["Do not look back."]
The voice in my mind spoke simultaneously when I uttered the lexicon of the writing.
The meaning was lost on me, my mouth agape.
I was holding my breath as the last of the "Narrator’s" enunciation slipped by.
I was stuck in place, but not for the reason I had thought.
I had assumed upon reading this that it would give me hints on the memories of my past.
Instead, there was nothing. It’s the same void as before.
For the next few moments, after getting used to my body’s movements, I looked around the hospital room for any clues or notes as before.
Actually...it was only an assumption, you know, that this was a hospital room.
The monotony of the room reminded me of it, so I deemed it as so.
The Narrator in my head was oddly silent all while I was rummaging around.
While I threw the mattress off the frame, I noticed that there were noises coming from beyond the window.
Driven by curiosity, I looked out.
It was then I realized I must really have been on the second floor of a hospital.
...albeit an abandoned one.
Outside, there were the ruins of a city.
Most looked to be hit by some sort of meteor or were trashed.
Some looked to be burnt into a crisp.
The red, plus shaped logo of the hospital was flickering with light.
And a beautiful blue moon gazed down on it all.
But, piercing the blue moon was a tall tower that reached beyond the sky.
The world...had ended..?
During my comatose, the world ended up like this.
What the hell happened?
There was a hollow pit in my stomach.
But even then, there was a thought that creeped up from behind me.
And that was...
...that this was not the world I once lived in.
[Regulus left his room.]
The Narrator yapped on.
Clad in white clothes, I left the hospital room.
I had decided to find out what had happened to reality, albeit one I had forgotten, while I was gone.
Truth be told, I wasn’t too keen on knowing.
There was a sinking pit in my stomach that started when I found that note.
"Do not look back."
It was as though it was telling me to not look back to my past, to instead move on and forget it.
But how could I?
I was a man of twenty-three years, but with nothing to live up for it.
I studied medicine, but I didn’t have the slightest idea on how to even give an injection.
I studied linguistics, but I couldn’t remember what my mother tongue was.
These were remnants of my past that I had no inkling of.
I clutched the papers in my hand, one of which was the note I had left myself in the past.
My eyes widened as I walked from one corridor to the next. I noticed that there was a staircase.
It was then that I realized that...
...these memories that I thought were fragments of my past were all given to me by a certain narrating voice in my head.
Was I schizophrenic?
Why didn’t I think twice when the voice first reverberated in my head?
Was this actually a mental hospital?
I choked out the words as I walked solitarily:
"Narrator."
No answer.
"Narrator."
I stopped walking.
A long silence.
[The Narrator refuses to answer.]
So, you have free will, huh.
Does that mean that you’re narrating my life just because you want to? Or, are you being forced to act as a system?
Anyhow.
"Fucker," I spat.
Eventually, when I made peace with the Narrator’s no response, I walked down the stairs.
As I do, the ruckus outside seems to get louder.
I groped through my pocket and took out the other piece of folded paper I was taking storage of.
It was the hospital’s patient chart I found in the bed frame.
Inserted in a plastic sheet, I nudged it out.
Typewritten out were:
PATIENT NAME: REGULUS R. LOCKE
D.O.B.: 01/05 SEX: MALE
ADDRESS: XXX
TELEPHONE: XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
PATIENT VITAL SIGNS....
CHIEF COMPAINT:XXXXXXXAMNESIAXXXXX
Most of the text was scribbled with a black marker, barely legible to the reader.
There was no date wherein I was first admitted to this hospital.
The cause of my admission was scribbled over as well, only leaving the word "amnesia" intact.
...what were the chances that the Narrator was a man who walked this land? A man that simply glanced at my chart and acted as though he knew my life?
I knew that the chances were zero.
Furrowing my brows, I thought that the same statistics can be said about my schizophrenia.
I sighed, crumpling the chart and tossing it away.
[The Narrator is silent.]
I can fucking tell.
When I neared the first floor, there were voices becoming clearer to my ears.
"...lord...here..?"
"He...around....reverie..."
I put myself on the edge of the wall so as to not reveal myself.
"You’re sure, right?"
The words were crystal.
"Fucking certain, my friend. The Lord Reverie has risen."
Lord Reverie?
I peeked further from the corner.
"And, He’s somewhere in this rundown hospital?" The voice that belonged to a man paused. "Hallowed by thy name."
"Hallowed be thy name," repeated the other voice, a man as well.
"You do realize that the first play could be starting in days? We need to prepare and not hunt some old god! Hallowed be thy name."
The man scoffed. "You believe in that self-proclaimed prophet? You dare call the Lord Reverie an old god?"
My toes were on the edge of the staircase, and I did not dare move an inch. Though I was about to slip...
"Is he not?"
"No!" the man said. "He wrote our world into existence, that’s who he is!"
...and slip, I did.
I tumbled down the stairs.
The tall man had long blond layered hair and the other, shorter than me and him, was thinner and less muscular. He had dark hair and glasses.
"Who the hell are you?" the dark-haired one barked.
The blond laughed. "Dumb fuck. Who’d give out names to a stranger in this era?"