Amnesia

 “Help! Can anyone hear me?!”

Teresa’s voice was beginning to become hoarse from her screaming. Her fists were stinging from trying to break the glass of the windows, but either she was too weak, or the windows of her normal house were bulletproof. They didn’t seem like they were abnormally thick, but not even throwing a mug at them would make them shatter.

The paintings on the walls seemed to be glaring down at her, smiling faces hiding judging expressions. Teresa knew that she had distinctively fiery red hair. It was the first thing she had noticed when she passed by a mirror in the hallway. Seeing that same flame-like hair in the photos was unnerving. She certainly would have remembered all these people, right?

But then again, Teresa didn’t remember anything. She didn’t even know her name before she saw it printed on the aforementioned mug that now laid in pieces on the living room rug. Her appearance had been a shock to her. She couldn’t even remember her parents' names, or how she had gotten into this situation.

She had been rather listless and unworried at first. It was only when she noticed the lack of food in the house that she had tried to leave. But when Teresa tried to open the front door, she noticed a huge problem.

It was locked. So was the backdoor, the windows, and the door to the balcony on the second floor. The large bunch of keys lying on the table near the door was utterly useless, seeing as everything was locked from outside.

“It’s almost like someone was trying to trap me in here.” She whispered to herself. Nothing about the situation made sense. Why had she suddenly lost her memories? What had happened? From a strange book on mental illnesses which she found in a bookshelf, she knew that amnesia was usually caused by brain damage or head trauma. But her skull was perfectly intact.

Why were the people passing by her house ignoring her when she screamed for help? It certainly wasn’t that they couldn’t hear her. She could hear them perfectly clearly.

It had already been a day since she first woke up in the unfamiliar bed in the bedroom of this unfamiliar house. Her stomach was complaining with loud grumbles, and she felt exhausted from her attempts at escape.

“Maybe there’s food hidden somewhere else. People keep snacks in strange places, right? Did I do things like that?” Teresa wondered. She didn’t keep any actual hope of finding something to eat, but she would take any distraction from the pangs of hunger.

Passing through the hallway to enter the kitchen, the amnesiac woman paused. Slowly turning around, she noticed something she hadn’t seen any of the other times she had walked the very same way. She was confident she had explored every inch of the house, but here was a door she had never even seen.

“How could I have missed that?” She raised her hand and brushed her fingers against the frame of the door, but quickly pulled it away. The strange entrance stood out from the warm mahogany theme of the houses, being made of a black metal that felt freezing to the touch.

Pushing the heavy door open with a creak, the woman hesitantly made her way inside the dark room. There were no lights on the ceiling, from what she could see with her limited vision. The only thing allowing for sight in the eerie room were flickering candles, still lit even though she hadn’t been in the room for an entire day.

If Teresa had her memories, she would have described the room to be straight out of a scene from Harry Potter. There were vials and cauldrons littering the room, old dusty bookshelves filled with books even older than them. Odd jars covered the walls, filled with strange things that seemed to be moving in the waters.

But something had caught her eye. The desk in the room was empty, save for two items. One was a book, well-loved according to the lack of dust covering it. The second item, an empty vial, was the reason she rushed over to the table. Holding the glass apparatus in her hands, she held it up to the candle on the desk. 

‘Lethe Water’, declared the label on the vial, but that meant nothing to the girl without her memories. It was the hastily scribbled words beneath it which caused her breath to catch in her throat. ‘Memory Loss Potion’, the messy handwriting added.

Teresa placed the empty container down with shaking hands. It seems that she had found the reason for her lack of memories. 

“The memory loss wasn’t caused by anyone else, I did this to myself. But why?” She questioned, but nobody was present to give her a reply.

There was only one way she could get her answers. She slowly opened the book on the table. Carefully flipping through pages, she could see that it was a diary. However, her patience had run out, and she didn’t feel like reading through all the entries.

Opening it to the final entry in the thick book, she sat down and read.

‘Friday,

June 13th, 2014,

2:42 AM

The Witch Order has found out about my betrayal. Bethany, who I had considered to be my best friend, informed the higher-ups about the son I had with a non-magical. It is only a matter of time before they find me, and kill George alongside me. 

I can’t let anything happen to my child. I would never betray his location, but they are powerful enough that they can simply read my mind. So, I will use my only vial of Lethe water. Probably the only vial in the whole continent.

My house is already defended from attacks. Now, all I need to do is consume the water. George says that he will lock the doors and place some final wards while I am unconscious. He will be long gone by the time I awaken.

I can only hope he stays safe. Nothing is more important to me than his safety.’