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‘I am in a chair. Straps placed over my wrists, my ankles, my neck. The room is dark. I’m yelling but no one is coming. I’m screaming out in pain; something is clawing at me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe?’
* * *
“Waffles,” Jasper’s ragged breath is inches from my own. The room is bright. “I’m here.” His hands are still gripped around my wrists, and I pull away from him. He takes a step back at my sudden movement.
“Get away from me,” I crawl into a ball to stop him from touching me. I can still feel the marks from the indentation of him and I bring my wrists close to my chest, rubbing them together. “Don’t you dare touch me,” I growl.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Stop,” I tell him. “Don’t say something if you don’t mean it.”
He stays silent but I’m not finished. I’m still processing all of this new information. In every corner of my life that I look, there is one common factor. One fingerprint pressed into every trauma in my entire life. Albert Cunningham. I may have been the trigger for those people’s death, but Albert was the one who loaded the gun and told me to shoot.
“Do you know what your father has done to me?” I ask.
“He convinced me that my mother was dead for ten years. He made my own father turn his back on me and run as far as he could from me. He kidnapped me once when I was EIGHT years old and tortured me for information I don’t even have! When that didn’t work out for him, he then stole my memories so I would get horrible nightmares about some girl who I didn’t realise was myself until I was kidnapped by him a second time! Except I still don’t have my memories or remember anything from my life because I injected myself with a memory serum to stop him because WHY would I want to help a man who has stolen everything from me.” I take a deep breath. I’m pacing the room in anguish because there is such a whirlwind of emotions inside me that I can’t possibly keep still.
“I need to see him.” I turn around and look Jasper hard in the eyes, “I need you to take me to him.”
“I can’t do that,” he whispers so I can barely hear him.
“I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T DO,” I yell at him, storming over to where he is sitting. “ I don’t care if it’s you who gets me there or if I have to search every floor in this building to find him, but I can assure you that I will find him. With or without you. This man has ruined my life only to erase all memory of it and ruin it again. I need answers.” I am heaving for air now, so full of anger at all of the pain and grief and suffering that has been simmering inside for so long. I can’t breathe.
He stands from the chair, his eyes fixed on mine. We are standing too close, barely a metre away from each other. I want to tell him to move. To leave me alone. But instead, he pulls me into his chest and hugs me. “I know you might never believe me,” he says, “but for what it’s worth, I am truly sorry.” I want to fight him, to make him let go, but my strength is crumbling, so I let him hold me for as long as I dare.
Don’t break, I tell myself. Don’t break. Don’t break.
I almost break. But I force myself to walk away from him so he can’t see the tear as it slides down my cheek. I stay with my back facing him and stare out the artificial window until the sun sets in the fake sky and a beautiful sunset explodes across the horizon.
I turn back around, hoping that when I do, Jasper will be gone. After all, why should he stay after I’ve just yelled at him? I know that’s wishful thinking because when I turn around, I see him sitting in the chair, his brow concentrated on the thing in his hand. A tray of waffles lies on my bed.
I didn’t even hear him leave.
I walk over to my bed, sit down, and start eating the waffles. Jasper doesn’t even look up. I know I should tell him that I’m sorry, that it was wrong of me to make a scene like that, that it’s not his fault that his father is a horrible man who has done horrible things. But I just want to forget it ever happened.
“Are they good?” he asks, not looking up from whatever he is doing. Now that I am closer, what I see in his hand is definitely a sketchbook of some kind and he is using a pencil to sketch in it. I take a peek, and I have to hold in a gasp. I can’t tell what he’s drawing, but it is absolutely beautiful.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I eat the rest of my meal in silence, watching him sitting in the chair drawing in his book. He must have finally gotten sick of me watching as the pencil slides gracefully along the page, because he looks up at me and smiles, “what?”
“I didn’t realise people used paper and pencils anymore.” I lie.
“Not many people do,” he laughs, “but nothing beats the good old pencil and paper.”
“Can I see?” I ask.
He hesitates for a moment, and then reluctantly hands me over the book. It is a brown, leather-bound book with a long piece of string to tie it closed.
I put down my empty plate, open the book and begin on the first page. There is a lead pencil drawing of a young girl smiling up to the artist, a small toy dog by her side. I slowly trace the angle of the girl’s face and look up at Jasper, “you drew this?” he nods, and my jaw drops in amazement. I flick through the pages filled with portraits of different people; men and women; young and old; happy and sad.
I flick to the last drawing and pause. It is a stunning drawing of a girl, asleep, with dark shadows under her eyes, but still looking peaceful. Her hair is flowing over her shoulder in a messy braid, dark hair falling in front of her face. I look up at him and he looks away.
“Look familiar?” he laughs to break the awkwardness that has just surrounded us like a low mist.
“You drew me?” the words come out harsher than I intend them to.
