agentblack

Still struggling when they put me in the back of the van.
Still struggling. I'd bite if I could but something is clamped between my teeth. I try to swear and scream at them but instead I make a mournful wailling noise.

I twist and turn but the two... Nurses? Porters? Orderlies? are bigger stronger fitter than me. They grab me hard and hold me down. My arms are pinned anyway, by the... Jacket? Coat? The strait-jacket.

I start to feel weaker, like I'm stuck under a pile of wet blankets. The.. The Men say something about the meds kicking in. One of them says something else, but my noises, my sounds, my ears can't be working properly 'cos the worlds, the wilds, the words, The words sound like they're coming from a far way gone.

Or like the others talking a language I don't understand anymore.

Then Just Me. Face too heavy to open, feel like sleep in the deep black and red dark warm. Feel things slip away, like I fall but stay still. Not me (body feet fingers tongue) falling but Me (talk, think, inside head, remembers) falling.

slip like sand through finger finger thumb, sand on beach noise like water folding (wave bye bye) and then nothing left at all.

Nothing.

Robert blinked awake in the warm glare of sun spilling through his window. He lay for a moment, pinned under the heaviness of sleep, and merely breathed.

He could see a clean but bare room, neat and tidy with pale painted walls and bare floorboards. he thought maybe he was upstairs. He felt upstairs. But he couldn't remember walking upstairs.

He couldn't remember anything.

He felt calm about that though, detached. He concentrated, tried to cast his mind back. But nothing came to him. He didn't remember parents, or where he grew up. He couldn't remember going to school, or learning to read.

Could he read? He wasn't sure. He assumed that he could, but had no way of knowing for sure. Could he count? From the soft warmth of the thin blankets, Robert pulled his hand gently from under him and held his fingers in front of him.

He started at the little finger, and worked his way across with no difficulty to the thumb. Five. He could count. Robert decided to assume that he could read for the time being.

He felt a little more awake, and sat up, continuing to take stock of what he could remember. Didn't remember school, couldn't remember if he had a job. Was he married? Robert checked his hands again for a ring, orn the mark of one.

His hands were clear, but he noticed an itchy rash, or maybe a burn (Had he been in an accident? A fire?) over the back of his hand. Another patch of hot itchy skin twisted around his upper arm, and he felt another patch on his shoulder.

They felt sore and tender. A little perturbed, Robert decided to leave them alone for now. Sitting up in bed, he took a better look around the room. It was barely furnished at all, just the bed, a cheap looking chest of drawers and a small frail looking chair in one corner. Some clothes were neatly laid on the seat, with a worn pair of trainers set on top of them, like a stone weighting down a towel at the beach.

Robert ran a hand over his head, feeling a moment's faint suprised at the thickness and length of his hair, although he wasn't sure why.

All Robert was really sure of was his age, which he felt certain was 23, and his name, Robert. But against all the missing information, even that felt frail and fragile. he tried not to think about it to much, in case even the knowledge of his name blew away as well, to join the rest of his missing memory.

I am Robert, he thought. I am 23. I do not know where I am, or how I got here.

There was a knock at the door as it opened. behind it stood a round middle aged looking woman who looked at Robert with some suprise. For a second, Robert was deathly afraid that he had done something wrong, but the woman was immediately smiling.

"Gracious!" She said, bustling into the room, "Doctor Hesperius said that you'd most likely wake up some time today, but I didn't expect you to be up till some time this afternoon!"

Robert looked at the woman, non-plussed.
"Doctor Hesperius? Have I been ill?"

The woman waved away his concerns.
"I shouldn't worry about all that deary." In one plump hand she took hold of Robert's wrist, and he was suprised at the strength in her grip. Two fingers prodded gently into his armabove the small bones in his wrist, and the woman stared vacantly at her watch for a few silent moments.

Robert watched her. She had a plain face, turning a little puffy in middle age, with a soft frame of curly blonde hair around her face, but she was animated with a bright jollyness that made her seem approachable and warm.

She nodded after a minute or so and let Robert's arm drop from her grasp to the bedspread. She jotted down some numbers in a notebook that had appeared from nowhere, and then brandished a thermometer that had materilised from the same source.

"Open wide sweet heart" she cooed. Robert complied. and lifted his tongue for her to slide the thermometer underneath.
"Are you a nurse?" He asked around the thin glass stick as the woman busied herself around the room.

She smiled at him. "More or Less lovey, more or less".
She cracked the window open a notch, and Robert could hear birdsong and the sound of a hardly there breeze through leaves.
"Am I ill?" Robert asked. The woman tutted and took the thermometer from his mouth.
"You and your questions eh? I don't know."

She left him in the empty room for a moment, before she bustled back in with a bowl of porridge and a glass of water.
"Here we go sweetie, get this down you, there's a good lad."

Whilst he ate, the woman watched him unobtrusively. Robert imagined her as some sort of large, benign mother cat, or a fairytale aunt. He was hoping that she'd stay, take his blood pressure, or maybe test his reflexes or something, just so that he could spend some more time in the warm spotlight of her attention.

He finished the poridge and gave a hesistant smile.
The woman beamed at him and held out the glass of water and two pale blue pills.
"Here you go sweetheart, be a dear and swallow this all down."

Robert did as he was told. The woman laid him back down on hte bed, and tucked him in, stroking his hair away from his eyes and over his forehead and he lay his head down.

"Doctor Hesperius will be ever so pleased you were up so early."

As he drifted off to sleep, Robert luxuriated in the feel of her hand stroking his forehead. He passed out with a indulgent smile upon his face.

The next day, Robert woke up and felt a little more at home. He got out of bed and looked out of the window. Most of the view was taken up by the apple tree that grew close enough for it's outermost branches to wave at the pane of glass, as if trying to reach it.

He could see some modest wooden frame houses arranged in a rough semi circle, interspersed with trees and liked by neat pathways of gravel and paving stones. The sun was shining again, still low in the east, some time in the morning.

Robert pulled on the clothes on the chair. They fitted him, and were clean, but seemed to carry the faint dusty scent of a charity shop to them. There was a note sitting on top of them, written in a neat slanting cursive.

-Robert
Maria tells me you up early yesterday morning! Congratulations! I'm very pleased to hear you're making such tremendous progress. I'll ask you to forgive us for tranquilising you again so soon after you awoke, but we feel it's important that you rest as much as possible during this early days.

I'm sure you've lots of questions. I'll be happy to answer them for you, and looking forward to seeing you thursday.

Doctor H

Robert wondered what day it was. He couldn't remember. He wandered downstairs (he was right after all) through the rest of the house looking for something like a calender to help him.

The house was much like his room. Bright, clean, airy, unfurnished. In the kitchen, he found a note from maria, who he decided must've been the lady from earlier the previous morning. In big blocky capital letters, she had given him a small iteneray and directions for the household appliances.

Robert wasn't sure how to cook anything, so he made himself a bowl of CEREAL, finding a small carton of MILK in the FRIDGE.

Pinned to the door, he found another note, from Maria again, encouraging him to take a WALK for exercise, but asking him to try and be back by THREE and to take the tranquiliser she had left for him on the COUNTER.

Outside, the sun was warm. Robert guessed it must be spring, the morning air still felt damp, and the light from the sun wasn't oppressive yet. The grass still looked lush, not crinkled and sun baked. Robert wondered how he knew this as he wandered out in front of the houses.

Out in front of the semi circle of houses, the grass was trimmed into a neat square, like it marked out a pitch or a gathering place of some sort. The houses arranged around it made it looked like the improvised stage of an ampitheatre.

He made his way across, looking back to see his footprints dark green in the dewy grass. He passed a small pond, a willow spilling high over it, it's strands and lost leaves drifting on the still surface.

Robert made his way over the rise that oppsed the semi circle of houses, wading through the deep tall grass that whispered up around his knees, saw the beach spread out before him. Looking out to his left, he saw the open expanse of the sea. Robert wondered if he'd seen it before, or if this was the first time he'd ever seen it in his life. He recognised it as 'Sea' though. he knew that much.

He plodded down the gentle slope, enjoying the breeze that rose to meet him, and noticing as the ground gave way to dune and sand and the rough round grass that clung to the top the dunes.

He walked for a while along the beach, wondering at the quiteness of the sea. Something so vast seemed to be deceptively still and quiet. That whole morning did. He walked down the beach, alternating between staring at his feet, then the horizon, the surf that hissed up the wet sand, and occasionally, back at his footprints.

Robert stopped at a piece of driftwood, a broken branch bleached bone white by the salt, lodged half into the sand.

He knelt by it and gripped the wood. The surface felt smoothed and soft. He gave it a half hearted tug, then left it wedged in the sand. His hands were left smelling faintly of brine. He wondered were the branch had come from, what had happened to it before it had arrived here.

He wondered the same things about himself, before he headed back up the beach, back to his small house and another bowl of cereal. He took the small blue pill he found in a little plastic cup on the worktop.
He stretched out on the sofa and began to sleep