Tabula Rasa

by Kitty Thomas

  I scanned further down the paper. “Fluent in French. Spent several semesters in Paris as an undergrad.” Maybe someone in France gave a shit about me.

  I glanced back at the DVD and slid it out of the plastic. I put it in the player and settled back on the sofa. It was a French film. It must have been a version of the film made specifically for a French audience because there were no subtitles or dubbing.

  But I understood all the dialogue.

  I wasn’t sure if Shannon had chosen a creepy foreboding movie on purpose or if it was just difficult to find a French film that didn’t fit that mold, but I nearly leaped off the sofa when Shannon came down the stairs during an intense scene. It didn’t help that he moved as stealthily as the cat did.

  He went to the kitchen for a glass of milk and then came back out into the living area. He wore pale gray pajama pants that showcased his tan and no shirt. The white cat jumped down off the chair and took the opportunity to weave in and out of his legs, leaving her scent on him. She stared at me pointedly while she did it. As if I were going to rush over there and fight for cuddle privileges with perhaps the least cuddly person in the world.

  “Est-ce que tu t’es rendu à l’histoire du chien dans la scène du dîner?”, Shannon said.

  “Ne me gâche pas tout.” Even though I knew I understood French, it still shocked me when I spoke it. Or did it shock me that Shannon spoke it? Maybe he’d just learned the one phrase. But his accent and enunciation were impeccable.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Have you read all of the file yet?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to watch the DVD, and then I got sucked in.”

  He nodded. “It’s a good film. You should read the rest of the file. I think this confirms a theory I had.”

  “And what theory was that?” I asked, trying not to look too eager.

  “You’ve clearly got retrograde amnesia, but your skills and general knowledge seem to be intact, just not specific autobiographical memories. That’s generally how it works. So you’ll find you know things but you won’t know how you know them. Like with the French.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever get my memories back?”

  Shannon shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. But I did a lot of research on the condition when I was collecting information. Realistically, probably not. If you’ve gone this long with memory loss this severe, you’re probably stuck with it. Anything’s possible, but this isn’t a movie.”

  A part of me had been living in fear of memory recall. I’m not sure why. I’d also equally been harboring the fear that my memories wouldn’t come back but someone else would show up claiming to be a husband or a friend or a relative and feed me bullshit stories that weren’t real, or else feed me real stories that still smelled like bullshit. I worried that over time I would hear stories about myself so much that I would start to believe them and start to imagine them. Maybe I would even reconstruct them in my mind and think they were true memories.

  If there was little hope for recovery, I was glad Shannon had spared me the police and media circus. Surely someone real or fake would have shown up claiming to know all about me, and then it would just be Trevor all over again, only without the apocalyptic backdrop.

  “Why didn’t anybody call about me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone did. But the authorities only wanted family—someone who could legally take responsibility for you. You know how the hospitals are. They weren’t going to just send you home with any random person who knew you for five minutes in some vague capacity.”

  I looked back down at the papers. Shannon had discovered my mom was a single mother who had me young and had died from complications of the flu a few years ago.

  “If I was raised by a single mother, how did I live without a job and have no student debt?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting. You have or had a mysterious benefactor. I think it’s your father. I think he set you up for life to avoid a scandal. That makes him a powerful politician or someone famous whose brand would be damaged by an illegitimate child. Whoever it was is as much of a professional as me because the trail runs cold.”

  “He didn’t call when my face was all over TV, though. Did he not recognize me?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he recognized you, and equally sure he considered his problems over, with the woman he knocked up dead and the inconvenient child he didn’t want no longer a problem.”

  I wondered if I’d known who my father was before the amnesia.

  “Do you remember anything from your childhood at all?” Shannon asked.

  “I... I’m not sure.” Honestly, at this point I wasn’t even sure what a memory felt like. At least not an old one. The whole concept seemed too wispy to nail down into anything solid. I did occasionally get a few images, bits of conversation and activity. It could be from my childhood. It definitely wasn’t anything recent.

  “The farther back the memory loss goes, the more serious the case. Recent memories are lost first.”

  So even if I remembered stuff from my childhood, it didn’t mean I’d remember everything or anything else.

  “How much money do I have?”

  “A lot,” Shannon said. “More than me. And I’m certainly not uncomfortable.”

  I stared at him for a good long moment, wondering if he’d idly thought of killing me and draining my bank accounts. Surely, if he could find out this much about me, he could find out how to gain access to my money once I was out of the way. Why hadn’t Trevor done that?

  But I think I knew. Those photos he kept in his wallet told me everything. I had to have dated him and then rejected him. And what he’d wanted more than my money was to force a relationship with me. When I woke without my memory, maybe he’d thought if he could just isolate me enough, make me depend on him enough... he might have a chance with me.

  It sounded crazy-vain for me to think this way, but he’d obviously been obsessed. What else would explain the lies he’d concocted? In his fantasy, I was his wife and depended solely on him for everything. And he’d found a way to make it happen. I don’t think he cared even a little bit about my money, or maybe he’d been planning for us to live off it indefinitely. Maybe that was how he was getting by just fine and stocking the deep freezer without his job at the hospital.

  “If you know how much money I have, does that mean you’ve been in my accounts somehow?” I didn’t even want to think about how he might have accomplished this, but I had every confidence Shannon was capable of figuring it out.

  He gave me one of his patented calm, assessing looks. “I have.”

  “Had there been recent withdrawals?”

  His eyes widened as if surprised I wasn’t a complete idiot. “I’m impressed. Yes, Trevor gained access to your accounts. He had your cards and PIN numbers. I used them to get in. He’d been leeching off your money.”

  “How much did he take?” I didn’t even know how much I had. More than Shannon. But what did that even mean? I had no idea how much Shannon had, but I was sure he had a lot more than it appeared to the casual passerby.

  “Not as much as I would expect. I think he was just living off you since he fled his job.”

  I wondered even more now about what Trevor’s end game had been. Surely he hadn’t thought we could live in an abandoned theme park forever. And even if we could temporarily, he’d been a fugitive, so it wasn’t as if he’d roamed freely without fear. Was there a second improbable location he’d planned for us? How would he have kept the ruse going? Or was he deluded enough to think he could win my love and then confess the truth to me, and we’d go off somewhere happily into the sunset? Was that why he’d tried to confirm that I loved him the night Shannon shot him? Had he thought he could move us to the confession and the next phase of his plan?

  But... I had money. At least that was something.

  “So I can pay you back now. For all the clothes and food and everything.”

  “I don’t need your money,” Shannon said.

 
“I didn’t say you needed it. I just... you should be compensated for... for everything.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  Shannon took his empty glass to the kitchen and went back upstairs. The cat followed him and then yowled when he shut her out of the bedroom.

  However much he might be attached to the animal, it didn’t extend to bedroom privileges. She sulked back down the stairs, gave me a look of pure evil as if it were my fault he’d locked her out, then curled up on the chair she’d been in before.

  “Mrrrawr?” she said.

  I might be going crazy but I was half-convinced she wanted to finish watching the movie. Maybe the white cat understood French, too.

  ***

  The following night, we had dinner early. Shannon brought home Chinese take-out. At five minutes til six, he took my box of food away from me, closed it, and calmly placed it in the fridge.

  “What?” I was only halfway finished.

  “It’s almost six.”

  “So?”

  “So, my guests will be arriving any minute. They’re very punctual. You have to go to your room.”

  “But...”

  “You can finish dinner when they leave.” Shannon never allowed food out of the kitchen for any reason. He’d said something about attracting bugs—as if bugs got together and conspired to find the houses where people ate in more than one room.

  “I still don’t understand why I can’t just...”

  Shannon loomed over me and pointed upstairs.

  “Okay! When will the party be over?”

  “I don’t know. Late. Go. Don’t come out of your room. And keep your door locked.”

  What the hell?

  But I didn’t fight him on it. I went upstairs as instructed and locked my door. I heard people come in, but I didn’t hear any growing noise or loud music. It seemed pretty quiet for a party. What the hell was going on down there? Were they playing Scrabble? Was it a hit man mixer? Very low key. Cocktails. Discussion of strategy—like best body disposal techniques—while Schubert played in the background.

  By nine o’clock, Shannon hadn’t come up to tell me I was free to go downstairs, and I was getting hungry again. I’d only had half my dinner after all. Finally, I just decided fuck it. I was hungry, and whatever was happening downstairs, it couldn’t be worse than all the things I was imagining might be going on.

  I unlocked the door and took a peek down the hallway. Nobody up here. Except the white cat. She sat just outside my door giving me that look again. Was she my guard cat? Would she report to Shannon that I’d been bad? I kind of wanted to kick her down the stairs. I was convinced she was the most disagreeable animal in the world with everyone except for Shannon. And I think he liked that about her.

  As I started toward the stairs, she began a loud howling meow as if she were in heat. It sounded like she was sending out her own emergency broadcast signal.

  “Will you shut up?” I hissed back at her. This cat definitely wanted me dead.

  The main level was silent as well. Some party. Maybe they’d relocated to somebody else’s house, and Shannon hadn’t bothered to tell me—or he’d forgotten about me. I still couldn’t fathom what he’d even do at a party besides brood near the punch bowl. He just didn’t seem like the social butterfly sort. As time had passed, it seemed increasingly ludicrous that he had friends to explore abandoned theme parks with, let alone to throw parties for.

  I went to the kitchen and heated the rest of my lo mein and chicken and vegetables and sat at the table. As I ate, I kind of faintly heard—but really more felt—the throbbing of music below me. The sound vibrated against my bare feet.

  So Shannon had a basement. I suppose I should be grateful I hadn’t been locked in it. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me that one of those locked doors might lead to a basement level, which made it all the more suspicious that the door remained locked all the time.

  I finished my food and put the cartons in the trash. I’d planned to go back to my room, but I went down the hallway on the main level instead. One of the mystery doors was cracked a fraction of an inch, the music drifting ever so slightly up and out to my ears.

  The temptation was just too great. I had to know what the hell happened at a party this man would host. As soon as I took a peek down the stairs, I discovered I was wrong about yet another thing. Shannon’s elevator did go up to the sex floor.

  The deviant sex floor.

  The basement was a big finished space like an open floor plan apartment. It stretched fully from one end of the house to the other, creating a complete underground level.

  There were maybe thirty or more people downstairs, every single one of them naked. There was no pretense of lingerie or underwear for either the men or the women. But the freaky part about the whole thing was that they all wore masks. Not masquerade masks that just covered your eyes, and not those creepy white masks that made you look like a mannequin, either.

  No, these were the kind of masks you’d wear for Halloween. Maybe it was a costume party, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t Halloween. There were gorilla masks and monster masks and wolf masks and alien masks—even a few freaky cartoon character masks that were way age inappropriate given the circumstances down here. The only requirement seemed to be that the mask had to be full coverage, not one that only hid half the head or face.

  The only thing not going on at the party was oral sex—for obvious mask-related reasons. The guests partner-swapped so fast it nearly gave me whiplash. I couldn’t even begin to guess which one was Shannon. Or was he hiding somewhere watching it all and not participating?

  The rule of the night seemed to be that anyone could fuck anyone—no holds barred—because no one resisted. No one said no, no matter how many people they were passed around to. And the whole thing was utterly and completely anonymous.

  Except for the masks, it was what I imagined an ancient Roman orgy might be like. I thought it must have been the case that if you decided to play at all, you were committed to whatever happened. The idea of complicated consent and negotiations seemed unlikely somehow. It was the same here. It didn’t seem a single person was willing to take no for an answer. If you came downstairs, well, you came downstairs.

  The floor was a dark shiny hardwood. Expensive black leather sex furniture was interspersed throughout the large space as well as a few beds for those who preferred more comfort. There was spanking and whipping going on in the middle of the large space and a few women and one man being led around on leashes. There were three different couples fucking on one bed, and more lined against the walls like an assembly line of depravity.

  I turned to go back upstairs, but a hand ensnared my wrist. “Where do you think you’re going, lovely? You aren’t following the dress code. I think we need to punish you for that.” The voice didn’t belong to Shannon.

  I tried to pull away, still thinking I could reason my way out of this. “Let me go. I have to go back upstairs.”

  “Shannon didn’t tell us he had a girlfriend. Do you just let your boyfriend fuck whoever he wants? That’s generous. Does he allow you the same freedoms? I can’t imagine him being so gracious with you.” His hand moved to the button on my jeans.

  I tried to ease out of the situation again, but he wasn’t having it. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I somehow knew he planned to take Shannon’s girlfriend right here on the carpeted stairs. I looked back again at the orgy going on only a few yards away, still wondering which one was Shannon. Had he spotted me yet?

  I wanted to scream for help, but I was both afraid someone might recognize me even with my new look and even more afraid to draw Shannon’s attention. Maybe I could stand to just let this guy do his thing and then slip back upstairs. It wasn’t as if Shannon hadn’t told me to stay in my room and keep my door locked. Even as I did it, I couldn’t believe I was trying to rationalize the situation—as if it would be my fault this guy couldn’t process the word no.

  The stranger sh
oved me down on the black carpeted stairs and stripped me down so fast I couldn’t believe it had already happened. My clothes lay in a chaotic pile near my feet. I had barely enough time to try to wrap my head around anything that was going on and whether or not I thought I could handle it better than the alternatives.

  His heavy weight settled on top of me, and I freaked out and screamed. I couldn’t just let it happen. Shannon was going to kill me for breaking his rules and coming down here, but I’d rather Shannon kill me than this guy fuck me. I had such messed-up priorities.

  Nobody paid attention to my cries. Maybe they thought my scream was role play. Or maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe they were locked into their own fantasies at the moment and didn’t feel like dealing with someone else’s traumatic reality. After all, that wasn’t part of the fantasy orgy package. I was sure they’d all been given an intense list of rules and that they all knew coming down those stairs was consent... to anything with anyone. But the only rule I’d been issued was to stay away.

  While I processed these thoughts and tried not to think about what was about to happen, the stranger was ripped off me. A second later, a guy in a gorilla mask had him by the throat against the wall. “Did she look like someone here for you to play with?” Shannon shouted.

  “N-no.”

  “She’s off-limits!” He turned back to the rest of the guests, most of whom were slowly coming out of the orgy fog to notice the commotion. “Everybody get the fuck out! Party’s over!”

  I pressed my clothes against me and slowly backed up the stairs.

  “Not you!” Shannon said, eyes blazing with fury from behind the mask.

  I froze where I was. He’d never yelled. I’d never heard him yell before tonight. He was calm and methodical. I hadn’t been totally sure he had the emotional range to yell. But tonight there was a new and very different energy about him.

  Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the reality of naked Shannon. To say he was sculpted was an understatement. I’d had some vague idea of what he must look like under his utilitarian black clothing, but the briefly flitting imagination didn’t do it justice. I looked away from his quite substantial erection, my face flaming.