T&A — Into the Cave

When she says her own name, memories from Tj’s past come back to her slowly, then faster, hitting her all at once in a rapid slideshow, pushing through the fog in her brain. But somehow knowing who she is makes her feel even more incomplete.

A sound from above like a creaking floorboard startles Tj, reminding her of her situation. She waits a while, but nothing else happens.

Quickly replacing everything back into her knapsack, she slips in the bag on, the size fitting her shoulders comfortably. Taking a quick peek outside, she slips through the door and gently closes it behind her.

When Tj peeks in, there is no sign of the person who had her shoe. Leaving her knapsack behind under some tree leaves, she ducks behind the nearest cluster of stalagmites and keeps low to the ground.

Tj moves slowly, not sure if she’ll encounter anyone along the way, but it doesn’t stop her sneakers from squeaking. After two or three minutes of walking, the slippery tunnel opens up to a chamber containing rocky oblong pools that stack upwards towards an open ceiling. 

They emanate soft lights glowing blue, pink, and green, tinting her brown skin with different colors. Climbing around the pools while trying to avoid touching the wet walls, Tj makes her way over to the one that someone’s head pokes out of, and inside is the splayed-out figure of a girl suspended in the chalky water.

Tj reaches under her arms to pull her out. The water makes it easier, but she’s unable to remove her completely. The exertion makes the smaller girl grab at the rim of her hat… Which isn’t there, so instead she places a hand on top of her head and runs it through her short purple curls.

Crouching down and pressing her knees against her chest, she sweeps up the back of her coat, so it doesn’t brush up against the wet floor and hovers over the other girl’s pale face.

“Excuse me,” Tj says. “Wake up, please.”

The girl is unfazed by Tj’s attempts to rouse her. Jostling and poking does nothing. Thus Tj pinches the girl's nose between two fingers, and within 10 seconds she snorts awake. Tj draws her hand back as the girl flails wildly, sitting up with a start. With her back to Tj, she sits hunched over, legs still in the pool and long brown hair wet against her back.

“Are you alright?” Tj asks, fingertips resting against the ground.

She snaps to look at Tj with a wide-eyed expression.

“Who are you? Where am I?” she rasps.

“My name is Tj. We’re in a cave,” she says simply.

The girl looks around, almost hitting her head on a stone protrusion beside her.

“Do you know your name?” Asks Tj.

“My name…?”

The girl brings a hand to her head, a motion that reminds Tj of herself when she’d first woken up on the beach.

“I can’t remember anything,” she groans. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Tj admits.

Fortunately, she already knows how she might be able to jog the girl’s memory, but her notebook was left behind with her bag.

“Please listen. I’m going to list off some names, so tell me if they remind you of anything.”

The girl turns to face Tj, removing her jeans from the pool, and sitting with her legs extended in front of her she nods vacantly.

“Alex.”

No reaction.

“Jean,” she says. “Hoshi.” “Adriane.” “Ruby.” “Mika—”

“Yeah…”

Tj blinks, “hm?”

“My name… my name is Adriane.”

“Adriane.” Tj repeats. “What do you remember now, Adriane?”

Coming to a shaky stand, Adriane says, “nothing about how I got here.”

Tj stands as well. At her full height, her line of sight is just under Adriane’s collarbone, and she has to angle her neck uncomfortably to look at her face.

“What about your own life? Did those memories come back?”

Adriane supports herself against the rock wall. “Look, can we get out of here first?”

Tj guides Adriane back from where she came. When they reach the end of the tunnel, she stops to make sure there’s no one at the entrance before ushering them out through the leaf curtain.

Adriane looks out into the dusk sky, then begins pacing around a tree. Tj picks up her back in watches as she suddenly lets out a yell.

“Adriane, please keep it down, there may be someone nearby.”

But Adriane isn’t listening.

“How the hell did I get here? Nothing makes sense in my brain!” She looks down at Tj. “And who the hell are you?!”

Tj huffs, “I already told you that.”

All at once, Adriane goes quiet. Her expression becoming indecipherable. Suddenly she advances on Tj, who only has time to take a single step back before Adriane embraces her in a restraining hold.

“What are you doing?!” Tj gasps as she tries to wriggle free

“You have something to do with this, don’t you?! This is some kind of TV show or prank, right? Well, you picked the wrong—!”

Freeing one hand, Tj grabs at a piece of skin near the crook of Adriane’s arm and twists it hard, making her yelp and drop Tj to the ground.

“Please calm down,” she says, getting up and dusting herself off. “Panicking isn’t going to help. There’s something wrong with my memories too. I was hoping you would have answers because you were found with my knapsack and left shoe.”

Tj waits for a response, but the girl just rubs the sore part of her arm, looking betrayed. “That hurt…” she says.

“You grabbed me.”

“Yeah, but,” then she sighs. “Sorry…”

“It’s fine.” Tj watches Adriane look around at the beach and up at the trees. “You don’t remember anything about my shoe and my bag, do you?

“No! I don’t even know how we got here!” Adriane starts to pace again.

“You were carried in by a group of fish-men.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Fishmen? I appreciate it, but now is not the time for jokes.”

“I’m not joking. I saw them carry you in here.”

Adriane studies Tj‘s face before drooping her shoulders and saying, “I guess someone with a monotone voice like yours wouldn’t be making jokes.”

Monotone?

Shrugging the comment off, Tj walks up to Adriane and holds her arm so she’ll stop pacing.

“We should move away from here. The scream you let out might have alerted the fish-men.”

“Alright…”

“Now that you’re less confused,” Tj says as they walk back around the beach, “please tell me if there’s anything you remember.”

Adriane gathers her hair and combs her hands through it, wrangling it into a thick braid. “The last thing I remember doing was…damn, I can’t even remember which comes last.”

Tj can relate.  Even after reading her new book she’s still having trouble connecting memories in a chronological order. 

“Why don’t you take it slow?”

“Yeah, something’s coming back to me… I’d been staying with these awesome people who gave me food when I was about to fall out. But one night when I came back from doing something, the whole encampment was on fire, and the ones who did it were just there laughing!”

“Fire?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t hurt or anything. But I almost killed them.” She pauses. Then hastily she adds, “but don’t worry. I wouldn’t kill you or anything!”

“Okay. What happened after that?”

“Well, I know it sounds made up, but I got scouted by this guy who was running an underground boxing ring? He saw me beating those guys and wanted me for his team.” After a few steps she says, “you’re not gonna rat me out are you?”

Tj tilts her head. “Rat you out?”

“You know…” Adriane makes a juggling motion with her hands. “Report me?”

“Who would I report that to?”

“I don’t know, the cops?”

“No.” Tj answers.

Adriane nods. “Ok, cool. ”

“Anyways,” says Tj, “it’s good that you know more about yourself, but that didn’t help us with our situation at all.”

“Well, sorry!”

“It might help if we look around some more and then we can find a better course of action.”

Adriane throws her hands up, “but we don’t even know where we are!”

“Exactly.”

Adriane narrows her eyes. “I know I was panicking before but you’re weirdly chill about all this.”

Tj shrugs.

Adriane’s longer legs make it so she frequently overtakes Tj, who has to jog every now and then to keep up.

“Need me to carry you?” Adriane asks in a peculiar tone.

Tj considers it but declines the offer. The only time she’d really felt tired that day was when the sun was beating down on her. Adriane chuckles, but Tj soon finds it easier to keep up with her, as though she’d slowed her pace down.

“Hey,” Adriane says, “what kind of stuff do you remember?”

Tj thinks back to a page in her notebook where various tickets were pasted. “I remember being on a train during golden hour. A family of three waved goodbye to me from the platform while it took off.”

“Did you know them?” Adriane leans against a tree to scratch at her ankle.

“No, we’d only known each other briefly. I think the ticket was payment for…a lost doll I’d found for them?”

As she talks, it becomes easier to remember the context of the memory. The doll hadn’t been lost, it was possessed. Tj had been able to calm the spirit using techniques she’d read in a book about the occult. But when she tells Adriane this, she refuses to believe her and forbids Tj from discussing it further.

“I’m hungry,” Adriane says. She’s panting heavily and sweat glistens on her neck. 

They stop and Tj opens her bag, remembering she saw an energy bar inside before. Adriane only takes a few bites before dropping to the dirt, breathing becoming more labored.

“Adriane?” 

Adriane drags her foot closer to herself; a spot on her ankle is flaring red. “Damn, did something bite me?”

“Let me see it.”

Tj kneels to inspect the mark as it turns purple before her eyes. Two puncture marks stand up against the bump. She lightly places a finger on it, which makes Adriane flinch.

“Does it hurt?”

“Like hell.”

“It looks like something venomous bit you.”

Adriane laughs weakly. “I don’t know if I can ask you to cut it open and suck out the poison for me.”

“That isn’t the correct procedure. Cutting the wound would make the venom travel through your veins faster, and ‘sucking it out’ could cause an infection.”

“What about a tourniquet to stop the poison from spreading?”

“That might give you gangrene.”

“Seriously? Then what am I gonna do?!”

“I…” Tj trails off when she makes eye contact with one of the fish-men with three more just behind him.

Adriane gapes, “what the hell…?”

Slowly, the one in front angles the trident in his webbed hands towards the two girls.