Forget Yourself

by Redfern Jon Barrett

  So Jay’s hut had become a casino and he a casinoer—that was his word.

  Everyone wanted to play. Everyone had gathered at once, disobeying written rules and rushing to the land of the moderates, desperate to play and drink. Crowds milled about the deformed huts, those better-off not even noticing the ruin surrounding them.

  Everyone had gone to the land of the moderates. For that afternoon the rules had been broken. I’d felt cheated. They had robbed me of my transgression, of sneaking in mid-night to this area, of lifting fabric and peering into darkness.

  As luck would have it, as chance would have it, that very hut I had found was Jay’s hut. That very hut was to be the casino. Everyone had gathered there, stealing my crime.

  The least devised a system: everyone would get to play, but only on weeks when there was alcohol. First would go the least, then the minors, and so on and so on.

  The crowd dispersed. Everyone had talked. Tanned seemed thoughtful, whilst Burberry smiled and smiled.

  Tanned was the first I had spoken to. I had scanned the crowd for familiarity. Of course I’d found him.

  “Tanned.”

  “Blondee.”

  “Well.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What do you think about this? Is this memory real?” I made to poke him in his side, but remembered Burberry.

  “It would seem so.”

  “Do you remember drinking?”

  He just looked at me. Of course not. No-one remembered drinking. It would have been in the book. We only had the flat imprint of alcohol. I had seen the bottles, just for a moment. They were grimy and old.

  “Blondee,” a flash of a smile.

  “Burberry.”

  “Isn’t this fantastic?” An arm around Tanned.

  “I’m not sure what to make of it. He doesn’t seem too enthusiastic.” I pointed to her lover.

  “He’s probably just stunned.” Smile smile smile. I couldn’t help myself and grinned in return.

  “Frederick,” I greeted his slender form from behind. He spun to face me.

  “Blon—Blondee.”

  “I was just talking to Tanned and Burberry. They’re minors, they live near me.”

  Silence.

  “So what do you think about this, Frederick? I’ve never seen Jay before.”

  “He’s—he’s a nice—he’s an attractive guy.”

  “I suppose,” I uttered. Pilsner was a few steps away. “Excuse me a moment, Frederick.”

  “No problem.”

  I thought Pilsner hadn’t seen me. I stepped behind him. He whirled round to meet my face.

  “Blondee.”

  “Pilsner.”

  “Marvellous, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose—well yes, it is. People seem excited about it.” I glanced over to Burberry. She was still smiling.

  “Well I’ll be in there like a shot, don’t you worry. This is a turn up for the books.”

  A turn-up for the books—miscellaneous phrase. Something went well unexpectedly.

  Page 237. The least knew the book well. They had the most time with it.

  “So when will the first session be?” I asked Pilsner.

  “Well it’ll be soon Blondee, you can be sure of that. It seems that Bacardi has waited long enough.” I wasn’t even sure what type of alcohol Bacardi was. What types were there?

  “Why have we only just had some now? Will we receive more?”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that. We must have done something right, Blondee.”

  The back of Ketamine’s head had flashed amongst the throng.

  So there we were, Jay and myself and two others. We were strewn about the floor of Jay’s canvas tent, a green-blue cloth between us, carrying both rations and game. This was where the Bacardi was served. There was a pile of sick in the corner.

  I had felt dizzy and warm but the sensation was evaporating. Jay looked my age (or what I presumed my age to be) and was attractive, as Frederick had said. He had auburn hair, auburn stubble, and well-proportioned features. His shirt was open and every now and then he exposed a flicker of pale nipple. He was also drunk and clearly had been for the past several days.

  The other two had introduced themselves: Gut and Green. Gut had a small beard and small round belly. Green had a bigger beard and no belly. I had seen them a few times at the fire tap.

  “Bluey, it’s your turn.” Jay pointed at me, unable to keep his hand still, his eyes rolling. Green glanced at Gut and giggled to himself. “Don’ laugh at her,” Jay slurred. Both Green and Gut sniggered.

  I rolled the dice. 67. I handed them to Green.

  “Right, right, now hand ‘em, hand ‘em over to,” Jay paused for a moment, trying to gather a lost name, “hand ‘em to him.” Green already held them in his open palm.

  “I just did, I just handed—” I started.

  “Look, don’, don’t argue just give him the dice.”

  Green and I looked at one another. I handed him empty air. We both laughed.

  “Can I have another drink?” Gut asked, shooting me a stay-away look and motioned to the bottle between Jay’s legs.

  “You may have one,” Jay replied. He sloshed the milky liquid unevenly into chipped mugs and wrapped his lips around the bottle, a trickle dribbling down his neck and over his chest. He placed the bottle to his side and slumped backwards, his eyes closed.

  “Are you all right?” Green asked.

  “He’s not moving.”

  “Is he breathing?”

  At that moment Jay snorted and began breathing deeply.

  “I suppose that’s it for the day,” Green said, peering at Jay’s empty expression.

  “No point wasting this,” Gut uttered, picking up the bottle, which was still a third full.

  “Can we?” Green asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Gut replied, heaving himself up and feeling for the flap of fabric which was the exit.

  “Can I have some?” I asked.

  Gut sighed and, with an icy look, poured a mouthful into my mug.

  “Until next time,” Green said. He gathered the rations they had brought into a bag and threw it over his shoulder.

  “Let’s just go,” Gut’s voice hissed from outside the hut.

  “Bye you two. Green. Gut.”

  I downed the contents of the mug with a swallow and a shudder. Jay was scratching his cheek vigorously, as though he was trying to remove a mask but couldn’t find where it began and his face ended. I pulled myself up, gathered my food into my sack and stepped into the warm air of the evening.

  This was my chance to look again. No-one could steal this from me—and if they asked I would say I was drunk. Still, it would be safest to wait, wait until night fell. Day and night, the only recognisable cycle in the world. I clambered back into the tent-hut, amidst heavy air being drawn in and out by Jay’s deep breathing. I set down my bag and waited, watching his eyes flicker behind thin skin. Red marks were etched along his jawbone.

  I had spent days avoiding the thought of her, her hair, her face when sleeping. Alone and sitting in fading light the thoughts returned, storming into my mind, angry that I had neglected them. I had to distract myself. I leant over the dreaming man, feeling the heureeeeeeur—heureeeeeeur of his breath on my cheek. Already it was stale. I leant back, watching his chest rise and fall, pulling his shirt back a little and examining it more fully. His skin was smooth and near-white, younger than his face. His only hair sprouted in red flecks around his nipples. I slumped to one arm and rested my head on his stomach, listening to the soft gurgle of shit in intestines. The fabric of the hut changed with the light.

  What was I going to look for? Was it her? If I saw her I could apologise. In the dark. Uninvited. No, I just wanted to see how she lived, her new-new life. Perhaps I even wanted to explore, to wander these half-formed homes and think about how things would have been had my nose been a little longer, or fingers, or whatever it was which made someone recognisable as a moderate criminal. What had
Jay done? I had heard someone mention his crime—moderate … moderate-disruption. That didn’t exactly have to change with his new job.

  It was dark before I decided it was safe to go. My stomach tensed as I sat up, sharp nails running beneath my skin. They spread up my arm as I pulled my bag over my shoulder, then down over my back. The air outside was colder than it had been, and prickles rode the surface of my body in rough waves.

  I headed onwards. The ground scattered and crunched with every kick of a step. It was gravel—how had I not noticed before? It must have spread over this whole corner. Each step felt as though I were crushing a dozen insects, the only noise the scrunch-scrunch sound of my feet. I passed a tree which prodded through and brushed my hair delicately with brittle bones of bark. A metre of so behind the tree was another hut, this one also made with skin-like fabric. I brought my ear close.

  Each hut was different—the first two were formed of canvas but the next were of broken chipboard, or sheets of plastic, or any number of furniture left over from rations. Some were silent, some cradled soft voices, others showcased violent rows. Some smelled of the air around them, some of paint, or the sweat of hefty sex.

  A sliver of a breeze cut through my clothes, cold fingers working their way around me, shocking and unexpected. The breeze grew quickly, carrying away the heavy air and the smell of myself. I drifted through, a rush and whistle filling my ears. The claw-handed trees swayed a little, chips of gravel skipped about my feet. Everything had been so still and heavy and dead, and now it jigged to life, awakening with a dance. I passed a wire chain fence, criss-crossed into diamond-shapes, the division between the lands of the moderate and the very worst, the land of the severes. I didn’t look beyond it.

  In the distance was the far wall, the concrete border of the world. A dull ache spread through my head and I placed my hand to it. It felt different, it was smoother here.

  Gravel crunched behind me.

  I pressed my face to the smooth wall, rubbing my cheek against its bulk, which was always cool, even on this side. I poked out the chilled gravel like a dead tree.

  Another crunch.

  And again.

  And again.

  Whoever it was stood behind me, watching my secret embrace. I willed them away.

  “Um. Hum. Blondee?”

  So I was caught. If I became a moderate would I also no longer be a thief? I’d probably be disruptive instead, this sort of thing would probably—

  “Blond—Blondee?”

  I kept my face to the wall. “Yes?”

  “Blondee,” the voice wouldn’t go away unless I turned around. I spun to

  face it.

  “Frederick.”

  “What are you doing here?” Frederick looked confused. Twisted poles of metal dangled from his hands.

  “I don’t know. I wanted to see what it was like.”

  “Ah. Oh. I can understand.” He looked no different than usual, though his shirt was draped around his shoulders, hair plastered around his chest, lean with the hint of a belly.

  I stood and looked at him. He looked away, first up at the wall behind me, then to the sky, then to my right, his left.

  “Are you going to tell anyone I was here?”

  “No. I don’t think so—I don’t know why I would.” His eyes returned to me. “Do you like coming here?”

  I was thrown by the question. Answers darted back and forth, none of them escaping my mouth. I forced one through my lips. “It makes a change.”

  “Well come with me next time. We can go somewhere else if you like.” He stepped forward and pressed me into a hug. He was only the second person whose body I had felt against my own.

  He smelled like beetroot.

  We left in different directions. All was silent through the moderate corner, as well as at the courtyard. As I got nearer my hut, however, a commotion grew. The rest of the minors were crowded around. People were scattered, in ones and pairs. Why were they at my hut? My skin prickled.

  Wait—they were facing away, they faced the hut opposite mine. Burberry and Tanned stood there, hushing words into each other’s ears. The same rotted stench filled the air.

  “Burberry, Tanned.”

  “Blondee.” They both uttered my name in a half-hush.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Where were you?” Tanned asked.

  “At the courtyard. What’s happening?”

  “The lady in the hut across from yours, she’s dead.”

  “Oh.”

  So that’s what the smell was.

  AND WHAT WAS LIFE like at the start of the world?

  Everyone knows that.

  I know it better, though, because I knew Tie, and he would have known what the start of the world was really like because he’d been there. He’d given me bits of the story and I’ve placed them atop the tale everyone knows, building it up, something like that. Making it three-dimensional.

  And maybe it’s wrong to call it the start of the world. The world was always there, as far as we can know. The walls, the ground with its grit and grass and gravel. The sky. But it was the start of us in the world. When the first of us arrived here.

  There was Pilsner. There was Tie. There were two others, whose names are no longer important and who are no longer with us. They awoke in a patch of dry brittle ground on a scorch-hot day. Pilsner was the first awake. He was naked with black writing scrawled down his side. Pilsner. He looked at the others and wondered if he knew them. Why were they naked? One wore a tie around his wrist. Had he hit his head? He didn’t remember anything, not anything about himself. He knew what a tree was and he knew rivers and femurs and all about atoms, but not his name, or his age, or who his cock had last been inside. Or whose cock had last been inside him.

  And the others woke up.

  And the others remembered nothing. They remembered some things and they listed them. They knew of Presidents and parks and agriculture. But they didn’t know of any Presidents, or parks, and they didn’t remember any particular farms.

  They decided to walk, to find cities or leaders or farms. They walked in one direction, a tap here or there, with little logos of fire uncanny and familiar, brushing past the sway of trees and the crunch of the ground, until they hit a wall. They walked in another direction, over tufts of grass and shrubs, until they hit a wall. They walked again, slewing through sand and hot sun until they hit a wall. One last time they passed scattered bricks and a huge pile of rubbish and one final wall.

  And they fought.

  They fought a lot, about which of them had placed them there, which was a spy, whose fault it was.

  Eventually spats and spots of rain petered down and pelted them until they stopped fighting. They had to make a shelter. They found the pile of debris and collected planks, and supports, and corrugated iron. They spent their first night in a makeshift shack.

  There were the four of them, Pilsner and Tie and a woman and someone who could have been man or woman and is now lost in time. They huddled together in the shack they had built together and they cried together. They didn’t know it, but they were doing for the first time what everyone would do when they first arrived, one by one. They cried for the lives they knew they had lost. Happy or sad, rich or shit-poor, they knew they had lost something. It didn’t take them long to realise this was punishment: they had done something wrong and this was punishment. What else could it be, really? Tie had said it, after staring at the wall for hours and hours. Once said it was truth. That was that. This was punishment.

  They huddled the night away together, exhausted. They woke up dark and heavy and thirsty, so went to the tap in the centre of the world, to the tap that would give them water. Each had drunk their fill before they noticed the box. It was metal and it was large, taller than each of them, taller than everyone in the world. It had a door and inside, inside they found food and drink and wood and more metal and plastic and tiles and this and that. They ate and drank and laughed. Whatever their crime it can�
��t have been so bad.

  When they were full they talked more. What else was there to do? They talked about punishment. What were their crimes? The woman pointed to Tie and told him his was sexual.

  “What makes you say that? Why would you say that?”

  “I don’t know, I honestly don’t know, it just feels right.”

  So his crime was sexual, though no crime was worse than any other, and they set about the rest of themselves. Pilsner’s was disruptive, the woman’s was violence, and the other’s was theft. Those just felt right, but they could find reasons if they tried. Noses, fingers, eyes. Plenty of reasons. No crime was worse than any other, they were all in the same boat, and no-one need feel ashamed, no more than anyone else.

  And so they lived and worked together, eating and shitting and crying and sleeping and building. They added bit-bit-bit to their shack, from the pile of treasure they had found and the rations every so-many-days. That was their world and they would live in it together and perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

  They’d found the book and the first memory all on the same day. Clearing away bits of homes and furniture from the pile Pilsner found the book, bound and blue and beautiful. It was full of clean white pages. It was fresh and new, the only fresh and new thing in the whole world.

  He took it back to the palace they had made for themselves and the woman and the other stared at it. Oooh. Oooooh. It’s so—new. They placed it in the centre of their home and they set about building it a table.

  Tie rushed in, full of sweat and panted breath. He had run back. He had run back because he had remembered something. He had a memory, a real memory from the world outside. They listened and they opened a page in the book which felt right, and they wrote the memory down with a shard of pencil.

  And every now and then memories would strike them hard about the brain and they would record it in the book. Memories formed around memories and clumped together in sections, written in pen and pencil.

  This would help us live our lives. We could live as we did before we slept and forgot everything. We could live properly.