Young Writers Society

He awoke to a face he didn't know, with a bed under him that he didn't know and a metallic scent in the air that he also didn't know. The alien smell was harsh, artificial. It was sharp, it was unpleasant in an austere, discomforting way. His head throbbed with a lazy persistence that remained at a constant level of mild irritation, lounging around behind his unfocused eyes.

“He's awake.” the face he didn't recognise moved slightly then turned, revealing to his blurred vision only a nondescript blot of brown. “You OK there?”

The man on the bed looked up, squinting. His throat was sore; his tongue was a dried up sponge that squatted in his mouth, dull and stolid.

“Maybe.” he rasped, not knowing himself. His eyes refused to focus on more than colour: the dark brown of the person's hair, faint smudges of green that were likely his – or her - eyes, and grey. Lots and lots of grey. Casually, he wondered if he needed glasses, because the entire room was a colourless sea to him. He confessed to himself that he had completely forgotten. If he did need them, he certainly didn't have them now.

“Need a drink?” the grey-brown-green patch of smeared vision spoke to him in a voice too low for any woman not dosing herself with testosterone. Without wasting his breath, the other nodded.

Quite suddenly, he was alone, without the oddly comforting blotch of vague colour. Some time seemed to pass before he found a cool glass of water by his hand.

Numbly, he fumbled for it until a cool, smooth thing – a something with five dextrous other-things - set his fingers around it, gently guiding. The splodge that glanced up at him was completely pale, except for a strange black band somewhere in there. His mind gave no answers – no answers to anything.

“There.”

This voice was quiet, soft. A young boy, or maybe a woman. He wasn't sure. Deciding on woman because it suited him better, the man smiled in what must have been more of a grimace and made an attempt to cock an eyebrow, though he felt that he'd known once, but now needed to learn again.

“What's your name?” the unidentified woman (possibly) queried after a pause.

He didn't know.

“Trigger.” the man said, over the lip of the glass. His voice still sounded foreign to him, like something he'd never heard before: low, decidedly male, edged with the catch of a critically sore throat, but not at all familiar.

“Trigger?” she seemed doubtful, but unconcerned nonetheless. “I'm Glitch. The man you just met is Snake-eyes. Welcome.”

Trigger nodded, having no response to that. It came to his attention that his back ached, that the metallic smell was almost corrosive, that the smear of the woman-thing – Glitch's – face was becoming slightly clearer, that the water tasted too clear, too pure. What didn't become at all apparent was anything that wasn't 'now'. What didn't was who he was.

“Please sleep, Trigger. You need rest.” Glitch instructed calmly, removing the glass, and with it his mind's chosen point of focus, in a hazy blur of movement. Nodding, Trigger laid back down, wishing that the softness of the pillow wasn't so distracting once Glitch's quiet footsteps receded.

He never did quite guess Glitch's sex, but female always seemed best.

----

When Trigger (the name had fixed itself, and he rather liked it) next awoke, he discovered that he could see - some details on the periphery failed to point themselves out to a suitable degree, however he felt that, too, would fix with good old Doctor Time, mass murderer and love guru.

Remembering nothing, nothing at all, he took the opportunity to get to know his body again. There was a serviceable, if dusty, mirror wedged in the corner.

He couldn't be bothered with that. Instead, he glanced at his hands – studied what he'd be staring at for the next however-many years he had left whenever he did anything interesting. The fingers were a little long and spidery, and he hoped that pallor would wear off - but they were decent enough hands, imperfections aside. Upon further inspection, his age remained a mystery, though he didn't feel old, even if everything ached. God, his back hurt.

Daring to reach behind, he ran his hand up his spine to feel if he'd injured it – it might explain his amnesia and current position – then drew his hand back sharply.

Those were definitely spines. Lizards had spines, fish had spines. Homo sapiens sapiens did not have spines, except the one neatly implanted in their back from birth, the one that was giving him grief.

Changing his mind about the mirror, he hauled himself up and staggered over to its waiting pane, peering forwards.

The face that gazed critically back at him was indeed human - haggard, exhausted, but human. There was a trace of royal blue on his arms following the veins, but he decided that he wouldn't allow that to faze him. His shoulders were the correct shape and fixed in the correct place, his legs were quite long, though in correct human proportions, he lacked a tail or other such strange appendages, and finally his earlier inspection of his hands told him that, no, he wasn't turning into the bogeyman. He was a correct, well proportioned, and most of all very tired human being.

Shrugging, he figured that having freakish mutant spines was just something he'd have to get used to. And that shrugging hurt. He winced.

And his teeth seemed to be sharp, he thought to himself, flinching when he cut his tongue on a canine that fulfilled the double meaning to a disturbing degree.

It seemed, also, that he remembered what was normal for a human – he also remembered how to talk, the reciprocal of six, how to make a good gin and tonic and countless other trivial things. Just not who this newly named 'Trigger' person, this stranger he'd need to get to know, was.

“Well, Trigger. Pleased to meet you.”

((Thanks for reading! It's not my best work, but it's about, well, Trigger. He's an enigmatic character of mine who's not in there all that much but serves an important purpose that nobody really understands. I'd love to know what you think of him! He's one of my babies. The writing style is a fusion between his good natured sarcasm, and my ill natured sarcasm.))

((Note: You know how HARD it is wracking your brain for x many synonyms of the word 'splodge'?))

((This guy's from the same world as the Ever Trail, and turns up once, though THIS story is set some five hundred and ten years in the future to it... Just who is he? Even I dunno sometimesm even I dunno.))