6He could fell pain, but all he could see was darkness. Who am I exactly? He thought to himself, he honestly did not know. He didn't know how long he had been in the black but he knew how long he had been feeling the pain. Forever. Or at least that is how it seemed. he felt the pain coursing red, hot, and angry through every part of his body. He opened his eyes, or thought he had because everything was still dark. His body screamed out in protest as he reached out in front of himself and to his sides. He had about an arms length of movement in each direction, that was when he realized that he was laying on his back. He reached out in front of himself again and felt what his hands came up against, it felt like wood. he readied himself for the pain that would come and started pushing upward with his arms. he gritted his teeth as the pain surged through him with a new life and intensity that nearly forced him back into the black of unconsciousness. The only thing that stopped that from happening was the tiny shaft of light that now came in through the crack he had created. He felt new strength come into him, the light gave him hope, gave him a goal, he wanted to get to it, he wanted to bask in that light. He was now dimly aware of how cramped he was and that this hole smelled like sweat. He pushed harder until the crack became a two inch seam, but then the wood stopped, it hit something hard and would not move. He tried again and got the same result. The next time he pushed up he slid the wood to the left at the same time and gasped as the bright light came shining in completely unobscured, that was when he realized that he was looking up at the sun. He put his hands up to his eyes to shield them from the glare as they adjusted. Finally the sky came into focus, but it didn't look right. It was blue enough but it was also tinged with whisps of gray that he knew weren't clouds. He took a deep breath, wanting to inhale fresh air and that was when he smelled something burning and realized that what he was seeing in the sky was smoke. Slowly he sat up and looked around, and immediately he wished he hadn't.
The first thing that he noticed as he pushed the rest of the debris off the top of himself was that he was under the corner of a partially collapsed house. He looked to his right and saw a sink and cabinets, closer to him on the right was a refrigerator that was half in what used to be a kitchen and hanging halfway into a hole that opened up to the basement below, the only thing that kept that refrigerator on this floor was that it was plugged in, its chord was stretched almost to the point of breaking. He turned to the left and saw the deck outside, it was slanted horribly downward with jagged pieces of wood stretching out towards the sky from every direction. He could also see that the whole left wall of the house was completely gone. He got to his feet and felt dizzy, it took everything he had not to fall back down. None of this looked familiar to him, he had no idea whose house this was, or more accurately whose it used to be, or more importantly who he was. It was like this was his first day on earth. He looked straight ahead and saw that there was a staircase that led up to the second floor. To the right was the rail and what was left of the kitchen, to the left there was nothing but outside. He started up the steps, not knowing exactly why he was going up them but by time he got to the top he could see halfway down the street. It wasn't pretty. There were a lot of houses that either looked like this one or were completely reduced to smoking rubble. That was one source of the smoke, the second was the cars. Some were charred and black, nothing left to them, they looked like they were firebombed, some of the others were still on fire. Something terrible had happened here, in the distance he could hear sirens but other than that it was extremely quiet, he had never felt so alone. He noticed that there was three ways he could go now. Directly in front of him was a bedroom, to his right was the bathroom and behind him a little to the right was another bedroom.
He went into the first bedroom and started looking around. He figured if he woke up here then there had to be a reason he was here in the first place, maybe he could find some clues, not that he would know one if he seen it. The room was practically in shambles. There were giant holes in the walls that offered unobstructed views of every thing out side of the house, and everything was tossed around. Maybe there was an earthquake. He thought to himself. Then he saw the picture on the bed. The picture was of a boy, a girl that looked to be about the same age, and an older woman. Probably brother and sister with their mother. He thought to himself, why could he remember stuff like that but not his own name?
He went into the other bedroom and found that it was in pretty much the same condition as the first. In here he found another picture, this one was of the same boy as the last time but this time he was with another girl who wasn't in the other one. He looked around at what was left of the room and from what he saw he decided that this room probably belonged to the boy in the pictures. He left the bedroom and went into the bathroom to look around and was hit with a surprise when he caught his reflection in the mirror, he was the boy in the pictures.
After he had gotten over the initial shock he made his way back downstairs and started looking around. He needed more clues, surely if this was his house there had to be something here with his name on it, and he wanted to see if the other people from the pictures were around here somewhere. A thorough search of the kitchen turned up a piece of paper with five names on it. John, Jennifer, Christopher, Lisa and Carrie, he could be either John or Christopher but he did not know. He turned to go to the living room and stopped in front of the ten foot wide hole that was in the middle of the floor. He would have to jump across and he was going to need one hell of a head start. The only problem was, he didn't have enough room. He took a few steps back and went for it. He was about half way across when he realized that he wasn't going to make it. He hit the other side of the hole at about chest high and tried to suck in air as it was being knocked out of him. He caught the edge with his arms and dangled there trying to catch his breath and not pass out. He was going to have to pull himself up but he didn't know if he had the strength to do it, but he knew he had to try. There had been something bothering him ever since he woke up and clawed himself out of that hole, but it had only been at the back of his mind at that time, buried beneath the pain and confusion, but he could feel it as plain as day now. It was not safe here, especially if he was still here at nightfall. Dread clenched and settled in his stomach like a knot and forced his arms to move. Slowly but surely he pulled himself far enough up so that he could swing one leg up over the edge and roll himself over. He laid there a moment, half in the kitchen and half in the living room, taking a moment to catch his breath. He knew he had to move, if the people in the pictures weren't here then maybe they were still alive. He had to find them, they were the only ones who could tell him who he was.