Cracks
After leaving Kazimir's room, Alfred stepped into one of the shared bathrooms and began to strip under the white sterile light. As the water rained on his back, he caught his reflection in the mirror beginning to fog and noticed the scar on his right arm, stretching from shoulder to elbow. For a second, it felt like seeing it for the first time. Like it had always been there, but somehow forgotten. Familiar, yet strange.
The scar didn't come alone like rain dragging mud through the door, it brought memories.
He saw a hospital bed, where he lay next to Kazimir and another boy. That boy had a similar scar: three deep, parallel cuts across his chest, Fresher, just like Alfred's.
Another memory surfaced. A car accident. Alfred, kazimir, Ilona, and that same boy he couldn't recall were riding bikes. Alfred's bike veered into a car. kazimir and Ilona rolled across the pavement, bruised but ok. In this memory, Alfred alone hit the car. The boy never touched it. Still, the boy bled the most.
Another vision came, different, like it belonged to a different world. The sky was black, with three gray spheres. Glowing moons? muted suns maybe? The ground was dark and the pavement was tiled in black and a different shade gray. The car glowed faintly with violet light. On top of it stood a mysterious figure with a skull-like head and a dark beard, dressed in black. His hand turned to smoke and reshaped into a massive, four-clawed limb. He brought it down striking the boy's chest, then hit Kazimir's bike and shattered it.
Alfred stared into the steam. He didn't know who the boy was. Couldn't even remember a name. He didn't know how he forgot him. But he knew what he felt.
Guilt. A sick sense that something important had been taken out of his head. Like he'd been robbed of the memory. And whatever was supposed to come with it.
Not knowing hurt more than the memory itself. He felt stolen.
The cracks around his eyes throbbed faintly. He had them since day zero. And he was afraid. Afraid of ending up like the ten soldiers he'd saved. They couldn't speak. Could barely function. Monsters had touched them too.
He wondered how long he had left before he joined them.
He couldn't remember who he failed. But he remembered failing.