**CURRENTLY A FEATURED STORY**
highest ranking: #11 in Science fiction
❝true happiness is only achieved without freedom.
There is a girl who wakes to a world that she was supposed to protect. Instead, she fights it.
There is a man who is cursed wit...
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vance
How can I forget my name, though, if I do not know it in the first place?
"Vance, are you quite alright? You look ill," a voice beside me says. It belongs to a tall man with soft features and mousy brown hair, and though he seems familiar, I cannot place him.
I ignore him as I wash my hands. He must be mad, I think, talking to a mirror like that. And someone named Vance, too. What an odd name.
"Vance. Vance."
Wringing my hands underneath the cool water, I rub the soap into my skin well, before I rinse them, shake off the water droplets with a few shakes of my hands, take a paper towel and dab the moisture from between my fingers. Deciding not to throw him a judgemental look, I make for the door of the lavatory.
"Hey, you."
I stop with my fingers ghosting on the doorknob, and I turn around. "Me?"
"Yes. Vance. What's the matter with you?"
"Why are you calling me Vance?" I demand, my brow knitting itself into a frown.
The man looks shocked, worried. Does he know me? Do we know each other? Is he a friend, perhaps, that he seems to care about me? "Because that's your name."
I scoff. "No it isn't."
His next expression is challenging, albeit unamused as he crosses his arms over his chest. I pay attention to the way his blue jacket creases up where it slopes gently down towards his shoulder, where his fingers grip the fabric, how it stretches over his elbows. "Then, pray tell, what is?"
I have no answer to that.
As a result I allow him to take me by the arm and lead me out of the bathroom, escorting me to the nearest security guard. I watch them, blankly, as they exchange murmured words. The next thing I know is that the guard is now leading my by the arm. I feel like a child.
"Where are we going?" I ask, as we turn a corner.
"Sir Beneš demanded you were taken back home, Sir," he answers.
"Why?"
I don't receive a reply to that. The guard drives me home and leads me up into my apartment, only leaving once he has ensured that I can fix myself a cup of coffee, unaided.
Within the hour, I receive an unexpected guest. A ring at my doorbell. Once. Twice. Urgent, pressured, and yet monotonous, calm. I open the door without hesitation, and greet my intruder with a muttered 'hello' as he pushes past me into the living room. I shut the door behind him and follow him as he traipses through the glass apartment, finally pulling us both into the lavatory.
I'm flattened against the locked door. The intentional discomfort is a piece of genius architecture: the minute amount of privacy that we have behind this one door is one that is not supposed to last; unarmed by security cameras, the area is tight, cramped.
