Amber Poe, part III
Jul. 16th, 2004 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsI drifted away with thoughts of the voices that had surrounded me that day. The waitress, the men in black that had chased me, Trent. After a while, darkness swallowed even those.
Morning crept into the small window that overlooked the desk beside me, which was heavy with computer equipment in various states of disarray. I drank the water that Trent had brought for me, very thirsty, and also very hungry. Laying there in the fog of early waking, I realized I had ingested nothing that I knew of save for my several cups of coffee the morning prior. I dressed, combed my hair with my fingers in a vain, and in the end humorous, attempt at being presentable. Soon after, Trent knocked on my door.
“Ah…” He began, and I heard shuffling outside the door. “Are you… are you up?”
“Yes. And dressed.” At length, I added. “It’s unlocked.”
The door clicked open, my host’s tousled, unshaven head coming around, followed by his shoulders. He ventured a smile that only really looked half sincere, and I responded with something like a similar expression. “Good morning.” He said. From the half open door wafted smells of cooking, and I stood. “I… ah, started breakfast…” He slid his eyes to the left, past the other side of the door and toward the kitchen. “You… are you a vegetarian?”
At this, I laughed, and Trent looked rather alarmed. Confused, perhaps, was a better word for the expression that shot through his face. Last night, in my delirious and slightly injured state, I had not thought long about what he knew, or what he understood. Since he had come to my rescue at such a perfect time, I assumed (and, wrongly, I now realized) that he knew more than I did about my condition. Surely, he knew what had happened to me and who I was supposed to have been. I assumed that, upon waking, all of this would somehow be revealed to me… rather, handed to me upon a platter. My psyche, presented to me after some absence. I laughed now because I realized the absurdity of this reasoning, or lack thereof. Trent understood nothing. He knew nothing more of my condition than I did, and he didn’t really comprehend it fully, being on the other side of these eyes of mine. He was merely looking into the empty head, not looking out from inside of it.
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed, my cheerful tone and somewhat ironic grin making him apparently nervous.
“Well, uh… I’ve got some… bacon on the stove…” He spoke slowly, his voice a cadence of uncertainty. “And some biscuits.”
“How old are you, Trent?” Alarm, again, bolted briefly through his features. He distracted himself with the kitchen, turning from me, and I padded across his living room to follow. Was he truly that young, that it made him uncomfortable to tell me?
“I’m twenty four.” He answered nonchalantly after a few moments of prodding at the bacon with a spatula. I understood, from some unnamed place in my mind, that the fact that he could utilize his stove and oven – even if the food was pre-prepared up to that point – was impressive. I smiled, but did not mention my thoughts aloud.
“Ah. I see.”
He kept cooking. I took the liberty of sitting down at the small table tucked in the corner of his kitchen. Surveying the room from this new vantage point, I realized that it looked, somehow, like someone else belonged here. When I found the cot in the office, I had assumed that he had prepared for me… he had known I was going to come. That the bed was clean and made when I arrived would seem to corroborate the fact that it did not belong to someone else. However, the rest of his home did not appear that way. Something here was missing.
“Do you live alone?” I queried, moving my eyes back to him as he paced between stove and oven. He seemed to be growing accustomed to my questions out of nowhere, realizing that I would make no prelude of Smalltalk at this point.
“Yea.” A good, straightforward answer. I looked around more. The street, again, drew my eye. I could just see the sliver of an intersection, from the narrow view I had of the large windows that spanned the far wall of his living room. The sun was up, still pale with morning, and shone on all the early traffic. Though there was no clock in my room and I had deigned to check my watch upon waking, I guessed it was around eight thirty. The traffic had that nine-to-five look about it.
“May I use your restroom?” He looked up at me for a moment, and then gestured, directing me around another corner. As I feared, I was certainly less than a flower, by that point. I resolved to bathe after breakfast, but washed my face now to see if it would help lessen the appearance of my bruises. While removing the crust of blood that had formed along my lower lip, from where it had split, I still looked quite thoroughly like I’d been in a fist fight. That disappointment was, however, secondary to the fact that the sight of my own face in the mirror did absolutely nothing to revive my memory of my self.
It is a strange experience, staring at what one knows rationally to be a looking glass that frames their own reflection, and recognizing nothing of the features they see. I peered, those moments in Trent Sahen’s washroom, into the eyes of a total stranger that I knew by reason alone was myself. So, this is what the waitress saw, and this is what Trent saw. This is what it was like to be outside, staring into the empty head. I didn’t look so different from anyone else I had seen in the previous day’s wandering… sans the bruises, of course. Conceivably, there was little to set me apart from any other denizen of this city.
I ran my hands into my hair, drawing it sharply away from my face. It could go. I could darken it, or lighten it. I could wait until the evidence of my battering faded to go out again, or find some way to conceal it. Not knowing myself as I was, my face was a blank slate, something I had no opposition to changing as much as I could.
A knock on the door. “Breakfast.”
“I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Okay.”
The meal was simple, but very good, considering my famished state. I ate all that Trent would feed me, and this seemed to please him… it was, after all, the first real way that he’d been able to do well by me, post rescuing me from those who would have done me harm (which I had not yet properly thanked him from. I made a note to myself to do that, eventually, when it would be less awkward for both of us). His interest, I’d gathered, did lay sincerely in aiding my present state… so, I wasn’t going to deny the help offered me early in the game. If he wanted to feed me like a Louisiana grandmother, I’d not argue.
We ate primarily in silence, and as we finished, I rose to clear and rinse the plates. He began to move to stop me, but I stopped him with a hand and went about the minor kitchen cleaning. Bemusedly, he watched me from the chair, and I left him to his own thoughts.
“You know…” He began, almost haltingly. “I have some makeup laying around here somewhere that you could cover your…” Pursing his lips beneath narrow eyes, he gestured to his own face, indicating the lovely picture that I was at that point.
“Where I was hit?” I filled in for him, arching a brow his way.
“Yes, well… yes.” Another moment of silence stretched between us, broken only by my quiet clattering of dishes in the sink, and water running. “I mean, it’s not mine… my ex girlfriend left it here.”
So, that was it. There’d been a woman, formerly… from what I gathered, sometime in the reasonably recent past. Maybe she hadn’t lived here, but she’d stayed here often enough for there to be things of hers left over. “Oh?” I pressed. Without looking at him, I could feel him grow tense behind me. He did his best to brush it off, replying with a nonchalant,
“Yea, I don’t think she’ll be coming back for any of it. I mean, it’s not much or anything, I just figured it might help.”
“Yes, and I have places I need to go, today.” I interjected, suddenly remembering the third set of directions I’d found… and left unchecked the day before.
Morning crept into the small window that overlooked the desk beside me, which was heavy with computer equipment in various states of disarray. I drank the water that Trent had brought for me, very thirsty, and also very hungry. Laying there in the fog of early waking, I realized I had ingested nothing that I knew of save for my several cups of coffee the morning prior. I dressed, combed my hair with my fingers in a vain, and in the end humorous, attempt at being presentable. Soon after, Trent knocked on my door.
“Ah…” He began, and I heard shuffling outside the door. “Are you… are you up?”
“Yes. And dressed.” At length, I added. “It’s unlocked.”
The door clicked open, my host’s tousled, unshaven head coming around, followed by his shoulders. He ventured a smile that only really looked half sincere, and I responded with something like a similar expression. “Good morning.” He said. From the half open door wafted smells of cooking, and I stood. “I… ah, started breakfast…” He slid his eyes to the left, past the other side of the door and toward the kitchen. “You… are you a vegetarian?”
At this, I laughed, and Trent looked rather alarmed. Confused, perhaps, was a better word for the expression that shot through his face. Last night, in my delirious and slightly injured state, I had not thought long about what he knew, or what he understood. Since he had come to my rescue at such a perfect time, I assumed (and, wrongly, I now realized) that he knew more than I did about my condition. Surely, he knew what had happened to me and who I was supposed to have been. I assumed that, upon waking, all of this would somehow be revealed to me… rather, handed to me upon a platter. My psyche, presented to me after some absence. I laughed now because I realized the absurdity of this reasoning, or lack thereof. Trent understood nothing. He knew nothing more of my condition than I did, and he didn’t really comprehend it fully, being on the other side of these eyes of mine. He was merely looking into the empty head, not looking out from inside of it.
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed, my cheerful tone and somewhat ironic grin making him apparently nervous.
“Well, uh… I’ve got some… bacon on the stove…” He spoke slowly, his voice a cadence of uncertainty. “And some biscuits.”
“How old are you, Trent?” Alarm, again, bolted briefly through his features. He distracted himself with the kitchen, turning from me, and I padded across his living room to follow. Was he truly that young, that it made him uncomfortable to tell me?
“I’m twenty four.” He answered nonchalantly after a few moments of prodding at the bacon with a spatula. I understood, from some unnamed place in my mind, that the fact that he could utilize his stove and oven – even if the food was pre-prepared up to that point – was impressive. I smiled, but did not mention my thoughts aloud.
“Ah. I see.”
He kept cooking. I took the liberty of sitting down at the small table tucked in the corner of his kitchen. Surveying the room from this new vantage point, I realized that it looked, somehow, like someone else belonged here. When I found the cot in the office, I had assumed that he had prepared for me… he had known I was going to come. That the bed was clean and made when I arrived would seem to corroborate the fact that it did not belong to someone else. However, the rest of his home did not appear that way. Something here was missing.
“Do you live alone?” I queried, moving my eyes back to him as he paced between stove and oven. He seemed to be growing accustomed to my questions out of nowhere, realizing that I would make no prelude of Smalltalk at this point.
“Yea.” A good, straightforward answer. I looked around more. The street, again, drew my eye. I could just see the sliver of an intersection, from the narrow view I had of the large windows that spanned the far wall of his living room. The sun was up, still pale with morning, and shone on all the early traffic. Though there was no clock in my room and I had deigned to check my watch upon waking, I guessed it was around eight thirty. The traffic had that nine-to-five look about it.
“May I use your restroom?” He looked up at me for a moment, and then gestured, directing me around another corner. As I feared, I was certainly less than a flower, by that point. I resolved to bathe after breakfast, but washed my face now to see if it would help lessen the appearance of my bruises. While removing the crust of blood that had formed along my lower lip, from where it had split, I still looked quite thoroughly like I’d been in a fist fight. That disappointment was, however, secondary to the fact that the sight of my own face in the mirror did absolutely nothing to revive my memory of my self.
It is a strange experience, staring at what one knows rationally to be a looking glass that frames their own reflection, and recognizing nothing of the features they see. I peered, those moments in Trent Sahen’s washroom, into the eyes of a total stranger that I knew by reason alone was myself. So, this is what the waitress saw, and this is what Trent saw. This is what it was like to be outside, staring into the empty head. I didn’t look so different from anyone else I had seen in the previous day’s wandering… sans the bruises, of course. Conceivably, there was little to set me apart from any other denizen of this city.
I ran my hands into my hair, drawing it sharply away from my face. It could go. I could darken it, or lighten it. I could wait until the evidence of my battering faded to go out again, or find some way to conceal it. Not knowing myself as I was, my face was a blank slate, something I had no opposition to changing as much as I could.
A knock on the door. “Breakfast.”
“I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Okay.”
The meal was simple, but very good, considering my famished state. I ate all that Trent would feed me, and this seemed to please him… it was, after all, the first real way that he’d been able to do well by me, post rescuing me from those who would have done me harm (which I had not yet properly thanked him from. I made a note to myself to do that, eventually, when it would be less awkward for both of us). His interest, I’d gathered, did lay sincerely in aiding my present state… so, I wasn’t going to deny the help offered me early in the game. If he wanted to feed me like a Louisiana grandmother, I’d not argue.
We ate primarily in silence, and as we finished, I rose to clear and rinse the plates. He began to move to stop me, but I stopped him with a hand and went about the minor kitchen cleaning. Bemusedly, he watched me from the chair, and I left him to his own thoughts.
“You know…” He began, almost haltingly. “I have some makeup laying around here somewhere that you could cover your…” Pursing his lips beneath narrow eyes, he gestured to his own face, indicating the lovely picture that I was at that point.
“Where I was hit?” I filled in for him, arching a brow his way.
“Yes, well… yes.” Another moment of silence stretched between us, broken only by my quiet clattering of dishes in the sink, and water running. “I mean, it’s not mine… my ex girlfriend left it here.”
So, that was it. There’d been a woman, formerly… from what I gathered, sometime in the reasonably recent past. Maybe she hadn’t lived here, but she’d stayed here often enough for there to be things of hers left over. “Oh?” I pressed. Without looking at him, I could feel him grow tense behind me. He did his best to brush it off, replying with a nonchalant,
“Yea, I don’t think she’ll be coming back for any of it. I mean, it’s not much or anything, I just figured it might help.”
“Yes, and I have places I need to go, today.” I interjected, suddenly remembering the third set of directions I’d found… and left unchecked the day before.