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SUMMARY: A man awakens and has amnesia. He knows nothing of himself except that he wants to live. He fights to escape from the chamber he is born, and find his place in the world.

I was suddenly in a room. It seemed to be white. At first I thought it was just painted white, but then I saw there were no walls, or floors. There really wasn't anything solid, nothing at all. All I could see, and feel, was the endless stream of light. I basked in its warmth and felt to be part of the wave. My soul was here, as part of the chorus of light. Then I felt something, and I moved my arm.

The sensation was unusual, to say the least. It was incredible, to feel. It was even more rapturous then becoming one with the light. Only after I thought about it a little longer did I realize there was no deviation from the white light. There were no shades of red, blue, or green. It was as if the world had removed any difference, any shifts in itself. The world was black and white to me. There was the light, and there was me.

I struggled to understand my position. "Am I color blind," I wondered. "Does that explain why I can only see the white, that I am incapable of seeing colors? Or was it because I was dreaming? I knew that people could imagine anything when they were asleep, even things as strange as I was seeing." As I continued to rack my brain for answers to these questions I realized something startling. I knew absolutely nothing about myself.

It wasn't that I forgot a little of my history. Most people do that. I had no clue of all of who, or even what I was. My first thoughts and memories were of awakening here. Everything before that, everything, was gone. My name, my parents, my friends I had forgotten all of them. All of the little things that make up what people are, I had none of those.

"Did I like fish," I wondered. "Or perhaps ham better." Even such trivial things I knew not of myself. All of my interests, even my hatreds were gone. It was quite simply as if I had just been born here. There was no proof in my mind or in the room around me that I had ever existed before now. I was nothing but an empty shell.

I searched my mind for any single glance or passing thought of who and what I was. I thought carefully for several minutes but found nothing. "This was impossible," I said inwardly. " I know what a wall is, and how to talk so I must of learned them from someone. It is impossible for me to have no memories."

I began to look closer into my thoughts, and search ever more intently for even a single memory. Then I found one. It was distant and obscure, but still there. I eagerly tried to relive that recollection, to observe and recall all the details. What I then came to remember made me wish I hadn't gone looking into my past.

I was first aware of a smell. It's interesting, after all that effort the first thing I remember was a smell. It was something dark and sinister. The aroma, which wafted through my nose, was the smell of death and decay. I could sense dried blood in it, and all of the other things that make up a decaying corpse. I felt something sticky on my hands and opened my eyes.

There was blood on my hands. The crimson fluid covered my palms, my arms, and even my shoulders.