This is the continuation of my freewritemadness/NaNoWriMo story.
Catch up with the previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23part1, 23Part2, 23Part3, 23Part4, 24, 25Part1, 25Part2, 26Part1, 26Part2, 27Part1, 27Part2
…
I am using 
Today’s prompts are: inbox and a Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:
The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 28 (Part One)
"You have a new message in your inbox".
Her eyes flickered open. The lights were bright - too bright - so she quickly closed them again
"Do you wish to open your email?" The voice, was strange to her ears. Human, yet... somehow not.
"No, I don't fucking want to open it!" she heard another voice, this one definately human, female too. Young, she thought.
"You'll get in trouble, you know," another, different voice from the first two. This one male. "If dinosaur britches catches you with a mobile phone, whist your on duty she'll haul your arse out of that door before you know it."
"I know, Brett," the first voice said. "I forgot to leave it in my locker."
"Well turn the fucking thing off, then, darling. Before you get us both into trouble... Hello... what have we here? Are you awake, my love? Amanda, she's awake: call the doctor."
She opened her eyes again, rubbed them, blinking against the harsh light, and attempted to sit up, but everything hurt so she gave up.
“Just stay where you are, young lady,” the man - Brett? - said. “I’ll help you sit up, if you want to, once the doctor has seen you.”
Doctor? Was she in hospital?
She heard a door open, and a woman was at her side. She was smiling, but it was only on her lips. Her eyes betrayed her tiredness. She could tell the woman was stressed, worried and wanted the shift to be over.
“Do you know where you are?” she shook her head, but then she caught the answer flowing from the woman as she bent over shining an even brighter light in her eyes: St Marys Hosptial. “Can you tell me your name?” this time the woman did not help her, she didn’t know either.
“Why don’t I know my name?” she said, struggling to sit up again.
“Don’t worry. You were involved in an accident. I’m sure it will all come back to you, soon.”
“Accident?” she blinked. She couldn’t remember anything about an accident… wait… she remembered a car accident… her brother, her father?
“My brother? Is he okay? Where’s daddy?”
The doctor looked over her head to Brett, standing on the other side of the bed, and raised her eyebrows. Brett bent down and touched her hand. He was warm, and oozed only good things, even though he was hurting himself.
“You were found alone, my love,” he said.
“But weren’t they in the car, with me?”
“Car?” he said. “You weren’t found in a car. You were pulled out of the sea… you almost drowned.”
“That’s enough, Brett. Let her rest. I’m sure it will all come back soon, my dear. It will all become clear.”
Clear… clear… Clare! Her name was Clare!
“I think…”
“What’s that dear?”
“Never mind.”
Clare lay still, watching Brett and Amanda fuss around her for a while. Well, Brett did most of the fussing, Amanda kept fiddling with her communication device, something Brett kept calling that fucking mobile! They helped her sit up, gave her something to drink and a piece of toasted bread that had seen better days, but Clare ate quickly as if it was the best thing she had ever tasted.
“Here you are, my love,” Brett said, handing her some glossy papers, bound together with a metal fastener. “Have a flick through this magazine. It might help bring some things back.”
With her head thumping, Clare tried to remember what had happened, how she had ended in the sea… All she could remember was a fluttering shadow, lots of people, lots of voices… but none of it made any sense.
She flicked through the magazine. It was full of people she didn’t know, doing things she didn’t recognise. There was an article on the disappearance of something called a “public telephone”, a picture of something that looked a little like the old fashioned communicator she remembered seeing as a child. Before the communication device was invented.
Then, as she turned the page a face stared back at her. A very familiar face. She dropped the magazine, letting slip from her fingers. She had to scrabble to stop it from sliding to the floor, and in the process on of the pages ripped.
“Satan or Savior?” the headline above the photo screamed. “Love him or hate him, he’s here to stay.”
The man smiled at the camera, a rosette pinned to his chest that read; “Think BIG! Vote TINY”
The magazine in her hands shook as Clare stared at it, memories came back to her in waves, not complete but in fragments like misremembered dreams, disordered, broken and in pieces. A jigsaw that didn’t quite fit together or make sense.
She had been hunting this man? No, not hunting. Protecting? No, not that either.
The shop.
She worked for something called the shop, she remembered. The aim was to protect her world - her reality - from the damage that this man, this Tiny, could do.
But something told her she was not in her reality any more.
Or perhaps she had dreamed of of this. Perhaps, she was suffering from some kind of head injury, and all she needed was a bit of old fashioned bed rest.
She read the article about this Tiny. The more she read the more she was convinced this was not the same Tiny she knew. The Tiny she knew was no politician. Although the magazine made it clear this man had come late to politics, a “businessman” - their quotes marks - who had links to the crime underworld, and appeared to stay just the right side of the legal line. He was something the magazine described as a “populist”. There was a picture of him with his wife, Janet (and Clare had another flash of recognition: she had never met the woman, but she knew of her), and the magazine spoke of how the couple were expecting their first child.
And then, Clare saw someone in the background of the photos. Someone else she realised she had met.
The shopkeeper.
She read the caption, “Belmond, Tiny’s closest advisor and friend, and some say the architect of his rise to political power.”
In the corridor, outside her room, she heard someone say the name, “Clare”. There was some discussion and then the door opened. Brett stood in the doorway, a big smile on his face.
“Good news!” he said. “There is someone here who thinks she knows who you are!”
He stepped aside and a woman walked in.
“Hello, Clare,” she said. “I understand you have a touch of amnesia. You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you.”
Clare pushed herself up in the bed, pulling the blanket up to cover herself.
“Oh, I recognise you, alright,” she said. “Hello Eleanor. Fancy seeing you here.”
...
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