Nobody Will ever Remember My Name

You probably know my name. The person reading this, you, are most likely a citizen who has heard my story, after I wrote it here and it was published by those who rescued me.

If I was rescued.

If I saved the world.

And as I tell you this story, you may think to yourself, “Why would anyone rescue you? You’re crazy,” but you would be wrong. I’m not crazy. The truth always goes deeper than what you see.

So, this is my point of view, and you will all feel like fools after making your stupid assumptions. Your stupid suppositions. Your stupid beliefs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

When I was a young child, no more than a little girl, just over four feet in height, I began to see things. Things that my parents didn’t see, and my friends didn’t see, and my siblings didn’t see. One day I was in a field– watching the cows graze, the sun rising over the plain horizon– and the beautiful green ground started to crumble. It started to roll and fall away, spewing ash and dust into the sun’s path and the cows didn’t even move.

I ran and I ran back to my house, screaming all the while, my tears falling onto my little girl shoes– but then it was gone. The field was as it had been before. And I knew I had seen an omen. The end of the world was coming.

So, I picked myself back up and walked with a swift pace towards my house again and told my father what I’d seen. At first, he believed I had been sent a message from some god, some immortal thing, some creator… but my mother questioned, and he had no choice but to listen to her. The next week I was sent to the doctor.

I kept seeing these terrible visions, and they were different each time. Once a crow pecked at my dead brother’s eyes in front of me, but he was alive, and once I saw bats, bats and bats and bats swooping down from everywhere, mouths open and gaping with blood… and that time I was so scared I’d fainted.

Over and over my parents took me to doctor after doctor, and all of them said the same thing– nothing was wrong. Except one time, father decided to take us to see a priest. And the priest said to them, I remember clear as day, he said, speaking as if I was not there, “She reminds me of my brother.”

The thing about the priest’s brother was that he was not right in the head, and he’d sought out his own end after leaving the sixth asylum he’d boarded in ten years. I was still quite young at this time, and so my parents were very scared at the news. For themselves. Not me. The priest suggested early intervention be done, you know, nip my problem in the bud. That satisfied my parents, and I spent the next two weeks in an asylum, the best one in town, the last one that had cared for the priest’s brother.

I thrashed and I screamed and I cursed but nothing would bend their will.

Years later… I was still in that horrible place. My parents never visited me. Nor my siblings, nor the few friends I still had, nor anyone. I was alone, eating hardly anything and seeing new visions every day.

Finally, I was freed, after mastering a performance of complete sanity… nobody could even tell that I had not changed. Not one bit. I was still the strong, independent woman who was going to save them from the world’s end, someday. I still forgave them, after all I’d been through. But I was older now, after all that time, and I had to live on my own. No one to lean on. Nobody.

Until one day, I was in a bookstore reading about others' visions, when I had one so intense… the light was so bright, the sounds so loud… I started screaming right then and there. My head pounded, my palms bleeding because I clenched my fists so hard. When it finally subsided, I couldn’t remember anything about it… and I’m so, so, sorry, dear reader.

This is where you come in.

After that vision, after the rude, stupid, useless store owner kicked me out, I walked home, limping, exhausted, vision fading in and out. And I decided to disappear, my reader.

I don’t even remember where I am anymore. Only that I’ve been living off of the food the rats bring me, in exchange I give them locks of my hair for their nests. There’s a steady drip of water from the solid roof above me. It’s dark. It’s silent. I have not had a vision all of this time.

So, I’m asking you, precious, essential reader that wherever you found this from, please follow the rats back to me. Please bring me back to the world. If it is still there.

But now I’m thinking, there may be no reader. Maybe I’ve let you all down. Maybe whatever I’m writing on in this darkness never reaches the surface, because maybe there is none.

I’m scared.

Nobody will ever remember my name.