Smokescreen

You're sitting at your desk, your eyes drifting over the text on the screen. The index finger of your right hand clicks the mouse button; the sound echoes louder and louder in your head. Your vision blurs, the ground shifts -

You open your eyes and blink into the bright light.

Then you wish you hadn't: you're in a child's bedroom, toys spilling out over the floor and crayon marks on the wall. You recognise the print of the duvet and shudder. This was your room, a long time ago. Is this a dream?

You reach out, and start. Suddenly, you're wide awake. You examine your hand. It's small, rounded, shockingly short. It's a six-year-old's hand.

You sit down heavily on the floor.

Slowly, you become aware of other sounds. Birds outside, the washing machine's rumble, someone's footsteps next door, your mum yelling at someone on the phone downstairs. You can't make out the words. You reach out a trembling hand for the door-knob and go out into the corridor. You start walking down the stairs, but your legs are smaller than you remember, and before you know it you are slipping and tumbling, down down down -

You hear the click of your mother dropping the phone, or maybe the click of the mouse as you knock it on the floor when you jerk awake, at your desk, years later.

Flashbacks

A flashback is when someone recalls a memory, suddenly and uncontrollably. Cal feels like he's reliving the crash, and can't tell the difference between his memory and reality. Flashbacks often involved difficult, traumatic or repressed memories. They can be about forgotten events from childhood, emotional or physical trauma, and in some cases they can even be caused by certain drugs. In Cal's case, his flashback fills in the details forgotten and repressed by the amnesia caused by his car crash.

Flashbacks are just one way that our brains try to process information that's difficult to deal with. They can be triggered by any number of signals: sounds, smells, tastes, colours. Our brains learn by making connections, but sometimes these associations can be painful. The noise and lights of fireworks could trigger off a flashback to a battlefield for a soldier, for instance.

Play Mission 8 again now!