The Undying Man - Heroic Vol.1

Issue 2 - Broken & Flawless

Mason’s past was an incomplete puzzle of memories. Some pieces were as clear as daylight and found their place so easily, while some were oddly formed and seemed somehow broken. Others were non-existent, missing or unknown; their absence so complete that he barely felt a sense of sorrow or longing for them, for how could he miss that which he’d never known?

It was the broken pieces which troubled him the most - the fragm­­ents of a day, the remnants of an experience. They were the ones that ticked away, playing havoc with his thoughts and stirring riddles in the back of his mind. But many of them were also the ones he felt the strongest about. The ones he truly remembered. The memories he could never let go of.

He remembered the smell of his mother’s hair. The subtle whiff of freshly baked food and lavender flowers. He remembered her long locks swaying through the air on a summers evening, somehow unrelenting against the push of a powerful sea breeze. He remembered closing his eyes and burying himself underneath those locks, trying dearly to hide himself from the bite of the cold, unforgiving wind. Her arms had pressed in tightly against his tiny back and cradled him close, creating a tender cocoon of warmth around him.

Here he was warm and safe. Here he was home.

It was one of his fondest memories of his mother and he remembered it so vividly; the comforting touch of her hand brushing past his forehead and straight through his own thick mane of caramel brown, the sound of her voice whispering tales into his ears, telling him of the many things the future held for him and the ways in which he was loved.  He could remember so many things about her, about that day. But the one thing he could not remember – and it was the one, single thing that truly scared him – was her face. He could see her hands, her hair, her clothes; but when he tried to picture her face – nothing. Not her eyes, nor her nose or mouth. Not even the glimpse of a smile. Nothing at all.

How could he not remember such a thing? The woman who had brought him into this world and – he assumed - taught him what it was to be kind, and gentle, and true. He felt like he should know her, know everything about her. Yet the pieces he had were not enough, they were merely the description of a person, the preview of a memory. It tormented him so.

 How could he have almost every line and colour of a painting in place, only to have the most important stroke missing? It shook him to his core, for it was one of the few things in the world that made him feel weak. He was a man of certainty, a man of control, and such a flaw – such a sense of incompleteness - felt like a gaping hole in his side. Worse than a missing limb. Like a missing heart.

The memory was broken.

His memory of his mother was broken.

He… was broken.

SLAM!

His eyes shot open at the sound of a door banging shut.

Where? Mason tried to remember where he had been. How had he come to be where he was now?

The last thing he could distinctly remember was heading to the Lawman’s Fair, but when he tried to recall anything beyond that his head was filled with an incessant buzzing and an erratic fuzz; he couldn’t remember a thing.

Putting aside his futile attempts at recall, he instead began to assess his surroundings.

He was horizontal, lying on something firm and supportive. A mattress. A bed. There was a severe lack of clothing on his body, though it didn’t seem like it had been removed by force. Someone had undressed him. Bonds held his wrists and ankles at bay, restricting his movements and holding him down to the bedframe. They were of poor quality, but competently tied. Makeshift.