05 — Unrecognizable — A flash fiction story

Welcome to the fifth week of the Flash Fiction Challenge, where I take the challenge to write a piece of flash fiction in under 60 minutes!
I chose a prompt from the book ‘The Very Short Story Starter’ by John Gillard.
This week’s prompt was: ‘Write a story from the perspective of someone who has woken up in a room or place they do not recognize.’

I don’t remember the moment I was born.

I remember being a child, hopping from one stone to the other on the river.

I remember myself as an adolescent, as I hop from one person to the other, clinging on so that I don’t slip and drown.

I don’t remember being an adult. My dream ends right here.

I wake up. I am not home. My room doesn’t have any windows. I don’t want my dreams to escape. It is luminous here in this place that is not my home. The bulbs must have the Sun instead of fluorescence. My eyes hold adrift phosphenes.

It is in these colorful images that I see myself as a child hopping from one stone to another in the shallow river that slithers in front of my house and bulges in monsoons. I see myself again as an adolescent jumping from person to person who lash their tongues out and shed their skin to show their true self. But I don’t see myself as an adult. I go back to the time when I was a child in the river in my village, and older when I was surrounded by people living in the city. Yet, I see no future for myself.

A camera roll, a video tape that shows who I was, where I was.

But who am I now? And where will I be in the future?