Blank Slate
Retention Loss
Chapter One: Blank Slate
Yú Ami keeps a photo book.
Inside are a collection of pictures.
Of people she once knew, names, dates, and past happenings, all of which have left her mind.
Ami doesn't remember her past. All the names and faces are blank.
She can only recall the steady beeping of a monitor, and bright lights.
According to a nurse that she'd become very close to in the hospital, she was sick.
Yú Ami had mild brain damage that effected her ability to retain memories.
Little by little Ami had been forgetting things, until one day falling into a comatose state and when she woke up she couldn't remember a single thing.
Nothing at all.
Not the year, or where she was. Not her age. Not even her name.
She couldn't remember if she had a family, or where she lived.
Every thought, every memory, every moment had been lost.
The doctors told her that the damage was having an effect similar to Alzheimer's disease.
She can't remember anything.
And she hates it, because she feels like she's so damn close.
Like when a word that's right on the tip of your tongue slips away from you. That's how it felt.
So she spends each morning reviewing her photo book. She reads the book everyday.
As not to lose everything. She checks each morning for which things are beginning to slip from her mind, and which she's lost completely.
Sitting down at the coffee table in her tiny studio apartment, she sips a cup of morning coffee.
She flips open the photo book and begins her daily ritual.
Ami looks at all the photos she's collected and tries to remember the faces.
She re-reads the cliff notes, and the journal entries, and each slip of paper tucked between the pages.
Willing her mind to remember these things.
But reading the album everyday is a lot like reading a book.
A novel filled with fiction, most days she wondered if these memories were really hers.
She tries to remember, but finds herself unable to recall the faces of people she'd once known, of names that tingle her tongue but she cannot seem to find the words.
She searches into the recesses of her mind and tries hard, but all is lost to her. Swallowed by the amnesia that shadowed her past.
She weeps at the loss of precious memories.
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