Tabula Rasa

by Kitty Thomas

  “Talk about what?”

  “I don’t remember anything about my life, about you, about our life together. And you’re acting like I never told you I couldn’t remember anything. Like nothing out of the ordinary happened today.”

  I heard him sit up and silently prayed he wouldn’t turn the lights back on.

  “I just think it’s fucking convenient that you fall and get amnesia of all fucking things right when we were in the middle of a fight.”

  “So you don’t believe me?”

  He shrugged. “I just think it’s fucking convenient. Do you know how rare and unlikely amnesia is? Especially the kind of full-on memory wipe you seem to be suffering from. On a soap opera, fine. In real life, absolutely not. I just don’t buy it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you don’t buy it.”

  Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. If our positions were reversed and the only person I had to count on in impossible circumstances suddenly didn’t remember me or anything that had happened to get us to that point, I’d be pretty upset about it, too. Maybe his anger masked loneliness. Or fear.

  “I’m really scared,” I said.

  “Yeah? Join the club.”

  “I can’t believe my husband would act this way.”

  “Well, I can’t believe my wife would climb around on an unstable pirate ship like a monkey despite how unsafe I told you it was. If you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be in this situation!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He snorted. “No, you’re not. You can’t remember doing it, so how can you be sorry? You’re just trying to appease me. And I fucking hate that even more. I hate that you’re afraid of me.”

  “I-I’m not afraid of you.” I was so glad the lights were out, that the darkness that enveloped us was so total and complete. He would have seen in my eyes that I was lying. I was afraid of him.

  I was pretty sure by now that he was being honest about being my husband, but that didn’t make him a good guy. Millions of women were married to abusive men. And he seemed to have a short fuse. More than once, I’d already been afraid he’d just grab me and shake me or something.

  Even if I couldn’t remember him, if he was the kind of man a normal woman would want to be married to, wouldn’t I at least feel safe with him? Instinctively? He was definitely good looking. I couldn’t imagine it would be too much of a strain to take comfort in those arms going on appearance alone. But something felt so off about him.

  “Like I said, I’m all you’ve got. And there’s only so long I’m willing to wait for your memory to come back.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means. The only good thing I had in my life was you. The only comfort I had at night was you. And now you’re ripping it all away.”

  What a selfish bastard. He should count himself lucky I’d agreed to marry him to begin with.

  I heard him scoot back down on the bed and felt him jerk the covers over his body, ripping them half off me. I didn’t say anything else. I was too busy going through the horrifying idea that he’d put a deadline on my memory retrieval, and if everything didn’t come back... if I wasn’t in love with him, he’d just... take what he felt was owed? We really were back in a pre-civilized world.

  “T-Trevor?”

  “What?”

  “We can’t... I mean... I can’t get pregnant out here without a hospital. Women died in childbirth before hospitals. They sometimes do even with them. But my odds wouldn’t be good without a doctor.”

  “You won’t get pregnant. I got snipped.”

  “W-why?” Didn’t he want kids with me? I mean, don’t most men want kids with their wives? Isn’t that part of the dream of normality?

  “I just did. I didn’t think the world was worth bringing kids into even before it pretty much ended. I’m glad I did it now.”

  Yeah, I could feel his smugness oozing over to my side and hoped it wasn’t contagious.

  I scooted down back onto the bed and stared out into the blackness. I jumped when Trevor’s hand landed on my waist.

  “Relax. I’m not trying anything. I’m sorry for how I’ve been today. I just can’t lose you again.”

  Again? When had he lost me the first time?

  Chapter Two

  I wish I could say the next day felt more hopeful, that the birdsong filling the air awakened a sense of adventure in me, but it didn’t. I woke up sore and tired and still feeling weak. I was beginning to wonder if I’d caught some exotic illness out here, a thought made more terrifying by lack of hospitals.

  Looking out the window of the tower, I wished it was still night so I couldn’t see outside. Much of the park was overgrown with kudzu, the aggressive vines winding and twisting through and around many of the rides and shops.

  It crawled over the concrete, determined to let nothing stop it in its quest for total park domination. I had my doubts that this would be a feasible place to stay for another year. Kudzu is like The Blob. The humidity paired with the kudzu almost guaranteed we were in the south.

  How did I know that?

  Trevor made eggs for breakfast, collected fresh from the chickens roosting in the kiddie rides. There was no milk or orange juice, just water. I had a feeling milk and juice were now rare luxury items as likely to be acquired as a private jet. On the bright side, there was some turkey bacon that had survived in the deep freezer.

  “Are you cutting back the kudzu coming our way?” I asked when we sat down in the kitchen to eat. The vines were the most pressing thought on my mind.

  Trevor gave me an odd look. “I thought you lost your memory.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You were a botanist... before.” Before the world went away. “When we first got here, the kudzu problem was your first concern.”

  And it still was, apparently.

  “Well? Are you? You have to cut that back. Some of those vines are heading right for the castle and could climb over the wall. If they grow strongly enough to the top, they could cover the solar panels. Then we’re fucked even worse.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’d better do it fast. That stuff grows a foot a day. In less than a week it’ll reach the base of the castle. We need the freezers to keep working. Speaking of which, how long will this stuff in the freezer last?”

  “Maybe another six to eight months if we’re lucky. Though I’ve started hunting and freezing local game already, so once this stuff starts going off, we can just start eating what I’m storing up.”

  I didn’t want to think about being here with him another six to eight months. I didn’t want to think about living here for another six to eight days. Even six to eight hours felt awful, like arriving at a menial job you hated, knowing you were trapped for an untenable block of time.

  “A-and the canned goods?”

  “Those have about another year on them. The challenge is going to be getting fruits and vegetables when that runs out. We may have to survive mainly on meat and eggs. Maybe some berries. At least you still seem to have your botany knowledge. It’ll keep us from eating the wrong berries.”

  I had the strange feeling that he was happy some of my knowledge survived primarily because he didn’t want my amnesia cutting into his berry foraging. What a prince.

  “We don’t have running water, right?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “So where do we... you know?”

  Trevor chuckled almost as if he were enjoying this. God, was he that petty that he was still holding some asinine grudge over whatever we’d been fighting about before I fell and lost my memory?

  “We go outside, princess.”

  “Like a bear?”

  “Yep.”

  That sounded fucking terrible. Of all the shitty things so far, this whole going to the bathroom outdoors sounded the absolute worst.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  Sure I would. Just like I’d ge
t used to his charming company.

  I laughed suddenly at the utter bizarreness of being a plant specialist but being freaked out by too much of the great outdoors.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing.” If I told him, I was sure he’d piss all over my tiny inch of mirth. I was convinced I would have to carefully guard any bit of joy I could find, or Trevor might overtake it like the kudzu outside.

  After breakfast, Trevor washed the dishes then lowered the drawbridge so I could get out of the castle. He didn’t follow me. After I took care of bear business, I wandered the park.

  Kudzu crept over everything. Statuary was broken with a stone limb here, a random nose there. Strong storms had come through, I could tell from the slant of things, the uprooted bushes and smaller trees, and the way they leaned. I took a closer look at the trees. With the Kudzu and humidity, definitely the south. But there were a few palms as well.

  I bent to take a handful of dirt in a spot where the sidewalk had broken apart. The texture was a bit sandy. Could we be near an ocean? Not near enough to smell the salt, but hurricanes definitely could have blown through.

  If storms had blown through, how long ago? It must have been before the world ended unless we had the luckiest set of solar panels in the world. And how long had it taken for the well water to be okay again? If it even had been harmed. I wasn’t sure about that. I grasped for information just outside my supposed specialty to no avail. What I wouldn’t give for an Internet connection and more information right about now.

  Trevor hadn’t exactly been the most forthcoming tour guide. Hell, I didn’t even know what he’d done for a living before the solar flares.

  As I moved farther from the castle, I could see shop windows had been broken, and on the main strip at least some looting had taken place. It was easy enough to see the bare walls and shelves through the gaping holes in the glass.

  Maybe the drawbridge of the castle had been up when they came, and it hadn’t been worth it to try to scale the walls. Maybe that was how Trevor and I had found such a livable environment amongst these modern ruins.

  On one wall near an arcade, with what looked like a fortune teller’s tent, someone had spray painted something about the fortune teller being dead and her services no longer being needed. It sounded like song lyrics. I was sure it was song lyrics. I strained to try to pick out a memory of the song in my head, a melody, more lyrics, anything, but everything was a blank. Maybe it was just clever, if not morbid, graffiti. Just because it rhymed, didn’t make it a song. Maybe it was some kind of street poetry.

  Many of the rides already showed signs of rust. A few of them looked as if they’d been beaten with baseball bats—some hopeless youth taking out aggression at the world for not staying the way it was supposed to, maybe? I wished they’d left the bats so I could take a few swings. It would have been cathartic.

  A wooden cut out of a man welcoming people to the park had been painted over so that he looked like a monster—a ghoul or a vampire or a zombie. It was hard to tell which one they had been going for. Covering the sign in black spray paint were the words: “Abandon all hope.”

  What a cheery place to live. Somehow I couldn’t imagine any version of myself that could have ever been excited about this. And if I had been, God, how bad had my living conditions been before we found this place?

  As I reached the end of Main Street, the park began to branch into different themed areas. On my right was a giant vampire head, his mouth wide open to form a door. Guests were meant to walk right in between those huge fangs to get to... above his head was a sign that once lit up with individual letters. It said “unhouse”. A large F was on the ground near a cluster of wildflowers that grew in abundance throughout the park.

  Not my kind of fun. Or “un” as the kids were calling it now.

  Just past the fun house, haunted house, and creepy clown-themed rides and stores, were the kiddie rides. The chickens started clucking as I approached. A few of the hens sat on nests, while others pecked at the bugs and worms through large cracks in the sidewalk. A rooster gave me an aggressive stare as if to say he’d peck out my eyeballs to keep his harem intact.

  I held up my hands to let him know I had no intentions toward his girls and wondered if such a gesture even translated across species. How had Trevor managed to get the eggs with that rooster lurking about? I backed away slowly until he lost interest in me and went back to eating.

  “Oww, Fuck!” I gripped the side of the kiddie ride as a sharp low abdominal cramp hit me. Oh shit. My period. What was I going to do about that? What had I been doing about that? I was too embarrassed to bring it up with Trevor. It didn’t matter if he was my husband. I didn’t know him.

  I was relieved at least to have a passingly plausible explanation for my feelings of weakness. Maybe it was just hormones. And I was sure the heat and humidity weren’t helping matters.

  As I wandered the park, an idea hit me, and I went in search of a ladies’ room. I shrieked when a long slinky rodent zipped past me inside the first bathroom I came to. Of course creatures would be nesting in here. But on the wall was just what I expected: one of those machines with feminine hygiene products. Fantastic.

  The machines were intact, so unless someone wandering past had a bunch of quarters on them, I might be in luck. I took apart the pipe on one of the sinks and used it to break into the machine. It was a lot more difficult than I expected, especially given how the metal box on the wall was rusting out.

  When it finally broke, feminine care products rained out like candy from a piñata. I gathered everything that had spilled out like I had just found a hoard of gold and continued on my way. I stopped in one of the gift shops. Looted. Almost picked clean.

  Whoever had been in the park before us must have been guys or the tampons would have already been raided. Despite the shop being savaged, I found a large shopping bag behind the register. I put my bounty from the bathroom machine into the bag then went and collected everything out of the other ladies’ rooms. A few of the machines were running low or empty but most were still full.

  When I got back, Trevor was in the tower reading a book. “Find anything interesting?” he asked, indicating my bag as if I’d just been out shopping or something.

  “More creepy than interesting,” I said. I wasn’t willing to get into a discussion about my hoarding. I took the bag to the bathroom and stashed it under the sink and locked the bathroom door. I was right, my period had started. I quickly took care of things and went back out into the main suite where Trevor sat with a curious expression on his face.

  There was no way I was talking about this directly, but I did need information. What I’d collected would last several months, but I was sure there had to be a storeroom somewhere, probably here in the castle. If it was in the castle, I was set and could worry about what happened when that ran out way in the future.

  “Umm, Trevor?”

  He looked up from his book. “Yes, dear?”

  I wished he wouldn’t call me that, but I let it go. “So, I know we don’t have running water, but surely if there’s a stock room in the castle, we have soap and shampoo at least.”

  He seemed almost disappointed that I’d figured that out. What an asshole.

  “Yeah, there’s a stock room on the second floor. Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No. I’ve got it, thanks,” I said.

  He shrugged and went back to reading.

  When I reached the second floor, I found the stock room hidden away at the end of a hallway—something I’d overlooked in my previous exploration because it was so nondescript. I let out a relieved sigh when I discovered the door was unlocked. Inside was a wondrous bounty of little hotel soaps and shampoos, towels, toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning products, and... jackpot... feminine protection. Endless boxes of pads and tampons. It was the happiest I’d been since waking up in that pirate ship. These were things that made me feel halfway civilized.

  I didn’t bother r
elocating any of it up to the tower. It was enough that I knew it was there. And with the drawbridge coming up each night, I didn’t have to worry someone would wander in and take anything. I was, somehow disturbed Trevor hadn’t already shown me this stuff. Wouldn’t he realize how important soap and shampoo and all the rest would be to me?

  Didn’t he care?

  I went back up to the tower.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Where’d you get a book?” I asked. I’d been preoccupied before but now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t imagine Trevor had traveled with books while the world was dying. And if he had, he’d probably read it so many times he could have it memorized by now.

  “There were a whole bunch of them in the office below us when we got here. We relocated them to the cabinet in the entertainment center. Check the side without the DVDs. You might like some of them. And without your memory, it’s all new again.”

  “Yeah, thrilling. You’re such a silver lining kind of guy.”

  Trevor frowned. “Are you going to be like this forever?”

  “Like what?”

  “Before you had that stupid fall you were optimistic, acclimating to our life. Things were good.”

  I wrinkled my nose at that. “They were so good that we had a huge fight before the accident?”

  A disturbing thought occurred to me. What if I hadn’t fallen at all? What if he’d pushed me? What if he’d tried to kill me during the fight? It would explain why he didn’t seem too upset about my memory loss.

  Trevor slammed his book shut and stalked out of the suite, leaving me alone in the tower. I was hungry, but I was also exhausted, and I didn’t want to run into him again for a while, so I lay down on the bed for a nap.

  I woke to find Trevor standing over me with a look I couldn’t quite translate into a coherent emotional state. Anticipatory maybe?

  “I made you some dinner.”

  “O-okay.” Had he poisoned it? Would this be his second murder attempt? He looked a bit too eager.