Her Last Memory
Page 1
Her Last Memory
C.A. Wittman
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Epilogue
Sleep Martyrs
Free Short Story, Reset
About the Author
Prologue
July 1996
* * *
“Merda! She's not waking up!” Enzo hovered over Taylor Davis, who lay curled up on the sofa. His hands patted her body like a blind man, identifying markers of head, face, and shoulder. One of the girls from the dinner party, Serene, stepped forward pushing him out of the way. She grabbed Taylor's arm, pressing her fingers into the underside of the limp, lifeless wrist, feeling for a pulse. There was a faint flutter of a beat, but then it was gone. Was she only imagining a pulse?
“Taylor?” Serene gently shook Taylor's still form. Drool snaked out the side of the girl's partially open lips.
“Call 911,” Enzo said, his voice coming out a rasp. No one moved.
He grabbed Taylor's shoulder and shook her hard. “Wake up! Wake up! Cazzo!” His voice caught and his hands flew to his face, the palms pressing hard against his eyes. “Cazzo!”
“What happened to her?” Serene asked. The others stood mute as wax figures.
“I don't know.” Enzo grabbed the phone off its wall mount and walked back over to Taylor, nudging her this time. “I don't know.”
“But I thought she left.”
Enzo didn't respond. He pressed the buttons on the phone and placed it to his ear.
“Something's happened,” he said in response to the dispatcher. “Something's happened to my girlfriend. I think she's dead.”
1
Dora - January 2020
* * *
Nothing looked familiar. She stared up at the giant billboards advertising products, fashions, movies and TV shows that seemed like they belonged to another era. A giant cannabis ad promised home delivery. Another billboard pictured a black woman with wild afro hair laughing uproariously. The caption read, “Shot on an iPhone 11 Pro.” What was an iPhone? People were dressed differently—a lot of linen and high-waisted jeans, crocheted dresses and shirts with disco collars. Men had carefully groomed facial hair and tailored slim cotton pants in unmanly colors of hot pink and robin's egg blue. In fact, there did not appear to be any cohesive style. She only knew she was in Hollywood because, well, it was Hollywood, that much was plain. But she recognized nothing else. Familiar restaurants had vanished, and in their place were boutique eateries that served vegan food and promised no gluten. Gluten? Two girls breezed past her with frothy coffees in small white paper cups, talking animatedly.
"Dora?"
She kept walking, ignoring the woman behind her.
A touch on the arm. "Dora?"
She spun around and stared blankly at a smiling woman, the skin around her amber eyes a crinkling mass of wrinkles, dark hair cropped short to the scalp. The woman wore a jumpsuit, the kind of outfit she'd seen her mother wearing in pictures from the 1970s. Something large and rectangular bulged at the woman's front, a leather 1980s fanny pack strapped around her narrow hips.
"I thought it was you," the woman said. She had a tinny British accent. "What are you up to?"
"I'm not Dora." She made to turn away. But this woman in her 1970s outfit and 1980s fanny pack gripped her arm harder. The smile flickered and then died on her lips, its absence taking ten years off her face.
"I'm not Dora."
The hand tightened more. The amber eyes softened with confusion. "You don't seem yourself. You okay, love?" She was squeezing her arm too hard.
"You're hurting me."
The woman looked down at her hand, surprised, as if it didn't belong to her at all. “Your arm. It's swollen.”
She wrenched herself from the woman's grasp, picking up her pace, and scurried away, traipsing over the big gold celebrity stars. She tried to catch her breath, order her thoughts, to square all of it somehow. The oddly dressed people, strange restaurants and advertisements. A pain shot through her right temple and an ashy grey darkened what was moments before a bright blue sky. When she fainted, she crumpled into a young man walking his toy poodle. The dog, taking offense, attacked her exposed ear.
* * *
Cuppa saw it all happen like a surreal Fellini film. Dora claiming she wasn't Dora, her pupils expanded in that way they do when a person is high. Dora running away from her and then stopping to look up at the sky. That was when she fainted, folding in on herself, collapsing slowly, almost gracefully, into some guy staring down at his phone while walking his dog. When she fell against him, he'd looked up, startled, as he simultaneously stumbled back, his phone flying from his hands. They both crashed to the sidewalk. The poodle scurried away, yapping like a wind-up toy, and then lunged at Dora's face, teeth attaching to her ear as it shook and shook, a frantic guttural sound bubbling from its throat. Cuppa raced to her best friend's wife, just as the dog's owner came to life and began wrestling with the little beast, but it had a good grip on her ear. By the time Cuppa made it to Dora's side, he'd managed to tear the dog away from her ear lobe now as lacerated as minced beef, her brown face turned the color of wet cement. The commotion drew a small crowd. Some called 911. Others filmed the incident.
"Christ!" Cuppa exhaled, dropping to a squat and placing her hand on Dora's head.
"Don't move her," one of the onlookers called out, an older woman wearing a funny straw hat with fake yellow flowers stuck in it. "She might have a neck injury."
The dog yapped a high-pitched bark over and over as its owner tried to contain it. A girl picked up the man's phone, the screen splintered, and handed it to him.
"Do you know her?" Asked the woman who told Cuppa not to move Dora.
"Yes. She's married to my friend."
"Just don't move her," the woman said again in a softer voice and tutted under her breath.
"I'm sorry," the man with the yapping dog said. "I didn't see her." He was trying to soothe the poodle by petting its head repeatedly, but the dog wouldn't stop.
“You need to lift her legs
up to get blood flow to her head,” another man said, stepping out of the small crowd of people.
“No, I wouldn't do that,” the woman in the hat argued.
The man ignored her and picked up Dora's legs. Cuppa hovered over him. She'd never seen anyone faint before and had no idea what to do. After some seconds, Dora's eyes fluttered open and she stared blankly up at Cuppa.
“Stay still,” the man said to her. “Don't try to sit up.”
“What?” Dora croaked and cleared her throat. “What happened?”
Cuppa knelt down next to her friend and took her hand. “Dora. It's me, Cuppa. You've gone and fainted, but I'm here and the ambulance is on its way.”
A small wrinkle appeared between Dora's brows, her eyes emanating incomprehension.
“It's me, Cuppa,” Cuppa tried again.
“Give her some space. She's disoriented,” the man holding her legs said. Gently he lowered her legs down as some of the people gathered began to disperse. The sound of the siren drew Cuppa's attention toward the street and she sighed a breath of relief as the ambulance pulled up and two paramedics climbed out, taking in the scene. The man who had revived Dora spoke to one of the paramedics while the other squatted over Dora, Cuppa still holding her hand.
“Hi there,” the paramedic said. “I want you to stay just like that for me. Can you tell me your name?”
“Serene,” she rasped.
Cuppa sucked in her breath. “That's not her name.”
The paramedic glanced up at her.
“It used to be, years ago. She goes by Dora now.”
“No, I'm not Dora.” She reached up a hand and then tried to sit up.
“Easy now. We don't want you upright at the moment,” the paramedic said and then turned to Cuppa. “Can I have you step away, please? Let me talk to her.”
“But I'm her friend. We live together.”
“I understand. Step aside, please.”
Cuppa stood and moved back several feet. Dora's skin was a mustardy grey now and her dark eyes emanated fear and confusion.
“Can you tell me your name one more time?” The paramedic said.
“Yes,” Dora said softly. “It's Serene. Serene Hokulani.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Hollywood. I think. Everything looks different.” The paramedic's brows drew together, and he picked up her arm, examining it. “She's got a contusion on her right forearm. It's formed a hematoma at the ulna,” he said to the other paramedic. “Do you know how you got this?”
She shook her head no and he picked up her other arm, placing a blood pressure cuff over the bicep. “Serene, do you know what day of the week it is?”
“Wednesday.”
Cuppa gasped and was back hovering over them.
“Ma'am, please, we need some space.”
“But, it's not Wednesday,” Cuppa said, and then to Dora, “It's not Wednesday.”
Cuppa felt a tug on her hand, it was the other paramedic. He guided her several feet back, before saying in a low voice. “You'll get a chance to check in with your friend, but right now we need to assess her vitals. We'll talk with you when we're done with her.”
The paramedic tending to Dora took her temperature and then asked her the name of the president.
“Clinton,” she said softly.
“My god,” Cuppa said under her breath.
“And what year is it, Serene?”
“1996.” Tears filled her eyes. “I think,” she added.
The second paramedic retrieved the stretcher.
“How old are you, Serene?”
“Sixteen.”
She was loaded onto the stretcher and lifted up and through the small ambulance's double doors. Cuppa was told to meet them at Cedars Sinai and then the ambulance sped away, leaving Cuppa to scroll through her recent calls until she got to Erica's name.
2
Serene - April 1996
* * *
"Make a right here," Ramani said.
Aarav put on his blinker and made a tight, fast turn at a sliver of a sign that read Jackson Ave. "Well, you didn't need to do that," she admonished.
"You didn't give me much time."
"You can always turn around, you know."
"Ramani, please." Arav paused at the split in the road.
"Keep to the right," Ramani said.
They moved forward slowly. Serene sat in the back of the recently purchased twelve-year-old Volvo station wagon, ignoring her mother and stepfather's tiff. She stared out the window at the shaded street. Jackson Avenue was a lot better to look at than the ugly urban sprawl they'd sped through under a grey LA sky. June gloom, Ramani called the blanket of cloud cover at the airport. It wasn't June, though. It wasn't even May.
Ramani and her second husband Darpan arrived in Culver City from Maui ten days earlier than Serene and Aarav. Darpan was waiting for them at the house, the house Ramani grew up in back in the 1950s and 60s when she was Brenda Wilson. Brenda Wilson with two younger sisters, Clair and Dottie. Clair and Dottie were like twins, Ramani had told Serene many times. It was one of those details about her mother's earlier life that she often repeated, like how she once saw Lucille Ball in downtown Culver City near MGM studios and waved at the actress. Lucille had waved back. As a girl, Serene's mother played with her sisters and other neighborhood children at a nearby creek, tracking through the water and exploring the culverts. On her walks home from school, she had liked to stop at a neighborhood store called Jackson Market, where she'd buy a coke. When Ramani told Serene these stories of her childhood, Serene found them hard to imagine. For instance, she could not imagine her New Age fit mother eating white sugar or drinking Coca Cola after school. This was the same woman who now considered soda no better than poison. Just as Serene had that thought, they drove past what looked like a house-turned-store and some people stepping out onto the sidewalk with a paper grocery bag.
"That's it. That's Jackson Market." Ramani pointed at a sign, the words arching in a friendly, old-fashioned way, half-hidden under a bushy trellis. She turned in her seat, frizzy, loopy brown curls forming a halo around her head.
"We can walk there later. "
Serene didn't bother answering. Ramani faced forward again and Serene stared at the back of her mother's head as a wave of utter and complete despair wracked through her body. She had to pinch the bridge of her nose to prevent the tears that threatened to come. She'd cried enough over the move. Nothing was going to change the trajectory her life was taking. Serene could have come to LA with her mother earlier but had elected to remain behind with Aarav, her stepdad tasked with wrapping up the last of their life on the island.
Aarav gave up insisting he was Serene's father years ago. She was supposed to be his; that was the plan. But the genetics of the donor dad––the one her parents chose to impregnate Ramani––gobbled up any likeness to anyone but him, his sperm like a cloning machine. Of course, Ramani and Aarav knew that Serene would come out looking different. They were both white while her biological father was black. Serene had seen pictures of a tall sinewy young man with a soft baby face supported by a square jaw and large, dark, extravagantly lashed eyes. He'd not been much more than a child. Seventeen. And Ramani, thirty-two. Serene’s biological father was renamed, Jai, by Baba Rae, the guru of the commune Shangri-La, where they once all lived. Jai meant Victorious. But he wasn't victorious. According to Ramani and Aarav, Jai tried to insert himself into their family. Unsuccessful in his attempts to be a part of Serene's life, he'd left Shangri-La, changing his name back to Joseph. Joseph's parents got involved and Ramani received a letter to appear in court. She never did. Instead, she and Aarav slipped away from the commune one night. They caught a flight from Oakland to Maui, escaping the clutches of the baby thief, Joseph, and his parents, who wanted to take custody of their rightful and precious indigo child. This was another story Ramani liked to retell Serene through the years. Serene needed to grow up some, pick apart the elements of the story and exa
mine them before the truth took shape. Her parents had taken advantage of her father, a young, naive teenager.
"I always wanted a little brown girl, and now I have one," Ramani used to like to tell Serene.
She'd stopped saying it two years ago after Serene snapped, "Do you know how fucked up that sounds?"
There had been a younger brother, too. Cedar. He arrived as a happy surprise, birthed down the hill from their house in the middle of a pasture. But Serene tried not to think of Cedar. After the accident, she tried to block out the memories. It was too difficult, for instance, to think of playing tag with Cedar, their bare feet flying over long damp grass from a recent rain, or reading to Cedar, or defending Cedar from bullies over his white skin, without thinking about the accident.
"It's there, to the left," Ramani said, pulling Serene out of her reflections. Darpan stood in the driveway of a white stucco two-story Spanish-style bungalow, shirtless and stretching, showing off sandy-colored underarm hair. He wore flowy black wraparound ashram pants and was barefoot, his blond hair pulled back in a can't-be-bothered ponytail. He waved as Aarav pulled into the driveway.