Chapter 1
Petal
Everything I perceive lacks the reassuring familiarity I so desperately seek.
And that includes my own body.
Still sobbing, I lift my hands, slowly caressing my tear-drenched cheeks, following the outline of my jaw like a blind person trying to familiarize themselves with someone else’s facial features. I can feel my fingertips grazing along my face, my skin prickling under the touch as if it were that of a stranger. I lean forward, lowering my gaze, and long ash-blonde hair falls down my shoulders, trailing along the outline of my breasts.
Holding my hands in front of my face, I turn them back and forth, wondering about the faint red lines that circle my wrists. Where do these marks come from? Did someone tie me up? What else did they do?
I know this body. I must know it, because it’s mine.
But I have no recollection of living in it.
My breathing hikes, turning erratic and beyond control once again while the room starts to spin.
No. I can’t lose it. I need to stay focused .
My hands wander down, tracing my collarbones before they reach the soft flesh of my breasts, under which I can feel my pained heart beating furiously. I cup my left breast, pressing gently as I try to calm myself down. The hammering slows, but it’s no less violent under my touch.
This is so strange. Everything is strange to me, even the touch of my own body. My boobs feel heavy and too big compared to everything else, and I feel terribly exposed as they almost spill out of the ridiculous gown I’m wearing.
What the hell is this? I would never put on something like this.
Or would I ?
How can I not even know something this mundane about myself?
I raise my head, my eyes latching on to the only thing in this room that holds a promise for answers.
The door.
A deep inhale prepares me for another attempt at getting up on my feet.
This second try is more successful than the first. There’s no elegance in the way I climb up, supporting myself on the leather-button-tufted bench and swaying like a drunk, but at least I manage to stand. I take a deep breath before I stagger toward the door like a newborn deer, pretty much falling onto the door handle. My fingers curl around it with desperate tension, as if I were holding on for dear life.
I shouldn’t be shocked, or even surprised, but I still can’t stop my heart from sinking when I confirm that the door is, in fact, locked. The handle doesn’t even move when I work it, seemingly ridiculing me with its stubbornness to follow my intrusion.
Now that I’m standing so close in front of it, I notice the hatch at the center of it. It’s about one foot wide and almost three inches high, located at the height of my chest. I’m not even sure if it really is a hatch, but if it is, it can only be opened from the outside. Of course.
I don’t know what else to do, so I resort to the only thing that comes to mind: violence. I curl my right hand into a fist and bang against the door, hoping to create some commotion and noise as the door clanks in its hinges.
But I’m too weak to leave such an impact on the heavy wood in front of me. The door remains firm, not rattling, not succumbing to my assault in the slightest. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
Yet I don’t stop until the side of my hand starts to hurt. Gently rubbing it, I step back, glaring at the door through narrow eyes. This dumb thing . I want to burn it to the ground. There’s nothing else here, nothing and no one I could blame for my predicament.
Though “predicament” seems too small a word for this.
All I have is this locked, stubborn gateway—and myself.
“Hello?” I croak, feeling dumb a moment later. Even if there were someone at the other side of this door, they probably wouldn’t hear me, because this stupid thing is sturdy enough to suggest it’s soundproof.
But I can’t stop myself.
“Hello? Is someone out there?”
Seriously, what do I expect? A confused old lady, hastily unlocking the door from the other side and greeting me with an aghast look as she says: “Oh my God, dear. I totally forgot about you! Let’s get you out of here!”
Under what scenario would this ever happen? It’s obvious that something terrible has been done to me, that I have been kidnapped and locked away by someone with bad intentions. There’s no old lady out there who simply locked me in by accident as she was cleaning the building. There’s someone evil out there, someone who wants to harm me, or someone who took me for some ransom money.
Is that it? Am I rich? Am I worth something to someone and that’s why I woke up in here?
I wish I knew. I wish I knew anything .
I move back from the door, taking small and deliberate steps as I circle my dimly lit prison. Nothing has changed. There’s still no window, no cameras, no visible microphones, or anything that would provide some kind of link to the outside world. Nothing I could hold on to, nothing that could give me some kind of clue of what this is all about.
All I have is a stronghold door, a leather-button-tufted bench—and myself.
Myself.
I close my eyes, wrapping my arms around my upper body as I try to dig deep within, following a trail to the darkest corner of my mind, searching. The answers must be there, hidden behind a black curtain. I just need to pull it aside and peek behind it to reveal the hidden mystery. That’s all I have to do.
I just need to get there. I need to access my lost memories.
But doing so turns out to be as impossible as getting anywhere with that damn door. I move in complete darkness, blind and deaf as I aimlessly wander through my empty mind, searching for even the slightest hint, the smallest light, the faintest sound, the most vague image, anything that could guide me, at least telling me what direction to look in, where to turn, what idea to follow.
But the harder I try, the further anything helpful slips away from me. The blackness thickens, hiding more than it’s willing to reveal, pushing me away instead of calling me in. Instead, I see a wall being built right in front my eyes, brick after brick stacking up to hide the secrets of my mind.
The attempt is painful and sickening. I’m heaving as my throat closes up and piercing flashes of light mingle in the darkness inside my head, confusing me more than they are helping. I feel like I’m choking, finding it impossible to breathe and too painful to continue my futile search.
My eyes open at the same time I hear a noise coming from the door.
End of preview