It wasn’t the cold of the room that made the boy wake up. It was hunger. The boy’s eyes opened slowly. He took in his surroundings, or as best as he could. That was the second thing he noticed. His eyes, they didn’t quite work right. He brought up a hesitant hand to his face. He felt around for his eyes, like he didn’t know where they were. At last, he found them and rubbed them relentlessly. When he could see again, he again tried to look at his surroundings, this time seeing what lay around him. The boy was in a cold metal room. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, all metal. He looked to his side and saw an opening. A door, ajar, leading into some other place. The boy tried standing up, but fell back down again. A look of concentration filled his face. He again tried to stand, this time getting on wobbly legs with the aid of a metal wall. The boy did not know why walking was so hard. While he did not have any recollection of doing the motion, he felt like it was second nature for him. Halfway to the door, the boy stopped. What he was doing, walking, it felt natural. Hard, but easy. Why had he not remembered how to do so? The boy thought about it. The boy scanned his memory, but to know avail. The earliest he has known was this room not too long ago. The boy then had a pained expression. Why was that, he wondered. Why was it that he could not know? Why was it that his body remembered more than he had? He dug deep, yet deeper into his mind while he clung to that wall on his shaking legs. Then again, the same force that spurred him from his sleep, the hunger, came to him. It ravaged his body, making him drop to his knees and clutch his stomach. The boy retched, but nothing came up. The boy gagged, but nothing came out. Then it was gone. The need for…something to fill him came to an end. Shuddering, The boy used the wall to help him along again. His bare feet made quiet slaps among the metal floor, seemingly the only sound in the world. The boy at long last reached the opening in the wall. Holding himself on the frame, he looked outward. The passage was black on both ends, as he could not see from his dimly lit room outward. A red light momentarily flashed in the passage, revealing his surroundings but for a moment. The boy knew he had to go out of his room. And so, he did. While using the wall to steady himself like he had done trying to reach the opening, he felt something. Turning his head, he stared into the plaque. A jumble of symbols stared back at him. The boy did not know what they said. He thought he should…no, he knew he should know. But he did not. He did not know what they meant. The boy grew frustrated and huffed out a sigh of anger. He could not be bothered anymore by meaningless things. The boy knew he had to leave this place, and he trusted that feeling over anything else presiding in him at that moment. While walking down the dark passage, he saw other rooms. Some lit, some not. He saw they also had placards that had different but illegible symbols on them. He noticed that each one of those rooms had openings like his, the doors either scrunched up like tin cans or blown off entirely. No mind, no mind…The boy had to keep going. He knew he had to keep going. Soon after a long time walking, he eventually saw a ladder leading upward during one of the flashes of red that illuminated the world for a brief moment. The boy knew…Why did he know? Stopping once more like he had done in his room, the boy again scrunched up his face in confusion. Things slipped his mind. Things evaded his grasp. He could not tell what he knew, what he didn’t know, what he should know, what he previously knew, or what should have filled in the empty, empty space of his mind. Memories seemed to be lost to the boy. No mind, no mind…He must keep going. He was hungry, and he knew, or his instincts knew, he could not find food here. It was all gone. Someone ate it. Yes, that was it. He REMEMBERED something. Smiling, he reached out his hand to the ladder, and began to climb. He did not know what he was, who he was, why he was, or where he was at, but he did know one thing. Yes, he REMEMBERED, REMEMBERED, REMEMBERED! His epiphany, his excitement, his joy, they were all tied to the memory, or feeling of a memory, that he had finally grasped within his mind. Why, the memory told him to EAT.

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