My Mind in Chaotic ReposeA Story by Saichiro Wolftotem A man and his struggle with memory. I set down my tasteless beer and looked over the other patrons in the dark bar so I could see her.
The girl of my dreams.
She was in a suggestive red dress, racy, but classy. Her dark blonde hair was fashionably wavy and fell to her shoulders in a way that would make a shampoo commercial jealous. Her skin, a pale peach color and just as supple, was highlighted perfectly in an ambiance that made everyone else look like a troglodyte. She was, for lack of better terms...flawless. The butterflies in my gut started an all new riot as I tried to muster the nerve to cross the bar. Just be natural, I told myself, You're funny. Be funny. A deep breath steadied me and I stood on legs of jello. The other drinking and drunken patrons floated by as I drifted toward my unattainable angel. Sooner than anticipated she was before me, looking up from her red drink like an elegant pin up. As she waited hesitatingly I realised she expected me to say something, and upon that realisation a new revelation floated to the top of my mind: I didn't know what to say and had not prepared for this very well. My fingers fumbled with a button on the front of my shirt and my brain threw me under the bus. "You're...pretty." Wow...had I just said that? She giggled toward her drink and looked at her friends sitting with her and the whole table broke into chittering laughter. "I, uh, I'll...leave you alone....now." Stupid, stupid, stupid. I turned to leave and a well-manicured hand caught my arm. I turned toward her apprehensively, surprised indeed to see a huge smile on her face. "Don't leave, " she said, with a voice that could calm a violent storm, "Y'know...you're kinda cute too. Have a seat." She patted the stool next to her and I numbly sat down. Invited to sit! With her! "What's your name?" "Vincent. My name is Vincent." I blinked and licked my bottom lip. "Vincent?" I looked to my left, bewildered. There was light coming in over what seemed a mountain of cloth and I was laying on my back below a ceiling fan. "What the-?" A sigh of contentment came from under the formation that was my black and white duvet. I swiftly pulled back the cover. The woman, the perfect unattainable woman was laying naked in my bed. She made an adorable little noise and snatched at the blanketing in my hand. "Vincent...do you always wake people up in such a gentlemanly way?" She turned to face me, one eye peeping out from her cocooon and a blonde curl sweeping toward freedom. Half of her smile flashed at me and my mind raced. How had I gotten here? I was in the bar...she invited me to sit down...I hadn't even gotten her name! "Hi. Uhm...what happened? Last night?" I felt stupid for asking, but there didn't seem to be any other way around it. I had obviously lost all memory of the previous evening. She laughed like it was a joke. "I don't know about you, but I would say 'fireworks'," her bright green eyes lit with mirth, but as she followed my face her tone changed, "You really don't remember? Wow you must have hit the bottle a little harder than I thought. Tell you what, how about I make us some eggs with toast and I'll tell you all about it." She laughed, but it was good-natured. Throwing the duvet in my direction she scrounged the floor's various clothing piles for a minute and finally came up with a very short pair of jean shorts. She pulled them up and quickly threw on a grey tank with a trendy grunge pattern on it. With a smile and a glance toward me, she swished out of the bedroom and a minute later I could hear the tell-tale clinks of kitchenware. I started in alarm to be greeted by an image of myself in a suit. It took a minute for me to comprehend that I was looking at myself in a mirror. Glancing around I found I was in rather familiar surroundings: this happened to be the rather unfortunate-looking men's room at work. I was wearing one of my suits but with no recollection of me putting it, or my favorite purple tie, on. My alarm churned into full fledged panic. Something was wrong. It had to be. I could swear that two minutes ago I had been standing in my apartment. Two before that and I was still in the bar. That said, the day after I had gone to the bar was a Sunday and I didn't work on Sundays. Hands shaking I reached into my pants pocket and fumbled for my PDA. The cold glow of the screen confirmed the impossible...it was a full week and a half since I had been at the bar. I could feel the thrum of my heartbeat in my ears. Crazy thoughts were going through my head, but there wasn't anything I could deny them with. Even if there were a reasonable explanation for this how could I make this carnival ride stop? My musings were interupted by the bathroom door opening with it's particular brand of irritating screech. I looked up in time to see Wallace, my co-worker and partner on the Anderson accounts, walking in like a bat out of hell. His eyes fixed on me with an almost feral look. "Where have you BEEN, man! The client has been waiting for us for a full fifteen minutes!" He paused, taking in my appearance and apparently misconstruing it for the pre-meeting jitters. The meeting? The meeting! It was quarterly review time and the client had ordered a massive and unnecessary recount of all activities instead of just the usual overview. I had had a week to do a month's worth of work, but...but... I couldn't know if the work had been done or not. "Listen," Wallace was saying, and I realised he had been talking for a minute, "We'll just tell them what happened, go over the details, and have them go through it. Hopefully, if they have to do the legwork, they won't find out." I scrambled to put together what he was saying. It all seemed muffled. I followed him quickly out the door and was halfway down the hall when I stumbled and fell, trying to catch myself on the carpeted... ...asphalt? I licked my lips and tasted blood. I must have skipped forward again somehow, but when was I? I laughed deliriously and heard a shuffle next to me. I was still on my stomach and tried to push myself up on the dark, wet tarmac. A hand touched my shoulder. "Whoa, fella," the voice was unfamiliar but sounded like a nervous man trying to be calm, "I can't have you getting up right now. That was a helluva mess you got into. You just lie still. I have my wife calling an ambulance." I peered down and to my left, stretching to see the brightest headlights I had ever witnessed glaring into the night. It lit some of the asphalt, but not all. Blood smeared it's way down part of the street and my stomach lurched. I doubted it belonged to me, for some reason. My eyelids felt as if they had donned 50 pound weights and regardless of my herculean effort to stay awake I felt myself drifting into the void of unconsciousness. For what seemed a long time there were senses and memories, all disjointed and drifting like so much flotsam. Here in this nothingness a color had as much meaning as an image, a smell as much weight as a feeling. None of it made sense. Slowly, like a jigsaw puzzle coming together, snippets connected and formed a larger truth. I was in the hospital. The daynurse was a woman named Jill and she had a face like a worn-out tire. My wife had been in ICU. Wife...? Snippets of medical jargon were thrown in as well. Atelectasis. Flail chest. Tubation. I gathered finally that the reason for my stay was some kind of serious chest trauma, but still had not come to full consciousness. How long had it been? Days? Hours? It certainly felt like an eternity, but the question really was what would be awaiting me when I came to? The answer was more jarring than anything I could have dreamed. "Daddy?" I blinked groggily. "I think Dad's awake!" The speaker, so far as I could tell, was a boy of about six years of age with mousy brown hair in a bowl cut and a missing front tooth. He was an adorable kid, but I wished someone would get him out of my room. It hurt to breathe and the florescent lights were stabbing at my retinas. The boy pulled at the thin cotton blanket that was draped over me. I opened my mouth to say something, but it felt like the Sahara had set up camp in my throat. "I think you may be right. Don't crowd him, now, Justin. He doesn't feel good." This voice was soft and female, late middle-age. Also strangely familiar. I sluggishly turned in that direction. My mom stood next to the boy with her strong jaw and caring blue eyes. She had on her be-strong-for-the-child face and it scared me a little. "M-?" My voice cracked and she came up to my bedside, clasping my limp fingers with motherly affection. She looked sad and I wanted to ask her so many questions. "Don't try to talk. The doctors told us you may have a hard time when you wake up. I called for the nurse so she'll be here soon. You were...you were in a terrible accident. I've been taking care of Justin. Getting him to and from school. It's just like old times really. Taking care of a child. It's been forever." She was rambling. My mother never rambled and she looked years older. Then again, as far as I knew, she WAS years older. And the boy at her side... My face went slack and my eyes widened in shock. The man he was referring to was me. My mother was taking care of him. He was...my son? Mom squeezed my hand a little, probably thinking I was in pain. The nurse, Jill, swept into the room already holding a syringe. "Sorry about this, Mr. Brooks, but we can't have you up and about for a couple more days. Might ruin your healing." She stuck me promptly, and I had to admit the drug was fast. The last unpleasant sensation I had was the observation that her flowery scrubs were rather tacky, and then the warm buttery nothingness was back. The blaring honk of an alarm woke me with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. I raised my hand up to my face and it dawned on me that I didn't seem to be hooked up to anything. I sat up quickly and noted also that my chest no longer hurt and the lights were off. "Hello? Mom?," the sound of my voice startled me. As if the words belonged to another person. I cleared my throat and tried again a bit louder. "Mom? J-Justin?" No answer, but the alarm shut off on it's own and I heard a shuffling noise outside my room. Without warning the light came on and I found myself in yet another different place. The walls were a pale orange and tastefully boring art was hung on each wall. The window to my right showed the soft glow of pre-dawn and the floors were carpeted. I reached for the water on the night stand and stopped, staring at the back of my hand. It was wrinkled and shaky and geriatric. "No..." I took another sweeping glance of the room and noticed a bathroom in the corner. I got to my feet with a monumental effort and felt all of my joints creak in protest and flare in pain. Shuffling as fast as I could I reached the bathroom and gasped anew as I came face to face with the horrifying truth in the mirror. A corpse-like visage oggled back at me, mouth in a silently protesting 'O'. My wrinkles spread out like cobwebs and arthritis-riddled knuckles came into view as I rubbed at my countenance in an effort to make it all go back to the way it was. The way it should be. As the horror of my current state and fast-forwarded life and lost friends, family, and time finally became concrete, I screamed a primal howl and tore at the paper-thin skin that now covered my features.
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Jill reached up and adjusted her name tag, watching with sad eyes as her patient was taken away in an ambulance. It was the second time this month he had had an episode that ended in a hospital visit. Stopping at the front desk, she addressed Lindsay, the current in a long line of fleeting temps. "There's something I never want to have happen to me." "Huh? What happened? I thought it was just a fall or something," Lindsay responded with a clueless look. Jill would bet she didn't even last to the end of the week. "Nah. Alzheimer's is a hell of a thing..." © 2013 Saichiro WolftotemAuthor's Note
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Saichiro WolftotemSan Antonio, TXAboutI'm a craftster and generally chronically bored person. I like entertainment of the non-screen-based variety. more..Writing
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