The Wrong Person

a story by Aleksandr Bahmatov, age 15

Chapter I: Where Am I ?

It was a hard hit on my head that took me out. I closed my eyes and everything went blank. When I awoke, I was in the hospital. I tried to sit up, but my head was locked in place and the bright white lights shined. I still couldn't get what was going on and where I was. I felt a tension in my head and before I knew it, a doctor was by my side. I could hardly see because my eyes were barely focusing and everything was a blur. He started talking to me in a soft voice to say where I was. My head was in such great pain that felt I was in hell for something, what I didn't know.

I asked with a nervous strain in my voice, "Doc, why am I here and what happened?"

Doctor said in a soft voice, too quiet to hear even for a pro, "You are in a hospital in New Jersey because you got hit really hard on your head by a terrorist. That was by the bank in June 2010."

"What, a terrorist?" I asked.

When a tall man in a police uniform came in and Doc went out, the policeman said,"Hi there, Alex. How are you doing? And, by the way, how is you head?"

"Alex," I spoke out softly. I was confused by not recognizing my name.

"Yes! Alex," he said. "That's your name. Can't you remember anything at all?"

It was there and then I realized that I can't remember anything except for when I was hit and my head cracked from the power blow.


Chapter II: Six months later after the surgery.

After six months passed, I was still feeling lost and unwanted. I was feeling lonely but I knew something now about what happened to me and who I was. And it was my first day after the accident to go back to work.

I was out walking alone and no one was out down the busy street leading to a police station, where I worked as an FBI agent. The cars passed by and no one looked at me because most of them were looking at the road and talking on the cellphone.

I walked by the apartments that were tall and by the markets that were small. Their parking lots were trashed. I stopped at the red signal and was waiting to cross the street that had four intersections of all black roads. There streets were clear, no car was left driving.

It was quiet and peaceful and, suddenly, a scene blinked in my head. Police cars had blocked the four-intersection road. Their sirens were loud, lights that were blue and red blinked one after other. But that scene went away as fast as it came.

I crossed the road, not waiting for the signal to turn. Now I was walking where there were no cars, no people and no birds had ever flown in the air before. I was thinking about the operation about which I found out from my partner. It happened when the terrorists were holding a hostage in a bank.

I was wearing a tuxedo, my black hair slicked back. I had a sports black Lance car that I was now afraid to ride in by myself.

When I was trying to get to the job ardently, a black truck with tan windows raced to me and stopped where I was. Before I knew it, a man in a black mask sprayed something that made me close my eyes and go to sleep. They dragged me into the car and raced away in a high speed.

When I woke up, I was in a dark dungeon siting on the wet floor. Some light was peering from the hall on the left. I was in a shock that gave me pain like there was a gust of wind. The pain on my wrists was from the handcuffs, fastened to a cold metal pipe that went trough the dungeon. And there before me was a man with black and tan sunglasses.

"Where am I and what am I doing here?" I asked, not knowing why I was here and what I have done wrong.

The man said, "You don't have to die painfully if you tell us where your partner lives and where his hideout is."

I was quiet because I was scared so much that I started to cry. My tears were falling down on the cold floor. They mixed with the dirty water that smelled like rats.

Then again he said the same question with an anger that gave me creeps. He showed me a photograph of a family that had two boys and women and me in it then said,"If you don't tell me, you will die and so will your family."

When he said "family," my heart tightened and thrashed in my chest and I was scared. It was more than usual, which was strange because I didn't know about the family in the photo. I still wanted to protect them, so I tried to tell the man with the black sunglasses that coved his eyes from been seen that I was in an accident and I couldn't remember anything that happened in the past. But he wouldn't listen to me. My voice was shaking and my teeth were clenched.

Then the man said, "You got thirty seconds to tell us."

Pretty soon I was being hit and kicked by ten men who came into the dungeon until blood came out of my mouth. When the man with the sunglasses went out, I tried to tell the other men what happened to me, but they did not listen to me. One of the men said," You could still save your life if you tell us what we need to know." But I couldn't say anything because I was in great pain and I didn't know anything to tell them.

Then one bad guy took out a black gun and pointed it at me. He said, "You got ten seconds to tell me or say goodbye to yourself and your family."

When he was counting down, my body shook in pain and I was getting more and more scared as he counted lower and lower. That's when I heard a police siren and a had a strange feeling about dying by a gun or being saved by the police.

When he was on the sixth second, someone ran in and screamed loud, "Finish him off fast!"

The man with the gun raised his hand that pointed at me and his muscles tightened when he closed his eyes. I heard the click of the trigger and a bullet went into my head.

My body shook in pain and my head hit the hard wall of the dungeon. My life flew so fast before my eyes that I couldn't remember it. Before my eyes closed, there was a light that was so hard it cut my eye, so that I couldn't see anything. Then it was so dark that I lost my pain and forgot everything there was and there is. I still didn't know if I was dead or away until a time that will come and I will live. But I knew only one thing--that my son, whom I saw in the picture, will grow up, he will find the injustice, find out about my story that was spread all over the world like a jigsaw puzzle, and get the picture to reveal itself from my perspective.





THE END