Forget Yourself

by Redfern Jon Barrett

  “I was thinking about you.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “I was thinking about the severes.”

  “They won’t come.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’ll stay where they are. They won’t come—they won’t change a thing. If I were still around I’d talk to Pilsner about it. When he’s figured out that they’re not even coming, they’ll come and do what they’ll do with you.”

  “Should I be scared or something?”

  “Do you feel scared, my dear?”

  “Not really.”

  My limbs kept jolting, painful shudders like they were forcing themselves awake. My clothes stuck to me. There was no more water. My tongue stuck to the sides of my mouth.

  “Blondee?”

  “Yes, Tie?” I missed the next word.

  “… me Blondee, what do you mean, this is it?”

  “I’m saying goodbye.”

  “You’re taking a long time about it. This isn’t how to go about it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re sounding like her.”

  “Thank you.”

  It hadn’t been light or dark for what must have been days. The sky was caught, in between, unwilling to move one way or the other. I couldn’t remember if it had even last been night or day.

  “What did it feel like, Tie, when you left?”

  There was a sharp silence before he spoke. I could hear the smack of his jowls. “I can’t give you any answer you don’t already know.”

  “Did you feel the same things as her?”

  “I’d imagine so. The thrilling rush of blood, that sort of thing.”

  “I can’t help having to leave you, Tie.”

  “I know that. I know that.”

  “Though you left me first.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well then, I’ll say it, though you never gave me chance that first time. Goodbye, Tie. I hope if you’ve been reborn you’re happy. I mostly hope you haven’t though. I wish I’d known you better, and that you’d stopped all this somehow. I kind of wish I’d felt enough to fuck you. To fuck you and treat you decently. But it never should have mattered, and maybe it wouldn’t have helped anything. Do you think you need to fuck someone to love them? You’d still have left, sooner or later, you wouldn’t have been able to help it. I missed you, I really did, but who could I have told? You’ve gone again, I can feel it, but I’ll carry on if it’s all the same to you. I wish you’d had the guts to tell me what was going on, or tell me their name. I wish you’d told me more about the start of the world, or why you thought we were here. As long as I’m Blondee I’ll hate you for leaving.

  “He’s here, Pilsner’s here and I have to go, but once again you’ve left first. Bye then, Tie.”

  Pilsner looked at the rubble I had created. He said nothing. Sunlight streaked his face. He seemed pleased, more pleased than when I had last seen him. Slivers of rusty razors shot from the music player he had brought with him.

  “This is it,” he told me.

  “Did they come, Pilsner?”

  He asked me who I meant. He grinned. He knew who I meant. I wasn’t in the mood to play, I had equally important places to be. He continued. He feigned surprise, “Oh, oh,” he said, “The severes, you mean the severes.” He said they weren’t coming after all, his grin growing, growing over his face like a plague.

  “They might. They might be waiting.” I didn’t believe it but I wanted to scare him.

  For a split of a second it worked, his face flickering into worry before his teeth returned. They were crooked, the ones at the front, and a bit yellow. Mine were better. He started talking again, about how they hadn’t come, how they never would, how they, unlike some, knew what was right, how we should live.

  I wanted to shock him again.

  I started stroking my chest, small motions at first, and he glanced for a moment, just a moment, until I pressed both palms into my breasts and caressed them, careful and slow. He glanced again, a second longer this time. It was working, he had stopped talking. I wanted to laugh. I had shut him up. So easy, so easy. I played with my left nipple, teasing it, even rubbing my thigh with my free hand, slowly bringing it to my crotch. I groaned a little, just for effect.

  He asked me what I was doing.

  I ignored the question and leaned back a nudge, undoing a button on my shirt.

  He asked me if I wanted sex.

  Then I laughed, right at him. “No, no, no. No I don’t want to fuck. Why would you ask that?”

  His face flushed with blood, his eyes white and small in the centre of his purpled face. It made me laugh more.

  He told me I was in trouble. He told me I had no idea how to act. He told me I had no sense of order, of what was right, or wrong, for that matter. He told me I used other people for my amusement and he had no idea who Blondee was, not really.

  I was tired of listening. I added words to the notes from his player. I sang his words back at him: Blondee you’re weak, Blondee you’re corrupt, Blondee Blondee Blondee. And Blondee it’s your fault, and Blondee you prove us right, Blondee the thief. The worst one. Stop that, stop that, sto-o-o-o-o-op it, stop, you fucking fucking freak. That’s it, there’s no point, no point, no point in talking any more. No point. This is it, Blondee, this is it. It it it. Time to go. Time to go-o-o-o-o, oh.

  I drifted in the dark space between worlds, falling through each, choking on stories.

  He kisses me and we lie down on the grass, a chicken clucking near my ankle. I can’t stand the waiting, the post-woman always brings bad news. Rebels on a farm. And now I’m fucking, him, I’m fucking him, I’m fucking him so hard it feels like my cock it going to explode. What did she say? That I was young? Why need to tell me that, I know I am. I know I am. And I’m close, I’m so close, and I’m gonna—

  The bag is heavy, so heavy today. I don’t want to bring them bad news. It’s not my fault, it’s just how things are. I’m even going to get myself into trouble, talking to his brother like that. He’ll be on some kind of list, they’ll be watching him, that’s for sure—for certain even. Don’t shoot the postwoman, I used to say that to people and they’d laugh. Too much bad news is delivered these days, and the bags are so heavy—there must be a better job but what am I to do?

  I need my brother. He’s the only one I ever needed. He looked after me, and now I’d look after him. Those fascist fucking pigs won’t get at him, I won’t let them. They could round me up and stick me in a prison camp somewhere for all I care. As long as I was with him it wouldn’t matter. Then we could always look after each other. We’d remind each other who we were, who we really were, like we did when we were teenagers. Smoking spliffs and ignoring bad news. Now he’s in the countryside, a place I daren’t go.

  I’ve lost the connection again. Fuck it. Perhaps I’ll go outside. No, no Norna will wonder where I am. She might be stupid, quite stupid, but she’ll wonder where I’ve gone. Besides, the neighbour will be back soon, that one who’s always on the phone. She might be able to guess what they’re actually on about. But, but it’s doing my back no good sitting in this chair all day, no good at all. I’ve never noticed the window is so dirty. Perhaps I can suggest another activity, one which involves less sitting and spying. Perhaps we can go somewhere together, somewhere where we can actually leave all the busy world behind and be alone, just the two of us. Do I really feel like that?

  The connection is gone again, but who has been keeping it going anyway? Who’s keeping the electricity running? They must have finished putting the turbines on the roof before the plague peaked. They’d better come for us, take us somewhere where it’s safe, where there’s no disease and plenty of food. I’m wasting away. Where has she gone? I need to talk to her. It might be through a fake face, through a woman’s lips but it’s better than nothing. With her I know I could be more. More than some sad old man in a shirt and tie who sells drugs to neighbourhood teens. Neighbourhood teens who’
d eventually vomited their lives away, along with their brothers, sisters, along with their parents. We might be the last two left on Earth.

  I looked for the pretty woman again, the crazy ketamine one outside the newsagent, but I couldn’t find her. I was just distracting myself. Truth is, what I’m doing is scary. I never knew anyone who did this, who sold their memories for hollow cash. And the building looks so normal from the outside, so fucking normal. It might have been an accountancy, but for the logo. It’s a different one from the ads online. It has a man, with a floating black ball for a head: like on toilet doors. But his head is glowing, one colour to the next, all the colours that exist, all in turn. Is that a good thing? Do I want my head to glow? It doesn’t seem like the type of thing that’d be good for you, after all, selling your memories. Enough distraction, I have to go inside.

  It would be utter madness—and this plan is one of Lamia’s more extravagant lunacies. It cannot be possible, surely? Yet her idea has wound its way about my mind, weaving its way into my thoughts. She is right in saying that my husband has left, and she was correct in her premonition that he would send a letter the very next day. The letter said all the usual things, about how he loves me and cherishes the time we spend with one another, and that I mustn’t be too angry at his absence—he had even bought me a car to cheer my thoughts. Modern barbarism. The letter gave absolutely no clue as to the length of this apparent absence. In truth I have absolutely no idea what I will with myself while he’s away: especially if my two friends and their husbands have left as well. Forget Yourself. That is tempting. The opportunity to live one’s life afresh. Who is to say that there aren’t some invaluable experiences to be obtained? A chance to see oneself from the outside. It is tempting, certainly tempting.

  And there he is, my husband, my ever-cleaning husband. I don’t know how he could clean at a time like this, the calm before the storm, the silence before the scream. Will there be screaming? The scream of jets overhead, well we’ve already heard that. Will they come and round us up? Enough questions. Wait and see. I lean over and kiss his salty lips, and in return he’s running his tongue down my neck, to my chest. He giggles, and I giggle, and for one moment there is no war. No shutters, no mobs, no paper from the sky. We collapse to the floor and I pull him on top of me, feeling the weight of his body press me into the ugly pink carpet we’ve never changed. I pull off his shirt, then my blouse, feeling skin on skin, our pulses pounding, firm, hard, rough and a crash. A burst of sound, an explosion. It has begun, but we carry on anyway, just more gently, the light touch of fingertips, the soft nudge of a forehead, soft and quiet, careful not to disturb anything.

  YOU SHOULD KNOW I AM Blondee.. For the last time, I am Blondee.

  This is the last time I can talk to you. After this I won’t be Blondee, not any more. Who shall I be?

  First I’ll tell you what they did with me. I’m alive, but who I am isn’t consistent, if it ever was. They took me, talked, they lectured me, led me, and left. And here I am, at a different wall, at a place I saw only once before. It’s not too bad. I am in a hole, the ever-rustling blue tarpaulin above, soil below. At times it’s lovely here. At times like this how could I want anything more?

  They gave Blondee a new label, one of her very own. I suppose they were trying to give it to me, but like I keep telling you, I’m not a stable entity.

  Now there were least, minor, moderate (species extinct), severe—and me. Pilsner had a proud gleam in his eye as he announced it. I’d laughed at him.

  Isolation. This was an elegant word they gifted me. Blondee was to be placed in isolation. That was why they gave me this ramshackle shelter. That’s why they keep leaving me rusted tins of food and mush-sloppy fruit. If I died I wouldn’t be alone, and who knows where I’d be? Or who? They keep me here so I can be by myself. They don’t know anything.

  This is the end of my story. But there are so many more. Now I’m by myself I can see them all. See and touch and taste. A million worlds outside our walls, all leading here. I had known each person—my dreadlocked lover and beetroot-scented husband living on a farm; my lost-long friend who cut himself up but who had lived a life behind a screen watching the world die; the man I hated, who only wanted his brother back; even the clumsy husband-gathering woman who lived bored and rich. Different worlds, different stories. All had been brought here, refugee or prisoner, vacation or torment. I saw them all.

  Yesterday, for example. Yesterday I was Timon, whose friends had called Tan. Tanned skin and one grey tooth.

  And I was scared. It wasn’t just the logo, sprawled all over the walls, a man’s head glowing blue then green then purple. I’d found a cigarette on the floor, a whole unsmoked cigarette, and I took it as a sign. I was doing the right thing, there would be a tomorrow. I smoked it as I watched the colours in the logo-man’s head change. A drag and he went blue. A drag and he went red. A drag and I threw the stub to the floor.

  I was scared, and it wasn’t just the receptionist, her face firm as her breasts, her voice clipped short of compassion. I was scared, couldn’t she see that? But she must have seen it every day, a hundred sad and lonely people a week selling all they could possible have left. She was bored and had no empathy. But I couldn’t blame her—she was just trying to make sure she had her own future now. Better her side of the desk than mine. There’s no more money, and we all know it.

  “Just a few,” I told her.

  I wouldn’t want to lose them all, not all my memories. Nothing on her moved even a millimetre, she was poised and placed, official like a statue. Eventually she handed me forms, a hundred signatures and I went into a little room which smelt of nothing—of nothing at all. It was dark in there. I’d always known clinics to be bright as a headache.

  There were two men in the room. One was a lawyer, one was a doctor. I couldn’t tell which was which. They wore near-matching designer suits and they handed me more forms. The medical and the legal ones looked the same. Rows of incomprehensible words. I have a degree but I’d never understand.

  “I only want to sell a few,” I told them.

  I wasn’t wearing a suit. I was wearing the same t-shirt I’d been wearing since yesterday. I could feel the little damp circles under my armpits. They nodded and talked about procedure. There wasn’t much for me to do. The doctor/lawyer told me they could do it the same day, and it was a statement, it wasn’t a question. I just nodded, nodded and nodded and hoped they didn’t notice the sweat-marks on my clothes.

  There were more rooms, dark and hot, and there were a few more people, all in suits.

  This was it, the very core of me. This was all I had, and now I had surrendered it to them. Once I had sold my body, and that was nothing. Now I sold my past, so that I could gain a future. Was that possible? He who controls the past controls the future, that’s what they say. Oh gods I hoped they were wrong.

  “Leave my mother,” I told someone. Leave her. She was gone and if they took her I’d never get her back. Leave my mother.

  They weren’t even listening by then, milling about, pills and wavelengths and sterile beds. The forms were signed and they had no further need of niceties. I belonged to them—most people are law-illiterate, they can’t speak or read what they lawyers write, and I was one of them.

  Banks and lawyers and politicians—they need us, you see. They need every part of us, so that they can grow fat. Without us they are one of us, and that’s worse than death for them—for we have no future. They jabbed at my arms and pinned me down.

  And so they took everything. They took the very core of me. I couldn’t scream.

  I slept. I went to sleep and I woke up somewhere else.

  I woke up here. Naked to the world. A new world, one I didn’t recognise, and I couldn’t recognise anything, especially myself. People were gathered around, ready to name me.

  How could I have been Timon if I wasn’t by myself? Without the luxury of isolation? With someone there, watching my performance. They’d grab on to me, hol
d on and not let go. Preconceptions and expectations would weigh me down, and I’d be trapped, Blondee, Blondee forever.

  I am Timon, known as Tan, and I sold my memories for rent.

  Is there a better reason? Of course I didn’t get to use the money myself. Read the small print, always read the small print. Bring a lawyer to help you wade through the endless meaningless syllables uttered by sharp-suited men. My family would get the money, but I would never remember who they were. Leave my mother, I’d said. For all I remember I could have been born in a tube, surrounded by goggle-eyed scientists. And someone somewhere has Timon’s real-live memories, which can never be copied, never duplicated, only moved to some squishy new organic home. Memories of beaches, of winter presents, memories of kisses and crosses and first cars. Did the rich read the small print? All the money in the world can’t buy a lifetime. Did they know how they got them? They’d be able to afford the lawyers.

  This place isn’t so bad. Here in my hole I have space. Not too long ago there would have been people scattered about, with questions and statements and thoughts. Now all I can see are one or two empty huts. Sometimes even, when the wind is blowing the right way, I can barely even smell death at all. But the distant dizzy hum of flies is always there unless it rains.

  A day after I was brought here I heard someone. I could hear the panting. They wanted to come and see Blondee. Their footsteps were all around me, I could hear them above the rain.

  I hid away until they left. They had been watching me. I knew who it was.

  I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anyone.

  Can I hold you?

  You might not be real but that doesn’t matter. I will still hold you.