FILE 001 : THE BOY NOBODY COULD REMEMBER
STATUS: UNRESOLVED
RECORD TYPE: LOST IDENTITY
At 7:14 a.m., Elias woke up to the sound of his mother screaming.
Not the frightened kind.
The confused kind.
The kind that makes a person sound as though they've just discovered something impossible in a place where nothing should be impossible.
“Elias?”
He sat up.
His bedroom was exactly as he had left it.
Grey curtains.
Unmade bed.
School uniform hanging from the back of the chair.
The crack in the ceiling he'd been meaning to complain about for three years.
Nothing was wrong.
Then his mother appeared in the doorway.
She stared at him.
Elias smiled.
“Morning, Mum.”
She didn't answer.
Her face had gone pale.
“Elias?”
“Yeah?”
She took a step backward.
“Who are you?”
He laughed.
It wasn't funny.
“Mum.”
She reached for the doorframe.
“I...I don't understand.”
“You just called my name.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“No, I didn't.”
“You did.”
“I said Elias.”
“Exactly.”
A long silence.
Then she whispered:
“That's my son's name.”
Elias looked at her.
“Yes.”
“My son is Elias.”
“I know.”
“My son is eighteen.”
“I know.”
“He has a scar above his left eyebrow.”
Elias touched it.
“I know.”
His mother's eyes filled with tears.
Because she recognized the scar.
She recognized his voice.
She recognized the blue shirt he had worn to bed.
She recognized the little chipped tooth he'd had since childhood.
She recognized everything.
Except him.
At breakfast, she kept watching him.
Not like a mother watching her son.
Like a stranger trying to remember where she'd seen a face before.
“Elias,” she said eventually.
“Yes?”
“What's your surname?”
He stared at her.
She knew it.
Of course she knew it.
Didn't she?
He told her.
She frowned.
Nothing.
He told her again.
Still nothing.
Then she opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out a framed photograph.
It was their family photograph from his tenth birthday.
His father.
His mother.
His little sister.
And him.
Elias pointed at the boy standing between them.
“That's me.”
His mother looked at the photograph.
Then at him.
Then back at the photograph.
“No.”
She said it quietly.
“That's not you.”
His stomach tightened.
“That's literally me.”
She shook her head.
“The boy in this picture…”
She swallowed.
“…I remember him.”
Elias took the frame from her.
He looked at himself.
Same eyes.
Same crooked smile.
Same scar.
But something was wrong.
He turned the photograph over.
Written on the back in his mother's handwriting were four words:
My beautiful family. 2018.
There were four people in the picture.
But beneath the photograph, someone had written a fifth line.
In handwriting Elias didn't recognize.
THERE WERE NEVER FOUR.