The Deal

I made a deal. I know, I shouldn't make deals--but I was never a good gambler, and I hardly thought twice about the price of my pay.

White foam crests around the soft lines of my legs, cool water rushing onto my skin as I ascend from the waves. 

I blink once, to try and recollect the sudden flush of light submerging my vision, then again, to survey my reality. 

A wave crashes against my back, nudging me forward. My knees dig into the surface and I grip my fingers into the sand coiling under me to try and steady myself. The beat of my heart is so quick, the pounding in my ears melts into the harsh crack of the water behind me. 

It's a funny thing. I don't remember the sound of waves. The roar of the surf cracking against the tide, rustling a murmur across the coast is unfamiliar. 

I look up, and I can't remember the blue hue of the sky, nor the grainy feel of the sand under the palm of my hand. It is as if I am a newborn--touching, feeling, seeing, hearing, for the first time. I can't remember anything, anything but the deal. 

I can remember the unhappiness I felt before I made the deal, but I can't remember why I felt the way I did. My life before the deal is a blur, but that night I made it still remains clear. I remember him. 

I can recall the lines of his face. Soft pale skin and beautiful dark hair, a facade of the person--well---thing that lied underneath. 

The devil was handsome. No, horns protruding from his temples nor a tapered pitchfork in his grasp. He looked like a man---a beautiful one in fact---though he was anything but. 

I remember leaning against the edge of the pier, watching as the water thundered against the poles, carrying the reflection of the moonlight and darkness of night in its coils. 

Trying to remember the look of the night sky is difficult, I close my eyes and try to draw a picture in my head of what it might look like, but I see nothing. I see blackness. Maybe that's all it was--blackness. 

I remember there was a feeling of hopelessness writhing under my skin when I was on the pier. Everything I did, everything I worked for, was for nothing. My hopes and dreams carried away with the waves under my feet, everyone in my life leaving with it. I tried so hard, so damn hard to be good...to be better. But goodness wasn't something I was very familiar with, and I feared I would never know the feeling of it. 

I wanted to give up as I looked over the ledge. My life felt useless for reasons I cannot recall. But useless. I wanted it all to be over. Then, he came. 

He stalked beside me, elegantly as if he could taste the feelings that saturated my head on his tongue. He noticed me overlooking the waves and met his eyes with the tide as well. 

“Waves are not all that great.” He said, the coolness of his voice taking me by surprise. 

“What?” I answered, in a startled voice. 

“The waves.” He tilts his head to the sea, “They are an illusion of something greater.”

“That is?”

“They crash, pull, they linger and they coil, but they would be nothing without a greater force. The moon. It pulls the change of the tide and controls the waves’ every move. If you're looking for greatness in the waves, you should tilt your head up a bit and look higher to the sky.”

I looked up--if only I can remember how the moon shined over the sea at that moment. 

“We all wish to seek greatness,” he said, looking out to the oceanfront. 

“I don't seek greatness,” I said, in a whisper as a terrible feeling tugged at my heart. 

He turned his head, his grey eyes seeming to twinkle, “Then what is it you seek?”

What was it I sought? Goodness. “Another chance.”

“Life would be easier if we could turn back time, no?”

“I don't want to turn back time. I just want to forget. I want to re-learn and re-think. I just want a new start.” 

He sat still for a moment, his eyes studying over me as if I were pages of a book. “What if I say I can make that happen?”

“What?”

“I can give you what you want. Call it...another chance.” He smiled smugly, and I wish I could have torn away from the look in his eyes, but it was so hard. There was something so alluring about him that I couldn't shake. 

“And how would you do that?” I questioned, being I didn't trust the silliness of the words he spoke. 

“We make a deal.” There was a glimmer in the tone of his voice as he said those words. We can make a deal. Still, I thought he was nothing but a con trying to annoy my business...so I played along. 

“What kind of deal?”

“That, my dear, is up to you. Tell me what you wish, and I can be sure to find something in return.” He lifted his chin, the moonlight carving the sharp lines in his cheeks. 

The man beside me only wanted to toy with my head. I wasn't one to argue, and I had no energy to protest him and put up a fight, so I replied, “You said you can give me another chance?” I gazed out into the ocean, then up to the moon, trying to seek greatness, yet could not find it, “I want that.”

He arched his brow, a sly look on his face as he held out his hand to me, “then so be it. A new start? A new beginning?”

“Yes,” I said under my breath.

“That is what you want?”

“Yes,” I repeated, reaching to shake his hand. I hesitated for a moment, and I wish I hesitated longer. Long enough to look him in his eyes, and see what he truly was. But I shook my doubt and grabbed his hand, not knowing at that moment, I would be signing away my life. 

“As you wish.” He purred, the smile on his lips unapologetically wicked. 

“And what will be my price?” I said, unamused, knowing deals go both ways. Something for me and something for him. 

He leaned in, my palm still intertwined in his as he pulled my hand to his chest and tugged me to his body. Being so close to someone, you should be able to feel the heat of their body, and the warmth of the breath as they speak, but his skin radiated coldness, and his breath was like ice. 

He whispered into my hair, his lips next to my ear sending a chill down my spine. At that moment, I knew that this man was not one I should have made a deal with. “Your price is your mind. I keep your memories and you get to make new ones,” He pulled away and smiled, the twinkle in his eyes seeming to change to something greater--something inhumane. I didn't know what it was, but the black orbs of his irises seemed to glow like a burning fire--an inferno of the depths of hell.

I gasped, air having trouble finding its way to my lungs. This was no man. This was...this was something else.

“I'll let you remember this night though.” He reached and cupped the side of my cheek with his cold hand. “I wouldn't want you to forget me, my dear.”

And just like that, he pushed me back against the dock, and I was cascading down the edges into the monstrous depths of the dark waves of the sea. I was falling

Falling

Falling

Falling

And then I opened my eyes and it was day, submerged in the water. Now I'm here, climbing onto the beach as faces of strangers gape at me with crazy eyes. I panic. Not being able to remember anything is a weird feeling. 

I know what a beach is, but I can't remember the feel of the sand. I know what people are, but the look of them is foreign. It's like he left me with common knowledge, but zero sense of what anything is.

Where am I?

“Miss?”

Is this real?

“Um, miss?”

Did I just give away my memories to the..?

“Miss!” Someone yells next to me, and I snap my attention to them. It’s a woman in a red swimsuit coverup decked with shiny pink sunglasses knotted on the top of her curly blonde hair. She shakes my shoulder, and I want to push her away, but I forgot the feeling of touch. The warmth of her hand on the skin of my shoulder feels nice. 

“Are you alright?” she says startled, “We thought you were drowning!”

Can I speak? What happens if I try to talk?

“I…” I push from my lips, my throat tightening at first but the words seem to find their way out, “I'm… I’m...fine.”

No, I'm not fine. But what could I say? I'm fine, I just signed my memories away to the devil, no big deal. 

“What's your name?” The woman urges. My name? I think, digging into the deepest part of my brain, trying to evoke any word that would make a nice name. Anything that would fit me. 

I stay silent for a moment, then look to the sky. A motorized vehicle with wings flies through the sky, carrying a sign on its tail that wavers over the beach. Amelia’s surf shop. It says. 

I'm surprised I remember how to read, but at least he didn't take that away from me too. 

“Amelia,” I say hesitantly. 

“Well, Amelia, are you sure you're ok?” The woman replies, and she sounds genuinely concerned. 

“yes...I'm okay.”

“Well, I’m seated over there if you need anything.” She points to a blue and white beach towel, three kids digging their hands and making castles out of the grainy sand. “Just ask for Dianna.” She smiles and walks away, but there's weariness in her look.

I look down at my body, my blue dress sticks to my skin, tattered and wet. It's uncomfortable and I would love to peel it off my figure immediately, but what do I have to change?

Anyone would just go home and slip into new clothes they already own, but not anyone just suddenly loses all their memories. Do I even have a home? Do I have a family? I look around at the people on the beach. Families swarm around me. Kids splashing into the tide, laughing with their warm high pitched voices as their parents sit aside tanning under the golden sun, holding a book between their fingers. I imagine I had a nice family. A mother, a father, maybe even a sister or brother. I imagine I had a sister. 

I walk from the beach to the boardwalk, drinking my surroundings thoroughly. You see the world differently when you don't remember any of it. The blue sky isn't just a blue sky--it's a labyrinth of clouds and winds, reflecting off the waves of the ocean and carrying planes and birds through its surface. The little things suddenly are so much bigger.

The smell of something sweet caresses my senses, pulling me like a magnet to the source. I follow it and see a stand with a vendor handing out triangle-shaped pieces of dough with yellow stuff on top. I can almost remember what it is--pizza! I remember pizza! 

Maybe I didn't lose all my memories. I remember little things, such as pizza. I also remember that if I want a piece of it, I have to buy it. But with what money? I dig into my pockets and pull out an ocean-soaked slip of greenish paper with an old grimacing face and a 20 on it. Is this what I use to pay? 

I walk to the stand and hand the slip to the vendor. “One please.” 

He slides me the piece and gives me back a different green slip along with some shiny coins. I shove the money in my pocket and hold the pizza to my face. It smells so nice--unlike anything I've ever smelled. My senses are tangled with satisfaction, and as the hot dough touches the buds of my tongue, I cannot get enough of it. It’s salty and sweet, greasy and chewy all in one. 

As I pass by a shop window, pizza in hand, I catch a glimpse of my reflection, and I stop stiff in my tracks. The green-eyed girl with tanned skin and almond eyes gazing back at me is a stranger. She has tiny freckles lining her cheeks that are rather pretty, but her nose is sharp and pointed, taking away the beauty in the sun-kissed skin. I like her eyes though, they're small and narrow, but the deep brown color of them is nice. All these features are features of someone who has lived so long, yet is a stranger to herself. 

Who am I?

Was I a mother? A friend? A foe? My head fills with curiosity about this brown-eyed girl before me.

I wonder if my family looks like me. If they bare the same tanned skin and narrow eyes--if I had a family to begin with. I look away from the girl in the window, being her shape is almost faded away as the sun sets over the oceanfront. 

My eyes widen and my heart skips. 

The sunset.

Now that is something very beautiful.

Colors of red and orange decorate the sky like a pallet of paints, along with glosses of purples and pinks. The clouds dust over the reddish-golden sun as it beds along the sea, the waves mirroring the colors unfamiliarly--lie my reflection of the stranger in the shop window. 

The longer I admire the dusk, the faster time passes, and suddenly it’s night. 

The sunset was one thing--but the beauty of the night sky is bewitching. 

A dark haze lifts to reveal the night. Lucid stars dance across the terrestrial ebony sky, twinkling and aglow with bright specs of white. It was alive with a raw earthy energy that transcended into the eternal darkness. Gazing up at the ethereal sight, I wonder if everyone feels this way when they look at the stars. 

A warmness climbs in my chest. A twinge of excitement lifts my cheeks and spills an uncontained smile across my lips. 

Life will never be the same for me. My memories are of the past, clutched in the fingers of lucifer. 

Though at this moment, I'm glad they're gone. I wished them away for a good reason. Now, maybe it is my real chance to begin again.

 I'm glad I can see the beauty of the stars for the first time. Though I cannot remember how the sunrise emerges through the stars, I'll surely never forget the sunset fading into the night. 

Hi! This is my first ever reedsy prompt story! I'm so excited about it, and had a blast writing it! I hope you all like it! (and understand it). It's my dream to be an author, so any support and suggestions mean the world to me! Thanks! -Kayla