Amnesia Read Online Free PDF Page A

for a place to at least sit and rest his aching body, but saw no vacant space to lower himself without landing in a pile of creeping serpents.  He took a tentative step with his right foot, pushing his toes gingerly between the vipers, forcing an opening, finding at last solid ground. Then he tried for the left, first pulling it slowly from the reptiles coiled around it, then picking through the jumbled bodies to find a foot hold again.
    Then the voice came again. This time he could decipher the words, but they made no sense. “Okay, Mr. John Doe, I’m Dolores, and I will be helping you with your bath. Just relax, and let me do the work. I’ve done this lots of times before. Yessir, I’m gonna take real good care of you.”
    Again he looked around for the disembodied voice, but saw nothing but a blazing sun directly over his head, and a landscape completely covered with the demons from his nightmares.
    He hung his head, and sobbed.
     
    *                             *                             *
     
    The annoying beeping just wouldn’t go away. The incessant alarm sounded like a truck backing right o ver Lissa’s sleeping head. S he swung an arm out in the general vicinity she hoped it was in, missing by a mere two feet.
    It hadn’t been a good night for her. Her uneventful weekend was turned upside down when h e r best friend in med school had called Sunday night , giving here the exciting news of the twins she was expecting, her fourth and fifth children. After a long and mostly thrilled conversation, she had sincerely wished her ex-roommate hearty congratulations, and hung up collapsing into a fit of uncontrollable sobs.
    She really was happy for her friend’s joy, but couldn’t dispel the poignant longing deep inside of her, a longing she was beginning to wonder would ever be sated. She had wept, prayed, and wept some more, feeling abandoned by her Father in Heaven in her time of need. It hadn’t been until after two o’clock this morning that sleep had finally overcome her exhausted body.
    Again she reached out to silence the alarm, missing again by over two feet. Finally she lifted her head and her eyelids to blearily locate the obnoxious sound, at last finding the culprit, the digital alarm clock sitting on her bedside table, and eliminated the wail.
    Five o’clock. Who in their right mind would get up at five A.M.? She snuggled back under her comforter-topped electric blanket and started drifting off again, only to be roused moments later by a banging on her apartment door.
    At first she tried to ignore it, hoping that whoever it was would take the hint that someone in here was trying to sleep, but the beating just became louder and more insistent. She irritably pulled the blankets back, called out she was coming, and threw her pink terry robe over her nightgown.
    First checking through the peephole, muttering something about how useless they were, she angrily unlocked the dead bolt, leaving the chain attached. “Darrion is that you!” she snarled through the two inch opening.
    “Boise Police ma’am. Are you Ms. Clarissa Brandon?” came the polite inquiry.
    Police? She thought, searching her mind for what they could possibly be wanting of her. “Just a minute.” She closed the door, slid off the chain, and then pulled it back open revealing two men in dark blue uniforms sporting the traditional police badge.
    “What is it? Is something wrong?”
    “Can we come in ma’am?” the first officer asked. He was holding a clipboard with the ubiquitous white, pink and goldenrod copy paper attached. She noticed that the paper was nearly full, and she spotted her name written a couple of times on it.
    “Of course,” she said, pulling the door open wide allowing the two to enter. “Right this way,” she called, leading them into the living room area, glancing at her bedraggled countenance in the hall mirror on the way. She noted that her light brown,