A New Beginning

 

A New Beginning

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. Sitting bolt upright I scanned the room through my half-open, sleep-filled, eyes yet nothing looked right. My head was pounding, as if someone was smashing a sledgehammer against it, my chest felt tight and my whole body ached.

Throwing the duvet off my body and swinging my legs off the side of the bed, I saw that I was wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Staring around the room I hadn’t got any idea where I was. The walls were covered in a floral, romantic-themed, looking wallpaper I would never have chosen. The carpet looked brand new, was a plain grey colour and felt soft on my bare feet. Giving myself a minute or two I took a few deep breaths and stood up, or at least tried to. As soon as I put my whole body weight through my legs I felt them crumble, and I fell back onto the bed.

Looking around the room, apart from the bed, there was a large, leather, armchair, an old-fashioned-looking chest of drawers and mirror, a double-door wardrobe, a television, a computer desk and a full computer and printer set-up. There were also two doors. One was to the right of the bed and the other, a much larger, double door, at least six feet at the opposite end of the bed.

Cautiously I went to stand up again and this time managed to not collapse again, even though I did feel like I would at any second. Slowly I began to walk towards the wardrobe, my legs trembling violently with each step, hoping above hope that there would be some clothes inside that I could put on because just wearing boxer shorts made me, for some reason, extremely vulnerable. Apart from the fact that a pair of trousers and a top wouldn’t protect me from any physical threat that might enter the room, there was my modesty to defend if anybody did enter the room.

Pulling both doors open I looked inside. There seemed to be five full suits, each with a shirt, pair of trousers, tie and jacket hanging on a rack and five pairs of, perfectly, polished shoes on the wardrobe floor. There were also a couple of pairs of jeans, some cargo shorts, a tracksuit and some trainers, Grabbing the tracksuit, and a pair of trainers, I eased myself back over to the bed and hurriedly got dressed. Rising to my feet again, this time feeling a lot steadier, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, on the chest of drawers, and froze.

The reflection I saw wasn’t mine. The face staring at me had a goatee, something I had always hated, and the hair was a lot longer, had a ponytail and was darker, almost jet black,  than I was used to. Instinctively I reached up, grabbed the ponytail I could see in the mirror, and saw the reflection do the same. What the hell is going on?

Walking closer to the chest of drawers, which I saw covered in a female make-up set, bottles of perfume and men’s aftershave and featuring the wedding photograph of a couple I, at first, didn’t recognize. Staring at it for a few seconds it eventually dawned on me that the couple were the man I had seen looking back at me from the mirror and a woman I couldn’t ever remember seeing.

I felt a wave of anger, the like of which, I had never felt before running through my body and the fingernails of my right hand beginning to dig into the palm of my hand. Before I knew what was happening, and unable to stop myself, I brought my fully clenched fist forward and shattered the mirror into hundreds of pieces.

Glass flew all over the drawers and, thanks to the force of the punch, onto the bedroom carpet. Yet all I could still see was the image of the man I didn’t recognize staring at me, now with a look of unbridled rage on his face, from what was left of the mirror. Whoever the reflection belonged to, whatever was happening to me, I didn’t like it and I needed to get out.

After glancing out of the window, to see if anybody was about, I turned and walked over to the double doors which, I hoped, would lead me out of the room and towards my freedom from whatever whoever had placed me in this room had in store for me. Taking a deep breath I reached for the handle, and heard the loud bang of another door being closed.

“Hi, baby I’m home,” a woman’s voice called out. “Are you awake yet?”

Stepping back from the door I felt what could only be described as fear running through my body. Surely whoever she was calling out to must have heard the mirror I punched shatter. Why hadn’t they come into the room to see what was going on?

“It’s only me. Let me put the shopping in the kitchen, then I’ll be up.”

The feeling of fear I had been feeling now grew tenfold and I found myself looking around, trying to find something to defend myself from whoever I would shortly be faced with. Going back over to where what was left of the mirror stood I opened every drawer, only to find nothing which would have been any use and then heard the sound of footsteps tip-tapping on what, I could only assume, was wooden flooring.

After another quick look around the room I had almost given up hope of finding anything, and that was when I heard the crunching of glass under my feet. Looking down I could see bits of the mirror I had put my fist through scattered on the floor, including one piece which was big enough to do as a makeshift knife.

Picking it up I went back to the chest of drawers and grabbed a sock out of one of them. Slipping my hand into it I gripped the shard of the mirror tightly, hoping that the sock would protect my hand from any serious damage if the worse came to the worse and that was when I heard the door handle turn, and the door to begin to creak open. Gripping my makeshift weapon I positioned myself against one of the bedroom walls away from the door, took a deep breath, waited and that was when the woman screamed.

“Oh my god, what’s happened?” She managed to stammer as she stopped in the doorway and looked around. “Are you okay?”

“Yes I’m fine but who the hell are you, and why am I here?”

“It’s me. It’s Natasha.”

Staring at the woman I watched as she walked towards me, still gripping my makeshift weapon tightly in my fist, when I suddenly remembered where I had seen her before. She was the woman in the wedding photo on the chest of drawers, which meant that the man must be her husband and that he must have been the other person in the house she had shouted up to when I first heard her.

Moving slowly over to the chest of drawers, my eyes never leaving Natasha as I did, I picked up the photo and held it out.

“Where is he then? Where’s your husband and what do the pair of you want from me?”

“You’re my husband, Liam,” Natasha managed to say before I saw tears start to run down her cheeks. “You’re my husband.”

“What are you talking about I don’t even know you, and how do you even know my name.”

“I swear, Liam, we are married,” Natasha sobbed.

“What do you mean the hospital? What hospital? Why was I even in a hospital?”

My mind was racing as I tried to process what this Natasha woman was telling me, yet nothing was making any sense.

“You had a cardiac arrest three weeks ago and I stayed by your bedside every day you were there, until yesterday when I insisted on bringing you home.” Natasha continued. “They wanted to keep you for longer, telling me that you would have trouble remembering things, due to the time your brain was deprived of oxygen, but I wanted you home. I wanted, no needed, my husband back.”

As I listened I felt the makeshift knife fall to the floor and just stared at Natasha. If what she was saying was true then I must have been the luckiest man in the world, because I had never seen a woman as beautiful as she looked, even with her makeup smeared by her tears and we slowly stepped towards each other, until she was close enough for me to wrap my arms around her.

“Everything will be okay,” she whispered as she squeezed me so tightly it was as if she was scared to let me go. “Please don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Believe me, if what you’re saying is true, I have no intention of it ever happening again.”