Twelve Voices of One

By Melodie Gray

Jacob Ross wakes up from a coma in a hospital and he suffers from amnesia. He discovers that the world outside is destroyed and he desperately searches for survivors of the disaster. There is an eerie absence of fellow humans and his lack of memory renders him perplexed and confused. He cannot find answers for the inexplicable situation in which he finds himself and in order to combat the loneliness and the isolation, he embarks on an incredible journey of self-discovery with boundless imagination. The future and the past collide and gather into an absurd present as he tries to fathom his identity and make sense of the destruction. A 2021 apocalypse nightmare is traded for a bizarre medieval dream as a court jester leads him out of the hospital and takes him to the medieval kingdom of Morodonia. Jacob unwittingly struggles with aspects of his own true nature which is obscured by the amnesia as he becomes part of the medieval kingdom.
The boundaries between the real and the unreal merge into a timeless hoax of possibility which is eventually reversed by the return of his memory. Jacob struggles with the disclosed truth of his identity and the harshness of the actual reality which is augmented by the wrenching solitude and haunting feelings of abandonment. Faith rescues him from doubt and concludes the true meaning of his existence.
In every beginning there is an end and in every end a new beginning, such is the circular nature of hope...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melodie Gray
• Release date: Jun 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311291332

Book preview

Twelve Voices of One

By Melodie J.E. Gray

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2016 Melodie J.E. Gray

Cover Picture Copyright © 2016 Melodie J.E. Gray

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer's imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

The cover picture is designed by the author. The picture depicts Pavo, the jester in the novel.

This book is dedicated to my loving mother Johanna, who loves reading as much as I love writing.

ISBN 9781311291332

"Forces which produce images plumb the depths of being: there they seek at once the primitive and the eternal. Imagination is not the faculty of forming images of reality: it is rather the faculty of forming images which go beyond reality, which sing reality.

- Gaston Bachelard.

Jacob's awakening.

Wake up...wake up!

It was a whisper loaded with urgency, like the voice of a fellow soldier in the trenches, panic-stricken by the close proximity of the enemy and desperately trying to wake him. It was a whisper of intimate concern, a warm breath of solidarity that did not want to forsake him...a brother wanting to save him from certain death. An unearthly rumbling sound followed, like the looming aftershock of an earthquake emanating from the bowels of the earth with its foul sulphur breath creeping into his lungs. He struggled to breathe. A moment of deadly silence hung in the air before he heard the chilling and prolonged sound of metal scraping on the surface. He felt alarmed and terrified as he woke and he instinctively wanted to flee from the danger hurtling towards him but he strained to open his eyes...invisible tethers bound his lids together, unwilling to release him from the darkness. His heart raced and he was lucid but he felt oddly heavy, as if he was somehow disabled by the induced torpor of sleep paralysis. Hello...hello? His voice sounded strangely unfamiliar to him. He listened. Silence.

He tried to open his eyes again and at first he could only squint through narrow slits with repeated blinking. He forced his eyes open and he was immediately struck by the blinding white light. He attempted to sit up and supported himself on his elbows for a while before he managed to sit up. He shook his head, scanned the room with blurred vision and rubbed his eyes, again and again until the stark surroundings came into focus. His gaze was met with the sterility of stainless steel and white starched linen on hospital beds, but there was not a soul in sight. The three beds next to his were neatly made up and vacant. This is a hospital ward? He frowned. Who did that voice belong to? Someone definitely tried to wake him and something terrible must have happened, he thought as he became increasingly apprehensive.

He untangled himself nervously from the tubes which restrained him, pulling the catheter out carefully and removing the IV drip's needle from his hand. He got up from the bed but his legs felt surprisingly weak as he shuffled unsteadily to the basin nearby to quench the most terrible thirst that he had ever experienced. The water was cool and streamed down his parched throat as he gulped it down. He looked up and gasped audibly when he saw his own reflection in the mirror. His face was pale and drawn and his eyes were sunken...he was looking at the image of a total stranger. He realized at that moment that he had no immediate memory of himself or the ward in which he found himself and he felt weirdly displaced and disembodied. Reality morphed into an unreal present which had no memory or thought attached to it and which could not be followed by lucid comprehension. He turned slowly on his heels and hesitated for a while, not quite knowing what to do next.

He spotted a satchel adjacent to his bed, picked it up and cleared out its contents on the bed. He shook his head repeatedly as if he wanted to dislodge the reluctant memories that were stuck in the adhesive crevices of his mind. The satchel was filled with various items which included a bag containing toiletries, a comb, several pens, a wallet, a wristwatch, cigarettes and a lighter, notebooks and journals, a pocket knife, a cell phone, cameras and equipment. The personal items of an unknown stranger lay strewn on the bed in front of him, awaiting his scrutiny. He paged through the notebooks and carefully examined all the written notes and the newspaper articles that were attached to it. Judging from the dated entries, it appeared to be the notes of a freelance photo-journalist or a war reporter, he thought. Could that be his occupation? He could not recall his last assignment nor make logical sense of the scribbled entries of names and places in the diary. He picked up the digital camera, switched it on and found to his surprise that it was still charged. He paged through the photos on the viewer but nothing seemed familiar to him: Landscapes, map locations, soldiers posing humorously and military vehicles in convoy - was he a war journalist? For a moment he felt angry that he could not remember anything. Amongst the papers he found a passport, opened it anxiously and stared at the photograph. A somewhat perplexed face stared back at him. Who the hell was that, could it be him?

He shuffled back to the mirror with the passport and tried to fathom whether this one 'Jacob Ross' was the name and face belonging to himself. He could not be sure - the long hair and the beard which the mirror reflected did not seem to fit. He searched through the toiletry bag and found scissors and then proceeded to cut his beard and hair. He scrutinized the passport again but he was still not convinced and he decided to shave the remainder of his beard and moustache. He once more looked at the image in the passport but the reflection in the mirror seemed much older than the young man in the photograph. He felt disorientated and confused and scanned the room for further clues in an effort to make sense of his situation. He reached over to recover a clipboard that was placed on the visitor's chair on the far side of his bed and examined the medical report.

If he was indeed this 'Jacob Ross', then it seemed that he was admitted to hospital after an accident which took place on the 4th of December 2020. It appeared that he suffered a brain injury and that he had been in a coma since the accident. He reached for the wristwatch and looked at the date on it - the watch had stopped and the last date on it read 12:04:2021. Why did it stop? Was it possible that he had been in a coma for several months? He felt bewildered and had a sudden urge to find a doctor or a nurse to clarify and answer all the questions that were milling around in his head: Who admitted him and what happened? What day of the week was it and which month? What time was it? He opened the doors of the closet next to his bed and inside it he found a duffle bag filled with clothes. He struggled to dress himself as his limbs ached and he felt weak and nauseous. He realized that the coma had diminished his muscle tone and that it would take a while for him to recover. He returned the duffle bag to the closet and then repacked the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. On his way out he peered through the window and stopped dead in his tracks - he was not prepared for the sight he saw.... The blood drained from his face and his mouth became dry. Oh hell....

Outside, for as far as the eye could see, lay the ruins of the city, destroyed and engulfed in flames. It was as if the demons of destruction opened the gates of hell to unleash their fury. Heavy smoke rose from the incinerated remains of collapsed buildings and fire-damaged cars were piled up in the streets. The buildings opposite the hospital were semi-demolished, much like the horrific aftermath of bomber planes striking specific civilian targets. It was bizarre and unreal - the image of a sudden cataclysmic event which obliterated all in its path, an apocalypse of place and time. He felt perplexed and his heart raced. It must have happened shortly before he woke up, he thought, that rumble and that metallic sound...has there been a war? He hurried through the door and limped anxiously down the corridor shouting: Can anybody hear me? Hello! Hello! Can anybody hear me? His voice sounded strangely broken as it echoed down the corridor, the corridor which seemed like an endless hollow tube reverberating his frantic calls.

The corridor was eerily empty and so were the wards. He could hear the faint sound of music playing and followed it expectantly until he located it. He recognised the recording of Yoav's 'Moonbike' which was playing recurrently as he opened the doors of an operating room. For a split second he thought that the surgeons looked up as he entered the room but they just as soon vanished...like ghosts.... Nothing but an operating table, an anaesthesia cart and machine at the head of the table and monitors brightly lit by the overhead surgical lights. The surgical instruments were neatly arranged on a stainless steel table but there was no sign of attending surgeons or a patient sprawled out on the table. He scanned the room with dismay and then stepped back into the corridor. He noticed that steam was still rising from the coffee cups at the nurse's stations, almost as if they would all soon emerge from somewhere to assist him. He frowned and felt ill at ease. What the hell...? The amnesia wilfully thwarted his efforts to make logical sense of anything. Where did everybody go? He peered into the empty wards and then decided to return to his own ward to search for more clues. The fact that he had no recollection of his past also meant that he could not even begin to envisage a future, all that he had any knowledge of was the absurdity of the immediate present, the present which was filled with unanswered questions....

Jacob spent the next two days searching systematically for any sign of life in the hospital. Most of the wards were still electrified but some were shrouded in darkness, supposedly due to damaged wiring, he gathered. He exhausted himself going from room to room, floor to floor, feeling more anxious as the search became seemingly fruitless. No doctors, no nurses, no patients and also, no visitors...not even a corpse in the morgue. Was it possible for human beings to simply evaporate? Was he perhaps dreaming and just imagined that he was awake or did he wake up from this dream only to discover that he was the sole survivor of ruin and nothing more than a perpetual stranger to himself? It was all too peculiar to be real, this new reality was one of relentless enigmas and the world outside was hostile and surreal.

He found the hospital kitchen with its adjoining canteen on the ground floor on the second day and rummaged through the fridges which were well-stocked for the preparation of meals for the patients. He was famished and pleased to find that the food was still fresh and he ate whatever he could find. He wolfed the food down like a vagrant who discovered a half-eaten meal in a dumpster. He noticed a television mounted on the wall of the canteen while he ate and walked up to it. He reached for the remote on the counter, switched it on and scanned all the channels, one after the other. Nothing, stone dead, not even a signal. No news channels reporting on a war and no mention of a natural disaster, not a single report of any survivors or evacuations.... He was baffled by the eerie transmission silence which mercilessly excluded him from the world of sound. He stared into space and his mind wandered off. He imagined himself as an astronaut, severed from his spacecraft and drifting haplessly in the silence of a vast universe.

He made a conscious decision to remain at the hospital for a while as he contemplated the possibility of rescue teams being dispatched. He returned to his intensive care ward each night, to his bed which was the only familiar centre of reference. He realized that he had to establish some sort of mindless routine in order to stay sane. He shaved and showered every day and he even endeavoured to do his own laundry. He collected a stack of magazines and placed it next to his bed so that he could do the crossword puzzles at night as he was plagued by insomnia. My life now dangles between amnesia and insomnia, he thought to himself. As the days passed, his health improved and he felt his strength and stamina gradually returning. He knew every inch of the hospital by now and yet he felt abandoned and forgotten by the world. He was haunted by the ghosts of time and he suffered incredible loneliness and boredom as he peered through the windows. Objects are placed in strategic positions so that they could become familiar to their location, he thought, and eventually the location would in turn expect the presence of the object....

Jacob found a tennis ball in the paediatric ward and amused himself by bouncing it against the walls as he ran up and down the corridors. After a while he stopped and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and frowned while he listened to all the hospital noises that persisted daily and that were all too familiar by now...the music playing, the lift doors opening and closing periodically, papers rustling in the breeze and monitors bleeping.... A hospital filled with the sounds of restless spirits.... What the hell happened here? Please God, give me a clue, he said to himself. He sank to the floor, wet with perspiration and his mind was fiercely ablaze with possible scenarios of events preceding the disaster.

When he opened his eyes again, he peered down the corridor and realized that the light outside was dimming. He had no concept of time since all the clocks seemed to have stopped ticking at exactly the same moment, twelve minutes past eight. He felt hungry and made his way down to the hospital kitchen. After he ate the toasted cheese and ham sandwich that he made, he spotted several bottles of wine and cigarettes under the counter and decided to open one of the bottles. He absentmindedly lit a cigarette and sank to the floor, clutching the bottle and leaning against the fridge. He inhaled the smoke and experienced a feeling of deep relief and contentment. So, he was definitely someone who enjoyed smoking cigarettes, this much he knew. He realized that the inherent instincts would dominate for as long as the amnesia persisted, that certain things would come naturally, as if engraved on the walls of the mind by prior routines and mindless mundane acts of repetition.

Jacob smiled to himself as he drank the wine but soon his thoughts were ambushed by the inexplicable situation in which he found himself. He felt desperate, it was as if his hopeful anticipation was constantly disillusioned by the discovery of nothingness. Why the hell aren't the phones ringing? This was a hospital after all, a vibrant hub of constant activity, a place of perpetual emergency where the sick and injured needed immediate attention.... All the phones still had dialling tones, people should be phoning, he thought. Could it be that there was an emergency evacuation and that they forgot about him? He finished the bottle of wine and found that it had made him drowsy. He dreaded falling asleep at night, the fear of lapsing into a coma again ushered in insomnia. He eventually fell asleep on the floor and not even the sound of the empty bottle falling over on the tiled floor could startle him. He dreamt that he was hiking and secretly stalking a magnificent grey wolf which was hunting in a forest. In the dream he followed the wolf endlessly without it ever discovering his presence.

After several hours Jacob woke abruptly, convinced that he heard the spine-chilling howl of a wolf nearby, stirring him from his sleep. He sat up and looked around nervously with all his senses on high alert. No, he was not in a forest, he was still in the hospital kitchen. He smiled and shook his head. He slowly rose to his feet and stretched, realizing the power of the dream - the dream which so easily erased the boundaries of conscious reality only to replace it with an alternate reality...a dreamt reality filled with the irony of the feral unknown, the dangerous grey, the twilight zone where all shadows were menacing and indistinct.

The sunlight of a new dawn beamed through the canteen windows. He there and then decided to leave the hospital for good, he could no longer stay there. He felt strong enough to venture out into the city and to search for survivors of the disaster. In a way he knew that the search would also be instrumental in establishing his own identity since he had no memory of his past and no recollection of his friends or family members or even of his colleagues. Maybe he would come across someone out there who would recognise him, he thought, and perhaps then he would remember everything at once. He felt sad that he could not even remember his own parents or siblings, he would give up all memories if only he could remember them.

He returned to his ward to fetch the satchel and the duffel bag and discovered to his surprise that a tripod was also stacked inside the closet. He proceeded to pack his clothes which he hung out to dry in the ward. So, he thought, he was a photographer for sure, he was familiar with all the equipment. He snapped a photo of his hospital bed for no apparent reason and smiled to himself. He went into the dispensary and store room behind the nurses' station after he forced the doors open so that he could fill his satchel with supplies and medication. He packed toothbrushes and toothpaste, toiletries, bandages, antiseptic creams, lotions and pain medication. He spent time on deciding what to take for he could not imagine returning to the hospital ever again.

Jacob returned to the kitchen to pack food for the journey. He touched the urn and felt that it was still hot and made himself a cup of coffee. He packed fruit, wine and bottled water and made stacks of sandwiches for the trip. He looked at the two bags and lifted them to test their weight. Nope, too heavy, he thought. He remembered spotting a small laundry trolley in the store room and decided to fetch it. He emptied it and grabbed a soft pillow and blanket on his way out. The wheels were sturdy and he placed his bags inside it and wheeled it around the kitchen to test it. Better to drag this load on wheels than to carry it, he thought. He stared at the vending machine in the canteen for a while, contemplating the next plan of action with a measure of reluctance. He picked up a steel chair and hesitated for a brief moment, closed his eyes and then smashed the vending machine so that he could stock up on cigarettes. He felt incredibly guilty for smashing it and for taking the cigarettes. He instinctively knew that the destruction of property and theft was not in his nature, but why on earth would they sell cigarettes in a hospital anyway? It made no sense, he thought.

He proceeded to loot the vending machine and placed the packets of