the sides. Her hands dusted the front, cautiously opening the spine to gaze at the first page within. A pristine picture jumped out at her: an image of herself. Her black hair, pale skin and all. Except, it wasn't exactly her. Just the familiar face of a baby. She touched her picture’s tuft of ebony on its scalp and dragged her finger down to the smile on its innocent face. To the side, a dog laid by the feet of the infant. She remembers her, but she couldn’t remember the dog’s name. Daisy? Maisy? A childhood dog’s name should have been a cherished piece of information. Her brow furrowed in frustration as she tried to recall this detail. Alas, that concentration was broken as a light breeze hit her face. She frowned, looking around, but the book in her hand seemed to burn with greed. The tattered leather suffocated her with its thirst to be acknowledged. She couldn’t ignore its Delphic temptation.
0:02:00
The next page was her first day of kindergarten. She saw her eager gapped tooth smile hesitantly staring back at her mom, taunting her in her current state of loneliness. She flipped the page: second grade. Again: third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. Every page in sequential order of her short life. The next folio was of the summer of her 9th grade year. In the picture, her friends crowded around her, all grinning wide from the exhilaration radiating off their bodies. She remembered that day. It was her birthday when her mom took her and her friends to a California beach for the first time. She could almost feel the sand between her toes and the salty air kissing her nose. Instinctively, she took a deep breathe in to relish the senses. A grimace overtook her face. Chemicals. No salty air. No sunscreen. Disinfectant and bleach. That's what she smelled. Blanching, she turned to the next page. The picture was recent, maybe a couple weeks old. It was her with the new bluntly cut bob getting ready for her 10th grade dance. The pink ribboned pin stood out against the dark black of her dress. The cherry red lipstick contrasted the porcelain look of her face. Looking back at the picture, she thought she looked like a vampire. The hesitant tug of a smile littered her face at that connection.
00:01:00
The book had thinned by now, only a couple pages left from the looks of it. She turned the page slowly, relishing in the memories permeating her mind from the images before and then...the memories perished. The page was blank. It looked as if it were hastily ripped out and burned around the edges, the blackened page juxtaposed against yellowing papers before it. Panic rose in her brain as she frantically flipped the page back and forth trying to catch a sliver of a picture from her past. Confusion swarmed her mind as she examined the forceful tear along the page. Tears threatened to fall down her eyes and she looked up to counter the emotion. The sky had turned gloomy as if anticipating her very mood. The wind howled with swells of speed. This land now looked bland, not the serene mystique it once was. Her hands
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