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Ashes.
He comes to as if yanked out of deep water by fish hooks with a mouth full of them, and his bones grind against each other when they unfurl on the damp grass. Hundreds of thousands of the wet blades, scraping against his skin. It is some kind of stillness hour—not black and not the white of day.
He sits up very very slowly. The breeze kicks up his hair.
Swallows down the bile.
He gets up.
Okay, he has to sit back down straight after when everything blurs and the world spins around.
There’s a silence rattling around in his brainpan though, as vast and as empty as the plain field he’s found himself in. Daylight filters in from the clouds. He’s got grass in his hair. He sits and lets himself think about nothing until the world goes clear and sunny, and it is rather peaceful.
There’s a phone next to him. So that’s that. But he opens it and the light
burns through his fucking eyeballs-
-so he flips it shut faster.
His head is still throbbing when he gets back up, and a few stumbling turns reveals a cluster of buildings off in the horizon. It's as good as a bet as anything, so he goes.
All his clothes are wet. As is his hair, the ends curling against his nape and ears and cheeks. His jeans are black and stick to him, even more water sloshes in his boots, all of which sent his skin crawling with palpable disgust.
He wonders how long the fucking walk is going to take.
He wonders what he was doing alone in that field, before waking up.
He wonders also, rather belatedly, why there’s dried blood crusted under his nails.
The cluster of buildings reveal themselves to be a college campus. It spreads out in front of him like the ocean. The closest one, which he has to cross the egregious parking lot for, is labelled the Faculty of Business in shiny gilt letters. There is also, quite frankly, an outrageous orange paw print above it.
Whatever that means.
He goes in.
The inside is almost abandoned. Clean, but soulless. And so white. Uncomfortably white. So, there’s a chance he could be a college student. Or a professor. Would he enjoy teaching kids some mumbo-jumbo? He scrounges deep inside himself and thinks nahh. He doesn’t really feel that old either, if that meant anything at all, but maybe weirder things have happened. He’s also leaving foot prints across the shiny floors.
Though the hallways are empty he ducks into the closest toilets he can find before the sudden guilt gets any worse.
The phone has a password that he can’t remember which renders that thing useless but its bordering 9am. He pulls the offending material off, paces the room in agitation, in the mirrors parallel to him walks some creature on the same path. He goes to look at it, hands braced against the sinks.
Brown skin, mirthless dark eyes, dark hair which—he assumes—had been freshly cut given how uneven and upright the ends were. He thinks his lips are too full, his brow too wide, his skin sallow from a night (?) outside but it’s a fleeting thought. Maybe under a different place, different light it could’ve looked better but when he steps away the reflection does too. It was his face.
Also, he has abs. So there’s a silver lining.
Alright that’s enough fucking around—he could call 911, tell them he had a problem and get an ID check.
He doesn’t want to though.
It doesn’t make any sense never makes any fucking sense.
He’ll survive figuring it out on his own. Surely. He’s not that injured. He can see and count—he holds out his fingers on impulse to count—
It’ll be fine.
His stomach screws itself up into a wet coil inside himself. He scrubs the blood under his nails away. Watches it swirl down the sink in a storm of shame.
He steps out of the bathroom and kind of decides to keep on walking. If he’s a student or professor here it probably meant that there was someplace he had to be today. Maybe he could remember something if he saw something important, or someone could find him.
He could’ve at least got a brain reset on a Saturday, he thinks, for god’s fucking sake. But no. Wednesday. From the dread that rears up he thinks maybe he’s not that invested in this whole education bullshit. He loops the entire building first floor and can’t even find a map. Boo.
He finds a bench. Yes, he did remember to put his shirt back on, after flapping it under the hand dryers and swiping his jeans and shoes with enough tissues to mop up a flood. So at least he’s decent. There’s not much he can do for his hair. But all is well because finally—finally—in a stream of people leaving some room, one of them waves on their way past and calls out “Hey, Nicky.”
He is up. Oh, he is up like a shot, almost dizzy with relief. He grabs the guy’s thick arm. “Heya! I’m starved, come with me to the cafeteria?”
The guy smiles at him. Big and tall, full lips, spiky hair with the same amount of gel they probably use on lego minisets, but whatever. (Nicky?) He’s pretty. He’s beginning to get a sense that he likes pretty things.
“You’re up?” Spiky asks.
“No offence dude I thought you were gonna…. Take it easy today?”
He laughs. It sounds weirdly shrill in the big space. He probably looks like dogshit, oh no. “I’m good. You know how I am.”
“Yeah, well.”
Spiky smiles at him. He smiles back. (Nicky??)
So they walk to the cafeteria. ‘Nicky’ doesn’t know the way. He’s not hungry, not really but there’s a churning in his gut. He hopes they don’t ask for money. Spiky maybe knows where they’re going, or maybe he doesn’t and is expecting ‘Nicky’ to know the way, he loses count of the number of times Spiky halts and so ‘Nicky’ has to halt and they look at each other awkwardly and then Spiky moves on. He hopes they’re going to the right place. He’s also growing painfully aware that he doesn’t have any of the things Spiky has in his bag. It feels best to smile serenely and say nothing so he does. Doesn’t stop Spiky from looking disconcerted.
He could tell this guy he doesn’t remember. There is nothing stopping him except for something going right down to his bones, something engrained in. He doesn’t want to tell him.
“You got lectures?” Spiky asks.
Well, shit.
“Eh, I’ll ask someone when I see them.”
Spiky’s smile is strained at the corners. Oh lord, they do know each other, right? Is he an aquaitance, not a friend? “Locked out of your phone?”
It seemed the safest answer so ‘Nicky’ nods. “Yeah. Last night, yanno.”
“Ye-e-ah. Look, have you spoken to Andrew?”
The fuck? “Well, no.”
“Figures.” He says it with a deep tone, straight from his chest, as if that is as typical as the sun getting up. “Alright, let's get something in you.”
They don’t ask for money at the cafeteria, and one of the women even smiles at Nicky. He smiles back eagerly and loads his plate up with scrambled eggs.
They taste kind of like plastic.
Absolutely divine.
He feels oddly happy coming out of there. His name is ‘Nicky’, he has Spiky (oops he does need to find out his name) as a friend, and he likes scrambled eggs and orange juice and pretty things. It's not a big list, but it's a good enough starting point. People here and there gesture to him in the hallways, so he could be well known. He waves back at the people who smile and ignores the ones that elbow their own friends. There’s enough of the former that the unease over the latter half fades away. Is he popular? Spiky’s texting furiously on his phone, says abruptly.
“You coming to practise later?”
“Practise?” Oh no, that doesn’t sound good. Practise what?
“If you need to rest then just rest.” Spiky hurries on. “Tell Kevin to fuck off. Or I will?”
Kevin? Practise?
Rest sounds good. He would like to rest and figure out where the fuck they’re going because he’s completely blank on where Spiky’s taking him.
Does he have to go to lectures? The thought of being in there knowing nothing makes him break out in a sweat. What happens if he gets called on or there’s actual work?
They get to a different ward where a woman meets up with Spiky, who takes the bag off of her arm and slings it over his spare shoulder so he could hold her hand. She says hi to ‘Nicky’ too. It's good to be well known but the sight of them intertwined hurts. Spiky asks him again if he’s sure about going to class which he really truly isn’t, the woman asks him promptly if he’s coming ‘to practise’. Which is—not ominous at all, given that he has no clue what they’re practising for—god, was it music, did he have to bring a fucking instrument, does he play a fucking instrument—
‘Nicky’ has no clue where the fuck he’s meant to be going. He thinks quick, “I’ll just follow you two around, whatever.”
The woman is unimpressed. “You told us that you were always too busy to hang out on Wednesdays.”
He prays to God he isn’t red in the face. “Not today. Surprise."
They go back to ‘the dorms.’ Its probably an excuse to get away from him. It may not be his dorms, even. ‘The dorms’ are a tower they share with a few other Palmetto athletic teams, and thank God they’re relatively high up in it. Then comes the issue that ‘Nicky’ doesn’t really know which, if there is one, is his. Or where the key is. He lingers in the hallways until a familiar voice makes him flinch by shouting out “Are you coming in, or what.”
Heart in his throat, I know you, I know you, I know you-
He’s curled up at the desk, legs on another chair studying with the blinds down and a lamp on. Even from a distance Nicky could tell he was little, far smaller than him, pale and blond.
I know you, but the name is gone.
So is everything else.
He leaves his phone on the table. Makes a pretense of going over to the kitchen area for some water, which is good, cold and crisp. The blond boy does not lift his head up.
His bedroom is cramped, presumably because it's shared with other people. There are no photos of himself anywhere. There’s nothing up on the walls, but on a bedside table, laid out is his schedule, a stash of papers on his work. There’s cut outs of recipes in the mix. On the assumption that the bedside table his papers are on is thus his, he opens the drawers and finds a wallet with an N stitched in alongside a sack of opened jellybeans and a bottle top in a drawer. There are some pretty sick eyeshadow palettes in there too, along with a handful of chokers and bead bracelets. Whatever Nicky is, he had some style.
He takes the sweet packet out and eats as he reads. He is Nicky, and he is in Marketing, but his surname has been violently scribbled out on every paper he finds. The cards inside have no surname altogether. What a jerk.
So, he’s on the lower bunk bed. His memory is gone. His memory is gone! He doesn’t remember these people, doesn’t remember their names or voices, he doesn’t even remember himself, but they know him. Its like missing a tooth for the first time, being able to stop your tongue from abusing the crevice. There is nothing else to think about but the rebirth.
Back to the living space he stumbles, prays to whatever that his voice doesn’t shake and calls out to the little blond boy
“Hey, can you open my phone for me? I need to check—
(?????)
(—Need to what? What does “Nicky” even do in his free time?)
“-my emails.”
The blond boy exhaled harshly—there’s that twist in his stomach again—nabbed it off the desk, punched the password in. He wonders why they have the password. Then he has to fight for his life to catch it when it's lobbed at his face. His protests are ignored but Okay! Okay, so maybe Nicky isn’t so hopeless after all! He has his phone! Sure he doesn’t know the password and he may not be able to disable it or pull this prank off again later, but he’ll-he’ll figure it out. It's whatever.
The background here is a mirror selfie of him in the arms of another blond. A man this time though, big and strong, more sandy flyaways than gold curls and his own face was younger.
They’re both pressed up against each other, hands gripping on. He searches deep inside himself. And comes up empty handed. Empty hearted.
He gets up to change his clothes. He wanted to get out-it felt off being inside here, as if the walls were caving in on him. There are chest of drawers but in comes the long standing long suffering issue which is, he had no clue which is his and he doesn’t think even accidentally wearing someone else’s clothes was going to end good. Not when he no longer knows these people.
He goes to the kitchenette and scrounges up a PB&J. It comes almost naturally. Trying to think of something to say to Blondie is harder.
He raises his head from the papers at one point, brows drawn. Turns to ‘Nicky’. There are frown lines furrowing into his face where he scowls, but Nicky doesn’t bother pointing it out. Not his business, right? But Blondie’s staring makes the hairs on the arms stand up. He’s meant to be doing something. There’s a silence in the air. Anticipatory.
Is he meant to be doing something?
He doesnt know these people.
Blondie’s head slowly turns back around on its neck to his papers. The frown does not leave. “You’re weirdly quiet.”
“What is there to say?”
(Blondie stiffens up, very slowly.
He decides not to turn attention to it.)
He’s slathering strawberry jam on a slice of rye for another one when a flurry of heavy footsteps reverberate through the halls, and Blondie says ugh, god in such a disgusted tone that even ‘Nicky’ nearly shudders.
First into the living section is a man taller than Nicky with brown hair, a surly expression and…. and a fucking 2 tattooed onto his cheekbone.
Okay.
The other is a. Another little blond. The exact same little blond. Dressed all in black like a little trooper and grinning like a fucking lunatic but. Uhhh.
God, what the fuck is Nicky’s life, even.
The little blond at the table is scowling and bickering with twoface and the other one in black oh god oh fuck oh jeez is smiling right at him. He cups his mouth with a thick hand but doesn’t bother lowering his voice to say “Hey, Nicky?”
He does not squeak when he replies “Yeah?”
“Your bracelet’s poofed.”
Bracelet? He pulls one wrist up. Then another. Squinting reveals indents on the skin under his hand. Unbudden, that fucking sucks. He wants his bracelet back. Where did it go? He didn’t have it on him in the field, did he miss it in the grass?
“-whatever-“ twoface is saying, tossing his satchel on the sofa and his hands in the air. Smiler’s brows raise. His eyes do not. The blond at the table does not look at his…. Doppelganger? Twin? Twin brother? They’re not looking at each other.
It’s weird. Nicky is weirded out and he doesn’t want to be.
“Let's go, it's almost time for practice.” How such dread be coursing through him from such a pretty man, God only knew.
Practice. Oh god. “You just got back.” Nicky tries. What kind of idiot would willingly ‘practise’ anything having just got out of lectures? Twoface, apparantly, he’s frowning at Nicky now. “Let’s go.”
Practice goes a little something like this.
“I’m not fucking doing it,” he says, and throws his racquet onto the ground with a clatter that echoes.
Echoes through the-honest to god-literal fucking glass box they have pushed over an indoors court.
He’s causing A Scene. Everyone’s looking at him from where they’re spread out across the Court. The orange—his orange gear, his orange uniform, the orange flags, the orange racquets, the orange seats surrounding them leading up—beats a pattern into his brain, pressure building up behind his eyeballs, skull pounding from the crammed on helmet. He rips that off too and throws it down. Fuck the damage. The woman, their Captain with WILDS emblazoned on her back, opens her mouth.
Practice was not music practice. Maybe Nicky should have hoped it was music practice, but as they say, hindsight’s a bitch. No no no. Practice is actually charging back and forth on a fourth meter court hauling around a gigantic racquet with which he was supposedly meant to catch teeny tiny balls with, to play a game he doesn’t know, just doesn’t fucking know.
He smacks himself in the head with the racquet within ten minutes.
Twoface pounds the plexiglass. He has to scream for Nicky to hear him, which is so hysterically funny he could feel the giggles crawling up his throat.
“You are not leaving!”
Smiley’s laughing in the goal area.
“Watch me!” Nicky shrieks back, and leaves.
Twoface is fuming for the rest of the day, literally red in the face. He fights with the Smiler over it. The other blond boy, the one Nicky truly feels sick to his stomach not knowing the name of, offers him a fistbump.
He imagines everything rushing back to his brain the second they do this familiar gesture. Knowing who these people are, laughing at his audaciousness. A bear of a man passes the hallway, giving Nicky an odd, contemplative look.
Blondie numero uno gives Nicky another long look before they knock fists.
Nothing happens.
There are clothes and makeup tools and accessories and things to hold onto, things for school, things for his outwardness and to doll up the vessel he’s stuck inside but as for the things that he could use as a looking glass straight into Nicky’s heart and brain and soul for, there is absolutely nothing at all. It's the kind of silence with its tongue cut out, a silence that says nothing at all, and he has to sit in the middle of it, sleep in the bed of it.
He’s twenty-three according to the cards in his wallet. His birthday was yesterday. And it ended up with him alone in a field.
Who are you?
What have you done to me?
(What have you done?)
What am I doing to you?
He goes to bed earlier. A woman raps on the door, asks if he’s feeling well, needs a checkup but ‘Nicky’ waves her away. He’s tired, and wants to sleep, and anyways he does have a fucking 9am tonorrow. Whoever Nicky was, the grace of doing this shit on a weekend really was beyond him.
He’s tossing and turning in the bed when he fully registers the crackling noise under his ear. Gets up.
It's in the pillowcase, folded up into a square, the ragged-end of a torn off notepad page. The scrawl is almost demented.
To you, it says, except that you is scribbled out and in its place is me, so it says To me, except that too has been scrawled over and the first phrase repeated, with the previous two ghosting through their grey barriers and the latter scritched out as if uncertain. To you me you
To—
As if all of his energy had been used up by that conundrum the rest of it is rather short.
There is: Password’s 032383. Change it.
There is: Delete the background photo of your my the phone
There is:
I want to see what I am when I don’t have to remember it all.
He remembers the feel of grass at the back of his neck where he woke up hollowed out. How dark his blood had looked as it drained down in the sink of that brightly-lit room. How dark red, almost black.