Savage Impulses - Story: A New Life

Savage Impulses

Story: A New Life - Chapter 2
Sunday, 09-Apr-2000 22:37:46
207.193.123.214 writes:

At their small farmhouse, Donald carefully placed the young woman onto the soft bed located in their single guest room. She still hadn't re-awakened, but he wasn't too worried, as she appeared to be breathing normally. "I'll go downstairs and put the car into the garage, Liz." His wife nodded in silent understanding, and the retired Boeing mechanic made his exit.

Elizabeth remained behind, tucking their unexpected guest into the large bed. She paused to gently brush some of the woman's dakr-blonde hair from her face. 'Woman? She's barely older than a girl....', she thought. She looked to be about eighteen, but it was hard to tell exactly how old she was, since people tended to age differently. But she was fairly sure of one thing. This was no Air Force pilot. There were several points that were proof of this to the elder woman. First of all was that the U.S. government was not in the habit of using young women like this to test top-secret projects. Secondly was the outfit she was wearing. It didn't look like any type of flight or space suit that she had ever remembered seeing. However, that wasn't as solid a fact as the first, since she would be the first to admit that she was no expert. But it was very different from any material she had felt before. It was very lightweight, but at the same time very strong. She picked up a section of it from their sleeping guest's outfit (there being plenty to grab, since it was too large for her form) and tugged at it with both her hands. The material stretched easily. She tugged harder on it, but the shiny black "fabric" stretched more, effortlessly expanding in Elizabeth's hands. She let go and watched as it quickly shrank back to its former size and shape, not a wrinkle or stretch mark in it.

That brought her to the third and most important (and obvious) fact. That object back in the field. It had been hard to make out just what it was, but it was not shaped like any kind of airplane or helicopter she had heard her husband describe during his career with Boeing. And what about all those other meterorites? Were they somehow connected with that thing...and with this young woman sleeping in their house? She shook her head. Did any of that really matter right now? Elizabeth wanted to help her, and she knew Donald wanted the same thing. For her part, the young woman reminded the elder one a little of their second daughter. A motherly smile on her face, Elizabeth stroked her cheek, watching her sleep. Then she stood up and quietly left the room. As she walked down the stairs to join her husband, she wondered what they would do when their guest woke up....

Golden beams marking the beginning of a bright new day streamed in through the open curtains of the guest room. They fell onto the unmoving form lying in the bed next to those curtains and the windows they surrounded. A small groan came from that form, and it slowly began twisting and turning, the sheets moving across it as the mysterious young woman began the slow process of returning to consciousness. Her blue-gray eyes squinting, she looked out the window....and suddenly snapped completely awake. She quickly pushed herself up on her elbows, blowing some of her mussed hair out of her face, her head turning back and forth. Where was she? How did she end up here? Her brow began to wrinkle in concentration, and then frustration, and then with a bit of fear. Suddenly, those two questions didn't seem important anymore; one question had overridden anything and everything else that she could have possibly been thinking or wondering about.

'Who am I?'

It was a simple question, really. Every day, people think that exact same question. Who were they? What was their place in life? Why were they on this small ball of dust? But then 99.9% of them would shrug and go about their daily lives, not giving those metaphysical questions another thought. The other .1% were either in mental institutions, or were the victims of verying degrees of amnesia. This young woman could be counted in the latter, and her case was severe. She couldn't remember anything about herself: what her name was, where she lived, what she liked to do, who her family was. All of it was a complete and utter blank. This scared her even more than wondering where she was.

'Well, I'm not going to find out anymore about myself just sitting here in bed...' With a grand movement of her right arm, the young woman pulled the sheets from the upper half of her body and swung her legs out, placing her feet upon the hardwood floor. She looked down at herself; she was dressed in some sort of slick, black-colored material that was much to large for her, appearing to hang from her frame. She then looked at the foot of her bed. There she saw a small, nicely folded stack of clothing. She quickly decided that wearing those would be preferable to what she was wearing now - - the strange feeling material just aggregated her sense of amnesia, since she had it in her mind that she was supposed to know what it was, but didn't. She shed the black outfit and put on the underwear, the simple pale-yellow blouse, the darkly-tinted blue jeans, slipping the white cotton socks over her bare feet. Throughout the slow process, her mind kept going back to her lack of remembrance. There was something immensely important locked inside, hovering just out of reach. But every time she thought she had grabbed a hold of it, the elusive memory or memories would leap from her mental grasp to be lost in the mental fog again. Knowing this was getting her nowhere, the young woman decided on finding the person or persons who had brought her here and see if they knew anything more about herself.

Now fully dressed, she walked towards the closed door at the other end of the room, listening to the red-stained floor creak slightly with her footsteps. She reached the door and proceeded down the stairs she found. She could hear faint voices, gradually becoming louder as she approached their location. She reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to the left. There she saw that she was now in a kitchen area. And sitting down at a small table ten feet in front of her, cups of tea halfway to their mouths, sat an elderly looking couple. They were slight looks of surprise - and she could also see growing looks of relief, too. The young woman looked at the tall, broad-shouldered man. Something about him looked familiar...

But it was the woman who spoke first. "You're awake! How do you feel, dear?"

"Kind of tired....Hungry.", she replied.

Then the man spoke up in a friendly tone. "Well, I don't doubt it. You've been asleep for almost fourteen hours. Here, sit down and have some breakfast." He stood up and pulled out another chair from the table. She gave him a small smile of thanks and sat down. She looked at the food that the couple began to place on her white plate. Something in her mind was trying to get her attention, trying to tell her that this was somehow not natural. But her stomach was growling, and so she began to dig into the buttermilk pancakes and hickory bacon with a vengeance. Whatever it was, it could wait.

Then she remebered what she was going to ask. Wiping a drip of syrup from her lip with her napkin, the young woman turned towards the familiar looking man. "Who am I? Where am I? I can't remember anything about myself or my past. Why was I wearing that strange outfit? Can you tell me anything - help me discover who I am?"

Donald placed his teacup back onto the talbe, giving a quick glance towards his wife. Elizabeth gave him a slight nod, and he took in a deep breath. This was something that they had both anticipated. If their young guest didn't remember anything about herself when she awoke, they had decided to tell her nothing about where they had found her. The hard part would be coming up with a story plausible enough that she would accept it. They had stayed up almost half the night discussing the potential problem, coming up with ideas, and just as quickly discarding them, until they had settled on one that sounded right. Of course, it would have all been for naught if she had awoken and remembered everything. But that hadn't happened, so now Donald put their plan into place.

"Well, Liz and I were driving down the road, not far from here, when we came upon another car that had overturned off the road. We pulled over to see if there was anything we could do to help. We then found you; you had been thrown from the car, but you didn't appear to be hurt badly. There wasn't anyone else in the car, but it was beginning to burn, so we didn't go inside to gather any of your personal belongings. You were conscious when I first got to you, and then you passed out. We brought you here to our home. That's about it." A feeling of guilt was running through Donald's mind; a part of him hated telling this young woman lies about her rescue. But he still wasn't sure of what he had seen last night, and he didn't wat to shock her with something that she might not be able to handle. Besides, she looked and acted perfectly normal; she was even eating pancakes! The thought of her being some kind of extra-terrestrial was hardly worth considering. There was some rational explanation to her coming from that object. Still, enough doubt existed inside his brain, and he watched her closely for her reaction.

"Oh.", was all she said. Then she broke a smile. "Thank you very much for saving my life last night! When I first saw you this morning, I thought that you looked familiar. Now I know why. This is kind of strange for me, not knowing about myself and all. Do you even know my name?"

"Sarah."

Donald looked over at his wife. But she was smiling at their guest, and he recognized that look on her face. He had seen it plenty of times while they had been raising their two children all those years ago. "Your name is Sarah. Sarah Carter. That's about all we know, though, dear. I'm so sorry to what's happened to you. Is there anything we can do to help?"

Sarah stopped eating, looking down at her lap. "Well... Since I can't remember anything, would it be possible for me to stay here for a little while? At least until I can get my memory back. I hope I'm not asking too much. You guys have already done so much for me, and I don't want to intrude any farther."

"Oh, don't be silly, dear.", Elizabeth spoke up. "Stay here as long as you like. If there's anything we can do to help you, please let us know." She reached over and gave Sarah's hand a squeeze, and then stood up and began to clear the dirty dishes from the table.

"Thank you again.", Sarah replied.

She spent the next several days trying to remember anything about her past. She took long walks around the farmhouse and surrounding fields, pondering her mysterious past. Those feelings of strangeness came upon her once in a while, telling her that something was just not right. But as the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months, and the months into years, those feelings gradually disappeared. She settled down into life with the Carters, and they treated her as if they had known her all her life - as if she were their daughter. She, too, was thinking of them as her own family. No matter how much she had tried to remember, her memories before waking up in that bed were just as elusive as they had been taht first minute. So she eventually gave up with them. Sarah felt like she was home. Those memories were no longer important to her.

But they would eventually catch up to her, and her life would never be the same.....

To be continued

Terry