“We’ll soon reach home. And do you know you have a sweet sister waiting for you there?”, the woman from the hospital said, turning her head towards me. The woman from the hospital is actually my dad’s friend’s wife Huang Ling, and the person driving the car is my dad’s friend Huang Xing. Dad’s friend? Yeah, a dad whom I don’t even remember, who died in the accident along with my mum. Even though they died, even though I know they were my parents, I don’t know why, but I don’t feel sad or anything. Perhaps because, I don’t remember them. It’s like I’ve never met them, and they are just two strangers for me, whose names are mom and dad, tagged as my parents. Aside from this verbal relation, I don’t have ant attachment towards them. Or I have, somewhere hidden in my heart, which my mind dear is keeping from me.

The experience of being an amnesiac…it feels like that everything you’ve known in the past, each relation or feeling, is just right in front of you, trapped in a glass container. What you have to do is just to touch it and you’ll be yourselves again, only if you can break free from the cruel chains of amnesia, which are coiled all around your body, making you unable to be who you really are. I wonder if I hadn’t lost my memories, would I have cried a lot for my parents? Would I have gone insane from all that pain and suffering? That…I think depends on the memories I shared with them, whether good or bad. But my mind is not curious about them even a little. Perhaps, trying to prevent my memories from coming back. Is it okay, just to forget about them, and live like nothing happened in the past? Even if I think like that, this won’t change the truth. But, if the truth is a cruel one, then I am contended in it being hidden from me.

The Huang couple’s house, was a humble one. Not something spectacular, but one you would expect from a middle-class family. My new home, with them. When the main door opened, it revealed a sweet, pretty girl, of my age. With black straight hair, dark earnest eyes, and a broad smile on her face, she seemed comfortable. She at once grasped my hand and dragged me upstairs. “Jing Jing, don’t be so ecstatic! You might hurt Hua’er!”, Mrs Huang cried.

“I know.”, the girl just answered this and continued. She took me into a room. The room was what you can expect from a typical girl’s room. With pink interior, little stuff toys here and there, frills going round like snakes in a dense forest. For any other girl, this might be paradise. But it seemed too childish to me. There was a lot of girly aura coming out of the room, which nearly suffocated me. Perhaps, I had a personality-shift, due to amnesia, or I was like this too in the past, but the room seemed too much to me. ‘Don’t tell me I am going to live in this room!’, at that time I was just constantly thinking this in my head. But it seemed like bad-luck had grasped my hand tightly. The girl turned towards me, she looked excited, “I am Huang Jing-Jing. I am so happy to see you. We are meeting straight after ten years. Don’t worry we won’t have to part ever again, we are going to live in the same house, the same room and even study in the same school!!”, saying this she hugged me tightly. I would’ve almost been strangled, if I somehow hadn’t managed to tell her to leave me. Why is she this happy to see me? Were we good friends in the past? I don’t know. But, from this incident I can infer that we surely would’ve been. When we had reached home, it was evening, and as Jing-Jing passed nearly two hours, telling me the various kind of interests she has, we went down to have dinner.

“I had no idea what you like, so I tied my best to prepare these. Hope you like it.”, Mrs. Huang said to me, and we began our dinner. Everything was normal. A normal family and a normal life to be. I was kind of feeling good, being with the three of them. But I had never imagined, in the past five days, when I had regained consciousness, that all of this wasn’t for long. The most dreaded part of my life was just to begin…tonight!

“Are you the only child?”, I asked Jing-Jing as we lay in our bed. She was just beside me and with a dizzy voice she answered, “Yeah, I used to be the only child, but now you are my sister, so…”, she yawned and the rest of the answer being mixed, so I couldn’t understand a word afterwards. She dozed off to sleep, before I could ask anymore.

2 am, I was suddenly woken up by a slight movement beside me. Jing-Jing, was sitting with her legs crossed. I tried to touch her, but before that she got off the bed. “Where are you going?”, I asked in vain as she exited the room. I switched on the lamp beside me to look for my slippers, when my heart beat just stopped from what I saw. Jing-Jing was sleeping peacefully on the bed!! I froze at my place, ‘Then what was it that I saw?’ I had to find it out, for the family’s and my own safety. Just as I exited the room, I saw Jing-Jing going downstairs, I quickly followed her, but what was it? As she was about to step on the last stair, she materialised in air. I agitated in vain and quickly ran down the stairs. My legs would’ve entangled and I would’ve fallen, if I hadn’t noticed the cleaning mop kept downstairs, leaning on a wall. I picked it thinking that why in the world was it kept here? As I tried to switch on the light of the gallery, I felt a cold hand trying to keep the lights off. The hand looked as ugly as anyone would’ve ever imagined. Wounded and cut, its flesh protruding itself, with bluish and black colour. I at once retreated my hand, the lights still being off. What I saw was so unearthly. A woman standing in front of me in rags. No, she was not Jing-Jing, but someone else, someone I had never seen before. I couldn’t see her face, it was all black, but I knew because I had strong intuitive feeling that it was someone else. She had two eyes, shining out into the dark, like that of a cat. It was staring at me, but it’s focus shifted as I leaned back on the wall in surprise. It seemed like it couldn’t see me anymore, as it was looking here and there in vain. It started to touch the wall adjoining the stairs, to find the mop. It seemed to me that it became blind in a second as she was neither able to see me nor able to spot the mop, as I was still holding it. Whatever it was, then a loud voice echoed, which seemed to be the creature’s thoughts, as it was not talking. What I heard at that time, I had never expected, “Where is that dreaded thing? If I see her again, I’ll hit her with that. Huh, she’ll just lie here unconscious forever, while I’ll be enjoying her life.” So that was it? That creature wanted to be me? But why?