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Rated: E · Short Story · Mystery · #2194518
A man found himself in the fog and can't recall who and where he is.
I don't know even where I came from. A thick fog is covering my eyesight and all I can see is nothing but white fog. I try my best to remember where am I and why I am here but I find nothing as if I am trying to search a memory before I was born. It's as if this fog around me is even inside of my head. I found I have nothing to do with the circumstance and I started to walk for no reason.
I only hear dry sounds which my feet make. A soft light is melting outlines and everything looks vague. I gradually realized that I've been in a forest. However this forest is quiet and lonely.It reminds me of old cats,somehow. I can't hear a single chirp of birds.
I started to get able to see around me as I walk. Trees of the forest are tall and with no leaf.I tried to see the holizen but I only saw trees fading into the fog. I make progress. Being with sounds of my feet rather makes me feel lonely. The trees are sparse and flat ground continues. I looked one of the trees closely. The trees in here appearently look ordinary but come to think of it I have never seen this ones. I thought perhaps I am in a compretely unfamiliar place. As the scenary doesn't change,I started to think I'm walking around same place.
I raised my head and noticed that something is over there. I stopped walking to look at it. It was a deer. It is watching me through the fog calmly like a ghost. We looked at each other for a while. I stepped forward to get closer.At that moment,the deer suddenly ran away and was gone into the forest. Somehow,I felt like the deer is not from this forest.
I started to walk again. The strange thing is my leds're never getting tired.I wandered perhaps I haven't made much progress.After a while a deer appeared again. This may be the same deer.It staring at me like it's want to say something. This time I stepped forward careefully. But the deer turned around right away and dissapeared. I thought about what this deer is.It wants to take me to somewhere?
I saw the deer once again after that.But what I found next was not a deer. It was a old,dingy and big wooden building. I never expected I find such a building in the middle of the forest.The building is too big to call it a house. I woundered if somebody is there. I started to be interested in it. I found a small dull window and look into it.But I didn't see anything as its inside was dark.
I dicided to walk around it. The another side of the building was like a barn. I noticed something many are inside of it. Cattles? They're not. I thought they were houses next but they're not.They were countless of deers.
I even felt it weird. Who in the wourld own deers in a barn? The dees don't move even a bit and quite silent. I felt a bit guilty but entered to the barn to look carefully. The Deers didn't react to me when I got in. I realized one thing except for the fact the deers are too quiet. These deers look exactly the same to each other. Face,size,fur,everything is the same. I started to think perhaps the deers which I saw on the way to come here were not the same deer and they were three different deers.
"That's right." Suddenly somebody said from my back. I was surprised and turn around,then I found a man wearing something like a workig cloth was standing behind me.
"Each deer you saw on your way here was different individuals." he said. Why this guy knows everything?I thought.Was he watching me? No.There was nobody watching me. "How do you know. You can't notice if they were same."I said."Everybody thinks like that way.You assume things to be same even if you don't recognize if they change." The man left strange words and walk back to somewhere.
What is this place? The deers don't move like they're waiting something. I try touching one of them. As it is a little bit warm, I guessed they are at least alive. Then I suddenly realized the deer didn't have one of its eyes. I was a bit scared and looked at another one. It has only one ear. I noticed all of the deers lucked some parts of their body. There even was a deer which has only its head.
I felt it creepy and curious at the same time. I want to know what this is. I started to walk to the way the man went to.
After went through the woods of deers,I found a door with a door handle made of brass. The rusty door gave a sound like shriek as I open it. There's a long and dark corrido inside and I see a dim light over it. The corrido creaked as I walked on it.
When I reached the end of it, I found the man doing something with his back turned. There was a deer with no head and neck in front of him. He scooped up red liquid which gross like mercury with his hands from the metal bucket beside him. And he put it on the area where the neck of the deer was supposed to be if it had had one. Then, the red liquid started to move by itself and make a shape of neck and head slowly. I was staring it quietly. After getting back its neck, the deer immediately satrted to move actively and when the man opened the backdoor, it ran away and disappeared into the fog.
"What the hell was that. What have you just done?"I asked. The man didn't answered immediately. "Well, have you heared that atoms making your body would be replaced in about 1 year?" The man asked me suddenly. "I have. What is the point is this?" "Then do you think you after 1 year from now really is you?" Foolish question.I thought."I'm sure that's me. Even if the substances are replaced,the momery will remain. With the memory until now, I can prove I am I." The men stood up with face look like he'd thinking something and started to walk around watching the floor. The bace is the floor is white tiles and black tiles are forming dot-lines on them.
"Not dot-lines." The man said. "These are not dot-lines. When you saw them as dot-lines,you let them contain 'nothing'."The man hold his tongue for a while and continued.
"You may think that your existence is like a line that comes from the past and goes to the future, and it continues until the day you die. But it's not. What you think you are is just an aggregate of your unreliable memories. You have spended similar days again and again. But if the day was ordinary, you will forget it someday. Although you can recall about yesterday and day before yesterday, you don't dare to recall every single ordinary day. And you don't remember what you have thought or how you have lived the day. Because you're 18 and one year has 365 days. And your memory is only in your head. The evidence you lived the day is no longer exist and 'you' who lived the day is dead. You of today can be the one. You might going to be forgot by 'you' of few years,or few days later and wouldn't exist. As memories are only in your head, they can't be restored and you won't even realize it. You said your memories confirm your existence .If so, 'you' in the future who forgot you is not you.
I said nothing. I started to understand what this place is. "These deers, are memories. They come across the fog and can't go back. Their body melt and disappear from even here. But occationaly, they get able to go back when I repair them like this. They become different from what they used to be of course, but they may get able to go back..."
And he turned around. His face was,ah,why I didn't notice. It was face of me in the day that I had forgotten long ago.



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