I see:
A man, with a scar on his cheek, but I think he was a boy quite recently, and I wonder when that change happened. Then I wonder how I know this, because I’m sure that I’ve never seen him before, but there’s something about him that’s familiar, as if he’s a sculpture modelled on another human being.
Once he fell down. I must have met him before, but I don’t know how or where or when, but then I can’t remember any hows, or wheres, or whens, except for this room, this bright white room, which has always been here, and always will, and I wonder for a moment if this is hell. A hell where I see the same man over and over again and can’t remember why, when I see him, I also see a small boy, tumbling, tumbling, over the cart that comes around once a day with food.
I can’t always eat the food, because sometimes it’s too big and soggy and I can’t get my hands into it, and when I try to explain to someone in green what’s wrong with the metal things they hand me, what’s wrong with the food they’ve presented me, words cannot escape my mouth.
Like now, I’m trying to ask why this man is holding my hand--there’s a scar there too, on the smooth white skin, and his other hand is wrinkled, not like his hand at all, veins bursting from it like roots from the ground, and I continue to stare, unable to look away from his two strange hands. They don’t look right together, and I think hands are supposed to be the same, but I’m not sure, and the doubt, and the inability to ask anyone, the inability to get my mouth to form the words I want it to form in order to ask them what the hell’s going on with these mismatched hands, is making my head hurt.
I can’t remember my head not aching. Or maybe it wasn’t a moment ago, when this man first took my hand. His hand is warm, and slightly sweaty, and I imagine curling up inside it, just as every time it gets dark, I curl up beneath the warm blankets. Sometimes, I will hide my face beneath them, snuggle into the pillow, and pretend that when I wake, the light will not be bright and the darkness will not be pitch, but instead something different, something new, something final. I curl into my shoulder, and then suddenly the hand slips, the young one out of what I now realise is my old grip, and he brings it to his ear to brush a lock of light brown hair behind his ears--he has big ears that stick out, as do his teeth, but his eyes have seen too many things for that to be comical.
When he fell down, he was helped up by the woman on the end of the----what’s the word? I can’t remember the word, but it’s there, dancing, teasing on the tip of my tongue. I used to know it well, and it’s warm and it’s comfy and it’s being in someone else’s arms, and never wanting to leave, but now I can’t remember. I reach forward to bite it, catch it in my mouth, but my teeth don’t snag on the word, but on my tongue and I taste the blood.
Blood. Only a little, but once there was once lots of it. There was a body bleeding, and someone standing over it with--with another word not quite in focus, something that’s usually safe, and soft, and brought to the skin every few days by someone in green, with the bones and crossed wands across it.
I stopped the bleeding body, with my wand, having then that power which I’ve now lost--careless of me to lose that, very careless, but I remember watching the skin speedily knit itself together. I didn’t sew his lips together, which is what someone, don’t know who, or when, sometimes it feels like a year, sometimes it feels like more, has done to me. Each word that passes through the stitches is an escape, blissfully uttered as it flies from the confines of my head, into the real world, but mostly it’s not a word at all, but a half-formed, weak thing, like the echo of a scream.
Screaming. So loud, so loud, and I can’t get rid of it. I clamp my hands to my ears to stop the noise, to pretend that I’m not helpless, to pretend that her body isn’t flying through the air and I’m not powerless to stop it--
Hands on my wrists, pulling my palm from my ear, and I’m staring into her eyes. I’ve stared into these eyes before, many, many times, in many, many places, and the images flash by, the day we met, she’s my boss, I think, I can’t be sure, but I think her a maverick, and she thinks me a stickler for rules, and we shout at each other, and there’s the red scent of danger, as we save each other’s lives, and then I call her infuriatingly spontaneous--what does that mean? I can’t remember what that means, but it must have meant something, to her, that day, because she kissed me.
I try to say it again, yearning with my eyes, to let her know that I don’t know her name, but I know something happened between us. She seems to know as well, because she reaches forward, her ears sticking out, her teeth overlarge, and presses her lips to my cheek.
I don’t know where we are, as we cradle each other in our arms. The screaming in my head, her screaming I realise, doesn’t stop, but becomes muted.
One hand is being held again by the once-boy, now man. He’s staring at us. I wonder what he’s doing here. What business does he have to stare at us so directly, as if his--what’s it called? That beating, pulsing thing inside your body--as if that might be hurting him, but why should it?
He has nothing to do with us.
Frank by welshdevondragon
Story Notes:
Thanks to Maple for another speedy beta job. Yes, I have been overworking her recently.
Chapter Endnotes: Thank you for reading. Reviews, whether a line or longer, are greatly appreciated and always responded to. Alex