Un-discovery and White
Jul. 10th, 2004 02:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsThe notes I had found were terribly brief, but contained just enough information for me to find what had been left there for me. I was beginning to suspect that it was indeed I who had written them, though it was too eerie of a possibility for me to be ready test it.
The first location didn’t hold much. A satchel with a set of keys in it, sunglasses, a change of clothes bundled tightly into a plastic bag. The second location held another box. Inside of it was a watch, a butane lighter, a knife – a light, narrow-bladed butterfly that felt familiar in my palm – and another set of instructions. There was nothing in the third place listed on my first piece of paper.
Burying myself in an alley, I burned the slip carefully into nothing, ground it into the concrete beneath one of my shoes, and took to the streets. The second set of instructions I pocketed, checked the time, and moved off toward part two of the plan. I decided the most prudent thing I could do was walk for a few hours. I didn’t feel tired, despite my lack of sleep over the last night, and it had stopped raining. Beneath my feet, the sun was doing it’s best to dry the streets, and the day’s traffic was well into its daily routine. What I wanted to find, to stumble upon, was someone that knew me. Hopefully, I could be vague enough to discover some information without betraying my condition to the wrong parties first. Somehow, I felt very sure that there were wrong parties. It was resolving in my grey mind that that was related to the fear I had felt earlier when the waitress noticed what I was reading. The newspaper was rolled up under my arm, still, and I clutched it. The front page was deliberately on the inside of that roll.
As the hours rolled on and the sun began to pull the shadows eastward across my streets, I began to feel less and less confident that anything would come of my current activity. My feet were beginning to hurt, and I was getting hungry, but I determined to walk on. There was a fear growing, though. I couldn’t go on like this forever. In fact, I couldn’t go on like I was for much longer at all. I needed a safe place to stay, a source of income. There were those basics, food and shelter, that… along with all my memories, were nowhere to be found in my present life.
In the midst of these thoughts, some men standing across the almost-deserted street from me caught my attention. I thought one of them had waved at me, and looked up toward them. Naturally, none of their faces meant anything to me, but I was prepared for that. My stomach heaved unexpectedly upward against my diaphragm and, unbidden, my hand followed it. I did my best not to frown openly, and kept the corner of my eye on the men.
They had not waved. One of them had gestured at me, and was now speaking furtively to his co-conspirators. He gestured at me again. I kept walking; didn’t look up.
Just keep walking I kept telling myself, driving my feet forward, one after another. With every step I felt heavier. My breathing was beginning to reflect the heaviness. The men, each one wearing black blazers and nice shoes, had picked up the pace on the other side of the street and now flanked me. My only barrier was the wide expanse of striped, black asphalt. It did little to bar me from them. I walked faster. They walked faster. Ahead, the road intersected another, narrower one. I turned right, buying a little time, convinced now that they were one of the wrong parties and that I had been spotted, and was being followed. Just keep walking.
Their footsteps came swiftly behind me, rounding the corner. I closed my eyes for a few moments, almost tripped over my shoes, but succeeded in reducing them from a gaggle of black-clad men, every one of them larger than me, to a clatter of dress-shoes on concrete. That was much less threatening. I calmed, kept walking. Then, from behind me,
“Hey!” I didn’t turn. He called out again. “Hey! You there!” I didn’t turn.
They were on top of me. One of them was grabbing my arm. “Hey there, miss…” He said lower, trying to get a look at my face.
“Leave me alone.” I twisted away, keeping my eyes fixed on the concrete.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The man said, reaching again for my arm. Both of my hands remained in my pockets. One of them was curling steadily around my knife, feeling for the direction of the latch.
“Leave me the fuck alone.” My mind clawed blankly. There was nothing. I had nowhere to run. Another set of hands found my shoulders.
Snapping, I threw a kick into the shins of the first man and an elbow into the gut of the second, jerking my knife free from my jacket pocket. The small motion of the wrist to bring the blade about was easy (I did mention the familiarity of this object to my hands), and that stopped a third from diving in immediately. There were terse words of confusion exchanged among my enemy, and I started to run down the street. Before I got far, a hand caught at my left wrist and wrenched it painfully. I went down to my knees, but did not lose my knife, and swung around in the direction I was pulled with its point brandished.
“Shit!” He released me and swung away, unwilling to release my wrist. My knife went for his hand, rendering a deep red line across his knuckles, before he finally let go.
The sun had dropped down completely behind the skyline of the city, and the shadows were deepening any moment. I counted on that light, for witness and direction when I finally freed myself of my assailants. A blow landed solidly on the back of my head, sending my vision whirling into light as pain lanced through me. I stood, somehow, and was struck again – in the mouth – as I turned to face them. Momentarily blinded, and reeling backward from the blow, I swung out wildly with the butterfly. I felt it land cloth, and then flesh, and a man’s voice cried out. Blood sang in my mouth, stirring the nausea that was beginning to accompany my throbbing head.
In the faded dusk, headlights swung erratically around one of the corners. Probably a drunk driver or someone equally unlikely to stop. I despaired, but then five men in black retreated around the corner.
Staggering across the road, I folded the knife closed and groped the wall for support. There wasn’t an alley where I thought there was. I could barely see through the sweat and hair that was sticking in my eyes. The cars tires were shrieking on the asphalt, high beams swaying my way like a pair of scythes ready for the killing. I groped further along the wall, desperate for a door to duck in, or a corner to disappear around. I prayed that by some miracle I had not been seen. I heard a door open, and my heart almost stopped. Standing very still, I tried to push the hair out of my face, tried to see into the glare of the headlights. Before I could maneuver my hand to shadow my eyes, I was touched. My knife was back in my pocket. Shit.
“Here…” This was a man’s voice, but younger. Maybe younger than me, certainly not older. Gently, though urgently, he was drawing me away from the wall, supporting me with one arm while the other rested on my opposite shoulder. “This way. You need to get in the car.” He spoke sternly, but not like one accustomed to having authority or speaking roughly to people. There was a grave sort of fear in his voice, within which I respected his actions, the steadiness of his steps behind me. I couldn’t run from those five men for the rest of the night. If this car hadn’t come, they would have had me. There was no one else here that would help me. If this boy was the enemy, then I was already lost. I let him guide me into the car. Without trying for a seatbelt, I turned my face into the clean-smelling upholstery and squeezed my eyes shut. He gunned the still-running engine and we careened through the city for about fifteen minutes, turning more times tan I could count. Not once did I look to see where we were. I knew I would recognize nothing.
We stopped. It was dark outside, and the building we were parked aside was primarily dark, also. He got out of the car, circled it, opened my door. By now, I was watching him, but without the headlights on I was hard pressed for a good look at his face. He didn’t look at mine. Taking my hand, he locked the car with the remote on his keychain, and we went into the building.
Now, I paid attention. We went three floors up, and down a straight hall to the left. Stopping at the seventh door, also on the left, he opened it with a key and an easy motion, and gestured for me to move within before he did. He locked the door behind me, handle and deadbolt, pressed his back against it, and sighed. I watched his entire body slump there in the unlit entry to the apartment, tired as I felt, uncertain.
He was not one of the men who had almost kidnapped me earlier. In that, I felt reassured, but I was in no was comfortable. After a few moments of impasse there in the darkness, I decided to break the ice.
“Who are you?”
“What?” He looked up at me then, squinting in the shadows, almost as if he didn’t realize I didn’t know him. Then, at length, “Oh… shit.”
I stared at him longer, waiting for at least a name, anything. He looked at me blankly for a long while before, finally, replying “My name is Trent Sahen.” To my displeasure, He did not volunteer any more information. Unfortunately, I had nothing to offer him for further enticement.
“May I sit down?” He stuttered a yes, and tripped over himself trying to turn a light on. The apartment illuminated, I stole a glance about as he cleared a chair for me. It was small, minimally furnished, the walls were bare. I sat down and took my jacket off. On the end table next to me was text book. Some kind of chemistry. I pursed my lips, and regretted it. One was split badly. Blood was in my mouth afresh.
Abruptly, my ‘host’ seemed to realize my condition. “Jesus… ah, let me get you something for that…” He sunk into the darkness of the kitchen and I heard water running. Trent returned with a washcloth, damp with cold water, and I began to slowly work at my face. It struck me, then, that I wasn’t feeling any kind of fear or discomfort. It was all replaced by the same greyness that primarily dwelled where the hysteria of not remembering who I was should have been. It was almost like apathy, but there was reason within it. I knew I had to find these things out, but there was no emotional attachment to doing so. I wondered, at first, if all who suffered this kind of amnesia experienced this. It wasn’t something I’d ever looked into before.
“Are you Indian, Trent?” I asked, after a while, pressing the cloth to my mouth. One of my teeth was loose.
“What?”
“Are you Indian? Is your family from India, in the distant past?” I elaborated flatly.
“No, why?” He seemed confused.
“Your last name, Sahen, means ‘falcon’.” We looked at one another for a long time. I gathered, from his face, that he didn’t have any greater idea of what we were doing there than I did.
“Are you…?” He ventured. I smiled at him, not without mirth, and he remembered that I knew nothing. I gathered, from his complete lack of questioning me, that he already knew this to be true. “Sorry.” I shook my head, dismissing the need for his apology with a hand.
We exchanged few more words that evening. I simply didn’t have anything to say, and apparently neither did he. He showed me an extra bed in the corner of an office on the other side of the kitchen. It looked out of place, recently prepared. But the sheets were clean, and the door could be locked from the inside. He pointed that out to me specifically. He brought me a glass of water to sit by the bed, bid me goodnight. I thanked him, and lay down, reviewing the events of the day.
Who were the five men who had pursued me that evening? Who sent them? Those were, perhaps, my most pressing questions once all was assessed. What I found most interesting, in retrospect, was that none of the five men had attempted to explain, to reason with me. This fact only reinforced that my first instincts about them were likely correct.
And...
White cat
Moves like
Silence
Over
Panes of
Sunlight
Part of a poem.
The first location didn’t hold much. A satchel with a set of keys in it, sunglasses, a change of clothes bundled tightly into a plastic bag. The second location held another box. Inside of it was a watch, a butane lighter, a knife – a light, narrow-bladed butterfly that felt familiar in my palm – and another set of instructions. There was nothing in the third place listed on my first piece of paper.
Burying myself in an alley, I burned the slip carefully into nothing, ground it into the concrete beneath one of my shoes, and took to the streets. The second set of instructions I pocketed, checked the time, and moved off toward part two of the plan. I decided the most prudent thing I could do was walk for a few hours. I didn’t feel tired, despite my lack of sleep over the last night, and it had stopped raining. Beneath my feet, the sun was doing it’s best to dry the streets, and the day’s traffic was well into its daily routine. What I wanted to find, to stumble upon, was someone that knew me. Hopefully, I could be vague enough to discover some information without betraying my condition to the wrong parties first. Somehow, I felt very sure that there were wrong parties. It was resolving in my grey mind that that was related to the fear I had felt earlier when the waitress noticed what I was reading. The newspaper was rolled up under my arm, still, and I clutched it. The front page was deliberately on the inside of that roll.
As the hours rolled on and the sun began to pull the shadows eastward across my streets, I began to feel less and less confident that anything would come of my current activity. My feet were beginning to hurt, and I was getting hungry, but I determined to walk on. There was a fear growing, though. I couldn’t go on like this forever. In fact, I couldn’t go on like I was for much longer at all. I needed a safe place to stay, a source of income. There were those basics, food and shelter, that… along with all my memories, were nowhere to be found in my present life.
In the midst of these thoughts, some men standing across the almost-deserted street from me caught my attention. I thought one of them had waved at me, and looked up toward them. Naturally, none of their faces meant anything to me, but I was prepared for that. My stomach heaved unexpectedly upward against my diaphragm and, unbidden, my hand followed it. I did my best not to frown openly, and kept the corner of my eye on the men.
They had not waved. One of them had gestured at me, and was now speaking furtively to his co-conspirators. He gestured at me again. I kept walking; didn’t look up.
Just keep walking I kept telling myself, driving my feet forward, one after another. With every step I felt heavier. My breathing was beginning to reflect the heaviness. The men, each one wearing black blazers and nice shoes, had picked up the pace on the other side of the street and now flanked me. My only barrier was the wide expanse of striped, black asphalt. It did little to bar me from them. I walked faster. They walked faster. Ahead, the road intersected another, narrower one. I turned right, buying a little time, convinced now that they were one of the wrong parties and that I had been spotted, and was being followed. Just keep walking.
Their footsteps came swiftly behind me, rounding the corner. I closed my eyes for a few moments, almost tripped over my shoes, but succeeded in reducing them from a gaggle of black-clad men, every one of them larger than me, to a clatter of dress-shoes on concrete. That was much less threatening. I calmed, kept walking. Then, from behind me,
“Hey!” I didn’t turn. He called out again. “Hey! You there!” I didn’t turn.
They were on top of me. One of them was grabbing my arm. “Hey there, miss…” He said lower, trying to get a look at my face.
“Leave me alone.” I twisted away, keeping my eyes fixed on the concrete.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The man said, reaching again for my arm. Both of my hands remained in my pockets. One of them was curling steadily around my knife, feeling for the direction of the latch.
“Leave me the fuck alone.” My mind clawed blankly. There was nothing. I had nowhere to run. Another set of hands found my shoulders.
Snapping, I threw a kick into the shins of the first man and an elbow into the gut of the second, jerking my knife free from my jacket pocket. The small motion of the wrist to bring the blade about was easy (I did mention the familiarity of this object to my hands), and that stopped a third from diving in immediately. There were terse words of confusion exchanged among my enemy, and I started to run down the street. Before I got far, a hand caught at my left wrist and wrenched it painfully. I went down to my knees, but did not lose my knife, and swung around in the direction I was pulled with its point brandished.
“Shit!” He released me and swung away, unwilling to release my wrist. My knife went for his hand, rendering a deep red line across his knuckles, before he finally let go.
The sun had dropped down completely behind the skyline of the city, and the shadows were deepening any moment. I counted on that light, for witness and direction when I finally freed myself of my assailants. A blow landed solidly on the back of my head, sending my vision whirling into light as pain lanced through me. I stood, somehow, and was struck again – in the mouth – as I turned to face them. Momentarily blinded, and reeling backward from the blow, I swung out wildly with the butterfly. I felt it land cloth, and then flesh, and a man’s voice cried out. Blood sang in my mouth, stirring the nausea that was beginning to accompany my throbbing head.
In the faded dusk, headlights swung erratically around one of the corners. Probably a drunk driver or someone equally unlikely to stop. I despaired, but then five men in black retreated around the corner.
Staggering across the road, I folded the knife closed and groped the wall for support. There wasn’t an alley where I thought there was. I could barely see through the sweat and hair that was sticking in my eyes. The cars tires were shrieking on the asphalt, high beams swaying my way like a pair of scythes ready for the killing. I groped further along the wall, desperate for a door to duck in, or a corner to disappear around. I prayed that by some miracle I had not been seen. I heard a door open, and my heart almost stopped. Standing very still, I tried to push the hair out of my face, tried to see into the glare of the headlights. Before I could maneuver my hand to shadow my eyes, I was touched. My knife was back in my pocket. Shit.
“Here…” This was a man’s voice, but younger. Maybe younger than me, certainly not older. Gently, though urgently, he was drawing me away from the wall, supporting me with one arm while the other rested on my opposite shoulder. “This way. You need to get in the car.” He spoke sternly, but not like one accustomed to having authority or speaking roughly to people. There was a grave sort of fear in his voice, within which I respected his actions, the steadiness of his steps behind me. I couldn’t run from those five men for the rest of the night. If this car hadn’t come, they would have had me. There was no one else here that would help me. If this boy was the enemy, then I was already lost. I let him guide me into the car. Without trying for a seatbelt, I turned my face into the clean-smelling upholstery and squeezed my eyes shut. He gunned the still-running engine and we careened through the city for about fifteen minutes, turning more times tan I could count. Not once did I look to see where we were. I knew I would recognize nothing.
We stopped. It was dark outside, and the building we were parked aside was primarily dark, also. He got out of the car, circled it, opened my door. By now, I was watching him, but without the headlights on I was hard pressed for a good look at his face. He didn’t look at mine. Taking my hand, he locked the car with the remote on his keychain, and we went into the building.
Now, I paid attention. We went three floors up, and down a straight hall to the left. Stopping at the seventh door, also on the left, he opened it with a key and an easy motion, and gestured for me to move within before he did. He locked the door behind me, handle and deadbolt, pressed his back against it, and sighed. I watched his entire body slump there in the unlit entry to the apartment, tired as I felt, uncertain.
He was not one of the men who had almost kidnapped me earlier. In that, I felt reassured, but I was in no was comfortable. After a few moments of impasse there in the darkness, I decided to break the ice.
“Who are you?”
“What?” He looked up at me then, squinting in the shadows, almost as if he didn’t realize I didn’t know him. Then, at length, “Oh… shit.”
I stared at him longer, waiting for at least a name, anything. He looked at me blankly for a long while before, finally, replying “My name is Trent Sahen.” To my displeasure, He did not volunteer any more information. Unfortunately, I had nothing to offer him for further enticement.
“May I sit down?” He stuttered a yes, and tripped over himself trying to turn a light on. The apartment illuminated, I stole a glance about as he cleared a chair for me. It was small, minimally furnished, the walls were bare. I sat down and took my jacket off. On the end table next to me was text book. Some kind of chemistry. I pursed my lips, and regretted it. One was split badly. Blood was in my mouth afresh.
Abruptly, my ‘host’ seemed to realize my condition. “Jesus… ah, let me get you something for that…” He sunk into the darkness of the kitchen and I heard water running. Trent returned with a washcloth, damp with cold water, and I began to slowly work at my face. It struck me, then, that I wasn’t feeling any kind of fear or discomfort. It was all replaced by the same greyness that primarily dwelled where the hysteria of not remembering who I was should have been. It was almost like apathy, but there was reason within it. I knew I had to find these things out, but there was no emotional attachment to doing so. I wondered, at first, if all who suffered this kind of amnesia experienced this. It wasn’t something I’d ever looked into before.
“Are you Indian, Trent?” I asked, after a while, pressing the cloth to my mouth. One of my teeth was loose.
“What?”
“Are you Indian? Is your family from India, in the distant past?” I elaborated flatly.
“No, why?” He seemed confused.
“Your last name, Sahen, means ‘falcon’.” We looked at one another for a long time. I gathered, from his face, that he didn’t have any greater idea of what we were doing there than I did.
“Are you…?” He ventured. I smiled at him, not without mirth, and he remembered that I knew nothing. I gathered, from his complete lack of questioning me, that he already knew this to be true. “Sorry.” I shook my head, dismissing the need for his apology with a hand.
We exchanged few more words that evening. I simply didn’t have anything to say, and apparently neither did he. He showed me an extra bed in the corner of an office on the other side of the kitchen. It looked out of place, recently prepared. But the sheets were clean, and the door could be locked from the inside. He pointed that out to me specifically. He brought me a glass of water to sit by the bed, bid me goodnight. I thanked him, and lay down, reviewing the events of the day.
Who were the five men who had pursued me that evening? Who sent them? Those were, perhaps, my most pressing questions once all was assessed. What I found most interesting, in retrospect, was that none of the five men had attempted to explain, to reason with me. This fact only reinforced that my first instincts about them were likely correct.
And...
White cat
Moves like
Silence
Over
Panes of
Sunlight
Part of a poem.