Memory is the Key

"I don't know."

My life could be distilled into those three words. What little I remembered of it, anyway.

"I don't know," I said to the voices, each time they asked me those same questions. They never asked anything else.

"What is your name?"

"I don't know."

"Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

There'd be a pause, for exactly six seconds. I'd count the beats in my mind. Sometimes, if it was late in the questioning, my racing heartbeat would throw off my counting. It was never enough. They'd always ask again.

"What is your name?" came the voice from nowhere - always male, but not always the same voice.

"I don't know," I'd say to the surrounding emptiness. My voice didn't echo. The blackness seemed to shallow it whole. I couldn't even see my hand held up before my face. No amount of staring wide-eyed ever brought clarity to the nothingness.

"Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

Sometimes, as they questioned me, I'd push my knuckles against my closed eyes, trying to make bright pressure-smears just to bring colour to the darkness.

It never worked. That's how I knew I was blind.

I couldn't say how long it took for things to change, but change they did: first the question, and then the answer.

My 'day' begin the moment my eyes first opened, no different from before. As ever, I couldn't move beyond the small confines of what I considered my cell. I checked each time I awoke, running my hands along what felt like cold, featureless stone. The stone tasted like salt, and smelled of blood. There was no door.

"What is you name?!" demanded the voice. A low and aggressively masculine tone, today. Almost angry.

"I don't know."

"Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

I wondered if I'd committed some grievous crime. Perhaps this was my punishment. That made sense, didn't it. The thought wasn't a new one, for it often danced through my consciousness, inspiring more fruitless, answerless musing.

I'd asked the voices before, of course, many times. I'd also learned quickly enough that they were extremely unforthcoming. They would ask, but never answer.

"What is your name?"

I sighed, slinking back to the thin blacker I considered my bed. In the sightless dark, I wrapped the rag around my shoulders, and returned to shivering.

"I don't know."

"Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

I was hungry, which surprised me. I rarely woke feeling hunger. Though I couldn't remember eating or drinking anything since first waking there, I knew they had fed me. Still, the only taste I knew was that the walls left a saline tingle on the tongue, so I suspected my sustenanc came through an intravenous process during the hours I was unconscious. The tiny pinpricks along my forearm were always the sorest just after I awoke.

"What is your name?"

I'd answer differently, at first. I'd railed at the unseen voices, demanding answers and insisting I shouldn't be here. The latter claim always felt more than a little hollow, since I had no idea at all whether I should be there or not. I often wondered if I deserved to be contained as I was. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I was a murderer.

These thoughts granted me little guilt, for I could remember nothing of my life outside these walls. Penance was an easy trial when one couldn't recall the sin.

Eventually, the routine settled into place. I no longer invented names or spat out meaningless syllables. I abandoned the sullen silences, and the equally ineffective shouted questions. They hurt me whenever I said anything except the truth.

"I don't know."

"Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

I'd never understood just how they inflicted pain onto me, but the pain would begin in my head and bloom outwards from there. A dull torn behind the eyes would leak to my eyes and the roof of my mouth, creeping down my spine. The last time I'd managed to endure it until my fingers felt as if they were aflame. The pain had dripped all the way down my torso, infecting half of my body.

Pain was the catalyst for honesty. I told the truth after that moment. I told it unfailingly.

"What is your name?"

Was I going to die here? Did I have long to live? These thoughts struck with greater force than any guilt. Feeling my own flesh never offered much in the way of enlightenment. With no sight for reference, I was reduced to guesswork. There was no loose skin, scars or obvious winkles, though I had a considerable amount of muscle mass. I was still the dark as to how old I was.

It was a bizarre feeling to not know how old I was, somehow stranger than not knowing my name, or remembering the sin that sentenced me to that cell.

"What is your name?!" The voice snarled this time.

Was that a repetition? Had I missed an answer? The pain sparked like a second heartbeat in my head, throbbing in my sinuses and the delicate tissue connecting my eyes to my brain. I had to clear my mouth of the sudden drool-flush.

Maybe they would kill me if I held back from answering. I'd tried to die that way before, back in the beginning, but the pain always broke me, leaving me weeping and panting, confessing the truth yet again.

"What is your name?"

I looked up, seeing nothing, already feeling the tremble in my fingers as the pain spread with pinching fire down to my jaw. A snorted breath, not quite a laugh, broke from my lips. I felt myself smiling, felt the welcome warmth of the tears on my face. Perhaps this was what going mad felt like. Perhaps I'd been mad for months already.

"What is your name?"

My cheeks hurt, both from the spreading punishment and the ache of grinning. This shouldn't be funny, but it was. In a way, it really was. What had I done to belong here? It must have been something bad. Something really, truly bad.

Was I important? Did I know something they wanted to pry from my skull? If that was the case, they were out of luck; the memory-starved darkness in my head was as empty as the blackness before my eyes.

That set my laughing again, harder this time.

"My name," I began to answer, but crumbled into childish sniggering. The pain ramped up, quicker than before, knifing to my tongue and throat in a quick pulse. I gagged, but didn't stop grinning. If there'd been anything in my system, I would have thrown it up right then and there.

"What is your name?!"

"I don't know." The pain receded, but didn't dissipate completely. I was still locked into a madman's smile as I drew another breath.

"I don't know."

I leaned back against the wall, the laughter finally fading.

"My name is whatever I want it to be! My name is whatever it needs to be, to get me the hell out of here!"

As soon as those words left my mouth, the pain exploded throughout my entire body, simultaneously. I fell to my knees, unable to stand the pain that burnt inside my legs.

My body contorted as the agony rampaged across my nervous system. Never before had I experienced such torture. I yelled at the darkness for it to end, but the voices were gone. No matter how many times or how loud I shouted, there was no response.

In that moment, I knew that this was my death, so I embraced it. Anywhere was better than here.

I felt something streamed down from my eyes, nose and ears; I couldn't tell what it was, but I assumed that it was blood. My blood.

At the same time, a new taste greeted my almost forgotten tastebuds. A liquid was slowly filling the space in my mouth. There was a strong taste of iron to it, which only confirmed that I was bleeding from the inside out.

I spat it out to clear my mouth, only for more to its place. I tried again and again, but the blood slowly started to fill my lungs. Coughing and spluttering, I desperately tried to breathe, only for more bodily fluids to enter my air ways. My lungs burned as the cells were starved of oxygen.  Dizziness overcame my mind, as I collapsed on the cold, hard floor. I felt the blood pool around me as my life slowly poured out of me.

[In Equestria]

Princess Celestia had just finished lowering the Sun, bringing about the night after another peaceful day. And thus Princess Luna began her duty. Slowly the white glow of the Moon peeked out from the clouds, with the stars amerging one by one like pin pricks of light in the sky.

"We wish thou a good night, dear sister," Luna stated.

"Good night to you too, Luna," replied Celestia.

Suddenly, the two alicorn princesses felt a massive distortion in the magical energy of Equestria, enough to make the ground shake beneath them. Nothing in recorded history had ever caused such a disturbance before.

All they knew was that something very powerful had occurred.

And for the first time in centuries, they were frightened.