Page 2 of Help Me Remember
It wasn’t much, but at the very least, I had some idea where I was. The place was abandoned, and I had no idea why I had been in the building in the first place, let alone the city or what had happened. What I could figure out, however, was that someone had tried to kill me. I didn’t know what that said about me, but it was probably best to leave the place where I’d nearly been killed as soon as possible. Figuring out who I was and what to do in the long run were problems that would have to wait until later.
“Right, immediate problem first, existential crisis later,” I told myself, spitting into the sink in a futile attempt to get the foul taste of vomit off my tongue.
Which meant getting out of the building without hurting myself further…and without drawing any unnecessary attention. A difficult feat when I looked like I’d been thrown down the stairs and half my face was covered in blood. After a moment, I realized there was nothing I could do about the former, but I could clean up the latter.
I looked down at the shirt in my hand and sighed. It was probably the most reasonably clean thing in this place. Keeping my grip on it, I walked out of the bathroom and made my way around the apartment. There wasn’t much to see, but just walking helped me feel stronger, and my gait became steadier as I dug around for anything the former occupants might have left behind.
Despite my best efforts, it took nearly twenty minutes to search the apartment I had found myself in and the other three that shared the same floor. All of them were in the same dilapidated, torn-apart state, and a couple had spray-painted symbols on the walls and floors that I didn’t recognize.
My search wasn’t in vain, however. I found a crumpled plastic bag with two slightly beaten but unopened bottles of water. And in another apartment, kicked behind a broken couch, I found a box of clothes. Sadly, none of the clothes were going to fit me, but considering the box hadn’t been opened and everything had been thrown into bags, I assumed they weren’t filthy.
In front of the least broken mirror on the floor, I paced around, using a clean-enough t-shirt to dab at my face and hair. Unfortunately, it sent new waves of pain radiating down my neck and back. It was a slow process, and I couldn’t do much to hide whatever wound lay out of sight at the back of my head. I could only hope I’d cleaned up the mess enough to avoid drawing immediate attention.
Keeping what was left of the water, I pulled on the dirty shirt I’d woken up wearing. It was black, so hopefully, it would conceal any bloodstains it might have picked up while I lay on the floor. With that, I made my way toward the stairway I’d seen earlier and prayed it was still usable.
The little moments of good luck continued as I descended. The stairway was cluttered with the same mess that littered the apartment floors, and I kept away from the railing, but I managed to descend a couple more floors. The front door was blocked by rubble I knew I didn’t have the strength to move, so I shambled toward the back.
Thankfully, the back door had been completely ripped off its hinges and tossed into the overgrown grass and weeds in the yard. The steps were cracked concrete but still held as I made my way down. I was thankful I hadn’t needed to go up any stairs, or I would have worn out what strength I’d managed to get back.
The back fence was in a similar state, and I was able to carefully climb through a gap into an empty alley between the rows of buildings. From there, I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I needed medical care. The thought brought a bubble of wariness to the edge of my mind but it disappeared before I could figure out why.
Limping to the mouth of the alley, I found myself on a street with only a handful of people. Not one of them paid me the slightest attention as I looked around, hoping to find something that stood out. It was only when I spotted a store on the nearby corner that I finally started moving again.
The store was cramped and poorly lit, and the clerk at the counter looked as if he’d seen thousands of things in his lifetime and wasn’t looking forward to any more. His eyes searched my face as I approached, and while his brow rose, I didn’t see any alarm or wariness on his face.
“You look like shit,” he proclaimed, setting his phone down to look me over. “Don’t smell much better either.”
“Kind of, uh, had an accident,” I told him, rubbing my jaw and immediately regretting it. “Bumped myself up pretty good.”
“Yeah, I see that,” he said, clicking his tongue almost annoyedly. “We got some bandages, but you probably should get yourself to a hospital.”
The vague wariness from before came back even stronger, twisting in my gut. I didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but a quiet, unnamed voice in my head told me a hospital was absolutely out of the question. Maybe it was some knowledge I couldn’t remember or a lingering instinct, but I knew there would be too many eyes and ears. Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem, but that voice offered another far safer solution.
“I was kind of hoping there was a clinic nearby,” I said, then wondered how I’d manage to pay for it. “One that could work with me. Not exactly rolling in money.”
There was a lump in my pocket that I hadn’t paid attention to before, but it was square, and I hoped it was a wallet. I wasn’t going to pull it out in front of this stranger, however. The act of going through it, hoping there was some form of identification to give me something to work with, felt way too intimate.
He shrugged, clearly hoping I would go away quickly. “There’s a place a couple of blocks over. Smells like piss from all the junkies and hobos wandering in all the time. But it’s free for most people, so fuck it.”
“Yeah, fuck it,” I repeated, rolling the phrase around in my head, not sure whether it was something I was comfortable with or not. “Could you, uh, point me in the right direction?”
His reaction was as disinterested as he’d been for the rest of the conversation, but he told me where to go and what to look for, so I left him alone. As I reached the door, I saw a bin with a handful of discount beanie hats. I hesitated, turning slightly as I patted myself down and saw the clerk hunched over and half turned away as he resumed looking at his phone. I felt the bulge I thought had to be a wallet with a sigh of relief while my other hand snatched up one of the hats as I stepped through the door.
Once I was out of sight of the windows, I yanked the tag off the hat and carefully inched it over my head. It was a little too warm for a hat, but at least it covered the wound on the back of my head for the moment. The instinct to keep a low profile vibrated strongly inside me, and I suspected it was the same one that had led me to steal the hat.
The act had been effortless and without thought, and I felt a tug in my chest as I wondered just what kind of person I must have been. The hat had only been a few dollars, but I’d taken it rather than linger in the store any longer. The thought had come to me, and then I’d simply done it, all within seconds. Either I hadn’t been a particularly moral person before, or I wasn’t now that I didn’t have a lifetime of memories to balance me out.
Neither thought was pleasant, and I pushed them aside once I neared the corner the clerk had described. Stepping out of the way on the sidewalk, I pulled the object from my pocket, heart racing as I did, in fact, find a wallet. It was a bifold, simple, black, and appeared to be made of leather or something like it. I noted it looked brand new as I opened it.
The contents were disappointing…mostly. My heart sank when I found absolutely nothing that identified who I was. There was what might be a pass for a subway, and I wondered if it was for whatever city I was in. There was also a diner receipt tucked into one of the pockets, but the bill had been paid in cash. The last item was nearly a thousand dollars in cash, and I stared at the amount in wonder.
I may not have known who I was or where I was, but I knew people didn’t usually carry that amount of money with them. Combined with the food bill being paid with cash, I frantically began to wonder what the hell I’d been doing before I woke up.
“Steady, steady,” I soothed, tucking the wallet away before anyone saw just how much money I had. On top of everything else I was dealing with, I didn’t want to risk enticing someone to try to take the money from me. A new surge of guilt over the theft of a cheap hat bubbled up, but I pushed it away. At the very least, I knew I would have money for whatever I needed while I tried to figure things out.
With that done, I made my way to the clinic the clerk had mentioned. The frosted glass door opened with difficulty, and I walked into the lobby. Without thinking, I took a few light sniffs and found only the scent of cleaning supplies, and not piss as had been advertised. Though from the looks of the man hunched in one of the chairs, I suspected one part of the room might.
An older woman sat perched behind a solid, worn desk and looked me over. Her expression held the same disinterest I’d seen on the clerk’s face at the store. Still, she seemed to take more interest in my physical appearance than he had and set her pen aside as I approached.