Blank memory
Posted by SgtPepper | Posted in short story | Posted on Sunday, March 08, 2009
He opened his eyes and saw a blank space, nothing around him, or at least that was his first impression. As he moved his gaze around the blank he noticed it was but a room, a very white one, he could not even distinguish the corner shadow of the walls. Then he looked at himself, he was lying down with pale-blue covers over him, and transparent strings attached to his arm. He tried to move and arm, but it ached too much, so he continued to examine this white room.
Now that he could see clearer, it was not that shinny and clear, there was a big frame in the wall at his left, it contained the picture of a little girl smiling, she looked familiar. Then, he began to listen to the things around him, a beep that was constant and annoying, the chains of the blinds hitting the walls, and steps that always sounded like approaching but never came. He could listen to his own breath. Then he listened to a second breath.
He turned to his right and saw a woman sitting by his side, while holding papaers in front of her; apparently he hadn't seen her there before. Then, the woman put down the papares and beamed him, without any change in her expression. She was probably in her mid fifties, well preserved, redhead with a very sharp nose. Her blue eyes kept holding his sight, "Are you feeling better?" she asked. "Does it hurt?"
He didn't answer, he couldn't know how to. He just moved his stare to the frame with the smilling girl. And just then, when he was thinking what the woman had said, he felt it, a burning and drilling sensation in his head. As if someone was driving a molten metal nail in his head. But even then he didn't opened his mouth, didn't yell or even moaned. And so heclosed his eyes and breath deeply untill the pain was bearable, which took a few minutes.
When it was back to being containable, he turned his head and the woman was still staring at him with the papers in her hands. "Where am I? What happened?" he said, realising his voice was deep and soar. "Do you remember me?" she asked, as if he hadn't said a thing. "Sure, you are my wife" he said, not thinking what he had just said. He looked around, to find the source of that response. He knew he had said it, but there was no way he could know what he just said.
"You are in a hospital" she said, looking too calmed to his confused reaction. "What happened?" he asked, gaining conciense of the pain in almost all of his body. "You were in an accident" she said, then she took the Newspaper back infront of her, as it was some hair dressing anteroom.
He tried to remember, he tried to take his mind back to the time he had married that woman, back to the time he had been in such an accident, or anything. He couldn't, he couldn't remember who he was, or who she was, or anything for that matter.
"What sort of accident?" he asked, overcame by his own lack of memories. "An accident, now try to sleep you need the rest" she said from the international news section. "Was it the kitchen again? Did the stove exploded?" he asked, again confused by the source of that information. "It would made sense if you had burns wouldn't it? But they are just some scratches and bruises." She said, turning the paper's page.
"Then what was it?" he asked, demanding some sort of explanation, anything that could relate to a memory. "You just had another of you episodes honey, like with the kitchen, but now you didn't got burn" she said, with the same monotonous voice she would have explained the fall of point two points in the stock market.
"Were you there?" he asked. She remained silent, he couldn't even listen to her breath now. Then, for what seemed like an hour or so they both remained silent, he was just overwhelmed and confused by the whole situation. The woman to his right said to be his wife, but seemed more like a ghost, he couldn't remember a thing and he was lying god knows where with everything in his body hurting.
"What do you mean by my episodes?" he asked, after the long silence. "I mean that you had an accident when you lost conciense, and you know how it goes..." she said, folding the paper horizontaly. "I don't" he said "Can't you notice I don't remember anything?!" he yelled, trying to get her out of the paper. "I know, just rest" she said, from the gossip section, putting more attention to the Africa adoption issue with Hollywood stars than to the yelling man.
He was desperate, he was angered and confused. He yelled for help, screamed at the insensitive dummy who called itself his wife. He tried to move, but nothing responded, not even the little finger of his foot; nothing. He was just a talking sack of flesh and bones. He screeched and shrieked and squealed, untill he was too tired to move his diaphragm any longer.
Then, when he got a bit of his ease back he asked "What happened when I had the episode in the kitchen?" his voice was cracking. The woman put the paper down again and took a deep breath "You were cooking breakfast, I was not around, then you lost control. For some reason you took the aerosol oil, opened the gas in all the stove and just made everything explode with the spray." she said, with her fixed expression and voice.
"Why would I do anything like that?" he couldn't believe a word of that. "The doctors said you were fixed, that it was a tumor inside your head, they said they had fixed you" she said, letting a little emotion out, but it couldn't be identified as sadness, or regret, it was just emotion. "And what happened this time?!" he asked, not believing still, but unexplainably worried.
"Like always, you had some hallucination of paranoia, then you had seissures and finally woke up saying you had been to the Mexican desert, where you had gotten the burns. The doctors said it was just a side effect of the syrgury and medications." she said. "But that was last time. What happened now?!" he asked.
"You don't know?" she said, again readin the Newspaper. "Why would I be asking you if I knew?" he was hyperventilating, he oculd now hear the rythmical beep go crazy. "Well, you had hallucinations again" she said.
"And then?"
She was looking at the financial section, then she gazed into his eyes. "You were in the highway, and near a precipice you felt you were being followed. You drove us to the precipice" she said, turning the page.
"Us?" he asked, but he knew the answer by the time he had finished it. He turned to his left and saw the little girl. "Us three?" he asked, tears sliding down his face.
"Is she fine?" he asked, with no response. "What happened then?"
"Then?" she asked rhetorically "Who said there was a then?"
"Whaty do you mean? Is this..."
She just turned the page into the obituary section.
By I'm the penguin
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