The Spark of Life: Prologue

Heh, may as well start at the beginning, or rather as close to the beginning as I can figure out. My name is now Jesse Spark. Don't give half a damn what it used to be, or what it really is, I'm Jesse Spark now, and I'll stay Jesse Spark 'til the day I die. And knowing my life after losing my memory, and after the Never incident, the day I die will probably be sooner rather than later, and a lot sooner than I'd like. I was on a bus when it all started. Even after months, I can't remember further back. I'd like to say that I know I still had my attitude back then, somewhere between 'never say die' and that one really sarcastic guy everyone knows, but I can't, and anyway that's not the point. The point is I was on a bus. No clue why, no clue where I was going from, or to, just that I was on a bus, with my head bashing against the window at every bump in the damn road. Maybe I was feeling masochistic, I don't know, but I do know that it hurt like hell. I was looking out of the window at the rain-slicked tarmac. So yep, I was definitely in Britain. And that's one thing that I can recall; the bloody typical British weather. The bus went round a sharp-ish corner (for a bus), and the whole thing tipped a bit. I guess it was a double-decker, but anyway, the sway made me look up, and I saw something that I didn't like. I don't know what it was, I can remember the scene, but I can't remember anything wrong with it. Maybe the fact that there was nothing amiss was the thing that was amiss. Maybe I saw something that erases it's self from your memory. Maybe whatever I saw really won, and I only think that I did, and not remembering it is part of it's victory. Maybe there was something blatantly wrong that I just can't see for looking. That's the scariest part, not if it's something trans-dimensional or extra-spectral or some other crap like that, but if it's the bleeding obvious that I just can't see. Did the buildings have eyes, and mouths, staring and gawping forever at me, and no-one else could see it, and I can't recall it because my brain won't let me see? Who knows? I sure don't. Anyway, whatever I saw or thought I saw put me on edge. Ah, I forgot about that. I might have been insane and hallucinating before I lost my memory, and I can't recall the hallucinations, only what I really saw. I might still be mad now. But who god-damn cares either way? Last I checked, the world didn't care about anything. Not the souls, or whatever that glass lightning ball was, not me, not you, whoever you are, not the light (whatever that thing even was) and not even Never. But then nothing cares about Never. I'll get to that later, Never. It's complex. It's best I just tell it as it happened to me, I still don't know what Never even is, and if I did, I wouldn't go into it. I'm writing a chronicle of events, not a paper on quantum physics. Now where was I? Oh yes, the something I saw put me on edge. I wanted to bolt. I wanted to get out of there. I keep wanting to say that it was primal fear, or animal fear, but that's not it. It was controlled fear. Domesticated animal fear. Wait, no, I don't mean fear of domestic animals, I mean animal fear that has been domesticated. Sort of honed primal fear. Fear made sharp and alert and controlled. I turned to get up right way. I was all alone, sitting next to the window. I still don't know why that was. When I got up I paused. I still see all the faces that ran through my head as I looked at the space beside me. Friends that weren't there. Love never possible now. Maybe they were all dead anyway. Maybe I'm dead anyway. Maybe everything is dead. That doesn't matter, I'll leave it at the fact that I got up, and left. Look, I know I was on a moving bus, and you can't just up and leave, but that's all I remember. One second I was on the bus, the next I was by standing by a bus stop. My memory might still be patchy. Or reality might have been screwed over, but how, I can't even begin to know. Maybe the thing I saw that was wrong earlier involved the fact that the bins on the street were obeying the law of gravity like everything else, and that was blatantly wrong because everyone knows that steel with black plastic bags in it is meant to float two feet off of the ground. Who cares if reality has changed? Then I was running. Away from the bus stop. Through dark alleys and back streets. Through slow, thin drizzle and the night. After a while of this in my memory, so much that it blends together, and starts repeating, I was running, but also clutching something. I don't know how I got it. I don't remember picking it up, and it's not like it just appeared, after all, the me in my memory wasn't bothered by it. Maybe it did just appear from nowhere, but I was expecting it to? I don't know, all the running seems to blend together. Then, sometime after I picked up the thing, or it materialised, or whatever, I fell, and hit my head on the pavement that had previously been beneath my feet. That's how this all started. A guy carrying something and running away from the fact that nothing was wrong trips over and cracks his head off of the ground, forgetting everything right down to who he is. I could still speak, write, spell and do all the usual human stuff though. I could still add and subtract and multiply and divide. Or maybe I couldn't understand maths at all before, and that really is something weird. Anyway, that's the prologue. I can't remember who I was then, what I was thinking, anything. But I can remember the rest, so that'll be in first person, not this weird amalgamation here. Or is first person anyway? Oh sod it, I never was much of a writer.

Oh, no, wait, maybe I was.