Chapter 2:

The next few days followed a regular pattern. I'd wake up and wish I had better bladder control, the old lady (to which I had started calling Granny) changed and fed me, Granny would read to me, I'd be fed again (possibly changed as well), I'd have a nap, Granny would usually read to me some more then I'd go to sleep. Rinse and repeat. It was definitely repetitive.

Sometimes Granny would take me outside. The outside world changed often, but it stayed the same as well. Outside the little tent I now called 'home' there was a vast desert. The dunes changed and often the arrangement of tents did too. Sometimes there was a cluster of animals in the distance. But it was always easy to recognise the harsh sun beating down and the sand that seemed to glow.

After the 2nd month of me being alive we started moving. Our small home was packed up and bundled away along with all of the meagre possessions it had. It was all packed away into several scrolls. Granny picked me up and we spent the rest of the day travelling with the people that lived in the other tents.

From what I could gather, we were a nomad tribe, travelling from place to place and never staying in one area for too long. Our 'tribe' consisted of a couple of hundred humans of varying ages (that all had the same green eyes and light hair), a few wagons or carts scattered about and a quite a lot pack animals.

I didn't understand why everyone else didn't just use the scrolls like Granny did. It was extremely effective and efficient. Some of the tribe members did, but not many, the rest relied on the animals to drag their belongings around for them. It was oddly frustrating, seeing them being so inefficient.

Another thing I noticed was the fact the no one offered to help Granny in anyway shape or form. We were at the back of the 'pack', behind even the animals. Whenever someone looked at us, they either scowled or looked away as if they were frightened.

I was honestly pissed at the tribe for not helping Granny. She was kind and nice. I saw a lot of mothers helping other mothers with their children, yet no one ever offered to help Granny with me. So, to strike back (because not being able to do anything can really get to you after a while), I was on my best behaviour and showed up those snotty brats that cried for their parents at every turn. It was petty, but there was little else I could do.

After the excitement of moving for the first time, everything become repetitive and boring once more. Granny would still read and speak in that odd language and we'd still be ignored by everyone else. Everything was so, so dull. Well outside my head, that is.

Inside, was a completely different story.

Now, I remember from somewhere that babies brains are made to soak up information, that's why it's harder to learn things like different languages later in life. The problem with my brain was that it was already dense with a whole lifetimes worth of knowledge. So, to clear it up a bit I started reorganising it. After all, I had all the time in the world.

I was a bit hesitant at first, deleting all of my memories. There were such a big part of me, they defined me as a person. They defined my actions, my fears, my likes, my dislikes, my traits, my quirks, my everything. I deleted small things at first, memories I didn't realise I had. Things like going down a slide at preschool, or reading a required-reading book for English, really memories I didn't feel attached to at first. Once I got used to it, getting rid of memories became quite easy.

It was a tedious process at first, I couldn't look at large amounts of information at once before I had a 'shutdown' or I lost conciseness. I started off with sorting the information (at a painfully slow rate) into two piles. "Useful" and "Useless". I quickly found out that the moment something was in the "Useless" pile, it was forgotten or (as I preferred to call it) 'permanently deleted'. I used that to my advantage.

The hard part was my family. I could sort out 'needed facts' from 'useless facts' quite easily when it came to anything else, but that was only because I didn't hold any sentimental value to them. Old crush from the seventh grade I barely remembered the name of? Gone, easy. Getting rid of the mother who raised me than disowned me? Not so much.

I had mixed feelings about my family. On one hand they hated me, were disgusted by me, disowned me for crying out loud! On the other hand, they were my family, my flesh and blood. Sure they hated me later in life, but earlier on they comforted me in a way only family could. They were my rock, my safety net. To get rid of them completely? I'm not sure I could do such a heartless thing, and that's saying something. I killed for a living, I learned early on that emotions were just a weak point and it was best just to get rid of them. Everyone has their weak points though.

I did end up deleting them. All my brothers, sisters, my mother, my father, my grandparents, my cousins, my nieces and nephews, everyone. When I was done, I had a cold, heavy feeling in my chest. It didn't feel like guilt, more like a form of regret, like I had just done something I knew was going to bite me in the ass later. No much I could do about it now though. They say we all have ghosts of our pasts, ghost we regret, but I wonder, can a ghost of my past haunt me for something I will never remember?

Then there was Mary. I couldn't delete anything connected to her in the slightest, even if I wanted to. I still had memories of late night sessions of binge watching shows, of theorising, of pop quizzes, of learning silly hand signs. I could delete my family yes, but I could never delete Mary, not so long as I live. Why? The answer is quite simple really. My life is-was dark. Looking back on it, really reflecting on it, re-watching every memory under a critical eye, it was easy for me to see that my life was about as bright as void. So like hell am I going to delete the only source of light I have.

After about two months of sorting and doing the same routine in the outside world, I had finally organised forty years worth of information. Now I was left with a huge mess of useful facts. So I organised everything further, after all I still had so much time before I could do anything.

I remembered seeing a piece of information that had a trick on it that seemed perfect. I dug around a bit and found it somewhere near the top of the pile. It was called a "Mind Palace". There used to be a memory attached to it, but I ended up getting rid of it. It seemed kind of 'incomplete' without it, but oh well.

I looked through the information. Okay, the first step is to decide on a blueprint. Hmm the more complicated the more space to store memory... Looking at the pile I have, I'm gonna need a huge place.

I shuffled though the information/memories and decided on one called "Maze of the Dead". I'm not sure why I didn't delete it, it was quite useless, but I'm glad I didn't. It was a series of catacombs that seemed to stretch forever. There was a memory attached to this called "Mission 17". After watching a few "Mission" memories, I had decided to keep all of them. Maybe I could view them at a later date.

I held the piece of information uncertainly. Did I just put it down and say this is now my mind palace? I mean, worth a shot... The moment it touched the 'ground' everything changed. What once was blank canvas of nothingness, became a large, complex system of tunnels and hidden passageways. I was shocked it was that easy.

For the next day or two I just spent time familiarising my self with my "Mind Palace". Well, "Mind Palace" seemed like the wrong name to call it. It was more like a "Mind Scape", hmmm... Maybe a "Mind Palape"? Or "Mind Scalace"? "Scapal"? "Lacesca"? Eh, I'll figure out a name later...

I spent every chance I could in my "Mind Palace/Scape", after all, the whole point of this place was to have information easily available. I couldn't exactly do that if I didn't know where everything was. After I was comfortable in my "Mind Palace/Scape" I started sorting information into it. That took a lot longer than expected.

First off, if took me a really fucking long time to actually, you know sort the information. Then, I decided that I really hated that configuration, so I changed it. After that I switched a few more things around before thinking Wouldn't it be best for the survival tactics to go with the killing techniques? So the format was changed again. This happened several times over the course of the next few months until I was pretty happy. It was a complete mess. An organised mess yes, but still a mess. I swear that no one else but me could ever figure out where anything was in this mess.

So after about 7 months of faffing around in my head, I decided to (finally) actually pay attention to the outside world.

To say that everything had changed would be kinda right and wrong. The scenery was still the same (as always) but things were different. There was more hate than apprehension in the tribe's eyes now and Granny was working a bit. It took me a minuet before I figured it out. I had practically been doing nothing for 7 months. Now, I'm not sure how fast babies learn, but I'm pretty sure that picking up nothing after 7 fucking months is pretty bad. So I had a lot to catch up on.

I had a few main priorities, but I decided that my first and for most should be coordinated movements. I spent two weeks non-stop trying to relearn walking and standing. This is where my memories became useful. I had so much information on moving my body (even if most of it was about martial arts techniques) that I got the whole walking and moving thing down after two weeks. The only thing I didn't realise was that Granny would have noticed my sudden incline in learning abilities. The odd thing though was that she didn't try to slow me down, no instead the crazy woman encouraged me.

She helped my go from barely being able to go from lying down to sitting up to being able to walk at a pretty fast rate for a 7 and a half month old. Next she started to teach me how to talk. She said things in a certain way and repeated certain phrases so many times that I could quite easily recognise objects and people. She always expected me to say the name of something when she pointed it out to me. This little exercise reminded me of Mary's pop quizzes and it quickly grew to be my favourite past time. She didn't let me get away with mispronouncing anything either, she'd immediately correct me and force me to repeat the word ten times and if I messed up saying it again, she'd make me say it twenty times. Needless to say, I rarely said words wrong.

Knowing a language before this one really helped, after all, I only had to 'translate' the words rather than have to learn learn them. Good in someways, not so much in others. I knew complex words that 6 year olds had trouble understanding and that wasn't such a good thing.

You'd be surprised how much you can do once you have a basic grasp of a language (and an extensive knowledge of another) and can move around fairly well on your own. Adults don't tend to pay attention to kids - well, baby in this case - and what they might overhear. After all, no kid should know the words 'abomination', 'devil', 'demon' or 'cursed' not really anyway. Unfortunately for me, I did.

My life before this one was dark, there's no way I can put a lighthearted spin on it. It was cruel, violent and overall horrible. At 8 months old I found out that my new life was going to be a whole lot worse.

I don't know how to create a lone blank so this is my solution. Please ignore this.

Sorry for the wait. I had to re-write it a few times before I was happy (even though I'm not really) with it. Hopefully the next chapter will be out sooner. Thank for reading and have a great day!