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The tickle of grass against bare feet. Warm hands with five fingers. Moths fluttering around porch lights. “I’m forgetting someone,” he said. He’d been… doing something, just a moment ago. Then he’d seen the brown wooden table and something about the colour or the texture or something something something made him realize that there was someone missing. “I’m forgetting someone, I know it…”
Ragatha, the newest member of the Circus (“newest”, there were people before her, who were those people and what happened to them, what even was the Circus?) stood beside him. He could feel her, and see her in his peripheral vision, but he was staring at the table. They must be on an adventure or something, this table wasn’t in the Circus. At least, he didn’t think it was. He may have forgotten. Why was he forgetting things? What else had he forgotten?
“Someone from the Circus?” She asked. He didn’t know. Probably. He couldn’t fathom what was outside the Circus. He shrugged. “You’ve mentioned before that the other members ‘abstracted’.”
The term was familiar. He remembered colourful glowing eyes, formless black mass, a dark room… he needed to be near her, it… it was too bright. “Can you turn out the lights?”
“What?” She asked, confused. “I… can’t access a switch. We’re in a furniture store.”
Was that where they were? He felt all scrambled. Why did he want the lights off anyway? Why did he care about this? It was just a table. “That- that’s fine, then, dear.”
“Um… alright.” She said, giving him a funny look. He tore his eyes away from the table to face her more directly. It felt like a betrayal, somehow.
“What- what were we doing, again?” Probably buying furniture, if they were in a furniture store. He couldn’t remember ever needing to buy furniture, Caine would do the furnishing for them. The store was big. Wide and open and unguarded.
“Are you okay?” She asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He was fine. They were just standing in a store, nothing was happening. He’d lost his train of thought, was all.
Ragatha frowned. She looked over at a table beside them, a nice brown colour. His throat felt tight. He didn’t have a throat. Had he ever? “You just seem… tense.”
Did he? Huh.
… He was forgetting something.
——
He remembered laughing at a joke, but he couldn’t remember the joke itself, or who told it. He thought the setup involved flies or maybe ants. He tried to fit pillows together but they kept tumbling out of place.
He’d laughed right before the punchline, because he saw where it was going and couldn’t hold back. He remembered someone telling him he had a sweet laugh. He didn’t know who. He couldn’t remember how to build a pillow fort.
They were too flimsy, they couldn’t hold their own weight, they kept toppling over. Maybe he needed something sturdier, like couch cushions. Maybe these pillows weren’t the right building blocks. Maybe he wasn’t the right person to put it together. There might be a joke in there, too. Ants carrying their weight. He couldn’t find the punchline. He didn’t laugh.
“Whatcha doing there, Kinger?” Ragatha asked. He turned to look at her.
… He was forgetting something.
——
“Today’s Adventure is…!” Caine began to speak, loud and performative.
“Wait!” Kinger cut him off. “Shouldn’t everyone be here, before we start?”
Caine tilted his head. There was silence, for a moment. Kinger imagined crickets chirping to fill the space, like when a joke didn’t land in a TV show. He couldn’t remember any TV shows.
“Um… Kinger?” Ragatha said.
“Everyone is here.” Caine said.
Kinger looked around. Everyone was not there. “No, we’re missing…” Everyone. Everyone, there- there was only him and Ragatha here, that wasn’t even half the Circus. There were other people before. He knew there were other people.
“Did I miss something?” Caine asked. “You’d tell me if someone else joined the Circus, wouldn’t you?”
“Um… I haven’t seen anyone else.” Ragatha said. She wouldn’t have. She was the newest.
Who were they missing? “C-Caine, you know who I mean, we’re missing people.” He couldn’t remember their names. That was fine, no one could remember their names when they entered the Circus. He just needed something to latch onto. “There was a, a dog, and… the one who liked sports, and… someone green, I think… and… a table? Or- no, a…”
“Table?” Caine laughed a bit. Kinger felt afraid.
“You mean the people who were here before me?” Ragatha asked. Kinger’s eyes snapped to her and he nodded, urgently. “I never met them, sorry…”
“Oh!” Caine said. “Well, they’re not missing! They’re in the cellar!”
The cellar, right… That was where the abstracted people went. He remembered funerals, but not who attended or who was being mourned. He remembered someone abstracted, and he’d touched her face.
“… All of them?” He asked.
“Yeah.” Caine said, without hesitation. Kinger felt a little sick. “We’d know if one got out somehow! They make quite a ruckus.”
Not in the dark, they didn’t.
… How did he know that?
He couldn’t remember what anyone looked like, before. He just remembered the big, hulking abstractions. Something was missing. Several somethings, several someones. He’d been in the dark with one, at one point, that was why he liked the dark. Or- disliked the dark? Or…
“Kinger?” Ragatha said, voice soft and concerned. When he looked at her, she had an arm raised as if to grab a hold of his shoulder or hand. His hand felt tingly, like he’d been touching something made of static. “Kinger, are you okay?”
He wasn’t the one who needed to be worried about. He was the one who made it out.
… Why would he make it out? He got them into the mess in the first place, he shouldn’t be the one to survive.
Into what mess? Who into what into where into why into how-
“Kinger!” Ragatha said, again, louder. It sounded like someone else’s name. She grabbed his hand, and the tingly feeling went away. He mourned it. “Kinger, you’re okay. You’re here. I’m here.”
Someone wasn’t.
… He was forgetting something.
——
“You building another fort?” She asked. He looked back at his hands. It seemed like he was. Funny, he couldn’t remember starting. “That last in-house adventure knocked it down, huh?” He didn’t remember the last adventure.
He tried fitting pillows into place. They stayed, but there were gaps. Light passed through. It didn’t look right.
“Need some help with that?” Ragatha sat beside him before he even thought of a response. Help might be nice. “I used to build these with my brothers, sometimes.”
Did he have siblings? A family? Friends? A partner? Who did he build pillow forts with? Just on his own?
Ragatha helped build up the wall. He didn’t like it. Something was missing.
Her wall didn’t have gaps. Strangely, he felt jealous.
… He was forgetting something.
——
A butterfly made out of butter flew by. They were on an island made of pancakes, with trees made out of bacon and surrounded by an ocean of syrup. His eyes tracked the butterfly as it landed on a berry bush.
“Oh, everything’s sticky…” Ragatha whined. Syrupy fabric did sound annoying. She pulled her feet off the ground to walk over to him. “Oh! That’s a cute butterfly.”
It was. Caine kept it simple, there were no intricate patterns on the wings, but it was lightly dusted with sugar. The butter made it look soft and rounded. It was cute.
Someone else would really like this, he thought. He couldn’t think of who. He moved that thought aside. “It is.”
“You think those berries are edible?” She asked. He laughed.
“Even if they’re not, I can tell you plenty of things on this island that are.” He did a sweeping gesture at their surroundings. Food wasn’t an issue.
“I know, but I want to try a berry!” She picked a little one off the bush. It was red and round, a little shiny.
“They’re probably fine.” Kinger said. He didn’t think Caine would poison them- at least not on a lighthearted adventure like this. What was the adventure, again? Building a shelter? Or a raft? Finding a treasure, maybe?
Ragatha popped the berry in her mouth. Her face scrunched up and she spit it out. “Eugh, it’s sour!” Kinger laughed, again. The butterfly had flown away, at some point. He missed it.
It was bright and sunny. Warm. It smelled like breakfast. Something was missing. The butterfly, he supposed. His head felt light and empty.
“You’re not really liking this place, are you?” Kinger asked, a little teasingly.
“It’s pretty, and it smells nice. I like it in concept. Just…” She sighed. Her fabric was syrupy. Her fingers were stained from the berry. She grabbed her hair to pull it back into a ponytail with one hand and fanned herself with the other. “I wish the ocean wasn’t syrup. Going for a swim might’ve been nice.”
He’d never learned to swim. Or, he didn’t think he did? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t lived near water, though.
…Yes he did, there was a lake on the Circus grounds. Why hadn’t he learned to swim? Maybe he did?
The ocean was syrup anyway, it didn’t matter.
“Hey, Kinger, look! Maybe we can use this!”
… He was forgetting…
——
“Why do you build these out in the open, anyway?” Ragatha asked, setting another pillow in place. She was building it more than he was, at this point. “Wouldn’t you rather build it in your room? There’d be less around to topple it over, then!”
“I don’t like my room.” He didn’t remember why. He didn’t even remember what his room looked like. He used to spend his time in someone’s bedroom, but he didn’t think it was his own. That door didn’t open anymore, and the inside didn’t load- no need for the extra strain when no one went in it. He wondered if his own room still existed. If Caine bothered keeping it running.
“Huh.” Ragatha said, and she went quiet for a moment. She stopped building. She just looked at him. The fort was almost done, and his hands itched to just finish it off. “Couldn’t you just… ask Caine to change it, if you don’t like it?”
Well, the problem was that it was a room. Or- or no, the problem was that it was his own room. So changing what it looked like, or what was in it, wouldn’t make a difference, it was still… lacking. Or wrong. Ragatha watched him as he picked up a pillow, but didn’t bother adding to the fort. It would just fall over if he tried, there was no point. He handed the pillow to her.
“Caine couldn’t fix it.” He didn’t even need to try asking. There was no point. It would all fall over.
… He was… forgetting.
——
He had a bag full of mail and a cap on his head. Ragatha was riding a bike, but he didn’t have legs, so he was walking. She’d offered to let him ride on the back, but he’d just mess up her balance. He liked walking anyway.
The houses were all identical. Caine hadn’t bothered modeling different ones. Some neighbourhoods looked like this in real life, anyway- repetitive and monotonous. The yards were all clean, grass freshly cut. A few had trees, maybe a tire swing here or there.
His neighbours had had a tire swing. When the kids got old enough to move out, it got spider webs. He’d joked it was their swing, now.
… Who had he joked to? Who were his neighbours? When had he last seen a spider?
There were no spider webs, here. Everything was shiny and new. The houses didn’t even look wooden, all polished like plastic. Ragatha stopped at a mailbox up ahead.
Maybe the neighbours were just another adventure. Maybe there was no “real world”. Wouldn’t be the first time his mind played tricks on him like that. He could ask Ragatha, but questions like that always seemed to make her uncomfortable. He could ask Caine, but Caine wouldn’t know anything outside the Circus, if there even was anything.
He looked through the mail he was carrying. There were no names written, just numbers. Why bother naming the NPCs when they would just be scrapped by the end? No one could remember their names in the Circus, anyway.
Something about it unnerved him. Like he could just be replaced by numbers, too. Like he could be scrapped. Like he could be forgotten.
… Was someone else?
——
He was in the fort Ragatha made. It was dark. It was familiar.
He still couldn’t remember her name.
He could remember her laugh, her voice, her hands, her bug collection, her bedroom, her jokes. He couldn’t remember her name.
He might as well tear the whole fort down. There was nothing left for him in it.
… He stayed in the fort. It was dark. It was familiar.