Piece By Piece ~ Snippet 9

Elise

“I knew you,” Aiden admits, eyes locked on Savannah. 

“You, what?” Her breathy response lacks her usual sass. Clearly she’s as shocked as Aiden. 

He nods. “I was a bartender at a restaurant, and you were a waitress there. I think that’s where we met.”

Viren interrupts. “We all woke up fairly close to each other. Should it really be that shocking that we may have known each other before?”

“We are a bit of a ragtag bunch,” I add in. “We don’t seem all that similar to each other, so maybe it is unusual for us to have known each other.” 

Viren shrugs. “Touché. I am way cooler than the rest of you guys.” I roll my eyes as everyone males some noise of disgust or disbelief. 

“Hey, we’re trying to learn useful information, remember?” Danger’s practicality cuts through the digression, redirecting our course as usual. “Aiden, do you remember anything about currency or regulations at your job? Anything relevant to our society?”

Aiden shakes his head, and then his cheeks redden. “No, the only thing I remember about my job, is Savannah.” Her eyes widen in shock, before she quickly looks away. Aiden adjusts his glasses, not that they truly needed to be fixed. 

After a moment of silence it’s clear that Savannah isn’t going to prompt the next question. “Aiden,” I start. “You answered, so that means it’s your turn to ask a question”

“Oh.” He nods. “Okay.” I see his eyes go to Danger, but they quickly dart off to his right, to Lana beside me. “Lana, what currency did we use before we lost our memories?” 

“Well,” she muses. “Let me think for a moment.” She purses her lips in thought, clearly concentrating. “It’s an old currency, paper money. They used it even in the old government. Ooh!” She raises a finger in the air as she remembers something. “Our money was in dollars, represented by paper bills.” 

“Did anyone have any of these dollars on them when they woke up?” Danger looks around at us. Everyone shrugs or shakes their heads. 

“Hey!”  Viren points at Danger. “You’re breaking the rules of the game. It isn’t your turn to ask a question.”

Danger sighs. “We only came up with this game an hour ago. I think the rules can change when they need to.”

“We came up with our names less than a day ago,” I point out. “Besides, it’s Savannah’s game, so I think she should be the referee.”

Savannah smirks. “I agree. Although, in this case, I have to agree with Danger. If someone can remember something, I think it’s a good idea to try to help them when we can.”

“Did you just side with Danger?” Viren’s mouth is wide with disbelief. 

She shrugs in response to their question. “I can, you know.” She points to herself. “I am the one who recruited him to our little gang, in the first place.”

Danger raises an eyebrow. “It certainly wasn’t because you agreed with me then.” 

Her eyes narrow. “That’s not the point.” She aims her finger at him. “Do you want me to agree with you or not? You’re irritating the ref, here.” His eyes roll. 

I sigh. “Okay, ref. I think we’re all getting a bit distracted now.” I look to Lana. “Do you remember anything else about dollars?” She shakes her head. “Okay, then ask away. It’s your turn.” 

She exhales. “Alright, Viren, what is the name of our supercity?”

“Pssh.” Viren waves a hand at her. “That’s an easy one.” 

“Oh, yeah? She smiles. “So what’s the answer?” 

Viren opens their mouth to say something, but then closes it. They exhale, and mutter, “I don’t know.”

“Haha!” Lana seems excited and I shake my head slightly. 

Aiden interrupts her celebration. “Isn’t the point of this exercise to recover our memories?”

“I believe there’s a secondary objective to this game.” We all must look confused, because she elaborates. “It’s the objective of all games, to win.” Viren’s eyes narrow and she sticks her tongue out at them. “Okay, it’s my turn to ask another question since Viren couldn’t answer.”

“I’m not sure how useful that information would’ve been anyway,” they grumble. 

Lana shrugs, before scanning the circle for her next victim. “Danger, how are the buildings powered in the supercity?” She glares across the circle at Viren. “You can’t say that wouldn’t be useful to know.” They glare back with their arms crossed over their chest. 

Danger remains silent during the exchange. It’s obvious he’s trying to remember, but despite his lack of facial expression, it’s also obvious he isn’t finding much. Eventually he shakes his head. “I really can’t remember.” 

I volunteer an idea. “I don’t know how the buildings are powered. I can’t remember anything about that either. What I have made is an observation.” I point to the window. “Even though the buildings don’t appear to have power, the streetlights still do. They must be powered differently.” 

Danger nods. “You’re right. That could be important.” 

Savannah interjects. “My turn, and I came up with a good one this time.” She rubs her hands together mischievously. “I’ll ask you, Lana, since you want to ‘win’ this game.” Lana straightens her posture, as though readying herself for the challenge. “What’s the name of the supercity?” 

Viren seems happy to have the question directed back at her, but the rest of us groan or roll our eyes. Danger literally face-palms. “Not this again. I don’t even think that’s relevant.” 

Savannah shrugs. “Tough. I’m the ref. Now,” She turns her gaze back to Lana. “Answer the question, if you can.” 

Lana concentrates so hard I can almost see the smoke coming out of her ears. Finally she huffily crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t know, okay?” She looks away from the group pointedly. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” Savannah says, but not in an overly triumphant way. “Now, can we all agree to focus on the task at hand? We may be playing a game of sorts, but it’s with a mission. Recovering some of these memories could very well mean the difference between life and death. We have to work together, alright?” Everyone nods their agreement, even Lana, who shivers when she feels Savannah’s glare burning into the back of her head. 

Viren raises a hand. “I know we need to work together and all, but can we take a pee break?” 

I shake my head and Savannah sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fine.” 

The circle breaks up when Viren leaves, and by the time they come back, only Savannah and I are still in our original positions in the circle. Lana’s taken Danger to show him the organization of our food stores, and Aiden’s moved to his own bed where he idly flips through an old magazine to amuse himself. 

“Hey, guys, this magazine doesn’t have a date on it, but do you think if it did, we could figure out what the current date is?” He holds it up to show us for emphasis. Savannah doesn’t respond, possibly a little miffed that her planned game has fallen apart. 

I shake my head. “Even if we knew when that magazine was printed, we don’t know how long ago that was. There’s enough dust around here that I doubt it was printed yesterday, but that’s really all we know.” Aiden nods, seeming thoughtful, before he goes back to the magazine. I notice he has a stack of them next to him. “Why do you have so many magazines?” 

He doesn’t look over at me. “It seems I like to read. Besides, I thought maybe it could give us some clues as to what happened.” 

I walk over and find him staring at a page of likely bygone celebrities in swimsuits. “Really? You look pretty interested in that page.”

He jumps, not having realized I walked up beside him. “I, um, it’s just the page I was on.” He quickly flips the page and his cheeks redden. 

I laugh. “I was just messing with you. Read, or look at, whatever you want.” 

Savannah comes over and picks up a different magazine from the pile. “I’ll help you read through the conspiracy theories.” She turns a couple pages. “Ooh, look! Hot guys in swimsuits!” She sits down on the adjacent bed. “I like this one.” Aiden blushes an even deeper shade of red, burying his nose in the magazine. 

As I shake my head, I start to see something else. It’s hazy, blurred even, but as I focus on it, it starts to clear a little. The screen on the wall is lit up with a live feed of straight haired reporter. “It’s clear that this act of ‘joint charity’ is only a ploy of the ruling families to save face in the aftermath of the recent takeover and liquidation of the Joens family assets.” 

The screen suddenly goes dark and my father steps in front of it. He tousles my fluffy hair. “Don’t believe what you hear in the news, Elise. Reporters are usually just fishing for a conspiracy.” 

“Okay, dad.” After all, why wouldn’t I trust my father? 

“Elise, Elise!” A different voice brings me back to the present. Viren stands in front of me, snapping their fingers and making all sorts of wild gestures. “Oh, good, you’re back.” 

“Back?” My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

Lana cranes her head around to look at me. “We were worried about you for a moment there, Elise. You were completely zoned out.”

I put a hand to my head, still remembering the sensation of my father running his hand through my hair. “I’m sorry. I think I just relived a memory.” 

-Thank you for reading this week's snippet of Piece By Piece. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope everyone enjoys the holiday weekend. I'm planning to use the extra time for writing, myself, but I hope everyone stays safe and doesn't get caught in traffic this weekend. See you next week for the next snippet of Piece by Piece!

Piece By Piece ~ Snippet 8

Aiden

“You didn’t do anything,” Savannah tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder. I look over to her and she smiles reassuringly. 

“I’ll go talk to him.” Lana gets up and quietly walks after Danger. 

“I tried to give him an easy question,” I say. “I thought maybe he could remember something about that knife because he carried it with him before we all lost our memories.”

Viren shrugs. “Last night Lana tried to recall memories associated with her journal, but she couldn’t remember anything either. Maybe he’s just frustrated like she was.” 

Elise nods. “They’re the only two who had any sort of belongings tying them to their pasts. It makes sense that they’d be the most easily irritated by not being able to use those ties to remember anything.” 

“My question, it just angered him more,” I realize. I put my head in my hands. “Why am I such an idiot?”

“How are we supposed to know?” Viren raises their hands and shrugs. “We can’t remember.”

I narrow my eyes and stand, shrugging off Savannah’s hand. “Yeah, I got that. Thanks.” I turn. “I’m going to talk to Danger. I feel like I owe him an apology.” I walk away before they can say anything else to me. 

Though Danger’s long, anger-driven strides took him pretty far, two voices in a mostly empty department store aren’t hard to track down. I listen for Danger and Lana’s quiet conversation, letting it guide me to their location. When I start to hear what it is they’re saying, my footsteps slow until I stop just out of sight behind a shelf. 

“I shouldn’t have reacted like that,” Danger sighs. “You guys didn’t deserve that from me.”

“No, I understand,” Lana replies. She exhales. “Last night, I tried to remember my past. I really tried, and even flipped through my journal to try to spark any kind of memory. Even that wasn’t enough though. Nothing was familiar, not even my initials.”

“I’m sorry,” Danger says. 

“I didn’t say that so you would feel bad for me,” Lana quickly refutes. “I just want you to know that I understand. We all do. We’re all going through the same thing you are. It’s okay for you to be angry. This situation we’ve been thrown into, it’s frustrating. I know we can get through it though, together. We’ve already started to recall some things, like our ages and names. Even those were hard at first.”

“But what if we can’t?” Danger sounds morose. “What if we can’t remember or learn how to survive this? What if I don’t innately know enough to keep us alive?” There’s a beat of silence. “The fact that I carried this knife led you all to believe that I can lead us, that I can keep us alive. Hell, it even led me to believe that. I don’t a damn thing about it though, or anything at all. How am I supposed to protect you all from this world when I don’t understand it in the slightest?”

There’s a pause before Lana speaks. “Danger, we don’t expect you to know anything more than we do. We’re just grateful for anything you can offer. It’s already clear that you know, or knew, more than we do.” 

“I don’t know,” Danger adds. “Maybe Viren was a genius before getting their memory wiped.” 

Lana laughs once. “Even if that were true, I bet you’d still have more practical knowledge than Viren. That’s what really matters, especially now.”

“So does that mean you’re going to be my backup now, Miss Practicality?” Danger’s voice is as monotonous as ever, but he’s clearly teasing. 

Lana responds with enough sass to rival Savannah at her best. “No way. I brought an extra hat for each outfit. Just because it’s the apocalypse doesn’t mean I can’t be neat.” 

Danger exhales. “Actually Lana, I’m pretty sure that that’s exactly what it means.” 

As they both start to walk back towards the group, I tuck myself in between two displays. I hadn’t really meant to eavesdrop for so long, but I feel like it would be rude to reveal that I was. Maybe it’s just rude and I don’t want reveal that I’d been rude. I did invade their privacy. I sigh in relief when they pass without seeing me. I wait for a minute before taking an intentionally different route back to the beds. 

I take my time so that I don’t run into Lana and Danger. I walk past a large window and the wind whips rain loudly into the glass. I cross my arms over my chest and a shiver races up my spine. The spacious emptiness of the department store suddenly seems ominous, oppressive even. It seems like I shouldn’t be here, or maybe, that someone else should be. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to wake up alone, without finding Savannah or the others. 

Now uncomfortable in solitude, I quickly return to the group. My earlier thoughts make me appreciate seeing them more, even though Viren immediately questions me. “Hey, where’d you go?” 

“Yeah, I thought you were going to apologize to Danger,” Elise adds. Danger raises an eyebrow and Lana gives me a strange look. 

I rub the back of my neck. “Yeah, I couldn’t find him.”

“You couldn’t find us?” Lana asks, Danger’s eyebrow raises a little further. “I mean, we didn’t leave this floor, let alone the store.”

“Uh, big store?” I can’t even convince myself. 

Savannah rolls her eyes. “Well, regardless, your apology, though well-intended, is no longer necessary. Danger apologized for exploding at us earlier.” She turns to him. “And by the way, you could give us a warning next time. Usually people’s faces change, or something.” 

He shrugs. “I can’t force myself to emote for you, and who says I would if I could?”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “Fine, but come sit back down. We’re going to resume our game.” 

Elise looks concerned. “Because it went so well the first time?” 

“Shh!” Savannah shushes her by reaching over and putting a finger to her lips. “It will be different this time.” She crosses her arms in an x before swing them apart. “No personal questions. We weren’t really getting anywhere with that anyway. What we need is information we can use, so that’s what we’re going to try to remember.”

Viren comes up with a question. “What do you consider useful information?” 

“Anything we can use to help us survive.” She points a finger at them. “No funny business from you or I’ll kick you out of the circle.”

“Oh, yeah?” Viren crosses their arms. “Half of the circle isn’t even sitting down yet.” Savannah pierces Lana, Danger and I with a serious death glare so that we sit down. She raises her brow in challenge, but of course Viren has a retort. “But what if I have a piece of key information that is absolutely essential to our survival?”

She grins. “Then you can discover it with your other friends.” 

“Ouch.” Viren holds a hand to their chest. “You wound me.” 

Savannah smiles triumphantly. “Good. Now, behave.” She looks across our circle to Danger. “I guess it’s your turn this time.”

He nods, but waits a moment, almost seeming hesitant. “Savannah, where are we?” 

“A store,” she replies helpfully. He narrows his eyes at her and she raises her arms in innocence. “No, seriously, I know that it’s called A-Mart, but that’s all I know.” 

Elise raises a hand. “Actually, I think I know.” Everyone looks to her, and she fidgets, shrinking away from the attention. “We’re in a city, a supercity.” 

When Elise pauses, Danger asks a follow-up question. “A supercity?” 

Elise nods. “I’m trying to remember, but it’s all a little fuzzy. From what I can piece together, we all live in this supercity. Supercities came about after some type of fighting, they replaced the previous government.”

“But what happened to it?” Danger presses further. “Surely, this isn’t how we’ve all lived.” 

“I don’t know.” Elise shrugs, looking down. “All that I’ve remembered seems to come from a history lesson, just generic information.” 

Lana puts a hand on her arm. “It’s alright. You’ve given us more than we knew before.”

“Do you know how the supercity was run? Where its supplies came from?” Danger continues to ask questions. 

Lana glares past Elise to him. “Quit pestering her. She already told you what she could remember. Now it’s her turn to ask a question.”

Elise looks at the rest of the group, stumbling for a moment. “Um, Aiden, what was your job before?”

Viren lets out a noise like a buzzer. “Wrong! That’s not a question about how the world works.”

“Yes, it is,” Savannah refutes. “It could have societal implications.”

“Hey, guys,” I interject. “I remember what my job was, and you’re right, Savannah. It definitely has other implications.”

- Piece By Piece returns! Sorry for the unannounced hiatus last week. On top of being very busy at work, I was also very sick. So, I have to apologize for the skipped update, but I had neither the time nor energy to write last week. I hope you enjoyed this week's snippet!

Piece By Piece ~ Snippet 7

Savannah

“You said that our biggest problem is that we don’t have our memories,” I repeat. Danger nods and I shrug. “Okay, then we need to recover our memories.” 

Danger’s eyes narrow. “Genius, Savannah. Do you know how to do that?”

“Umm…” I tap my finger against my lip. “Oh! So we remembered our names when we had to introduce ourselves, and our ages only when we started to ask each other.”

“You think we need to interrogate each other to force the memories to come back?” Aiden asks. 

I hold my hands up on either side. “Why not? That’s worked so far.” 

Danger sets his can down abruptly, causing the spoon to rattle noisily. “We don’t have time for that. We have to deal with this world now, head-on.” 

I cross my arms over my chest. “Oh, yeah? So what’s your practical, head-on approach, then?”

“Exploration,” he returns faster than I’d expected. “We scour the surrounding area for clues as to what happened.” 

“Uh, that’s a great idea and all, but there might be a problem with that.” Lana points towards the window. 
We all look in the direction she’s pointing. “And, what’s the problem, exactly?” Viren voices our unanimous question. 

Lana rolls her eyes. “Look for a second, guys.” 

“It’s raining,” Elise realizes. I squint at the window and finally notice the droplets falling beyond the pane of glass. As we watch for a moment, the rain starts to pick up, pouring down in obvious sheets. Rivulets of water create winding trails down the barely visible panel separating us from the weather outside.  

“What,” Viren asks. “Are you guys afraid of the rain?” Suddenly a gust of wind smacks the rain against the window and Viren jumps. 

Lana laughs. “Are you?” Viren pouts.

“I’m not afraid of the rain,” Danger says. “However, we shouldn’t go out in it.” 

“Aw. Why’s that,” Viren asks. “I need to get out of this place.”

Danger sighs. “I want to get out of this building too. I think we need to explore to learn more about what’s happening, and about what’s happened to us. Right now though, we shouldn’t. Going out in the rain could make us sick, and we don’t have any hospitals or doctors for help.”

“We did find some medicine earlier,” Elise adds in.

“And rain ponchos,” Viren interjects.

“But we should save those until we need them,” Aiden muses. “Shouldn’t we?” He looks to Danger, who nods. 

“We should save our essential supplies until we need to use them. For now, I guess we have to stay indoors. There may come a time when we can’t.” He rubs his eyes. “So, I guess for now, the best we can come up with is Savannah’s plan.”

“Hey! What are you saying?” I put my hands on my hips. 

“I said your plan was the best,” Danger insists. 

My lids lower. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

He turns, walking back towards the cluster of beds we’ve made our home base within the store. “Believe what you like, but I’m willing to go along with your plan to try to regain our memories.” He looks back over his shoulder and speaks a little louder. “I suggest everyone joins us. We could all use a few more memories.”

“Lana tried to remember some last night,” Viren says, and I look over to her. 

Lana blushes and reaches over to smack Viren on the arm. “Hey!”
Viren rubs their arm, pretending to be hurt. “Ouch. What was that for?” I don’t ask Lana anything. The way her eyes are fixed on the ground makes it clear she doesn’t want to talk about last night. She probably didn’t remember anything. I can’t let that discourage my plans. We need to remember how this world works, in order to survive it.

We settle on a few of the beds, forming a circle so that we can all see each other. After a moment I realize all eyes are on me. “What?”

“This was your plan,” Elise states. “So what do we do now?” Danger’s eyes meet mine in challenge. 

I bring my hands together. “Okay, so the easiest things for us to remember so far have been related to who we are, our ages and our names. I think we should start by asking personal questions, rather than trying to remember how the world works exactly.” I form a quick plan in my mind. “We can make this like a game. I ask someone a question, and if they can answer it, they get to ask someone else a question. If not, the next person in the circle asks a question instead. Sound fair?” Everyone in the circle nods their assent. “Okay. Hmm… Danger, what did you do before, as your job?”

We all look to him, but his face doesn’t change. “I don’t know.” He exhales. 

I shrug. “Too bad. Aiden, that means it’s your turn.” I turn to my left to look at him. 

“Oh, okay.” He thinks for a moment. “Lana, why do you like everything neat and tidy?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” She seems almost offended by the question. “We need to keep things like our supplies organized, or our survival bags. Keeping things neat is practical, useful, and it’s easier for me. I don’t like it when things are dirty and unkempt. For some reason, it just bothers me. I can’t tell you why.” 

“I guess that means you don’t get to ask a question yet,” Viren tells her, sticking out their tongue. 

“Sure I do,” Lana replies. “I answered the question. I may not remember why dirtiness makes me so uncomfortable, but I know it does.”

I sigh. “I think Lana’s right. Go ahead, ask a question.” 

She grins. “Viren, why do you like it when things aren’t clean and tidy? That should be easy for you to answer.” She crosses her arms over her chest. 

Viren grins. “It is. I’d rather spend my time living life than cleaning up after it. You spend so much time worrying about your clothes, or your organization. I’d rather spend my time doing something than planning for it.” Lana looks disappointed, but Viren seems triumphant. “Ha! My turn now. Hmm…” They rub their hands together. “Elise!” They point at her, announcing their victim. “Why did you dye your hair blonde?” 

She reaches up and grabs a curl, twirling it around a finger. “That’s a good question. I like the way it looks, but I can’t really remember dying it this way.” 

“You lose,” Viren says. “That means I get to ask another question because I’m next in the circle.” Elise shrugs. “So, Aiden, how come you look so much older when you’re really only seventeen?”

Aiden sits in silence for a moment. “I don’t know. I mean, I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but I know that I had to be older for some reason. I needed to appear older than I was, and I needed to act older too. Whatever that reason was, it was important.” He bites his thumbnail. “If only I could remember why I needed to make myself older.”

Viren grins mischievously. “Maybe it was so you could date one of the girls.” They raise their eyebrows suggestively. “They’re all older than us.” 

“Hey!” The three of us object in unison. 

“You shouldn’t comment on a lady’s age,” Elise says. 

“Maybe the lady shouldn’t have told us her age,” Viren replies. 

Elise looks away but I point a finger at Viren. “We didn’t have much else to introduce ourselves with. Besides, we’re not much older than you, anyway.” 

“Oh, really? You’re the oldest out of the girls. You’re older than me by six years, you know,” Viren reminds me. I cross my arms over my chest and simmer. 

“Alright, alright.” Aiden raises his hands to draw our attention. “I’m pretty sure it’s my turn to ask a question. 

“Ask away,” Elise says, and Lana adds, “Please.”

“Okay, Danger, why did you have a knife with you when you woke up?” Aiden looks at Danger and the rest of us do too. 

Danger’s face doesn’t change, but after a moment his eyes dart around between our faces. “I don’t know,” he admits softly. “I don’t know! I can’t remember anything!” We all lean away from his outburst before he storms off. 

“What just happened?” I watch him stomp away. His face was completely unreadable, and we haven’t seen that much emotion from Danger yet. So what made him explode like that? 

Aiden seems horrified. “What did I do?”

- Hello, everyone. Piece By Piece updates will likely move to the weekends so that I have more time to work on finishing and finalizing them. I initially picked Wednesday because I personally like something new to read during the week, but lately my schedule has left me with better writing time on Saturday and Sunday, so I may officially be moving the snippet to one of those days instead of being late on a regular basis. This is a learning process for me, but I think this will be a shift in the right direction. Tune in next week for another snippet of Piece By Piece.