Awake

I began writing this tonight, this is what I have so far:

CHAPTER 1

A storm wakes me. I find myself longing for the dream. A constant companion of mine these days. This dream is all that remains from a time before. Before what? Something that now lingers in the back of my mind like someone you met only once and are now trying to remember again. In my dream I’m not alone. In my dream I am younger. Everything is, in my dream, as it once was and shadows of things gone remain in these vivid flashes of augmented memory.

I stretch. The sleeping bag restricts me. A moment ago it was a comfort. Now, it’s a cocoon that I must emerge from. The zipper is tough to move at first but it finally gives, allowing me to free myself, and I stand fully awake.

My clothes are where I placed them before going to bed, neatly folded, neatly placed, on a desk nearby. I think of the first few nights sleeping without my clothes, after realizing my clothes would remain clean or as close to clean as possible, and the feeling that someone would walk in on me while I was naked. That fear soon passed. No one would ever walk in on me again. Maybe.

It’s been months since I left home. Not that there’s much of a home to leave behind. I started out with a plan to find others. Survivors of whatever it was that caused life as I knew it to change forever. I looked, cautious of dangers, for anyone but found empty buildings instead. I take a moment to recall that night, searching my memory for clues, to find all that I remember is going to bed after saying goodnight to my mother. I woke up to an empty house. Alone, but why was I alone, why hadn’t my own mother woken me?