Young Writers Society

He resisted the urge to smile.

He knew it! He wasn't the only one who had lost his memories. Saying where they were wouldn't have taken a lot of effort, and Matvei hadn't acted that exasperated before. He glanced around Matvei at the others in front of the motel.

"Can someone tell me where we are?" he asked. "Matvei says I should check my phone, but I think I forgot it somewhere."

The boy skipped along into the building. It was an odd, dingy place. Ill-suited for a mage, though he didn't know how, exactly, it was ill-suited for a magic-user. Regardless, his hands twitched at his sides. He had to do something with them or...or something. Or.

He hopped up onto the bed and, with some fluid, acrobatic flares, flipped into a cross-legged position with his fiddle case in his lap. He unlatched it and tossed it open, reverently removing the instrument. He plucked one of the strings and winced. It was so, so very out of tune.

As he rectified that fact, he flashed a grin at the others. The tall, dark-haired lad and the pretty lass. The other two were talking, and it was rude to interrupt them.

"You like music, lassie?" he asked her cheerily. He switched between smiling at the woman and smiling at the man. They were both quite beautiful people.

It was around then that the boy with the goggles - a fashion statement the boy quite approved of - asked his question. The boy's smile hardly faded as he shook his head and focused on tuning his fiddle. What did it matter where they were? In such an interesting place as this, they had plenty to occupy them before they had to move on.

Laney had followed the rest of them after she watched Wally enter the building. She certainly did not want to be left by herself outside with that...whatever it was. In fact, she did not want to find herself alone anywhere in this place. Whatever hellhole this place was.

She watched as the colorful boy - *what's his name?* - jumped on the bed with plenty of flair and took care to tune his fiddle. Now certainly did not seem to be the most appropriate time for fiddling. So she didn't answer right away when he had asked her what kind of music she liked. Instead, she caught herself almost remembering a piece of a memory, a happy one. The jumping and flipping on the motel bed had triggered it. Whatever she was remembering seemed to have...love in it.

She was about to give some answer when Wally asked about the location of their whereabouts, which caused her to inadvertently step all the way through the threshold and into the creepy motel room. There seemed to be a well-deserved layer of dust everywhere, which floated up into the red light being cast into the room when the group of them disturbed it. She looked up at Wally, actually glad to know she wasn't the only one who didn't know where she had found herself.

"I don't know what this place is," she admitted, "but it sure is giving me major creep vibes." Laney had been trying to disguise the fact that she was scared, but after that comment perhaps she'd just shown everyone her fear. She hoped not. She was already the only girl - no need to be the only wimp too.

"Um... fiddle music," she added to the colorful boy. It seemed the most fitting, and even if she tried, she didn't think she'd be able to place her favorite song anyway.

Elijah hadn't understood what the intimidating man had meant when he had mentioned looking things up on a phone. Still, he decided not to press it.

He followed the others to the motel because that's where he felt compelled to go. It was dark and seemed abandoned.

Yet, his vision of the hazel-eyed woman that smelled of roses was so strong now. She was connected, somehow, even if he couldn't quite figure it out.

He took a deep breath. Even if these people weren't his friends, they were in the same predicament together, so they would have to stick together.

God, the kids were getting everywhere. He wanted to do the same, running amok like an unrestrained gremlin was all he could wish for, but his heart was still racing to a different tune.

He walked around the room. It was a typical single-bed motel room, with much to be desired. There was the bed that fiddle kid was abusing with his acrobatics, and right beside it was a bedside table and a lamp with a dead bulb. He checked it, walking over and plugging it in, flipping the switch. Nothing. Either the bulb was dead, or there was no power. The latter seemed unlikely considering the sign outside was on, but maybe the circuits in the building were shot. Or things were turned off in the power box...

He spun around the room, checking all the drawers. Under the dresser. Dust, dust, dust. The drawers were all empty. Not even one of those Gideon Bibles or a brochure for where they were. Nothing.

There was a bathroom, separate from the main room. He barged into that, instinctively flipping for a switch that didn’t work. With how little light was already spilling into the main room, the bathroom was comparably pitch black.

He pulled out a small flashlight from his pocket, attached to his keys. He didn’t remember he had it until it was in his hands.

When he turned on the light, it flickered before focusing, still dim, but better than nothing.

The bathroom looked standard. Empty. Not even a bar of soap.

He pushed back the shower curtain, shining the light in there with an aggressive insistence. For half a moment, he saw a flash of something- a figure, a light, a shadow, but as quickly as he saw it, it was gone.

He tore the shower curtain off in an attempt to catch it, but failed to do so. He only ended up growling and throwing the curtain on the floor before stomping back out into the doorway of the bathroom.

“There’s a devil in these walls and I’m going to find it, and kill it,” he declared, his voice laced with determination and underlying bloodlust. “It keeps teasing me, like a cowardly dog.”

He couldn't tell if Matvei was being literal or not. He seemed like he could be going either way - and Wally really wasn't sure he wanted the answer. If he wasn't being literal, he was a little more intimidated by Matvei than before. If he was being literal, than the shadow out of the corner of his eyes might have actually been a threat.

But Wally had other things to think about - like how he had been right.

"I knew it," he said, grinning. "You're all like me. None of you remember anything, do you-"

He caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye.

It wasn't the shadow, though. There was a desk in the corner of the room, and a dusty, smudged mirror hanging above it. He couldn't tell why he was so compelled to look at his reflection, but he made a beeline for it anyways.

He stared at the face that looked back at him.

Then he raised a hand up to touch his cheek - trying to get confirmation that it was really him in the mirror. That wasn't right. It was all wrong. His hair was supposed to be a green-eyed redhead. And where were his freckles? He knew they were supposed to be all across his face.

"...Is this mirror working right?" he asked. He looked back at the others. He should have been more concerned with the shadow and Matvei's threat. He knew that. But all he cared about right now was how he wasn't the man he thought he was. "I have orange hair, right? And green eyes? And freckles?"

The boy looked up, placing the newly-tuned fiddle on his shoulder and playing a short, cheery tune to check that all was in order. It played like an extension of him, perfectly joyous in its sound. The boy grinned.

The lad with the goggles had asked a question, and only now did it register. the boy tilted his head, giving him a confused look, "Your hair doesn't look so orange in this light," he admitted, "You're still a pretty lad, though," he added with a wink.

The boy had said something about there being a devil in the walls, and Elijah wasn't sure what he meant.

He could believe there was actually a devil, because he was sending the brunette hazel eyed woman to haunt him. Her scent was growing stronger now. Why couldn't he remember her name?

He decided the woman would be called Eve. Elijah was sure that wasn't her name, just like he was sure Elijah wasn't his. But until he figured it out, it would have to do.

Elijah glanced at his reflection the mirror. Dark hair. Blue eyes. This felt right. This body felt right. So why did nothing else?

Who was Eve, and why wouldn't she leave him alone?

"You can't kill the devil, you know. It's not like he's a human being, like us." Laney crossed her arms, addressing Matvei's frustrated outburst. She crossed her arms and reached up with one hand to touch the miraculous medal hanging around her neck. Somehow, she knew it couldn't be done. Not that there weren't other ways to overcome evil.

Laney faced Wally, who was looking into the mirror, and walked over to the mirror herself.

"Don't worry, Wally, you look great." She wasn't sure why he seemed to have 'misplaced' his freckles or forgotten his eye color...the thought made her uneasy. She could remember hers were a brilliant blue. Right?

Laney furrowed her brow and pushed past both Wally and Elijah to look into the mirror. Yes, blue they were. Good. She pushed a blonde curl back that had fallen into her face.

Looking up at Elijah's looking at his own reflection, she noticed a strange look in his eyes. "Something wrong?"

*Did he seen a demon or devil? Was it the same darkness Matvei saw? That I thought I saw outside?*

He frantically glanced between the others in the room and the mirror.

They didn't see anything wrong with it, and they thought he looked good like this. Wally could care less about looking good; he'd look horrible if it meant he looked the right way in his reflection. And he just knew that the not-voice would be backing him up on this. It wasn't just his hair, or his eyes, or his freckles. That was just the stuff he had immediately noticed.

Everything else was wrong, too. His face was the wrong shape, his body was supposed to be a few inches shorter, and there was supposed to be something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"I don't understand," Wally whispered. "Why-why don't I look the way I'm supposed to?"

He just kept staring at the mirror.

...Only to catch another glimpse of a shadow moving in an unnatural way out of the corner of his eye. Adrenaline and instinct kicked in, and he spun around to finally catch a glimpse of who - or what - had been hiding from them.

But he wasn't moving nearly as fast as he had hoped he would.

He still was moving fast. That wasn't a question. He had a feeling he had done track at some point, just going off of his leg muscles alone. But, still. The lack of speed was the icing on the nothing-was-right cake.

And the whole reaction had the added bonus of making him seem like he was crazy. Which he probably was. He thought he was a different person, had lost all of his memories, and was convinced that a not-voice in his head would be the best ally/friend he could get here. If he had met himself, he would have slowly - or quickly - backed away.

The boy hummed along to a mournful tune he played on his fiddle. It was wrong. What it was was to be determined. It felt like something was supposed to be happening, but nothing was. Just anticipation for a mythical something.

He sighed and put down his fiddle.

With a bit more twisting than was strickly necessary, he got off the bed, fiddle in hand, and flashed his grin at the tall lad with the lovely artwork up his arms. "Is there a tune you'd like to hear, my pretty fellow?"

Kazimir stalked over to where Waldo and Louisiana were having an identity crisis party with the mirror and leaned down to catch a look at his own reflection. It wasn't like he could say he looked like he remembered, but it felt right. The scar running across his nose and cheek was perfectly placed, though he couldn't recall how he got it.

It was a shame. That would've been a story he'd love to tell.

He stood back up, turning to the fiddle child on the bed and sat down on the end, turning back to look at him, one arm extended behind him to prop him up.

"Aren't you, like, ten or something?" he said. "Play a song about the shadow in the corners of your eyes. Maybe it'll draw 'im out."

"I was just wondering," Elijah told the girl. "What a beautiful girl like you is doing in a place like this."

The words came out of his mouth before he had the chance to consider them. But he stood by them. Elijah could sense that he belonged here. The girl didn't, though.

The boy plucked out a few notes on the fiddle, humming the start of a tune. Oh, it was such a lovely song. He didn't know where he'd heard it, but he could remember color, running his fingers through the grass, staring at stars. The stars were so precious that night. A thousand notes for a million songs written in the silken sky.

His fingers moved to the notes on muscle memory as his bow danced over the strings. "I'm not that young, laddy," he said good-naturedly to the man with the lovely artwork on his arms before the song really got started. It was a complicated, mournful ballad. Two voices spoke between the notes if you listened. One persuading the other, to do what was more difficult to determine. The boy could never tell if they were successful by the end of the song. It seemed to go differently every time he played it.

The kid wasn't bad at playing the fiddle, but he'd been expecting something a little more intense, not a melancholic melody. He'd asked for loud. This song was just depressing. Pretty, maybe, and not bad, but boring. He blinked slowly, looking back at the other man around his age. What was his name? A liar? Ellie? Elbow. Something with "uh." He looked like "uh," with his lumberjack plaid and his weird, creepy words.

"Hey beanstalk, you never seen a woman before? What's your deal?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at the man, leaning forward on the edge of the bed. The frame creaked.

"You haven't really said much since you came here. Maybe you're in cahoots with the fiend in the shadows."