Amnesiac

I met him for the first time in a darkened room, my hands brimming full of roses. Sharp. Their bristles brushed against my skin. 

Outside the sky was all blue and the moon full, a blue eye swimming high in the blue sky. The sun bleached the lower horizon a paler shade of blue. And I was saying something. What was I telling him?

And he was saying something to me. What was he trying to tell me?

I remember the door. A darker shade of brown-black, a shade of paint you’d never have to clean the muck off. It had a golden doorknob. I remember reaching out for it, but it was always too far away. I reached out to open the door, but the door moved away from me, or maybe my hand never moved at all; it stayed exactly the same one and a half metres away from me forever, hovering on its hinges. There was a looking-hole, a singular fish-eye looking at no one in particular. Then looking at me. What was that word? I remember him saying something. I remember not looking at his face, looking at his baby blue tie tucked in his baby blue suit like a still hare, caught in a teething trap.

He counts down for me. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

I feel dizzy dancing. I clutch onto the stranger’s baby blue suit and hate myself for it; he leads me waltzing round the brown mahogany. I don’t want to dance with him. I want to throw up. I want to be sick all over his fucking suit. I say nothing. He presses his body tight against mine. We waltz.

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1

And his grip on me is deceptively tight. I don’t want to dance with him. It hurts. I want to run away; but where could I go? He leans down, brushing his cheek against mine, sharp bristles against my cheek, and says, why don’t you come back to my place. I imagine being a bystander, watching this distant interaction unfold, part of some other person’s life. His breath lingers on my face.

His place is clad in wooden furnishings. They’re shiny, varnished. He leaves for another room and I look at all the photos on his mantlepiece. 

He has a picture of me, trapped like a rabbit in its frame on the mantlepiece. A child, clutching onto a baby blue suit trouser, in a room clad full of wooden furnishings.  I stare at myself from behind the dusty glass.

In fact, all his photos are of me. I sit in a chair, holding a balloon in the shape of a seven, before a table laden with cake. Somebody’s hand is on me as I blow out the candles.

Tight grip on my shoulder. Why does he follow me everywhere?

If I were in a movie, I would scream, but I’m not, so I just stare.

And I’m going up the stairs, and they’re covered in muck and brown bottles and flaps of plastic. The banisters strobe past me. 

I depart into a corridor, seventh floor. A seedy brown corridor, fluids in the walls, in the carpet, the smells of the departed watching you. The door. I watch myself move automatically, wondering, is this my apartment, or somebody else’s? 

I get into the room and the floor is slippery, slick with something. I slip and fall and I hit my head on a golden doorknob, dirtying its surface. I’m left lying in the slick, listening to the clock on the wall tick loudly, like a metronome. I feel wetness clogging my hair, clotting and curdling. A red rose is growing. I feel dizzy. I watch the clock’s huge, cyclopean eye because I’m too tired not to. It goes tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick.

I’m kneeling by the flower bed, on my muddy knees, with gloves on, holding a small spade, like a child at the beach. My hands are clean beneath the brown muck of the gloves; no one will be able to tell. The rose cuttings are laid neatly in a bundle by my side. They are not going anywhere. The scarlet roses. What do they remind me of? I poke holes in the fresh compost with my gloved hand, and push the stalks into each one, before filling the cavity with displaced compost. I count them as I plant. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I can’t remember it. Something happened to me. When?

I think I see him, standing behind the tree. His shiny fish eyes follow my hands as they move. I can feel knives tracing down the notches of my spine, and I shiver. Why does he follow me everywhere? He stands as still as the tree, wearing a baby blue suit. Then I look at my hands, and I’m appalled by what they’re full of.

You can listen to a recorded version of this story at: Purple Radio Spotify

Illustrated by Talia Jacobs