Flash Fiction | Amanda

Alice drew in a sharp breath and looked down at her phone. The memories had been coming back in a tidal wave of awareness. Up until this point, she believed her name was Amanda and she had been adopted when she was a little girl. Her parents had always been very tight lipped about where Alice came from and how she ended up with them.

However, in the last few weeks, Alice remembered her real name. Alice Kominsky was really Amanda Sharpe. A picture filled her mind like a movie reel as she remembered tracing this name with a pencil in a classroom. She could remember her parents’ names now. They were George and Donna Sharpe, and they lived in a blue house in a neighborhood just outside the city.

When these memories returned, Alice began her research. She did so quietly, because any questions about her origin story upset her parents, and they would clam up and offer no information. She had never seen her real birth certificate. Her entire life before the age of seven was a complete mystery.

Until now.

Alice’s research led her to George and Donna Sharpe. They still lived in the small blue house outside the city she was beginning to remember again. She couldn’t remember specifics of anything such as her parents’ faces or her life with them, but she was starting to get feelings of familiarity when it came to certain people, places, and things.

Alice looked for clues as to what might have happened to Amanda Sharpe fifteen years ago, but there was nothing. No news reports of a missing child, and no connections between the Sharpes and the Kominskys.

The number she was looking at on her phone would ring the phone inside George and Donna’s home. Her hand shook as she hit the call button. The phone rang a few times before a man’s voice answered.

“Hello?” he asked. His voice was gravelly and deep like he had been a lifelong smoker.

“Hi, um, hello,” Alice stammered, “Is this George Sharpe?”

“It is,” he answered tersely, “You better not be trying to sell me something.”

“No, I was wondering if I could talk to you about your daughter Amanda.”

There was silence on the other end. Alice could hear the quick breathing of the man on the other line.

“You see,” she continued, “My name is Alice Kominsky, but I am really Amanda Sharpe, your daughter. I was adopted when I was seven, and I didn’t remember much about my life before living with my parents, but then I started to remember things like my name, and your name, and Donna’s name –”

“Donna!” the man interrupted shouting into the background on the other end, “Donna come here!”

Alice waited as she heard muffled voices discussing something. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they sounded frantic. Soon a woman came onto the line.

“Hello? Did you say you are our daughter Amanda?”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe so,” Alice replied, “Are you Donna?”

“Yes I am,” the woman replied with a much more soothing voice than her husband, “I believe you are mistaken. There’s no possibility you are Amanda.”

As Alice heard these words, she began to tremble. A new very vivid memory was enveloping her and her heart began to race. She remembered. She knew why it was impossible for Amanda Sharpe to be making this phone call.

“I know it’s impossible. It’s because you two killed me fifteen years ago.”