I went to bed that night as a normal person, but little did I know that 24 hours later, I would be a whole new man. My name is Matt Smith, and when I was 23 years old, I discovered that I had suffered from an enormous case of amnesia. I cannot remember a single thing from before the date of November 25th, 1998. You can't even imagine how I felt when I found out what my entire life was about. When I was back into the therapy room, the nurses and doctors were all trying to tell me about all of these different events that had occurred in my life. For about half of an hour, I was just thinking to myself about what could have possibly been going on, and why did I of all people have to go through this. So, I checked back in with what the nurses and doctors were saying, and I was hearing about how I was apparently a millionaire who used to be involved in this high-notch drug dealing group called "The McDealers" and I just couldn't even believe it. I thought I would have been a very successful businessman or something like that. But no, I get to have been a dude who was arrested from being on the street dealing pot without any worries. I just told the doctor "Why would I have done such a thing"? He and all of the nurses of course had no response to this and just eventually kept telling me about this horrible life that I had lived. From that point on, I made the bold decision to become a whole new man. 3 hours later when I was done in the therapist's office, I went over to my old work office and told my boss that I wanted to quit my job. He had no idea what or why I would do such a thing, because I had a very high paying job, which are not very common in the part of the world where I live. He accepted what I was saying, and although this was very unfortunate news to him, he told me that he had hoped that I went on with my life as a much more successful man and that he was proud of all the other bold decisions that I had made. Some of these include quitting all drugs, smoking and alcohol altogether, making sure that all of my bills were in order, looking for a new job so I could get a jump start on my brand new exciting life. I went into another office building with my resume, and when I looked at it for what seemed to be the very first time ever, I noticed so many flaws and errors with it. I decided with myself that I could not turn in such a paper if I was going to apply for a job. So I went back home, wrote up a fresh new resume based on the events of my embarrassingly small and nasty looks and records of my old resume. I was very proud of myself for doing this, I was just happy that I was taking a whole new turn on my life and how I lived it. Plus, I was not the only one that was ecstatic about this new change in my everyday life. My entire family was more than pleased that I had finally, after so long, given up drugs and gone into a lifestyle where I can be proud of my work instead of having to hide it from all of the authorities. I really did feel like my life was taking a turn into a better way, and I know that all of the fairy tales and movies will tell you that, but I really felt it this time. Little did I know what was coming my way later on. About 4 more days went by and they all felt fairytale fantastic to be because they were all just so happy and joyful. That night, I remember saying good night to everyone in my family, turning out all of the light, and then crashing into my bed to go to sleep.
I sat there for about 10 minutes just thinking about how this whole amnesia thing might have been a good thing after all. So, having it be 12:45, I decided that it was time for myself to go to bed, and so I did, and I with that I just didn't. I was sleeping and I woke up from a simple reoccurring nightmare that I oftentimes have. It consists of a 6' 5" large white male that passed away a long time ago. In my dreams, I just kept seeing him in the corners of rooms that I went into. When I had woken up, I had noticed that there were thunder and lightning outside, mainly by noticing the dog barking like a hungry would that had a piece of glass between it and a large, juicy steak. So, hearing these annoying barks, I decided that I would go and calm the dog down, because my oldest son, Mark, was starting to wake up from all of the noise and commotion. I wanted to get out of my bed, but I was feeling foolish about being scared of a mere shadow I saw of something that had seemed to resemble the man in my dreams. Again, recalling to myself that these thoughts were just foolish, I went to get up, and I had started to get up. I walked halfway through the room before I thought that I saw the man in the corner again in the mere light of an electrifying strike of lightning. I quickly ran back to bed as an 8 year boy would after getting up for a quick drink of water and then thinks about the boggy monster and 2 seconds later, BAM, right back into the bed. I decided that I would try to wake up my wife to try to talk out what I was going through with her. Of course, I had felt bad because that was the night where she had worked two shifts from 8:00 yesterday morning into 2:00 tonight, so I just decided to let her rest. I tried to fall asleep, but it was already 5:30 in the morning, and I had not taken my nightly medications that night, so I just decided to wait it out in my bed, awake, for another two and a half hours until Mark came into my room to ask me if he could go for his daily bike ride. I always say yes to this, but I just wanted him to wake up a little bit earlier because, honestly, I was sort of terrified at the moment at what I thought that I had just seen for the second time in the same hour-long period of time. Time eventually passed by and my day went on. I was just so relieved and happy to get some time out of that room. I actually took a small walk from about 6:00 to 7:00 just to get some exercise and get some of the crazy out of me. When I got up, Mark and my second son, Danny, were both eating cereal downstairs in the kitchen because in about 20 more minutes, it was going to be time for me to walk them on over to school. Mark always walks to school alone, while Danny always loves to hold my hand through the whole journey there. I will admit, I do love knowing that my little youngest son really loves me more than the world itself. Mark on the other hand, I know that deep on the inside, he really does care about it, he just never expresses or shows that out in the public in front of all of his their friends walking to school. When I got back home with the knowledge that both of my children were at school, I found my wife sitting in the kitchen sipping on her routine espresso from the coffee maker. she says to me all the time that it gives her that extra boost that she needs to get through the rest of the day at work when the shifts get looser and looser for her.
I feel bad for her because when she signed up for the job that she got, she was expecting to work a very specified about of hours, but this did not happen. Instead, her boss makes her work extra 3-5 hours daily and doesn't even get paid for them.I thought that this was just out of hand and completely ridiculous, so I asked her if she wanted me to talk to her boss for her, but she consistently tells me that she has it all under control. I'm just getting back into the routine of my family, and I am starting to think that I should get it more often. Apparently from what I hear, I have improved in all of my weak spots and am getting better and better than I was before the accident. The only bad thing that has happened to me was that nightmare and that freaky stream of thoughts that I had the night before. I started to talk to my wife, Patricia, about what had happened. All that she remembered from the night before is falling into her bed and just going straight to sleep. I was sort of just wondering what was the whole deal with all of that. I decided to go upstairs and take one more daring look into that room into that corner just to make sure what I saw wasn't fictitious. So there I was, walking up those stairs one by one, just hoping that for some reason, the night before, I was going psychotic. So I got up the staircase and eventually gathered up the courage to open the dreaded doors of my fictitious nightmares and see what lie in that corner. Once I got in, I saw that there was nothing there, being instantly relieved. I went back downstairs with my wife and just discussed everything on our minds. We sat there until about 9:30 just talking when we realized that she was going to be late for work and I was going to be late for a job interview that I had booked for myself. We both got ready in 5 minutes then at 9:45 we were both gone, leaving the house empty of people as a flower vase is oftentimes empty in the wintertime. Me and Patricia share a car, so she drove me to my interview then drove four minutes down the street where she works. I thanked her for driving me there, gave her a loving kiss to the cheek, then shut the door and started into the office building. It was darker than it usually was at 10:00, and it felt like it was only about 7:00 based on the low light.
I was walking into the building up the large oversized staircase when I couldn't help but see footsteps in the corner of the porch-like area and instinctively tried to say hello. I didn't hear anybody respond to my greeting, so I looked into the corner of the porch and nearly passed out. I swear to anything that I saw the dead man again. He was just sitting in the corner watching all of the new and old workers come into the office building. Luckily for me, another person was walking into the building late with me, so I told them about the person that I had just seen. They ended up thinking that I was going insane and crazy because he didn't see the decaying lifeless body sitting in the corner. I turned back around to face that corner again, making sure that the body didn't somehow just disappear, but it did. It seemed that the body just vanished into thin air without any noises or any notices to me of it happening. I walked into the office building with the man from before asking him if he thought that I was crazy or something and he obviously said that he did. So instead of continuing my walk with this mystery man, I decided that going into the room where I was going to be interviewing in would be a bright idea. I walked over and I was instantly saddened.
The man that said he would interview with me at 9:45 left because I was about 20 minutes later than I said that I would be. I was really sad because I really thought I was going to get this job and really like it. I was also really excited for it because instead of walking to work everyday letting my wife use the car, I got to ride front seat with her in the mornings and talk with her. I walked back to my house after taking another short walk around the center city park. I was sort of debating going back home since it had been two times that I had been seeing this mysterious man in the corner of my eye. I made the bold decision to go into the doctors office and book an appointment right then and there. I just wanted to make sure that nothing was severely wrong with me. I started to go on thinking that this was all just a small and short side effect of the amnesia and I just kept telling myself that it was. by 12:30 that day, I was on the bed in the doctors office telling the man what was going on with me. He thought it might have to do with the medications that I was taking, and since it was in such a high dosage, he thought to lower the dosage and let me try going around like that. I agreed with him and we did just that, giving me the hope and thought that I would never see this strange dead man in real life ever again. I wasn't looking forward to going to bed either tonight because I just knew that I would never get enough sleep. I went back home and went onto my computer to look for new job opportunities and I was successful. On Friday, in 3 days, I would have an interview at a trampoline park just west of town called Jump Up. I was really excited for it because I wanted to be able to assist all of the kids on the trampolines so that I could go there for free. It also just seemed like a really fun job and a very different change in jobs. I wanted to take a new try on it because it just seemed to be a fun idea, and I wanted to just try it out for a while. I didn't expect to stay at the job for more than a couple of months, but it still seemed like a pretty cool job to have. I realized that I had to go pick up Daniel and Mark in about 5 minutes because they get out of school at 2:25. So I walked over to the school and got there just in time so see them walk out of the educational building. I greeted them both with a smile on my face, hoping that they would react back to me in a similar way, which they both did. I asked them how their school day went, having them both give the daily report of "Good". They both had some homework to do that day, so we went straight home to be able to get all of it done. I try to make sure that Danny and Mark both get all of their homework done and are both ready for tomorrow before Patricia gets home at about 5:00 to 5:30 depending on the day. She is supposed to get out and be home by 3:00, but we all know that isn't going to be happening anytime soon. I was hopeful that I would be able to talk to her tonight, you know, just to check up on things.
She got home at the suspected 5:30 and I made sure that all homework was done and that Danny and Mark were ready for the day tomorrow. This gave the lots of time to let Danny play video games, Mark work on his studying for his finals in two weeks, and me and Patricia to be able to chat about things that were going on in our lives. We were both just sitting there, in the kitchen, discussing topics like work and family matters. We sat at the kitchen table for about an hour and a half before Patricia decided to start making dinner. After her doing this for about an half of an hour, she called the family down to the kitchen table to eat the dinner she had just prepared for us. It amazes me that I am able to do so little, yet so much, at what seems to be the same time. I am able to have such a wonderful family, an amazingly dedicated wife and 2 kids that do well academically and athletically, but yet to not be able to truly remember the first stages of it bothers me more than you would ever believe. That night, I just sat in my bed until about 2:00 in the morning, just thinking about what an amazing privilege that I have to have all of these wonderful people in my life, but also about how I will never really know how I made this life for myself. Then, I fell asleep, thinking that I would from then on be more grateful about what I do and have in my life, so that I can get to appreciate it more.
I woke up scare free the next day ready to start out my weekend on a good note. I went into the kitchen to make myself a simple cup of coffee the way I like it with 3 creamers and 2 sugar packets. I was just about to go and sit at the kitchen table and look out the window for a half of an hour or so, but I heard a knock at the door, the paperboy. I usually never read the newspaper because none of the articles in it ever amuseme, it almost seems like whenever I do try to read it that I am being forced to. For once, I was actually in the mood to read the paper, so I went up to the front door to grab it. I opened the door to the sight of the paperboy waiting there, just standing, with a sort of blank stare on his face when he said “You have been warned…” and I was very confused. I asked “Warned about what?” expecting a laughing and joking answer back, but all he said was “You know what I am talking about, get it done by 9:30 pm tonight or bad things will happen.” and left. I was confused, worried, and happy, having never felt so many emotions conflicting with each other relating to the same thing. I felt happy and giggly because I had the feeling that it was a joke, worried because I also had the feeling that it might not be a joke, and confused because I didn’t know what just happened or what he was talking about. I had continued on with my day normally until about 8:30 that night when I saw something that awed me more than any of the other things crazy that had just happened to me. On the ground, laying there, was my son’s newly-born dog, Rex, with a stab wound in his back. I was in tears at the disturbing but more so fearful sight of the puppy, thinking that this was the scariest thing that has ever happened in my life. This was until I took further inspection on the full view of where I found the dead creature, mostly on the wall behind. There wrote in deep red, fresh blood “1 hour left, better hurry.” Just then, I had remembered the boy at the front step, and how he said to do whatever it is that he was talking about by 9:30 tonight bad things would happen, what could be worse than this though. I was just about to call the police on the landline phone 2 rooms over, but the door was shut locked. I reached into my pocket for my cellphone, to see that it was out of battery with the charger in the same locked room as the landline phone. I barged through the door, and got to the phone, and it was out of service, the chord on the ground that lead into the phone and the wall was chopped into about 20 pieces, covered in infant puppy blood, and I ran out to leave the house. When I got to the door, it was locked with a master lock that I had never before seen in my life, and a sign on the door that read “Your time is almost up, better hurry.” and I scarcely looked at the clock. It read 9:20 and I wanted to cry. I sat there for 10 minutes screaming “WHAT DO YOU WANT, WHAT DO I NEED TO DO” after this, I saw the clock change from 9:29 to 9:30. at 9:29, my clock was it’s normal shade of faded green in the LED lights displaying the time, but when it turned to 9:30, the clock turned a new color, red, then it flickered, then the electricity went out. I was scared, I wanted to say goodbye to my beautiful family. I heard the voice of what in my mind seemed to be Satin saying in the lightest of voices “Your time is up, you should have listened.” and I wanted to have it gone forever, but that was not an option. I felt a harsh sudden pain in my back and jumped out the window screeching “HELP!!!” as loud as I possibly could. Someone must have heard me, because I saw somebody come running to help me, calling 911 as fast as possible, then I past out, waking back up at a chaotic hospital room.
"Come on, Frank!!! DON’T STOP TRYING!!! Don't stop until you are directed to stop!!!" The doctor pounded on my chest like he was trying to break through whatever was in between my skin and heart to be able to steal my heart and run away with the prize. He just kept trying to make me wake up, as angst-filled teenager would to a pair of headphones with internally frayed wires, continuously trying to get them to work again, but with almost no hope that they would be okay in the end. After 5 minutes of continuous pounding and shouting at people, the head doctor finally gave in, release a few tears, and walked out. He first went to my family and told them, and they all cried for my loss unconditionally for a few weeks, then he came back in to check up on me-one last time. After doing this, voice so silky smooth, "Name, Matthew Taylor, Time, 9:42 pm, Cause of Death, knife wound to the back. The one thing that nobody will ever know about is the paperboy in the hallway behind my family, and I died seeing that little boy with the undead creature’s face fixed on top of his.
The End
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