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INTRODUCTION
What if you were born as a fully formed adult? Completely aware of your surroundings, fully able to speak, walk, think, and recognize, by name, all of the items you could see? The only thing missing, the only nagging void in your memory: your identity.
How do you think you would react to such a situation? Would it even be possibly to take it calmly? To sit back and think methodically about the situation at hand. Only then to try to find the most reasonable angle of attack moving forward?
Or would there be a sense of panic? A rush of nauseating adrenaline so thick, so heavy, that it would leave you literally gasping for air in a room full of it?
Of course, in order to answer these questions, you would have to have some concept of just what identity is. What it means. And how it effects your daily life. If you look at the research, you’ll find that identity is considered to be something more than an awareness of yourself. Rather, identity requires that you pass from moment to moment with the same concept of self, so that you remain the same person over the time in which you exist.
Bursting suddenly into existence with a fully functioning consciousness, however, would eliminate any possibility of that definition of identity in your case. Since you would have no past, you would not have an identity that had existed cohesively from a previous time into the one you currently found yourself.
Imagine just how frightening that could be. You would be aware of yourself, able to complete the necessary mental processes that result in thinking of yourself in the first person, as “I” or “me,” but your lack of personal experience and identity would make it impossible to consider yourself in the third person, as “he” or “she.”
Now, let’s throw a single wrinkle into the mix. Suppose that you awakened into this new existence with one tiny clue as to who you were. A single word. A name. Which you somehow believed to be your own, despite the fact that you had no memory of any previous existence in which that name applied to you. Would this concept of a name, supposedly your own, in any way alleviate the stress of finding yourself suddenly coming into existence?
I’d like to say it did for me, but that simply wouldn’t be the full truth. You will find that out soon enough though. But my only fear is what you might think once you learn the truth.
I am Sal.
This is my story.
Chapter 1
I woke up in an utter panic. Three words, “I am Sal,” played over and over again in my mind, like a ball bouncing back and forth between the two solid sides of my skull. Hard, and loud.
Besides that, though, nothing.
Absolutely nothing. I had no idea where I was, or how I had come to be there. In fact, I knew nothing about myself other than those three obnoxious words.
“I am Sal.”
I shook my head violently, hoping the words would fall out. No luck.
The manner in which I awoke felt the same as you would when someone, or something, startles you from a deep slumber. It was like a jolt, almost like an electric shock, that suddenly snapped me into full wakefulness. But, even though my eyes were fully open, I had no more understanding of where I was, or how I got there, than I had when my eyes were closed.
First off, it was dark. There was very little light in the room at all, and a lot of what there was seemed to be coming from small indicator lamps on various pieces of equipment. I couldn’t see well enough to make out what some of them were, but there were computers and microscopes, all sorts of dials and gauges, and what appeared to be laboratory equipment. I was lying on some sort of table, and managed to make myself sit up and look around, but there just wasn’t that much to see.
I looked down at myself and realized that, except for a pair of boxer shorts, I seemed to be naked. I still couldn’t see anything clearly, and there was no sign of any clothing that might fit me lying anywhere nearby, so I slid off the table and onto my feet.
It hit me that I could hear sounds above me, somehow, and they sounded like voices. That’s when I noticed a flickering light dancing erratically across the walls and the floor. It seemed to be coming from over to my right. I turned that way and could just make out a stairway leading upward.
I made my way over to it, but when I looked upward, I could see more of that flickering light hitting the wall up above. I realized that there was some kind of a fire up there, and at first, I naturally thought of a fireplace. Maybe this was my home, I thought, so perhaps there would be answers about who I was and why I was down in the basement. I hurried upstairs, ready to learn anything I could.
The flickering wasn’t coming from a fireplace; it was coming from an actual fire burning in the corner of what I took to be a living room, and something electrical—a broken lamp—was sparking on the floor close to it. The flames were licking up the wall, and I knew instantly that it was far beyond anything I could hope to put out on my own. I noticed there was a television set on, which explained the voices I had heard, but I didn’t see a telephone that I could use to call for help. I knew I’d have to get out of the house and find someone to call 911.
I looked around frantically. I was standing in a hallway, and just across from me was an open door into a bedroom, where I could see an open closet. I rushed inside, hoping that I could find clothing that might fit me well enough to let me escape from the burning house and find help.
As I entered the room, I caught a look at myself in the dresser mirror.
I had a fairly normal face, I thought. Though I’m not even sure why I thought it was “normal”. It was just my gut reaction. I saw that my eyes were blue, and my skin white. My nose was kind of large, and the brown hair on my head was cut short, in a buzz cut. I had a distinct five-o’clock shadow of whiskers on my lip and jaw, but I wasn’t about to try to find a razor and shave at that moment. I was about six feet tall, I guessed, and seemed to be in pretty good shape, physically. Nothing about what I saw told me who I was, or gave me any clue as to my identity.
There were suits in the closet, but there was a large dresser in the room as well, and when I snatched open its drawers, I found jeans, polo shirts, underwear and socks. I hurriedly dressed myself, and the clothes fit so well that I was sure they must’ve been my own. There was a pair of sneakers on the floor, just inside the bedroom door, and they slid on to my feet as if made for them. I took one more glance into the mirror, still seeing nothing that told me who I might be, so I stepped out of the bedroom again.
The fire had spread. It had reached all the way across one wall, and was spreading across both the floor and the ceiling. The hallway itself was filling with smoke, making it difficult to see much of anything. I could just make out what must have been the front door through the smoke, so I didn’t even try to loo
k for another exit. I pulled my shirt up over my face and made a run for it.
I had only gone about five steps when I tripped over something and went sprawling onto the floor. I spun around and looked, horrified at what I saw. It was a man. He groaned weakly, and I suddenly realized that he, and the floor around him, were soaked in blood. It was pulsing weakly out of a deep wound in the side of his throat, and my instincts told me to apply pressure on it to try to stop the bleeding. I covered it with both hands, but the wound was too wide. Too deep. The dark crimson ran between my fingers, barely even slowing down.
He opened his eyes and looked up at me, a surprised expression on his face. He tried to say something, but only a gurgling mess came out. Like someone trying to breathe through toothpaste. His mouth opened a couple more times, but it was no use. He could not speak. As I watched, his jaw went slack, and his eyes slowly faded into an absent gaze. He gasped helplessly a few more times, but then even his breathing slowed to a halt.
I had just witnessed a man die.
I was in shock; I was so lost and confused that I didn’t know what to think. I looked up at the fire and realized that it had almost reached where I was kneeling beside the dead man, so I started to rise. I planned to drag him out with me; something inside me rejecting the thought of leaving him in the fire. Perhaps he wasn’t really dead? No, of course he was. But the idea of just leaving him behind seemed so…heartless. Barbaric, even. This man deserved a proper burial. His family deserved to see him one last time. The police, someone, needed to find out what happened to him.
Then it hit me. The wound, the blood. This man wasn’t simply dead. He was murdered.
An eerie chill ran down and straightened my spine.
I heard a sudden noise just behind me and spun my head around. A new man stood there, staring at me and at the man on the floor. Suddenly, he pulled a gun from the holster on his hip and pointed it at me.
“What the hell is this?” the man shouted as he took a step toward me, but the fire was suddenly raging. He looked down at the man on the floor, then dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse. He shook his head, stood quickly, then grabbed me by the arm and dragged me outside.
“What the hell happened in there?” he demanded, as he tossed me down on the white-blanketed front lawn. “I got a call saying that there was screaming coming from inside this house. Then, I show up and find that my deputy has been killed! You better have a damn good explanation for me, kid.”
I looked over at him as we stood there in the still-falling snow, and it dawned on me that he was wearing a uniform. A patch on his shoulder identified him as being with the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office.
“Deputy?” I asked. “That man inside?” My voice sounded scratchy, and the words seemed somehow alien to me, even as I spoke them.
The man in the uniform stared at me, and I could see in his eyes that he expected me to understand what he was saying, but I didn’t. “Hey,” he said, a little more softly, “what’s wrong with you? How did this fire get started, and what happened to Kyle?”
I shook my head, unable to think of anything that might explain what was going on. None of it was making any sense to me, but since I had no idea who I was or how I had come to be there, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said. “I—I was down in the basement, and I woke up—I didn’t know where I was, so I ran upstairs and saw the fire, and I was just in my underwear, but I found clothes and I put them on, and I was trying to get outside when I found that man on the floor. He was all covered in blood, but I don’t know why.”
The guy was looking at me strangely, deciding whether or not to believe my obviously crazy story. “That’s Kyle Johnson, my deputy; he came out here a while ago just to talk to you. Are you trying to tell me you don’t know what happened to him?”
I looked at him, and shrugged my shoulders. “Sir,” I said, “I don’t remember him, I don’t remember anything.” I opened my mouth to say more, but nothing came. There was nothing else to tell.
The sheriff glared. “You’re telling me that you don’t remember anything?”
I shook my head, and those three pesky words started to bounce around once again.
I looked at him straight in the eye, pleading for him to explain this to me, and said, “I am Sal.”
Chapter 2
The sheriff stared at me, a clear look of surprise draped across his face. He opened his mouth and started to say something, but then closed it again. His eyes were wide, his mouth set in a line that struck me as barely controlled rage.
A sudden roar sounded behind us, as part of the roof caved in and the fire suddenly went up like a mushroom cloud. We both had to step back as the heat became too intense to handle. He grabbed my arm once again, pulling me over by his car. We stood there in silence as the seconds slowly passed. Both staring at the blaze. I heard a siren in the distance, then another, and within a minute or so, there were fire trucks and ambulances pulling up. The firemen were rushing around, hooking up hoses to the hydrant and then spraying water wildly at the fire. There was no hope of saving the house, but in order to keep the fire contained, they needed to put it out quickly.
A fire captain came to us, and the man in the uniform said there was no one alive in the house. He waited until they were all set up, then turned and looked at me.
“You sure you don’t want to talk?” He said, a certain finality in his voice. I looked at him blankly. He sighed, “alright,” he said, “You’re under arrest for murder.” My blood went cold. He glanced over at the house, which was collapsing in on itself from the flames. “At least you’ll have a place to sleep tonight,” he added. “Sorry it won’t be as luxurious as you’re used to.”
He turned me around and pulled my hands behind my back. I felt the handcuffs on my wrists, and a part of me started to panic, but I simply didn’t know what to do. When he turned me back around and opened the car door, I got in meekly. He reached in and fastened the seat belt around me, then closed the door and went around to the driver’s side, where he started the car without getting in.
“Can’t have you freezing to death,” he said. “You don’t even have a jacket on.” He left me to my thoughts as he went to speak with the fire captain again.
The trouble with being alone with my thoughts was that I didn’t have any. I sat there and tried to rack my brain, tried to remember anything before I woke up in that basement, but there was nothing. I didn’t know what it could mean. Obviously, I had some kind of amnesia, but what could’ve induced it? Did I suffer an injury to my head? Had I blocked out my memory because of some horrible trauma? For all I knew, I might have blocked it out because I killed that poor deputy, and couldn’t face my own guilt.
I watched out the window as the sheriff stood there with the fire captain, and the milling crowd of neighbors who were watching the firemen do their best to put out the blaze. I looked at the house, trying to feel some sense of loss or remorse over what was happening, but there was nothing. The sheriff had referred to it as my house, but I didn’t recognize it, didn’t feel any sense of belonging. It was just a house, just like any of the others on the street.
I saw the sheriff coming back toward the car, and he got in behind the wheel. “It doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to save anything,” he said. He shook his head. “Damn shame. Don’t suppose you kept any of your work stashed away somewhere else, did you?”
I looked at him. “My work? I don’t know what you mean…”
He turned in his seat suddenly, and I could see him glaring at me in the firelight. “Don’t play your games with me,” he said. “I’ve been around the block too many times, I know a scam when I see one. I don’t know why you killed Kyle, but it’s obvious you did, so now you’re setting yourself up for an insanity defense. Oh, poor little me,” he said mockingly, “I can’t remember what happened, I don’t know who I am!” His hand slapped the steel mesh that was between us, as he went back to using his own v
oice. “I’m gonna break you, buddy. You’re not getting away with this. Kyle wasn’t just my deputy, he was my friend, dammit. I’m going to hang you for this.”
He spun around to face forward, then put the car in gear and began driving. I sat there in the back seat, trying my best to figure out what he had been talking about. What work was he referring to? Why would I keep it somewhere else? None of this was making any sense to me.
We drove for about fifteen minutes, and finally pulled up at a huge, concrete building. A sign at the entrance read “Stevens County Detention Center,” and the place was surrounded by twenty-foot-tall chain-link fences with coils of concertina wire all over them. It was a jail, but it looked like a small prison.
The sheriff stopped outside what looked like a big garage, and spoke into an intercom on a post. A moment later, the big garage door began to roll upwards, and then we drove inside. As soon as he stopped the car and shut it off, the door came down again, sealing us inside a large room.
The sheriff got out and walked over to a window in one of the walls. I could see people behind the window, and what looked like some sort of a control room or dispatch room. He walked up to a rack of cabinets beside the window and put his pistol into one of them, removed a key that he dropped into his pocket, and then closed it.
He came back to the car and opened my door, reaching in and helping me get out of the seat belt. He took hold of my arm as I got out of the car, and escorted me to a door beside the big window. I heard a loud buzz, and then he opened the door and walked me through it.
“What have we got, Sheriff?” I heard one of the people in the room ask.
“Says his name is Sal, but that’s all I got,” the sheriff said, glaring at me. “At the moment, he’s being held on suspicion of murder in the first degree, for killing Kyle Johnson.”
All three of the people behind the big counter suddenly looked at him, and then at me. One of them, a woman, burst into tears. “Kyle…” she said. “Kyle’s dead?”
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 1