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crowsThere was blood on the page. This is the most that I remember, of that night, of waking in the strange apartment high in that building that overlooked streets I did not recognize. Even now, the memories of that place come in clots. The world still breaks on me like a wave, at day. My nights are long, endless really, and I feel the tide sucking a little bit more of my forgotten psyche away each morning that spaces me from whatever happened that night. I remember most clearly, though, the blood on the paper.
There wasn’t much. Just a smudge, and there was blood nowhere else in the place that I could find. ‘Call 911’, as well as an address, were printed in a neat, calm hand next to a small smudge of blood. A partial fingerprint too smeared for analysis. Right below it, the corner of the paper had been torn off. I would later find it, but let’s stick to the sequence of events as they occurred.
I wake in a strange apartment. It is night. The front room of the place, the sitting room, is at a corner of the building… encased in glass, in windows. I stand for a long time staring at the stream of lights blurring down the wet streets. It occurs to me that it is raining outside. I turn from the windows, walk to a table I feel a certain kinship or recognition with, and find the note next to the phone. I stare at that for long than I stared at the windows, trying to piece this all together with the pain crawling around in my head and shoulders. My eyes, I realize, are focused on this little dark stain at the lower right hand of the paper. I realize that it is blood. This is the first conscious realization I have had concerning the real world, since I woke. By instinct, I treasure it. This is why I remember it so clearly.
I call the police. I give them the address. I explain very patiently to the woman on the other end of the crackling line that I have no name to give her, that I know nothing other than what I have already told her. Nothing. The police arrive. I am spoken too like an infant, or an invalid (though I suppose, in some respects, I was), and lead away. The police search the apartment, find nothing. I was told later that the spoke to the landlord of the building, and he said no one was supposed to be living in that apartment. That it had been vacant for a few months. I tell the investigator when I am told that I don’t believe that. The apartment was furnished… furnished by caring hands, made a home by somebody. There were fresh flowers on a table, fruit in a bowl next to them. A connected telephone, note paper next to it. It was neat, but it was lived in. Nobody seemed to want to talk about it.
My mind went into overdrive at that point, reaching into a kind of panic that forced my thoughts to string together, despite their previous unwillingness to do so. I managed to convince them, somehow (and to this day, I am unsure how they let me escape), that I had a place to go. Managed to construct numbers and names out of what I had seen on the drive to the station, and told them an address to take me too. Fortunately, my short-term memory had not failed me, and I was abandoned at the door of a secure apartment building. The officer that bore me away from my potential doom did not wait for me to enter the second set of doors.
Maybe, they didn’t care at all. At any rate, I was free.
I spent the remainder of that night awake on a park bench, staring at the sphered reflections of the city on the rainy streets. I spoke to no one, and no one took notice of me there in the darkness. Traffic began to pick up before dawn, and the first day opened in the shadow of oppressive clouds and even heavier rain. That’s when I began to search my person.
I was wearing, at that point, jeans slightly to big for me, shoes, socks, underwear, a black cotton t-shirt that didn’t seem to go with the rest of my attire by fit or material, a bra, and a jacket that felt the most like my own. My pockets proved to house little. There was a small amount of money, but no wallet… no identification. I walked to the first restaurant I could find and bought some coffee, and then sat at their windows for a long time, watching the cars race too and fro over the slick concrete. Each one different, each one nameless. I felt strangely empty, watching the steel-and-carbon fiber shells careen about. Each one housed more than my one head housed. Life, the information to prove that life… to flesh it out and give it boundaries. I was vast, inside, but I was nothing.
After the third or fourth cup of coffee (the waitress was happy to keep my cup full. I was her second of two customers that morning), I was mostly dry, and I realized shifting in my chair that my bra was scratching me a little. Distracted from my reverie by this discomfort, I inquired after a lady’s room and took my leave to repair the problem. What I found, behind the wood-look laminate of the stall door, was the torn corner of that paper on which my note had been written the night before. I unfolded it carefully, for the ink that had been written on it had blurred with the rain that had soaked through my jacket. Coordinates… street corners, really. Almost-addresses. Three of them. I read each one over and over again in my mind, shaken deeply by a force I could not fit into my mind’s fragile scheme of things.
With my jacket and shirt slung over one arm, I reluctantly turned the paper over in my hands. There was more writing scrawled on the back, but not quite in the same moderate hand that had written on the front. It occurred to me then that what I was looking at, and what the 911 note had been written on, was likely the back of another document… some that, by the look of the hand, was more personal. I suddenly regretted very deeply that I had not kept the rest of the note, but clung desperately to what I had left of it. Redressing, I washed my hands and hurried back out to my seat, where there was better light.
The words that would have been on that tiny slip of paper were few, and many were faded beyond legibility from the effect of the rain and rubbing inside of my clothing. A staggering letter that could have been a ‘t’ or an ‘f’ at the end of a word preceded the words ‘I would do anything’, followed by more blurry scrawling that I could not read. I would do anything. I mouthed the words, flattening the paper with my fingers and turning it back over to muse over the three locations listed there in shorthand.
Then, by some chance, I spied the abandoned newspaper sitting on the table across from mine. Immediately, I drew it to me and set my full attention on its exposed front page.
“Military conducting unregulated experiments on humans”
I read on. A ‘security leak’ somewhere in the government had allowed information about top-secret drug development to reach the media. Then, of course, what society would view as the darkest and most outrageous facet of the information was sensationalized as quickly as possible to condition the so called facts for public consumption.
What interested me was not that the government was illegally exploiting a select number of the poor, or the incarcerated, for purposes of researching complex narcotic substances, but rather the substances themselves. Memory and mood-altering chemicals that could be used, theoretically, to ‘cut and paste’ information from one person to another. Ideally, from enemy intelligence and spies sent into the deepest, most inhumane of situations to recover secrets. With assistance from the drugs that were supposedly being developed, deliberately withheld information and devastatingly traumatic experiences alike could be extracted, recorded, and erased from an individual’s mind.
They were, however, still experimental. The article, for being the top headline on the front page of the local newspaper, was disappointingly short and vague… again, the media didn’t seem to care much about actually informing the public about what was happening to their fellow man. Rather, the newspaper aimed to boost publicity and slander a few big-name government icons who were apparently, somehow, tied to the incident.
Beside me, some dishes clattered. The sound was far away. I felt anxious, to a depth that drove a disconcerting pain into the pit of my chest. It was the waitress, gathering plates a few tables away and then heading my direction to refill my half-empty coffee cup. She looked at the newspaper under my hand. I almost panicked. The woman misread my expression, smiled sympathetically at me, and patted my hand.
“Oh, I know, dear… isn’t that awful? You’d think there’d be some decency in the world, among the privileged… but no, no no… It’s up to us, down here…” She paused to indicate her restaurant, her working-class status, her barely-getting-by as if I’d identify. Realistically, I should have. I was in that kind of place. Maybe, I would have, two days ago. “… to keep the world civilized.” Already calming, I gave her a wan smile and nodded. She asked me again if I wanted any cream, if I was sure, and I told her no, but asked her if I could take the paper with me when I went. She nodded, and she left.
My fear ebbed. It was a fear I didn’t understand. Why shouldn’t I be glancing over the morning paper, grabbed by the sensationalist front headlines? That was perfectly natural, wasn’t it?
Furtively, I watched the waitress for the rest of the morning, and then decided what I had to do next. Really, it was all that was left for me to do next.
The notes I had found were terribly brief, but contained just enough information for me to find what had been left there for me.
There wasn’t much. Just a smudge, and there was blood nowhere else in the place that I could find. ‘Call 911’, as well as an address, were printed in a neat, calm hand next to a small smudge of blood. A partial fingerprint too smeared for analysis. Right below it, the corner of the paper had been torn off. I would later find it, but let’s stick to the sequence of events as they occurred.
I wake in a strange apartment. It is night. The front room of the place, the sitting room, is at a corner of the building… encased in glass, in windows. I stand for a long time staring at the stream of lights blurring down the wet streets. It occurs to me that it is raining outside. I turn from the windows, walk to a table I feel a certain kinship or recognition with, and find the note next to the phone. I stare at that for long than I stared at the windows, trying to piece this all together with the pain crawling around in my head and shoulders. My eyes, I realize, are focused on this little dark stain at the lower right hand of the paper. I realize that it is blood. This is the first conscious realization I have had concerning the real world, since I woke. By instinct, I treasure it. This is why I remember it so clearly.
I call the police. I give them the address. I explain very patiently to the woman on the other end of the crackling line that I have no name to give her, that I know nothing other than what I have already told her. Nothing. The police arrive. I am spoken too like an infant, or an invalid (though I suppose, in some respects, I was), and lead away. The police search the apartment, find nothing. I was told later that the spoke to the landlord of the building, and he said no one was supposed to be living in that apartment. That it had been vacant for a few months. I tell the investigator when I am told that I don’t believe that. The apartment was furnished… furnished by caring hands, made a home by somebody. There were fresh flowers on a table, fruit in a bowl next to them. A connected telephone, note paper next to it. It was neat, but it was lived in. Nobody seemed to want to talk about it.
My mind went into overdrive at that point, reaching into a kind of panic that forced my thoughts to string together, despite their previous unwillingness to do so. I managed to convince them, somehow (and to this day, I am unsure how they let me escape), that I had a place to go. Managed to construct numbers and names out of what I had seen on the drive to the station, and told them an address to take me too. Fortunately, my short-term memory had not failed me, and I was abandoned at the door of a secure apartment building. The officer that bore me away from my potential doom did not wait for me to enter the second set of doors.
Maybe, they didn’t care at all. At any rate, I was free.
I spent the remainder of that night awake on a park bench, staring at the sphered reflections of the city on the rainy streets. I spoke to no one, and no one took notice of me there in the darkness. Traffic began to pick up before dawn, and the first day opened in the shadow of oppressive clouds and even heavier rain. That’s when I began to search my person.
I was wearing, at that point, jeans slightly to big for me, shoes, socks, underwear, a black cotton t-shirt that didn’t seem to go with the rest of my attire by fit or material, a bra, and a jacket that felt the most like my own. My pockets proved to house little. There was a small amount of money, but no wallet… no identification. I walked to the first restaurant I could find and bought some coffee, and then sat at their windows for a long time, watching the cars race too and fro over the slick concrete. Each one different, each one nameless. I felt strangely empty, watching the steel-and-carbon fiber shells careen about. Each one housed more than my one head housed. Life, the information to prove that life… to flesh it out and give it boundaries. I was vast, inside, but I was nothing.
After the third or fourth cup of coffee (the waitress was happy to keep my cup full. I was her second of two customers that morning), I was mostly dry, and I realized shifting in my chair that my bra was scratching me a little. Distracted from my reverie by this discomfort, I inquired after a lady’s room and took my leave to repair the problem. What I found, behind the wood-look laminate of the stall door, was the torn corner of that paper on which my note had been written the night before. I unfolded it carefully, for the ink that had been written on it had blurred with the rain that had soaked through my jacket. Coordinates… street corners, really. Almost-addresses. Three of them. I read each one over and over again in my mind, shaken deeply by a force I could not fit into my mind’s fragile scheme of things.
With my jacket and shirt slung over one arm, I reluctantly turned the paper over in my hands. There was more writing scrawled on the back, but not quite in the same moderate hand that had written on the front. It occurred to me then that what I was looking at, and what the 911 note had been written on, was likely the back of another document… some that, by the look of the hand, was more personal. I suddenly regretted very deeply that I had not kept the rest of the note, but clung desperately to what I had left of it. Redressing, I washed my hands and hurried back out to my seat, where there was better light.
The words that would have been on that tiny slip of paper were few, and many were faded beyond legibility from the effect of the rain and rubbing inside of my clothing. A staggering letter that could have been a ‘t’ or an ‘f’ at the end of a word preceded the words ‘I would do anything’, followed by more blurry scrawling that I could not read. I would do anything. I mouthed the words, flattening the paper with my fingers and turning it back over to muse over the three locations listed there in shorthand.
Then, by some chance, I spied the abandoned newspaper sitting on the table across from mine. Immediately, I drew it to me and set my full attention on its exposed front page.
“Military conducting unregulated experiments on humans”
I read on. A ‘security leak’ somewhere in the government had allowed information about top-secret drug development to reach the media. Then, of course, what society would view as the darkest and most outrageous facet of the information was sensationalized as quickly as possible to condition the so called facts for public consumption.
What interested me was not that the government was illegally exploiting a select number of the poor, or the incarcerated, for purposes of researching complex narcotic substances, but rather the substances themselves. Memory and mood-altering chemicals that could be used, theoretically, to ‘cut and paste’ information from one person to another. Ideally, from enemy intelligence and spies sent into the deepest, most inhumane of situations to recover secrets. With assistance from the drugs that were supposedly being developed, deliberately withheld information and devastatingly traumatic experiences alike could be extracted, recorded, and erased from an individual’s mind.
They were, however, still experimental. The article, for being the top headline on the front page of the local newspaper, was disappointingly short and vague… again, the media didn’t seem to care much about actually informing the public about what was happening to their fellow man. Rather, the newspaper aimed to boost publicity and slander a few big-name government icons who were apparently, somehow, tied to the incident.
Beside me, some dishes clattered. The sound was far away. I felt anxious, to a depth that drove a disconcerting pain into the pit of my chest. It was the waitress, gathering plates a few tables away and then heading my direction to refill my half-empty coffee cup. She looked at the newspaper under my hand. I almost panicked. The woman misread my expression, smiled sympathetically at me, and patted my hand.
“Oh, I know, dear… isn’t that awful? You’d think there’d be some decency in the world, among the privileged… but no, no no… It’s up to us, down here…” She paused to indicate her restaurant, her working-class status, her barely-getting-by as if I’d identify. Realistically, I should have. I was in that kind of place. Maybe, I would have, two days ago. “… to keep the world civilized.” Already calming, I gave her a wan smile and nodded. She asked me again if I wanted any cream, if I was sure, and I told her no, but asked her if I could take the paper with me when I went. She nodded, and she left.
My fear ebbed. It was a fear I didn’t understand. Why shouldn’t I be glancing over the morning paper, grabbed by the sensationalist front headlines? That was perfectly natural, wasn’t it?
Furtively, I watched the waitress for the rest of the morning, and then decided what I had to do next. Really, it was all that was left for me to do next.
The notes I had found were terribly brief, but contained just enough information for me to find what had been left there for me.