The Short Stories of Harry Styles

The Assignment: Part 7

I knew I was dead the moment I saw myself, aged 12, strapped to a chair and being forced to watch atrocities on the old television in front of me.

So this is hell.

I watched as my younger self sat there, unflinching, unwavering, unmoved by the gore and subliminal messaging on the screen.

Sparrows had to be mentally strong.

Sparrows could not have emotions.

A blink and I was in the dance studio.

Fifteen year old me was dancing as my instructors looked on.

Dance had been the only escape I'd ever enjoyed. The only pleasure.

A blink and sixteen year old me is now positioned in front of a hooded figure, gun at the ready.

"You will shoot. You will not hesitate. To you they are faceless, nameless. You feel nothing." The voice I'd come to know as my superior echoed through my mind and as if on cue, a gunshot, the hooded figure slumps forward, and sixteen year old me grins wickedly.

A blink and I am seven years old.

I shake my head because I do not remember such things. I do not remember a time before the age of ten when The Agency found me.

"Karenna, you have to hurry." A small voice beside me whispers and my stomach flutters at the sound of the name.

Karenna.

I am being tugged through darkness and I cannot see. Memories long since gone but the small hand gripping my wrist is gentle but purposeful.

Seventeen year old me is now standing in front of a mirror. Fiery red hair flowing like wildfire around my small face and I watch as she catches a reflection that surprises her.

I shake my head to clear the haze of the figure that embraces my younger self.

A kiss.

A deep kiss.

This must be hell.

A torment to echo through eternity.

Is this what I deserve? Yes. I deserve to feel the reality that this was something I could never have. I could never have love, feelings, emotions.

So my personal hell would torment me into watching, helplessly, wishing it were true forever.

She looked happy, my younger self with the person that remained a fog, a billowy specter.

A blink and there is blood upon the floor.

Sobs. Pain. Anguish.

Her lover is dead.

"Oh Karenna, didn't I say you were to feel nothing? Did I not warn you?" My superior's voice floods through the darkness.

So this is torment. So this is heart break.

I feel pain drowning me, so visceral, so real I fall to the ground and look into my seventeen year old self's hazel eyes.

She sees me.

I blink.

I am awake.

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"Ah, sleeping beauty awakens."

My head pounds with such an intensity that I screw my eyes shut instead of let the light in.