Amnesia:

I'm visiting relatives in the mountains. Or maybe I'm not.

I can't tell you, because I feel a little disoriented. 

I woke up like this: Here, with these people, in this place that smells like pine bark and camp fires. They call me Samuel. They call me 'son'. There's a lady with white hair who says she's my mom, must be about a hundred years old, and a man who's around the same age, with a combover so thin it doesn't need to be combed over, anymore, because it's not hiding anything, but he still does it. I feel about forty-five. No. I am forty-five. I know that. I know that one, for sure. 

My whole head burns.

The lady says I hit my head pretty hard trying to get down a steep hill covered in ice, that she's sorry my dog died, baby, but they got his body out of the creek and they kept him outside on the patio to freeze him, until I feel better. Says that we can have the funeral, later, and that this is my aunt, and this is my uncle, and this is my mother, and that we're in the woods. And that she's sorry. She's very sorry. And am I okay? And I look so lost. 

And Jesus Christ, my head hurts. I can taste copper. She's cleaning blood off me.

I'm aware, but I'm not aware. I know my head is killing me. When I wash my face, I see the damage in the mirror: I look like Mike Tyson handed me my ass. They give me painkillers and Tylenol, and I stare out the window at the snow, and I wonder how long until I can be alone. 

They tell me we can't go to the hospital. They say we're snowed in on the mountain, again. Again, like this happens all the time. 

I get to know my hands. I look at them and see they have callouses. Thick ones, like I do a lot of intensive labor. I look down at my hands and I can taste hay and dust in my mouth, and the word Wyoming.

When everybody's sleeping, I take my phone into the woods to try and get a signal. They said I won't find one anywhere. That doesn't keep me from trying, anyway. Nothing better to do.

That's when I see somebody. Out here. Somebody out here in the woods. I was told there was nobody. I shout, "Are you lost?!" And he doesn't shout back. I think he can't hear me. It's cold. It's snowed in. 

I get closer.

So does he.

I stop.

So does he.

I lift my hand.

He lifts his, too.

I realize that he's not waving.

Very slowly, I hoist my phone up.

Very slowly, he hoists his phone up, too, and the screen shines at me like a white fire.

I fucking run.

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As scared as I was, I had to prove to myself it was just my imagination, that it was just my head injury, that these people that were giving this dog a funeral... that said they were related to me, that they were real people and that I was a real person and that they weren't fucking liars who shot my dog. 

Because I remember my dog. I just don't remember how we got here.

I charged my phone, so I could get him on video. That way, I thought, I could watch it, later. If he wasn't on the video and I was watching a video of nothing but snow and tree bark, then I would know that it wasn't real, at all, and that I really did do a number on my head, when I tried to get down the snow bank to save my dog from an icy creek.

But when they do the funeral, it's... They tell me not to look inside the box.

They tell me not to, but I do it, anyway, because I'm fucking me, and I'm an idiot, and I'll do just about anything somebody says not to do. But also because I want to see my dog.

They all wear black to the funeral: All seven of the bastards, like a bunch of fucking creeps, and I'm standing there by my mom in her black dress, and I'm in my tan, corduroy jacket with the sheep's wool insides, and who the fuck wears black to a dog's funeral. 

I try not to think about how Max's head is bent at a weird angle.

I wonder if all dogs who drown in ice water get their heads canoed out and have buckshot stuck in them. I wonder what Max was barking at, when I started chasing him. I'm starting to remember, and I remember that I was chasing him, and he was hollering, and that these people weren't in my fucking cabin.

It's dark, when I leave, again. Everybody is sleeping. They don't trust me to go out of the house without them. They tell me that it's for my own good, that they don't want me to wander and get hurt, again, or lost, because I still don't remember everything, and these woods are new to me. They tell me they'll take me out, later, if I want to go out.

My mom's a complete stranger. 

I can't remember her, at all, and she looks so hurt, when I tell her so.

I sit in bed, rock, and cry, before I leave. I'm still drying my tears, when I tie my hair back against my neck and pull on my corduroy coat and my baseball cap, pull on my hiking boots, and I go back out, without the seven dwarves. That's what I've been calling them.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I would have just stayed in the cabin and trusted them to take care of me. But I'm pig-headed. I'm stupid.

Now, I'm in a whole lot of fucking trouble.

I went back out in the woods, where I saw him the first time, and he was there, again, like a chalky, black ghost, like a charcoal smudge. I moved and he moved.

In the dark and the snow, with my phone as the only light, I pissed myself. I recorded him, as I approached, and my piss stuck in my jeans, got cold against my leg, then started freezing. I tried to move, and couldn't. My legs didn't feel heavy. They felt stuck. They felt like, even if I wanted to move, I couldn't do it. I told my brain to move, and it wouldn't let me.

So, he recorded me, too. He held his phone up and recorded me recording him, and I thought maybe he was trying to get some insurance. I shouted, "I'm coming that way!" And he didn't run.

In fact, he didn't move, until I moved. And he was totally quiet.

Very slowly, we came together and put our hands on one another's hands, and I shouldn't have done it.

I wish I could take it all back.

I wish I could just go back and ignore him.

But that's the thing about choices, I guess: You can't unmake them.

My phone clacked against glass. Clear, industrial glass, like a giant mirror.

I shouldn't be out, walking in the woods, and that much became very, very clear, when I realize that this man who looks like me actually is me, and I'm staring up the side of the biggest mirror I've ever seen, and that this must be where the world ends. It's like the edge of a videogame, where the programmer stops the map.

Jesus fucking Christ.

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@sandflea : i went over the word limit, but i wanted you to read this. it's for your 'walking in the park' challenge.