pulled at his expression. He focused the beam on what had caught his attention and confirmed that the glint had not been from glass or machinery.

It took a while with watching his steps but he eventually made it across the room. He picked up what looked like an expensive journal by the spine. It had metal detailing across the spine as well as a complicated lock that appeared to have been shattered. He ran his hand over the hard cover, taking in the details.

He opened the cover, looking the inside of the cover over before flipping slowly through the pages. There weren’t any identification marks, no “This book belongs to ________” but the first true page was full of writing. The upper left corner had numbers scrawled on it that correlated with the two sets of numbers written in the left margin at the top of what appeared to be two separate units of text. He flipped through the pages without reading, realizing that the numbers referred to dates and that the dates in the left margin marked the start of a new entry. Some were a paragraph, if that. Others were pages long, pages filled with scrawled writing, equations, poor sketches, diagrams, and broken sentences. He started reading parts, settling on a clear bit of floor as he became engrossed with what was written.

This sense of foreboding settled over him and got heavier with every page turn.

As he reached the halfway mark, an entry caught his attention and he stared at the words before him.

40521XXe20913 – I just that today marks the 207th day of experiments and that I have started having a hard time remembering things. I think something is seriously wrong. I can hardly remember what I did yesterday and the others are starting to gain a sort of dazed way of going about things. We talk about things that I know we’ve talked about before. I’ve started rereading my entries and I find that I’ve been rewriting entries. We haven’t been making any progress. Any that we think we’re making has already been made. We’re going in circles. I’m starting to fear that I may lose my mind completely.

He hoped whoever had written this had managed to fix the issue but as he continued on, he found that they had not been able to.

The entries started becoming sparse and short. Fragmented, even. He came to a page with only two entries on it separated by a good chunk of blank space, an inconsistency with the other entries.

71921XXe31356 – We are not being able to remember anything now. Everything is being recorded. Everything.



81021XX1247 – I have made a horrible mistake.

He frowned and turned the page. It was blank. There was a good inch of pages remaining and he took the remaining pages in hand and started to rapidly flip pages, gaze looking for any discrepancies. About two thirds of the way through, a page had something heavily scrawled on it. He halted his flipping and slowly turned the pages back looking for whatever had caught his eye. He laid the book flat in his hand, gaping at the two words scrawled out with a heavy, rapid hand to take up as much of the page as possible.

REMEMBER NOVEMBER

The sense of foreboding was suffocating but he didn’t understand. Remember November? What did that mean? And when had that been scrawled?

He closed the book, running his fingers over the cover and hoping whoever had written those entries had found peace in whatever form it had come in.

He got up and stretched, his body still complaining but not as stiff. He made his way towards the door, riffling through some of the papers only to not understand any of it. He found more pages with the same handwriting but none of them told him anything useful.

He left the room before he came across the file folder that contained a picture of himself with different pages scrawled in two separate hands. One was neat, orderly and the other was the lazy strokes of those in the book he had discovered.

[m139]

Remember November
(takes place after It's not raining... yet (http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=83834&p=2834892&viewfull=1#post2834892))

She was drenched, soaked. The rain had not let up the entire time. To say the fifteen year old had no clue where she was would be an understatement. For indeed, she had no clue where she was or where she was going. She had no clue why this was even happening. But the strange events of the day gave her no choice but to simply follow, in some sort of strange, dreamlike state. Was this real? The rain sloshing in the boots that were not her own told her so, as did her mother's constant guiding figure, pushing her along. But was it real? Never in her whole life had she experienced this: the most hiking she had ever done was cutting through the woods in the park to switch trails. That itself, she knew, was highly irregular, but this- this was absurd! And so were all the other events of the day!

Truly, she felt as if she were living a dream. And that dream feeling did not stop, even when they finally got out of the weather, traveling down a little entrance tunnel into some pipes, sloshing around in a maze of abandoned tunnels to who knows where, and finally, into some little room with a working lift, and sliding noiselessly into the black.

There was some more movement, but no light this time. Slosh slosh went the water underfoot. The girl clung to her mother, whose movement slowed so that the girl could keep up. Even so, the girl tripped from time to time, and was kept from falling only by her mother's sure grip. They continued down the tunnel, stopping from time to time. The only sound beside their own footsteps in the water was the occasional muttering of her mother- "sixty seven, sixty eight, right... one, two"- but even these were barely audible and often faded into the darkness of the world around.

Finally, however, it was over. They got into some other moving vehicle, still in darkness, and then, they walked a bit more (but here, thankfully, the pavement was dry), and then they stopped at some door. For a while, they paused. Her mother seemed to be entering some combination in the dark that the daughter could not see. And then, she felt herself being pulled in, the door clicking shut, and then stopping again. Another door?

To say that Clarisse did not feel a bit of apprehension was an understatement. It was not as if she was extremely claustrophobic, or afraid of the dark, but this- it was as if something big was happening to her. Her, a high school student whose worst worry, before coming home, had been that upcoming calculus test. And even then it had only been a question of whether an A or A-. But now...

They were through the second door. Again the click, again the hallway, and still the total darkness. A third door, a fourth...

And then, finally, a light.

The long florescent bulb illuminated a small room maybe around fourteen by fourteen feet, from which three other rooms branched off of. And in it, there were many things that shocked Clarisse in their unexpectedness.

First of all, the room was wallpapered with soft brown stripes. The floor itself was of hardwood planks. There was furniture, too: a table, two couches, and a armchair, though all were covered with dustcovers.

Her mother motioned for her to take off her rain boots, which she did, although she did not even remember putting them on. While she did this, her mother began to tear off the dustcovers, throwing them all into a pile to the left of the room. Then, her mother helped her to one of the brown leather couches, and threw a blanket she had gathered from somewhere around her daughter's shoulders.

"We'll stay here for a night." her mother said, wrapping the dry blanket around her, "and we will meet your father tomorrow." She then sat down next to the girl and looked into her daughter's eyes. She paused, then said, "Are you okay?"

Clarisse weekly nodded.

A gentle, sad, and knowing smile spread across her mother's face. "Rest a little." she said, "I'll go make us some soup-"

"But-"

"-and then I will tell you everything." Her mother got up, and as she went towards the little back opening. As she left, Clarisse thought she heard the words, "at least, as much as I know" escape her mother's mouth. But she could not be quite sure.

Indeed, she could not be quite sure of anything- this seemed real, but it seemed a dream.

She pinched herself, and felt the pain. But then again, perhaps she imagined it. If so, her brain was being horrible to her, and she wanted to wake up. But what if reality was worse than the dream? Or what if... what if this already was reality... and this, this little journey was not the worse part?

She drew up her knees closer to herself and pulled the blanket wrapping her tighter. She could now distinctly smell the mothballs. She sneezed, and, instinctively, looked for a tissue.

But there was none. Instead, she was in a mostly empty room, alone with just a small table and the couches. It was mostly silent, too: there was the constant hum of the generator, but that sounded as far off as that of the clanking that must be her mother in the kitchen.

In that instant, Clarisse felt utterly alone. The pressure of an entire world seemed all at once to come upon her, almost suffocating her.

Her breath began to speed up. The emptiness, the not knowing...

... ...

"Clarisse?"

Her mother's voice broke through the silence. The girl's eyes, which had been opened the whole time, finally began to focus again. Her mother's face appeared from the void. The face was followed by a body, and slowly the whole room again came into focus.

"Clarisse?" Her mother began again, "Are you okay? I brought the soup." Her mother, gestured to the coffee table, where there were two steaming bowls of tomato soup.

"Here." Her mother said, handing one to her daughter. "Eat."

"But-" Clarisse finally managed to speak.

"Not yet, just eat. Don't worry about your father, we will meet him tomorrow. Besides, I think it might be better if I speak first. Shall I begin?"

She looked at Clarisse, who, after taking the soup and beginning to drink it, nodded. Her mother nodded back, and then, eyes looking towards the ceiling, began.

"It all started many years before you were born. However, it only came to a point a little less than two years before. Ah, yes. I remember that November..."