Blood. It seeped across the floor as Riff’s eyes quivered in their sockets. The blood was his own. His hearing was fading in and out. The only sound the ten year-old heard were the sobs coming from his mother who was cowering in the bathtub as his blood reached out across the small white tiles. Between sobs, the woman repeated the same five words: You are not my son. His eyes rolled back in his head. All was black.

--

There was a beeping sound in the distance. It was calm and steady, but it nagged at Riff as if urging him to wake up. Voices echoed in the distance. What was happening?

“Benjamin Nyx? You’re the boy’s father?” someone said. His father? Why did someone need to talk to him? All he did was drink to drown out the world. He’d been that say ever since Riff lost his memory three years prior, his mother lost her mind, and his brother, Sage, mysteriously passed away.

“Yeah, that’s me. How’s he doing?” his father asked.

The other voice spoke again. Riff could now tell it was a woman. “He’s still out, but his condition’s finally stabilized. He should be waking up soon. If you don’t mind me asking… What did they do with his mother?”

Riff heard his father sigh. “She’s been placed in the behavioral corrections facility across town. Pending on the results of her mental tests, she’ll either be locked away in there or face trial for attempted murder,” he said roughly.

“Oh… That’s terrible. I don’t understand what would have driven her to do such a thing,” the woman said with a mournful tone.

“You wake up one day and your child can’t remember who the hell he is anymore, his personalities done a complete turn-around… Then your oldest son just… dies. You either lose it or drink yourself into oblivion,” he replied.

“I’m very sorry for your family’s losses, Mr. Nyx,” the woman replied. “I’ll let you have some time alone with him.”

A sound broke the steady silence. It sounded like a curtain being pulled back. Riff finally recognized the beeping sound from all those true-crime shows his father watched. It was a heart monitor. He was in the hospital. That’s right, his mother tried to kill him. She’d knocked him down and bashed his head into the tile until he couldn’t move.

The sound of a chair scraping the floor met the boy’s ears. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. He was trapped in the state of being where one is aware but still asleep.

“C’mon, Raphael… Riff… My boy,” his father began to say. He sounded distressed, sick, even. He sounded tired. He sounded like he was finally at the end of his rope. Riff felt a hand land on his forehead. A thumb caressed his brow as the hand wiped away the strands of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead.

“Riff, you’ve got to wake up, Son. It’s been three days. Open those eyes… Look, I’ll make a deal with you.” Making deals was a sign of desperation. “If you open your eyes and wake up, I’ll quit drinkin’ so much. You can come home with me and we’ll try to work through things. I’ll get you the best doctors I can to figure out where your memory went. We’ll get through this and get back to normal, okay? Just wake up now…”

Riff heard his father’s words. He wanted to wake up and hug him. The man sounded so lost. His voice cracked. Was he crying? It was silent again. Silent and still, except for that steady beeping.

Determined, the boy told his brain to command his eyes to open. He struggled, his brow shivering at his mental efforts. The beeping of the heart monitor became more frequent. This apparently caught the woman’s attention out in the lobby. She was a nurse. Riff’s fingers began to twitch.

“Doctor! Get the doctor!” the woman cried.

Finally, those blue-grey eyes of his fluttered open and a long breath escaped him. Turning his head, he spotted his father and eyes of the same color gazing back at him with an eager sense of hope.

“D…ad…” Riff uttered, feeling exhausted, even after his long sleep. A small device was clipped to his finger, an IV in his hand. He felt rigid and uncomfortable from laying in the hospital bed. His head itched; it was bandaged.

“Oh, thank the heavens,” his father said, standing so he could lean over and take the boy in his arms. As he kissed his son’s head, the doctor’s came in.

--

Two months later…

Riff sat there. The chair was metal. He felt the coolness of it through his old jeans. The room was empty, except for him and the chair. Don’t forget the table that rested in front of him. The far wall which he scowled at appeared to be a mirror. However, looks can be deceiving. He knew there were people behind it. They were watching him. No, they were studying him like he was some sort of other-worldly being. He sat. He waited.

This is not what the boy had wanted.