• Chapter 1:
    The noise bellowed in my ears, drowning out the alarm forcefully from my mind. I thought it odd I didn’t hear voices. Usually in the mornings, my mom would get up and yelled up at the sloping stairs of our mansion and demand me to get ready for school. My dad left hours before for he worked as a miner in the dusty West Virginia hills; eighteen hours made him cranky and angry when he got home. Now…nothing.
    I struggled to get out of the hold of sleep and snuggled my feet into expensive red plush slippers. “Mother!” I called out in the eerie darkness of my beloved home. “Father!” I turned on the hallway light. “Hello?”
    Mother scuffed up her bedroom-like hair and groaned. “Can you quit the noise up there, please? My head is killing me.”
    I rushed into her arms. “Mother! I’ve been trying to call you forever.”
    She frowned. “What? You can’t be my daughter. I don’t even have a kid.”
    Her confused words torn my heart into helpless shreds. “Mother? How can you say that when I’m proof of you and Dad’s love?”
    “I’m married too? Great. How’s Sarah Goodhart going to feel about that? She declared me the non-marrying type long ago.” A slow smile started to form on her face when Dad came down the stairs in his plushy lapis lazuli robe. Then it was wiped off as if he were a contagious disease. What was going on today? I wondered. Why was everyone acting so…off?
    He frowned at the both of us, wondering what to say to not make the moment even extra awkward and uncomfortable. “Um…hi?”
    I rolled my eyes. “Ok. Very funny, guys. Why are you acting like this?”
    “Acting like what?” questioned Mother innocently. “I didn’t start to assume things here. You did.”
    “But it’s true! How can you not realize that?”
    “Not until there’s proof and if I remember which I don’t.”
    I realize these are clue words, why they were refusing that they knew me. And on a deeper level too considering I’m their daughter and all. Their minds were erased, wiped clean of anything memorable. It only left behind their teenaged memories; hopes and dreams before that was destroyed by college and long hours of work. I will figure out why they were in this state. Them and the others who might suffer from this ‘mishap’ that I wasn’t even a part of. And I will do my best.