6 years ago, 2015
"...In conclusion, your son most likely has trauma induced retrograde amnesia, rendering him unable to recall any memory of past events."
9 year old Grayton sat on the clinic chair next to his dad with a blank expression, focusing more on the low humming produced by the bright white lights on the ceiling than the doctor's words. His parents, on the other hand, listened attentively with worried expressions.
"So... Only the memories of the attack were lost, right?" Grayton's mom spoke up after a moment of silence.
"I'm afraid not, Ms. Laurentius..." The doctor answered as he readjusted his glasses. "From what I can tell, all of his memories from before the event were wiped."
"S-so he doesn't even remember us?" Grayton's mom spoke once more, raising the tone in her voice.
"That's not true!" Grayton squeakily interrupted.
At that moment, everyone in the room stopped talking and turned to look at Grayton.
"I remember you, mom! We went to- You taught me... Uh...huh?" Grayton's sentence broke down halfway through as he scoured his brain, remembering countless events and bits of conversations that happened in the past between them, but every time he tried to get a clearer look, his memories simply blurred away. "B-but I remember?"
"Yes, exactly." The doctor continued in a monotone voice, as if expecting this to happen. "As you can tell, though the amnesia affected his memories, his core memories and his reasoning are still intact. Rest assured, Grayton knows you two are his parents."
"Thank God..." Grayton's father breathed a sigh of relief, raising his hand to rub Grayton's head. "You can't forget about us that easily, ha!"
"Thank you so much, doctor." Grayton's mother quickly rose up to shake the doctor's hand.
"Don't thank me, really." The doctor put his palm up, rejecting the handshake. "I'm getting paid for this after all."
And that; was the earliest memory Grayton had of his life.
----------------------------------------
Present, 2021
"Hmm, so if you take away every electron from a matter, it would immediately try to bond with the nearest material, so theoretically, we can atomically bond any matter in the world together. Interesting…"
Grayton flipped a page on a high school chemistry textbook. He glanced at the clock that rests on the side of one of the walls in the library, realising it was already past 6 in the afternoon.
"It’s late already… Well, the library’s gonna close soon. I should probably go."
Grayton rose from his seat and returned the textbook to its original shelf before tidying up his clothes and prepared to leave. While making it to the door, he checked all of his belongings to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind.
"Bottle? Check. Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. Stun gun? Also check… Looks like I’m good to go." He thought as he combed through his bag and pockets.
With that, Grayton finally opened the old wooden door and made his exit. As soon as he opened the door, he felt a cool waft of air brush past him.
"Finally, some fresh air." Grayton sighed. After a few hours of studying, the gentle breeze provided a much needed refresher.
He walked forward through the stone tiled path in front of the library leading to the main street. As he did, he wondered which route he should take on the way home.
"Hmm, I’d like to go through the park if I can, but that’ll mean a detour, and it’s already late…" Grayton considered. "Ah, screw it. It’s not like there’s anyone waiting for me at home."
Deciding to pay his favorite park a visit on his way home, he turned and made his way to the entrance at the end of the street. He lived separately from his parents in order to live a shorter distance from his school.
While walking, Grayton noticed the road was mostly empty, aside from the occasional cars and passersby, who all looked as if they’d rather be anywhere but the road. Son enough, he arrived at the park entrance. Above the metal gates was a familiar sign with the words: "CORNUCOPIA TOWN PUBLIC PARK" Embedded onto its rusty surface.
As he got closer, he was greeted by the security guard sitting in his guard post.
"Back again, kid?" The guard spoke in his gruff voice as he stepped out of his post and slowly opened the metal gate. He was a fairly fat man with pale skin and a shaved beard, wearing a blue security uniform. "You’ve been coming here every day since, what, 5 years ago?"
"6." Grayton answered dryly. Past the metal gates, he could see the fog-covered trees. This fog was exactly what made him enjoy walking through the park so much. He always loved the feeling of being in foggy areas ever since he could remember. To him, it had a calming and relaxing effect.
"Sheesh, I can’t imagine what draws a young’un like you so much to a small, creepy park like this." The guard muttered as he finally opened the gate completely. "The people up-top won't give this place the care it needs; they'd rather leave it to rot so they can tear it down." The man complained
"Why don't you become mayor of Cornucopia, then?" Grayton quipped as he walked through the gates, considering the conversation over.
"Oh, right!" The guard called out to him, causing him to stop and look back. "The fog’s real thick today! Y’better watch out, kid!"
He simply nodded at him in response before turning away and continuing onward on the path.
"You say that every time I go here…"
He took a deep breath as he entered the fog, walking in a more relaxed stance. However, as he made his way deeper into the park, he realised he should’ve heeded the guard’s warning. The fog was unbearably thick today, as Grayton could barely see 6 meters ahead of him (20ft).
"Huh, this is definitely unusual…" Grayton thought, stroking his chin as he walked. "Not that I’m complaining." He shrugged.
It was easy enough to simply follow the path under his feet, which is still visible. On top of that, having gone through this route hundreds of times, he was almost confident he could make his way through the park with his eyes closed.
Almost.
As Grayton continued through the fog engulfed path, he noticed something weird. During his walk, his forehead had accumulated some sweat, and he quickly wiped it off with his sleeve. As soon as he did, he realised something was amiss.
Why was sweating so weird? Well, normally it would be a basic bodily function, but inside a heavy fog-
"Sweat shouldn’t be able to evaporate in this humid air. It should’ve stuck to the skin, producing a sticky sensation. But this…" Grayton felt his brow with his hand. "That didn’t happen. This should be impossible, unless…"
He eyed the fog all around him, paying much more attention than he ever did. Its milky white appearance quickly felt more and more alien and unfamiliar to him as he did.
"Unless this fog isn’t made out of water."
Grayton scowled. Despite this revelation, there was literally nothing he could do about it other than to keep moving. Continuing onward in a more careful stance, he started to think about how this foreign material could affect his body.
"Well, it’s definitely not poison or sleeping gas; it also doesn’t seem to inhibit my breathing…" Grayton pondered, now focusing more on the situation. "Maybe it carries some sort of disease? God, I hope not…"
After a good while of walking, Grayton found that instead of returning to normal, the situation only became more eerie.
First of all, the environment around him slowly lit up despite it being well over 6 p.m. As if there was a light source somewhere beyond the fog. Secondly, Grayton knew he had walked enough distance to at least reach the end of the park, but the path kept extending into the fog, and now he couldn’t even recognise where in the park he was. If he was even still inside the park…
"Alright, I think we’ve officially crossed the line from weird occurrence into supernatural territory…" Grayton pondered. "What is this, then? Am I being abducted by the fey? Or am I hallucinating and I’m actually spasming out somewhere on the street?"
As he mused about the possibilities, the fog kept getting thicker. Now, Grayton couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, or the ground under his feet, on that matter. However, to even his own surprise , he managed to stay relatively calm despite his predicament.
"When I said I wanted my life to be a bit more exciting, this isn’t at all what I meant…" Grayton complained in his head. "I just hope this fog clears up soon. I’ll be in trouble if this goes on for a while."
Fortunately, his wish was granted. 30 minutes of walking later, the fog cleared up, revealing a confounding scenery.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"What the hell...?" Grayton stood with his mouth agape, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
The first thing he noticed was he was standing on an ocean of purplish-blue liquid that stretched for forever in every direction he could see. Said liquid appeared to be wavy and possessed the same properties as water, but Grayton was currently standing on it as if it were solid ground.
The second thing was a warm yellow light was emitted from the sky above him. He looked up only to see no sun or stars. Instead, in their place was a thick layer of billowing clouds that looked exactly like the fog earlier. There seemed to be some sort of immense light source somewhere above or within the fog, the yellow light seeping through and painting the world around him in a yellow hue.
Grayton stood stunned, taking a moment to comprehend the surreality of his surroundings. He took a couple deep breaths as he recovered his composure.
"I feel like I just hopped from the pan into the fire…" Grayton sighed. "Well on the bright side, at least now I know how it feels to cross the border to Mexico- Aah!"
Grayton suddenly plunged into the ocean, as if the liquid finally remembered its properties and was now quickly making his way into the depths.
"What the fuck is this!?"
Grayton flailed around, trying his best to swim to no avail. It was as if the liquid itself was pulling him down, and there was nothing Grayton could do about it. However, just as fast as it had started, the current stopped, leaving him floating around in the depths of this unnatural ocean.
Grayton opened his eyes and looked around in an attempt to reorient himself, but what he saw was a view like something out of his wildest dreams. In front of him was a vast blue expanse filled with bright yellow lights and occasional purple clouds, painting a space-like view full of stars and nebulae. He would consider such a view as exceedingly beautiful if he didn’t have much more urgent matters to worry about.
Still, Grayton couldn’t help but gasp at the sight.
"Wait, what?" Grayton recoiled in confusion, quickly discovering he could breathe normally through the liquid. Though he could feel the fluid around him entering his throat when he did, it was as if it stopped existing when he exhaled.
"That’s… a weird sensation for sure, but I suppose it beats drowning to death."
Grayton took a deep breath as he drifted through the depths, feeling more relieved now that he had some literal breathing room. But his peace was short-lived, as soon after this, he felt a numbing sensation in his left hand.
His eyes widened when saw his right hand slowly chipping away into fine dust that dissolved in the liquid. He also noticed the same thing happening in his other extremities as well. It was as if this ocean was disintegrating him somehow.
"Shit, I’m on a time limit after all…" Grayton thought, immediately tensing up again. "I have to get out of here quick."
He looked around, his heart now racing. For the first time during this whole ordeal, the threat to his mortality started to sink in. Even so, he couldn’t ascertain which way was up or down, so all he could do was choose a direction and swim, hoping it was the correct direction.
"Better to go out trying than not doing anything. Let’s see… Yeah, that looks like up."
Grayton swam with all his might, but before he could even doubt his decision, he caught a blur of movement in his peripherals. He tilted his head to the left to see something even more surprising.
In the distance, he saw a giant beast, swimming in the ocean, swimming towards him. The leviathan was unlike anything Grayton had ever seen. Its main body was that of a giant eel, perhaps spanning multiple kilometers. It had smooth, translucent membrane for skin and hundreds if not thousands of tendrils protruding from its body, all working together to glide majestically across the ocean. The beast’s innards were comprised of the same glowing stars that populated the ocean, scattered throughout its gigantic body and connected together through golden nerves. The biggest being the one on its head, seemingly acting as its core.
It had no mouth, eyes, or any orifice whatsoever. It was as if this creature was the manifestation of random lines drawn between stars. It was a mystery how this creature sustained itself or even came to be, on that matter. But that didn’t matter to Grayton right now—not one bit. What mattered to him was that the closer the creature was to him, the faster he seemed to disintegrate. And it was beelining for him fast.
Grayton frantically tried to swim away, fully knowing the futility of trying to outpace a city big underwater leviathan in a swimming race. Forced to abandon the direction he deemed as "up", he could only pray he was wrong.
"Is this really how it ends?" Grayton questioned in his mind. The situation was almost too absurd for him to completely process. "This isn't how I want to go!"
As the gigantic beast closed in on him, Grayton felt something else besides the numbing sensation of his body disintegrating. He felt a foreign wave of thought, for lack of a better word, emanating from the beast which got stronger as it got closer.
As he swam, he suddenly realised he was somehow able to "feel" the creature’s thoughts. Either that or this thing was intentionally projecting them onto him, but he didn’t really have the time to theorise.
"Is it forcibly shoving emotions in my head? I don’t like it at all." Grayton thought. He slowed down slightly to focus more on the transmitted feelings, hoping to find a clue to survive this situation. "Surprise, excitement, and overwhelming curiosity…"
"So it’s not trying to eat me, but it’s still indirectly killing me… That somehow pisses me off more."
Though frustrating, this revelation gave Grayton a glimmer of hope. He stopped swimming and instead raised his arms up and tried to convey with movements for the creature to stop and/or move away.
"It’s not trying to kill me, so if I can somehow communicate with it, it’ll stop. Maybe it’ll even help me get out of here."
That was the thought process. But as the primal curiosity that reverberated through Grayton grew even stronger, it became exceedingly clear the leviathan had no intention of stopping. With the beast just a few hundred meters away, fear finally overtook Grayton. He turned around and started one last desperate escape. But he knew it was futile.
At this point, his legs were already in a serious state of decay, and his left arm was straight up gone. On top of that, he was willing to bet his head wasn’t fully intact either. It was when he saw the looming shadow over him did Grayton really felt his end coming. His whole body felt numb, and he wasn’t even sure his torso still existed. In what he thought were his final moments, Grayton tried to recall his time with his parents, his friends, and his happiest moments overall.
"If only I had some childhood memories… Dad said we used to go on lots of vacations."
However, even during all this, there was a thought that distracted Grayton. As weird as it may seem, the sensation of having thoughts and emotions forced through his mind like this felt familiar. As if this wasn’t the first time it happened, and his body deeply resented the sensation.He had felt this since the chase started, but it became even clearer now that the beast was directly upon him.
While he swam, Grayton suddenly felt the leviathan stop in its tracks. From their shared telepathy, He knew something had distracted it.
He looked back to see the gigantic creature play with what seemed to be a vortex. Specifically, a small vortex created in the liquid due to the warped shape of Grayton’s legs as he swam. It quickly disappeared as there were no waves to sustain it. But the creature’s fascination with the short spectacle did not end there.
Instead, the leviathan give up chasing him and instead start to align its body vertically, stretching out its tendrils in all sorts of directions. Once it achieved this position, the stars and nerves inside the creature glowed brighter, and it appeared to be exerting itself somehow.
Before he knew it, Grayton felt a current pass by him, and then another. He looked around and saw the purple clouds in the distance being swept around by currents as well. Moments later, whirlpools and vortexes started appearing throughout the ocean as well. At first, there were just a few, but they quickly grew to be as innumerable as the stars in the ocean. In just a matter of seconds, Grayton was swallowed by a vortex that appeared next to him.
And everything went dark.
----------------------------------------
After some time, Grayton woke up laying in the middle of the park trail he had previously walked through. He almost chalked the whole thing up as a fever dream until he realized his left hand was still very much gone. Half of his face was probably still disintegrated as well, judging by how he couldn’t see out of his right eye.
"!!?" Grayton let out a muffled scream from his non-existent mouth before noticing something else with his missing limbs.
His missing body parts appeared to be slowly regenerating. He could already see his arm slowly reforming from his somehow still intact shoulder. But for now, he was stuck on the ground, as most of his limbs are still missing.
"Eugh, that wasn’t fun at all…" Grayton frowned. He felt like he would puke if not for the fact that his trachea was missing. "It’s quite surreal, seeing your own flesh and blood without it spewing out everywhere." Grayton thought as he shifted around to examine his body.
And so Grayton laid there, waiting. All he could do was gaze at the night sky and the tree leaves above him.
"The fog has cleared up quite a bit, huh?" Grayton thought. "I wonder if I’ll see that place again… I hope not."
----------------------------------------
1 hour later
"Alright," Grayton limped, his leg not quite fully recovered yet. "Let’s go get some dinner."
As he limped towards the park exit, Grayton tried to understand the previous events and what they meant for him going forward.
"What was that, then? A pocket dimension? A rift in reality?" Grayton mused. "It definitely wasn’t an illusion; my missing torso was real."
"And that… thing—I can’t even begin to explain it." Grayton shook his head. "But what interests me more was that sensation." Grayton recalled how he felt when the leviathan projected its surface thoughts onto him. It wasn't all that unpleasant, but something in the back of his mind was absolutely disgusted by the feeling.
The sensation seemed to have jogged a part of his missing memory. But it wasn’t enough; he could only grasp fragments of the original memory. All he could remember right now were blurred images of a milky white floor, a hospital bed, and-
"Overwhelming resentment for whoever was on that bed…"
Grayton tried to dig deeper into his memory, but like every other time, he failed to recall anything new. Realising that all this theorising was useless when he had no way to actually find out, Grayton sighed.
"I just wanna get home faster." Grayton said out loud while limping.
As Grayton finished his sentence, a small vortex-like portal appeared on the ground in front of him. It appeared to lead back to the starry ocean.
"Huh? Now?" Grayton eyes widened as he stumbled backwards in order to avoid falling into it. "Can it not leave me alone?"
As soon as Grayton finished the thought, the vortex shrank and swirled into nothingness, leaving him even more confused.
"Huh?"
Suddenly, an idea popped into Grayton’s head.
"Wait… Could it be?" Grayton thought as he outstretched his arm towards a spot on the ground while conjuring up an image of his apartment complex in his head. "Am I actually...?"
As expected, another vortex opened up in front of him. Its maw now somehow appeared inviting.
"Heh, this might just be fun after all."