The water curled around his neck like a guillotine and he frantically swung his arms back and forth to keep from drowning. The coolness ran into his mouth and past his throat as if to reach inside of him and firmly drag him into the depths, but his legs kicked out again and again, blasting jets through the water that buoyed him up to gulps of precious air. His hand, searching for something, anything, landed on a hard beam, and he instinctively gripped it tightly. Another hand was secured beside it, and he pulled himself up, heaving all his weight over the side and letting himself collapse on the flat structure that dipped as it absorbed his fall.

He tried to reach back into his mind and remember how he got here, as if he were like a ghostly hand gliding along rows and rows of files, skimming the flimsy labels and hearing them whistle through the air as they bent from his touch, each and every one of them brandishing themselves as empty, empty, empty.

He strained his mind but there was nothing he could recover, no memory of where he had just been. No memory of falling asleep in an old familiar bed. No memory of feeling his hands loosen his hold on an evening book as fatigue from the working day overtook him. No memory of a light kiss to someone he loved before he shut off the light and felt the welcoming embrace of his pillow.

No, there was none of that. There was no such image of where he had just been that he could recall. There was only the water, and now, this boat on the water.

He sat up and shut his eyes and waited for an image to return out of the specks of colors that were dotted among the dark. He opened and shut them, tensing the muscles of his brow, as if he could squeeze something out of them: a picture, an answer.

But there too, was nothing to be found, only a disconcerting absence of anything that would reassure him that he was not indeed losing his mind.

And then, as if brightened by sudden light, he felt the sensations in his hands. Rough, grainy, dense, cylindrical. He looked down and saw his hands had been gripping a long pair of oars that dipped into the murky water.

The boat was small and simply cut, with no decorations and no coloring aside from its deep wrinkled brown exterior.

Around him was only water that slowly drew weak waves that his boat languidly dipped and raised across. He turned his head to see if there was anything else around him but fog and water, water and fog, yet nothing else appeared through the dense mist that faintly tickled his face.

He focused all sensation on his hands and arms and tried to forget the cold droplets that continued to fall off his body, and then he discovered his arms rowing on their own accord, as if they were called to action to get somewhere, anywhere, out of here. And he found himself identifying with that movement wholly, if that was all he was in this moment: a pair of arms, rowing.

His tongue folded and touched the roof of his mouth, and his bottom lip lowered. There was something coming, he could tell. But first, there was just movement.

"Hello?" he called out.

Words.

Before he could hear the answer to his call, he let one out again, louder this time.

"Hello?"

Finally, he felt, something of some familiarity. Words, yes, even speech perhaps. He had that. He felt it attached to the very capacity as if it were a physical appendage, the same sense of discovery when he first felt his hands tighten around the oars.

"Hello?" he called out again, this time more confidently. This time, it wasn't just a test of the vocal cords, a blowing of air through the muscles. This time there was intention. A drive to greet whatever it was that was out of here, if there were anything at all.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

His voice echoed for ages before returning to him empty handed. He listened to his greeting decay, softer and softer until there was no sound again but the oars cutting through the surface of the water.

He scanned his head along the water, hoping to find something out of the thick fog, and his eyes focused along mangled pieces of wood there were barely lashed together by frayed ropes that sank into weeds that popped out of the water. He rowed towards it, but a thought frightened him: just because you get to land, doesn't mean you'll be any less lost.

He shook his head and continued to row, getting into a pleasant rhythm, enjoying the arc of his shoulders and arms and the predictable resistance as his oars pulled his boat through the water, leaving behind a steady wake.

He reached the dilapidated dock and reached over the side of his boat, tying whatever could be tied to keep his boat anchored. There were little loops carved into the side which he fastened to the ropes, some so frayed he thought they'd melt in his hands at his touch. When sufficiently secured, he carefully tried to step over onto the planks that remained, allowing his leg to steady for a moment after some tremors and pulsing muscles. His feet slid gingerly along the planks, afraid any step larger than that would surely puncture the wood and plunge into the opaque waters.

The grass tickled his feet and he wriggled his toes as the strands stuck out between them. He looked back into the waters from which he came, hoping to see something appear out of the fog that focused into an impenetrable darkness.

A pang of worry hit him as he was reminded of his previous concern: just because you get to land, doesn't mean you'll be any less lost.

Maybe I was fishing, he thought. He could feel his powers of speculation return, but without his ego to supplant a critical center. There were thoughts, thoughts in search of a self.

Fishing, he thought again, I remember that. I don't remember who I am, but I remember fishing. Well, the idea of fishing. Maybe I was fishing and hit my head. How? Someone dropped something from my head from a bridge. My head hit a low bridge. Or I was the lone object on the water and lightning found me a convenient target. The fear of the damage that might have caused him was replaced with a temporary contentment in the fact there could at least be a rational explanation for his situation.

He continued to imagine possibilities, feeling some accomplishment when a new one presented himself to his mind. It was if it could fill the void of not knowing who he was or how he got here, like flicking channels endlessly on a TV, distracting oneself from the knowledge that there was nothing to watch.

He would have stood there longer, were it not for the chill that whipped across his body and forced him to hug himself to preserve warmth.

There was no going back in that boat, he thought. He'd be out there for days, rowing in circles.

Instead, he turned around and faced the field before him. Slick grass and small tufts of weeds stretched out as far as he could see, which still was not very far, because of the constant curtain of fog. Yet there may be shelter somewhere, he wished. Something to protect him, to limit his exposure to the elements.

He looked at his clothes for the first time, to see what he was wearing and check if perhaps there were a clue that could assist him in discovering his whereabouts. But there was little to go off of. Gray, coarse materials that bristled his skin when he walked, and barely kept in any heat. They looked like they had been found amongst refuse and were fished out just for him. Regardless, he had a second of appreciation as another chill blew past him, and he wondered how piercing it would have felt if he did at least have that short undergarment on that hung in loose fibers right before his knees.

The ground was squishy and wet and gurgled under his feet with each step. He was disgusted at the sloppy sounds that seemed like grotesque laughs mocking his plight. The ground seemed to slip under his feet and he was making slow progress, as if he were walking the same plot of land over and over.

His frustrations began to well up with every step. Dirt, water, grass, that seemed to accumulate on his feet like cuffs, a spear of cold wind to rip through his bones and needle its way through the openings in his clothes, and the fog, always the fog like a wall he could never get past.

"Damn it!"

He cursed as he kicked a round stone in his path with all of his might, sending it rolling it over the bumpy ground with a speed that shocked him.

His eyes were fixed on the stone's trajectory as it collided with a round three legged creature with scaly and murky green skin that barely cleared the ground. The creature was flung up into the air from the impact and emitted a high pitched honk, then scampered away on its tiny legs the moment it made contact with the ground.

Before he could laugh at the absurdity of what just happened, black lines suddenly materialized and filled his vision, forming letters, and his heart skipped a beat at the unexpected sight:

[You have struck a trihop for 7 damage.]

His eyes widened and he tried to shield himself from the words as if they were invaders that swooped in from the sky to smite him. But the words simply dissipated into the air, leaving him all alone, once again.