Forget Yourself

by Redfern Jon Barrett

  And they tried. That was all you could expect, really, to try.

  Rations after rations and rations. Memories here and there, picked out from broken tiles and dirty fabric and plastic and planks of wood. Days were hot and cold, snow and rain fell amongst sun and heat-shivers.

  One day there were bodies alongside the rations. They were naked and sleeping.

  Why where they there? Six, there were six of them. They lay sweating and sleeping. One was wearing boxers: ‘Frederick’ across the band. He was so young. Another had a broken watch; one had ginger hair. That one had hair all about his shoulders. Straight away they could tell what they had done—violence, theft, theft, disruption, sexual. But that last one—something about him. Something as he awoke, something in his eyes. What he had done was slightly worse. It must have been worse. Probably not too bad, but worse all the same. It was violence, he had hurt someone. Something about the size of his hands.

  They all awoke and cried and were shown the world. The hut was too small to fit ten whole people but there was plenty of wood and plastic. Plenty of metal. So they each built their own. The original hut was for the book.

  But that one, the one whose crime was worse, who had hurt someone worse than anyone else had. Perhaps he should live on the other side of the courtyard. It wasn’t too far away, after all—they’d still see him every day.

  And that was the start of the world.

  IT RAINS. Thunder over the blue tarpaulin. I’m lying down now, staring at the ripples and waves of the plastic. I have mud in my hair. Water flows down into the hole, over my fingers, over my arms.

  My eyes prickle with tears, tears of relief. I enjoy the feeling of them welling in my eyes, flooding over my face.

  These are the last sensations I will have.

  Tomorrow they will belong to someone else.

  I think my last thoughts of Frederick. Secret hours together, sheltered from the world. Long and lazy hours.

  The rain is falling heavier, the tarp beats like a dream.

  Frederick.

  WE EXPLORED TOGETHER, he and I, we explored the land of the moderates. We retraced every step of their gravel-coated land, sneaking and slipping and stopping outside huts to listen to the conversations within. The conversations were simple—happy or angry or sad.

  People talked about rations, people talked about if they were having enough sex, people talked about how hot it was today and how cold yesterday. People talked about how cold it was today and how it looked like it would be wet tomorrow.

  As they talked Frederick and I would crouch or squat, fingers clasped together, or an arm over the other’s shoulder.

  One hut was made of actual skin—skin from a large and hairy animal, brown fur with grey splotches, sewn to another skin of another large creature, this one grey with brown splotches. Frederick had seen it before. He held out his arm to present it to me.

  I asked him what it was made of.

  He didn’t know. The skin had been delivered with the rations long ago, but none of the least had wanted it.

  “I—I was interested in them, even though I didn’t take them—for myself. It was before I was an artist. I waited for a while, but I didn’t—no-one left with them, that I saw.”

  I understood why. It smelled like death. We had enough of that amongst ourselves.

  I expected it to be soft, but it was coarse to the touch, bristly, stiff with the weight of age. We heard someone moving inside.

  I asked him if it was her. He shook his head.

  The next day we found another hut; a pile of soaked, split cushions, furry with mould. It was held up with a series of bars, the large cushions draped over and around them, larger stiffer ones used to form basic walls. No-one lived there, and no-one had wanted the pieces of this failed experiment.

  “The—well, you know they—the severes—they would want them, Blondee.” Frederick put his arm around me, pulling me toward the crook of his neck.

  Were things so bad for them? That they would want these warped and malformed cushions heavy with damp and crawling with insects? It wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

  “They don’t have much, Blondee, they—”

  And I kissed him, running my tongue over his lips, clearing away sad thoughts of the worst of us here, those who had committed terrible crimes and now lived terrible lives. I kissed him and he kissed me in return, his tongue meeting mine, dancing, flicking, plunging.

  I don’t remember who laughed first but we pulled apart, like every time, wiping our mouths. We couldn’t kiss one another seriously. We had comfort but no passion. I put my arm around him, pulling his waist toward me.

  So where did she live?

  He knew where she was. He was hoping I would lose interest, that after a few visits I’d no longer have my strange desire to see the home of Ketamine. It wasn’t that he was angry, it really wasn’t: Frederick seemed below anger, as though he couldn’t reach up for it even if he wanted to. Anger requires expectation, and Frederick seemed to have none of that, not for anything—people or rations or even his artist-pieces.

  I told him it was simply something I needed to do, and then it would be over.

  So he took me there.

  He didn’t tell me beforehand. It was evening and we reached a hut made of planks and rubber and he said, in a low-low voice,

  “This is it.”

  I took some steps backwards, tripping over the heels of my feet. I couldn’t hear her inside.

  “Does it—does it help you, Blondee?” He was curious.

  I didn’t know.

  “It helps,” I said, lying about my certainty. “She’s in a nice enough place.”

  She was a voluntary moderate. She had demoted herself, so of course she would be the first on their list, the lesser bad of the moderately bad. She still had less than if she’d remained with me, and I had more than her—but it was no longer my concern.

  I wanted to leave her something, something more than a lock of my hair, something powerful, something protective. Something to keep her alive.

  I asked Frederick for a moment to myself. He nodded and strolled away, almost beyond sight. I knew he was still watching, but I needed room, not privacy.

  I would give her a circle.

  Tie had told me that he knew a trick—one that would help me.

  I asked if it would help me escape.

  He told me it would, in a manner of speaking.

  I asked him to show me.

  He told me to breathe deeply, evenly, endlessly. He’d taken my hand in his. I’d flinched. He’d waited until my breathing settled into rhythm once more. I’d closed my eyes, the dark patches of colour flickering wildly, then settling, pulsing slowly.

  He told me to point my finger.

  So I did.

  He’d pulled my hand toward the earth, prodding it by proxy, warm and deep. He’d pulled my hand along by the wrist, my finger tearing through the soft ground, on and on, my breathing and heartbeat and mind all steady.

  He’d let go and told me to open my eyes.

  We were in the middle of a circle, scratched through the dirt. He told me to keep my breathing steady. There was nothing but us and the circle, a tiny, peaceful, silent world. Everything was still. The crowded world was us.

  Protection. Tie was gone but he had left me that.

  I closed my eyes and kept my breathing even. The world melted. I pushed my finger into the gravel and drew a large circle around Ketamine’s new hut, end-to-end. This was for her, this would keep her safe. I could let go.

  End-to-end, I pulled my finger out from the ground and I pulled away from her. An arm reached around me. Frederick pressed his nose into my hair.

  After the moderates Frederick had taken me over his own land. At first I argued: to go peak at the moderates was one thing, but to spy on the least? That was too much. But he had convinced me in his slow, stuttered way—the least are not so different, he had said.

  He was wrong.

  First of
all, the opulence of the least houses was overwhelming. My mind couldn’t comprehend the size—each home was three times larger than the courtyard, with windows and sturdy walls and doors in frames. They were lined with elegance itself: held together with nails rather than rope and glue.

  All houses everywhere changed in shape, but there they changed in colour. Some wore pink-and-purple tiles, some were lavished with green paint. Each had a garden, ornaments jutting from the ground and marking a territory. Each garden too was draped in eye-clutching colours: red posts; blue ornaments.

  One had pillars on either side of the front door—front door, Frederick had told me, there was very often more than one door. There were two small windows on either side of either pillar, glass gleaming in the afternoon sun. Frederick stepped to one of the side walls and pressed his ear to it.

  I tugged at his sleeve. We couldn’t listen to them, not in these rich homes, surely? But he folded his arms about my waist and we listened. They were quieter, those voices, muffled by their many walls.

  Here was the second major difference: like the moderates they talked of rations and weather—but they also talked about the book and they talked far more of their neighbours. Frederick had smiled silently the whole time.

  I enjoyed the warmth off his stomach.

  Another house was clad in crimson boards and lined with small trees—living trees which were once scattered all over the world, which had been transported to the land of the minors. Frederick told me that this was Pilsner’s home, one of the largest, one of the most elegant. We peered in through the window.

  It was a palace. I’d had no idea how far it was flung, running backwards and backwards, at minimum the length of fifteen minor huts. In the centre squatted an actual coffee table with four legs. The walls were adorned with torn satin and silk. There were two unbroken mugs and a private water tap, which stood in the very centre of his home, surrounded by a mosaic of colourful chipped tile, proudly wrapped in orange rust. There were chairs, chairs which actually had backs.

  I could see one of the mugs read ‘World’s Best Dad,’ though most of the letters were worn. Why did he need two mugs?

  “Do you live in a place like this, Frederick?”

  He didn’t reply.

  He would come to my triangle hut, but always after it was dark or a little before the light—he would whisper my name through the fabric of my door, and I would whisper his name in return. Now and then he would enter the hut and we would spend time with our arms wrapped around one another, though that was the full extent of it.

  We had spent some days exploring the land of the least before he turned up, a little before light, and said my name. He didn’t enter—instead he asked if I wanted to see something truly new.

  Of course.

  We journeyed out of sight, in and around the backs of huts. He sped slightly, his bare feet kicking soil and sand in small flurries. His feet were burned black on the soles. We wound past more impossibly-large huts before leaving them behind. We came to a tangle of trees and bushes.

  We passed through the scratched embrace of red and green leaves, pushing and shoving forward for space, clawed at, branches black against the dim sky. And there was the far wall of the least land. This was their edge, their limit. As I walked toward the wall I felt water curl about my toes, licking my toenails then up to my ankles. I stumbled and fell, a splash as water rippled around my wrists. My arse was wet.

  “See.”

  The water stretched all the way over to the wall. He swept past me, small waves bobbing about his ankles, then shins, thighs, then his knees. I stood up and followed, watching him disappear from the bottom-up, waist then finally chest, up to the armpits.

  “What is this?”

  “Well, it’s water,” Frederick replied.

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “There’s a pipe. Down there. It’s not big enough to fit through.”

  “Can you drink it?”

  “Would you want to try?”

  I glanced behind.

  “Don’t worry—it’s all fine—no-one ever comes here. And no, I don’t—I just don’t know why.”

  I swept my arms from side to side, enjoying the feeling of wet waves about my limbs, heavy in my clothes, spinning and feeling the slow movements of my liquid body. The water spread out through the fading light, an endless ocean wide and long. Frederick splashed his way back to land.

  The water had a scent, a scent I couldn’t place, one which crawled into my nose and stung my sinuses. I had smelled it before my death sleep, I knew that much. Frederick didn’t seem to notice. He crouched with his back to me, examining the stone-scattered ground by the water. I waded over and knelt next to him, my knee scraping shards of rock.

  “What is it?”

  Sprigs of plants were sprawled and played between his fingers. They were red and green and tiny. I moved away and brought myself to the ground, kicking at the water with my toes.

  “How many memories have you had, Frederick?”

  “Well. I don’t know.”

  “You remembered art.”

  “I did.”

  “Did you remember anything else?”

  “A few things,” he paused as he turned around, still crouching. He leaned his face into mine. I felt each word against my cheek. “I remembered having four meals a day. I remembered people have their hair cut evenly on all sides. I remembered sayings, like ‘Any old iron’ and ‘Don’t eat yellow snow’. I remembered sex, having sex when you broke up with someone—to say goodbye.”

  The last one stung. I slung a scatter of small stones over the water.

  Frederick moved his head into my lap. I placed a pebble on his forehead.

  “Did it all make it into the book?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did everything you remembered make it into the book?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer. I took the pebble from his face and flung it into the water. Chlorine. Where was that word from?

  THE LIGHT WAS STRANGE from the moment the sun rose. It was a heavy bruised colour. I let in a sliver through the curtains. He lay half-dozing, half-awake, propped up against the wall as though it would collapse without him. Now and then he would snort or murmur, his arm resting gently against mine. The window was battered with heavy-falling droplets, falling in short bursts, tinny shots from the sky. I lay half-dozing, half-awake, one foot in the triangle home and the other somewhere else.

  We were both slumped over stickly linoleum. I was careful not to place my hands upon the floor, instead resting one on Frederick’s thigh, the other on my own. Sleep was edging away from me, being absorbed by him, into his young body which was clad in well-sewn green cotton. His breathing grew deeper and heavier as he drew more sleep from me, sucking it in through his mouth and nostrils. Perhaps if he took too much he would sleep forever, and I would be stuck with the weight of a young man on my lino. Perhaps I would have to feed him, move his mouth to chew for him, clean up after him when it came out again...

  He opened his eyes and for a moment they rested on me, before slipping back behind half-closed lids. I ran a finger through his hair then pressed my weight on his thigh to push myself up. He gave a hollow grunt and leant forward, before leaning back into sleep.

  I had slept with no memories. The days were flowing into one another so quickly and smoothly that I thought very little of the stone woman and her stern grimace. What did I even need memories for?

  I went to make breakfast, pulling the plastic tray from under my bed. It was nearly empty—a dice-size block or two of bouillon-butter, slices of green-mottled cheese, firm rye bread, rice. There was little point in preparation and so I piled bread, butter and cheese into my mouth, forcing it down my throat, dry and unsatisfying.

  “Blondee.” Tanned’s voice called through the doorway. He wouldn’t be able to see Frederick, no-one had seen me spending all this time with Frederick. They would have said we were lovers, but we w
eren’t fucking. We were physical, sure enough, but any caress was with arms, torsos, even legs: nothing below the waist, nothing above the thigh. The curtains were ever closed.

  “Blondee.”

  I swallowed as quickly as I could. Frederick didn’t stir.

  “Tanned. I’m coming.”

  “You’d better,” his voice sounded unnatural.

  I stepped outside, the light grazing my eyes. Outside it was more vibrant: even the heat it gave was purple. It felt purple. The dusty grass was tinged with it, the wall was a gentle lilac, our skins dark.

  “Did you ever see the sky like this?” I asked.

  “I just felt like seeing you.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I need to talk.”

  “Is it about Burberry?” I often imagined them as twins.

  Tanned didn’t respond, instead looking upwards, his eyes glinting an alien colour.

  “So what’s up with her?” I tried, “With you and her?”

  With false reluctance he answered.

  In all fairness I tried to concentrate. I tried to force my mind to focus. Tanned and Burberry fought, more often these days than ever, and the fights were usually the same and they were usually banal. Maybe it was just the way couples were, or maybe they really didn’t get along and stayed together so as not to stand out in a world of partners. That was understandable.

  “So what did she say?”

  And Tanned talked about how she had been unreasonable and how he had tried to talk to her and how she would never really understand. And I nodded because it was friendly and fought the urge to glance back at the triangle hut.

  Tanned told me how she had thrown old milk over him.

  I wasn’t unsympathetic, I felt for him. I could deal with the emotion but not the details. They were too familiar. I waited until he had finished talking and placed two of my fingers on his hand, as many as I could get away with. It was some restrained attempt at comfort.

  “Talk to her.”