As far as mornings are concerned, this particular one wasn't so bad... once you overlooked the splitting headache, the whirling nausea, and the loud screaming of my alarm clock apparently hell-bent on waking the entire neighborhood. Aside from those things, everything was just peachy.

For a few seconds I only grumbled under the sheets, but then I actually woke up properly and I hit the off button with a swipe of hand fueled by the righteous fury of the sleep-deprived. After a long yawn I groggily sat up in my bed. Then I promptly fell back down with a soft thud.

"Goddammit, what the hell was I doing last night...?" I mumbled while cradling my aching skull, and for a moment or two I almost felt relieved that I couldn't remember a thing. At least it spared me from the unavoidable onslaught of shame I knew was coming the moment my memory decided to start working properly, though I could make some educated guesses. It probably involved booze, and based on the white-hot axe of agony planted between by lobes, a lot of it.

In the end, I decided to just lay on my bed for the next five or so minutes. I buried my steadily pounding head deep into the wildflower-scented pillows and delighted in whatever momentary relief a stray cynical thought could offer. After a while, conscious thought finally reasserted itself into the driving seat of my grey matter and my mind's eye was soon flashing with warning lights like my brain was a misshapen Christmas tree.

I somehow managed to get myself back into a sitting position through sheer force of bafflement and began to gently massage my temples, if only to keep the steadily rising sense of panic in the pit of my stomach in check. I couldn't remember a thing. Not just last night, I couldn't remember the day; or the previous one if we were at that. By this point I could feel the cold sweat trickling down my back like miniature icebergs.

"What the...?" I mumbled and then shuddered as the aforementioned panic began worming its way into my head all the same. Whatever happened to me had to be drastic, as for a split-second I had a hard time recognizing my own voice. That was a sensation I could definitely live without ever experiencing. It might not have been the creepiest thing ever, but it was definitely up there.

I forcefully shook my head and sprang to my feet.

"Right, I must still be half asleep or something. Let's wait about half an hour, then I will have a reason to panic."

Following that rationale I decided to get a cold shower. If that wouldn't wake me up, nothing would. I threw the door of my room open and rushed towards the bathroom. I quickly realized, to my considerable relief, that I could find my way around the spacious family home with the utmost familiarity. If nothing else, my functional memory seemed to be in order.

With that in mind I opened the bathroom door and looked at my surroundings. A modest shower, a sink and a shiny white washing machine tucked away in the corner surrounded by blue tiled walls and floor. It was a simple and fairly typical setup as far as bathrooms were concerned but at the same time it felt distinctly odd. I let my brain wrack itself over the source of the abnormality while I peeled myself out of my fancy blue pajamas. By the way, I do mean fancy. It seemed like they were made of silk or something just as smooth and they fit me like they were tailor-made. Hell, they might as well have been as far as I knew (which, considering my memory-deficit, wasn't particularly far). They also seemed brand new, a tiny bit of observation that finally jogged the rusted cogs of my brain just as I was about to take off my briefs.

It just didn't feel lived-in. The bathroom, I mean, not my briefs. Everything was squeaky clean. No, what is even cleaner than ‘squeaky'? Whatever it was, the bathroom was it. There wasn't even a speck of dust on the floor or a hint of scaling on the sink. It was like a daily cleaned room of a high-class hotel suite. It simply didn't agree with the homey atmosphere of the rest of the house. Or... did it?

I pulled my underpants back up and tentatively glanced back into the corridor from whence I came. It wasn't as readily apparent, but on closer inspection it appeared to be just as disturbingly clean as the bathroom... Oh well, there must be some kind of rational explanation for that; I concluded with much less of a solid logical foundation than I would have liked. But back on track; I was supposed to get a cold shower. I could think all about the quality of the house service once I shook off my current confusion over the huge empty plot where my memories were supposed to be.

So I stepped through the door again, turned right and then promptly froze dead on my tracks. There was a face I didn't recognize staring back at me from the mirror over the sink. It was that of a teenager, a high-school student at best. His face was reasonably attractive, though I am the first to admit I am not a good judge of these things, and the short brown bed-hair on his head was sticking out in so many different and altogether unlikely directions it brought an Escher-painting to mind. I instinctively reached out towards my scalp to comb through it with my fingers, only to freeze mid-motion as the realization finally sank in: It was me. Me. I was looking at my own bloody reflection and I couldn't even recognize it!

I stood there dumbfounded for the next couple of seconds. "All right..." I finally muttered as I let my hand down. "I am going to freak out now..."