The sage green cloth above my head looks unfamiliar. Or does it? I’m not sure. My thoughts feel foggy and uncertain. A curtain to the side of the bed pulls back revealing a middle aged woman with her graying hair pulled back into a tight bun.

The woman leans over me. “You’re awake,” she states.

“Where am I?” I ask the unknown woman.

“In your bedroom. Let’s get you ready for breakfast, my Lady,” she says as she pulls me into a sitting position.

The cloth around my bed moves to the four corners of the bedframe by itself, and I can see I am in a grasslands, or am I? It doesn’t look quite real.

“This is my bedroom?” It doesn’t feel like it.

“Yes, my Lady. You’ve lived here for quite some time,” she answers as she pulls back the blankets over me. “If you could get up, my Lady, it would greatly help.”

I oblige and turn myself on the soft mattress. It feels too soft. I almost collapse as I try to stand, but the woman grabs me and holds me up.

“I was afraid you might be a little weak. You’ve been asleep for a little while,” she says while carefully holding my waist till I stabilize on my legs. The moment she feels I’m stable she lets go and hurries over to a dresser that has a simple blue dress lying on top of it.

“Do I know you?” I ask her, uncertain of anything.

“No,” she states as she grabs the dress. “I’m new, my Lady. My first day was yesterday.”

She brings the dress over to me and sets it on the bed.

“What’s your name?” I ask as she seems reluctant to easily provide information to me.

“Rebecca, my Lady,” she gives a small curtsey as she says this and then she grabs the simple white shift I am wearing and pulls it over my head.

This seems sort of familiar, but at the same time I have no memories of it. She dresses me in the blue dress quite quickly with a practiced hand.

Where is this room, this place? Why does a person dressing me feel like a familiar routine? What is happening? Who the heck even am I?

As my breathing starts to match the speed of my thoughts, she tugs gently on my hand. “It’s breakfast time, my Lady.”

I follow her and try to not think too much about my missing memory, but as we head to the door I can’t help asking her again, “Where am I?”

She pauses and glances back at me, her eyes have narrowed a little, and I wonder if my questions have made her suspicious. But suspicious of what? Do I have something to hide? “Why do you keep asking where you are? This is your bedroom, my lady,” she says calmly, and then turns back toward the door.

“Has it been my bedroom for awhile?” I ask.

She opens the door. “You’ve lived here a long time, my lady,” she says as she walks through the door without looking at me.

The room she leads me into is lined with shelves filled with books and has some couches in the middle of it, but I don’t have much time to look around as she leads me through it and into another room.

She opens yet another door, but this time she stands to the side and lets me pass her. The room has a large dining table and a woman sitting in one of the seats quietly eating something yellow on her plate.

“Please take a seat, my Lady. Breakfast is scrambled eggs this morning,” Rebecca says from beside me and gives a little curtsy.

The seated woman looks up at me, and smiles at me with kind brown eyes. Her black hair hangs around her like a curtain almost touching the chair she is sitting on. She glances at Rebecca, and then looks back at her food as if she is afraid of looking at me too long.

What is this place?

I take a seat near the door and a person brings me a plate with the fluffy yellow stuff on it. Scrambled eggs.

I think about saying something to to the other woman, but as soon as she finishes eating she stands up without looking at me and hurries off. I notice there is a portrait of the woman looking stern with her hair done up and in a nice dress on the wall. There are also other portraits around the dining room. Most are men, but I notice one other woman. Do I have a portrait in this room?

I look down at my white hair, and then at the portraits. None of them have white hair.

As soon as I finish eating, Rebecca walks over to me. “Let us head back to your room, my Lady”

I don’t seem to have a say in this. I stand and follow her back to the room.

After opening the door to the room she calls mine, she steps to the side. I walk through, and then turn back to see she is about to close the door, but I stop her. “Umm, where can I use the restroom?” I ask.

For a moment it looks like she grimaces, but she points at the wall across from me. There is a door on that wall. “That is your private bathroom, my Lady. Your toilet and bathing facilities are in there,” she closes the door as soon as she finishes.

I try to open the door, but it seems to be locked. I am trapped in this strange room. I might as well use the bathroom. After I finish using the toilet, I test the door again, but it is still locked.

I walk over to the bed on the left wall, and flop onto the soft mattress of the unfamiliar bed. It’s the only place to sit in this sparsely furnished room, and I don’t feel like standing while I wait some amount of time for someone to show up and explain more to me.

It’s a pleasant room that has the illusion of looking like it’s in the middle of grasslands that has animals wandering around in the distance. Between the bed and the door is a rug hidden under the holograms of grass. Next to the door is the dresser this dress was on, and on the wall between the dresser and the bed is another door that I haven’t tried. On either side of the bed are empty nightstands. Draps cover the wall across from the bed, and across from the entry door is the door that leads to the bathroom.

It’s too pristine. It looks unlived in. There are no pictures on the dresser of people that I cared about. I would have had pictures right? Like the pictures I saw on the walls of the dining room this morning. This room has nothing.

The other weird thing is I saw my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom, and I definitely don’t look like any of the photos I’ve seen. Maybe the woman at the table would tell me more later when there weren’t all those people standing around watching us eat.

Everything feels wrong, but what is right? My head hurts even trying to remember anything past this morning. In fact it just kind of aches in general.

I sigh and bury myself in the fluffy blankets covering the bed. Why have they left me here with my thoughts?

There is nothing to do in this room. There is the mystery door next to my bed. I stand back up and go to the small door next to the bed. It opens to a small closet filled with dresses.

How do I know this is a small closet? What is a large closet? Nothing makes sense. I know this is a closet, but I don’t even know my own name! Should I know my name?

I can’t make sense of anything. Why am I locked in this room?

I close the closet and walk to the cloth covered wall on the other side of the room. I try to lift the drapes, but they seem to be anchored to the floor. I pull at them trying to move them to the side, and I still can’t.

I truly am locked in this room that holds the illusion of infinity with grasslands as far as the eye can see displayed on the walls. I collapse into the fake grass I can’t touch.

In the end, there is nothing I can do. This wall of cloth feels like the way out, but there is now way for me to get past it.

A click and the entry door open. A tall man who still has the lankiness of youth walks through the door. A light brown scruff covers his jaw and his brown hair is neatly trimmed close to his head.

“Hope! You are up just like Rebecca said. I was worried we might have to hospitalize you soon,” he exclaims as if he knows me and is happy to see me sitting here in the middle of the floor.

Who is this man?

But I don’t ask that. Other questions are more pressing. “Is that my name? Hope?”

He looks surprised and turns to look out the door behind him. Then he looks back at me. “Stop acting like this, Hope. An insanity plea won’t protect you.”

“Acting like what? I don’t even know where I am, much less know enough to act like something! I’ve eaten what I was told are scrambled eggs in another room and since then I’ve been locked up here! Who even are you people!?” This isn’t fair. I want out. I want to be free of this place, and tears of bottled frustration and confusion spring from the corners of my eyes.

He’s staring at me like he doesn’t know what to do with me.

“Are you going to pretend to have memory sickness to get out of this?” His voice sounds harsh and angry. He steps forward as he speaks towering over me and filling my vision and I find myself scrambling backwards.

I don’t know this man or why he’s so angry with me!

He stops and takes a deep breath. “Stand up, Hope.”

I want to ask again if that really is my name, but I’m too scared to make this man any angrier. I stand up, and though being closer to his height makes his presence less terrifying, his frowning brown eyes hold so much blame and hatred I have to look away.

He grabs my jaw and forces me to look at him. Eventually his eyes soften slightly and he lets go. I immediately look back at the ground, but he is already heading for the door.

At the door he stops and turns back to look at me. “My name is Patrick McNeil. The woman you were eating with this morning is my wife Azalea. Rebecca, your maid, will take care of anything you need.”

He pauses for a moment and tilts his head slightly, softening his features as pity took over his expression. “You are under house arrest while awaiting trial for corruption of an election, multiple counts of murder, and a number of other things. Your name is Hope, and you were the Mayor of this city. For now your world will be this room, though I will allow you in the library connected to this room under supervision. That and the dining room for meals.”

He turns as if to leave, and half way through the door he turns back. “You are a crazy woman to give yourself memory sickness. It won’t help you even if you don’t remember anything you’ve done.” While shaking his head he shuts the door and leaves me alone in this room again.

I’m a murderer? None of this feels right. I collapse back on the floor and curl up in a ball. The overload of information washes through me, and comes out my eyes as I cry into my arms. I don’t even know who this person named Hope is, and yet I’m on the hook for everything she’s done.