My peaceful sleep that night was interrupted by the somber notes of the piano at a funeral service. I stood by a man, tall and handsome, but clearly trying to hold himself together in front of his two children. Him and I both wore black suits, while the younger girl with us wore a black dress and a matching bow in her hair. She held the man’s hand while we stared on at the coffin in front of us.

  My head was barely high enough to peek into the long box, inside was a beautiful woman. Her features were not visible to me, veiled by a faceless face, but nonetheless, she was stunning. The way her hands were positioned over her chest, holding a rose, seemed sad for some reason. Contrary to the rest of us, she was dressed in a garnet hue, substituting for the blood that no longer ran through her veins.

  As I looked up at the man I was there with, a solitary tear fell off his cheekbone, landing somewhere in the grass beneath. Suddenly, the girl and I were pulled away from the coffin and over to the side. I watched over my shoulder as a few men closed the box, hiding her from sight, and began to lower it into the ground below.

  When the box hit the bottom, a small cloud of dust pushed itself up, out of the hole. At this, the men began to cover over the coffin with the dirt piled up around the hole. The man covered both mine and the girl's eyes, pulling us ever further away from the recently deceased woman.

  Thunder cracked, and the dark clouds above began to pour out their sorrow. The drops were cold, chilling me to my core. The man’s gaze was filled with disbelief, staring into the distance as the warmth left his skin. He winced every time a shovel could be heard, dumping more dirt onto the coffin with a loud thump.

  A gust of strong wind blew violently.

  I now found myself inside of a small room, the man and the girl there with me. The floor was littered with toys and blankets, the once vibrant colors seemed faded and dull.

  The man was sitting on a chair in the corner, he was bent over, hands holding his head. His eyes were wide as he reached his bottle on the end table and took another swig of beer. The ground around him was covered in bottles, I didn’t spend time counting them, but they were enough to make a heavyweight severely drunk.

  The girl frowned, dropping her doll on the ground and walking over to the man in the corner. She seemed to ask some kind of question, tilting her head to the side and pulling on his sleeve.

  The man stood up. Looking at the young girl, he raised his hand up high. She looked on him with terror as his hand began to fly down toward her. My legs shoved me forward, getting in between the man and the girl. My face stung as his hand collided with it, sending me into the wall adjacent to me.

  He was usually a kind man, he’d never drank before then, instead choosing to pour out his sorrows into his work. However, this sorrow was one so deep that it penetrated the lowest parts of his soul, turning it black as night for just a moment. A moment too long...

  He seemed aggravated that I had stolen his wrath and began to ready another slap for the girl. I stood as fast as I could and sent my fist as hard as possible into his gut. The man staggered back into his chair and spewed green-ish liquid out of his mouth, running down his white button-up. My fist ached after the impact, but the resulting adrenaline covered it up in a hurry.

  The man switched his attention to me, attempting to throw a drunken punch in my direction. I easily evaded him in his inebriated state and readied myself for a counter-attack.

  The girl was bawling behind me, pulling on my arm to get me to stop. Her eyes were full of pain and confusion. I lowered my fist and looked at her face, the tears falling down it nonstop, forming a puddle on the ground.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  A hard fist collides with the side of my head, throwing me to the ground. I smacked into the hardwood floor with a thud, my whole body ached and writhed at the impact. I felt his foot push its way into my gut multiple times over, making blood spray out from between my gritted teeth.

  The girl tried to step in and shove the man away from me, but he simply swatted her aside. As the girl fell to the ground, her head met with the corner of the end table. No scream emanated from the girl, instead a pool of thick red liquid began to form with her head at the source.

  The man turned back to finish me off, but at that moment, he had realized what he was doing. He looked at me in horror, his eyes bulged as he saw the damage he had done. He moved his attention to where my hand was trying to reach, seeing his daughter sprawled out on the floor, on top of a river of blood.

  He quickly fell to his knees and called out for his daughter, but she gave no answer.

  He stood and backed up, gaping at the two bodies on the floor. His lifeless daughter was still, and made no noise. He stopped for a moment, writing something down on a paper and setting his "lucky" compass on it. Quickly, he turned and ran out the door, leaving it wide open and letting in the cold winter breeze.

  I crawled over to the girl’s body, hoping to no end that she would be alive when I got there. I slipped through the puddle of crimson on the ground as I inched closer to her. Arriving, I moved her long, jet black hair away from her face.

  In the same way as the woman earlier, she no longer had any features. Simply a blank canvas of skin showed in front of my eyes. I called out to her and no response was heard.

  As I lifted my hand away from her face, I turned my palm toward my own. My skin was painted red with the blood of the girl. My hand shook uncontrollably, dripping the red fluid into the river below, Plop, Plop, Plop. My eyes darted to the standing mirror situated in the corner. My own face hid from me, featureless skin covered in blood was all that remained to be seen.

  My eyes began to fade to black. Sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer and closer to the once happy one-room home.

  As the paramedics rushed in, only one line could be heard. This line echoed through my brain at a loud volume. Slowly, it quieted until it could be heard no longer. “She’s dead.”

  ***

  I felt my eyelids flutter open, revealing nothing but a dimly lit tent. I stared up at the tapered ceiling, my head and heart both pounding.

  My face was wet from the tears flowing down it, dampening the pillow beneath my head. I reached underneath the pillow and pulled out a silver object, it shimmered slightly in the moonlight that slipped through the cracks in the tent.

  Running my finger over it, I felt the shape of a boar, carved into its surface. I gripped the compass tightly with my small hands, trying to crush it to no avail. The cruel stand-in for an apology that the compass represented made me light aflame with anger.

  I ran through my dream in my head, trying to remember the names and faces of the people in it. The more I thought through it, however, the more I forgot. Ultimately, I couldn’t even remember why I had been crying, or where the hated object in my hand had even originated from.

  Yet, even without memory of what I had dreamt, the tears continued to flow, and my anger continued to burn. I sat up and turned, preparing myself to throw the object in my hand into the ground next to the cot.

  As I looked downward, I caught the glint of faded moonlight in the eye of a man who sat on the ground. I couldn’t make out much more than his shape, but the selfless stranger who had saved my life was sat down on the ground next to the cot. His eyes were open, but he slept all the while.

  My anger was calmed and my heart eased as I looked on, trying to see the face of the man. My tears slipped away and I felt the safety of his company while gazing upon him. I’d been saved by that man more than once at that point. I was grateful that he’d spent so much effort on protecting me, a stranger.

  As I laid my head back on the pillow, once again feeling its dampness, something felt missing. The more I tried to think about my past, the more it escaped me. I didn’t want to lose myself, to lose my past, I desperately tried to hold on to it.

  The questions shoved through my brain. Why am I here? What am I doing? W-who am I?

  Pondering these questions proved fruitless. I could not remember my name, my objective, anything about myself. It was as if there was nothing before the desert for me. Yet, I was left with the reminders of a past life that I couldn’t recall, the pain of memories that no longer belonged to me.

  Drifting back to sleep, a name crossed my mind. Its significance was unknown to me, but it was charged with sorrow and dread. As fast as it came, it went, the final memory that I had to hold on to, gone...

  The tears returned to my small face, my heart burned as I cried myself back to peaceful rest.