Mr. Nobody(101)

I look around the room. I walk over to the handwritten note and pick it up from the floor. I deliberately do not read the dark black swirls of “my” writing before folding it up and slipping it safely into my coat pocket.

    I bend and scoop up two fresh red cartridges from the parquet with my one good hand. I crack open the shotgun like Dad used to show me, tip out the spent cartridges, and slide two new ones in. I click the gun back together, grab the canvas bag, and head back outside.

I slump down in front of him, on the cold stone step leading up onto the lawn, and watch him. The winter sun warm on my back, his breathing body sprawled before me, my gun trained on him. And I wait.

He could almost be sleeping, except for the warm wet pool of blood around him. His features, so hard and filled with rage before, have dissolved back into Matthew’s pleasingly handsome face. His breath is irregular; he doesn’t have long left—he’ll die of his massive injuries.

I know I’m in shock, colored specks flutter across my vision. I find my mind wandering and I wonder what his life could have been like if things had been different. Without his condition. I try to imagine the wife he could have had, the kids, the Christmases, the birthdays celebrated with rooms full of friends.

A muscle quakes under his eye, a synapse firing, electrical impulses going awry—God knows what is happening inside his brain right now. I hope his dreams are sweet, I hope he can’t remember the awful things he has done.

And just as I think it, his eyes flick open. I gasp.

He blinks, his eyes gradually finding me.





48


THE MAN


A figure slowly comes into focus in front of me, a woman perched on a snowy step.

There is pain, sharp but distant inside me; my cheek is pressed hard against the cold ground. I let my eyes look down to the darkness beneath me, deep red and wet. Blood, perhaps mine. The thought scares me, so I pass over it. I try to move away from the redness but my muscles won’t respond. I can’t move myself.

What’s happening?

I search for the figure on the step again, and she sharpens into focus. A young woman, pretty but disheveled, her hair in disarray, a smear of red down her cheek.

Maybe this is a dream, I think, because I can’t remember where I am, or how I got here.

She’s watching me intently, her eyes wide and wet but alert, and I notice something grasped tightly in her hands, her knuckles whitening around it.

This doesn’t feel like a dream. My eyes go back to her face.

What’s going on? What’s happened between us?

She looks terrified, terrified of something, maybe me.

    What have I done?

I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try to remember.

Why is she scared of me? Why is she holding a gun?

I know her, somehow. I take in her features, her faded freckles, her ruddy cheeks, her soft lips. I know her. Yes, she’s a good person. I trust her. But who am I? A feeling of dread wells inside me.

Have I done something?

I try to ask the figure on the step, the young woman, but the words don’t come. I try a second time and they come in a rasped whisper, a voice I don’t recognize. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

The figure is standing now, trembling. “Stop it!” she shouts, color flooding her face. “Stop it! I know what you’re doing, Matthew! Just stop.”

Matthew. My name is Matthew. I try desperately to remember her name. If I can just remember her name, then it will all be okay, I know it will, because I know her. We know each other. We’re close, I feel it: she trusts me and I trust her. I have such strong feeling toward her, toward—

“—Marn?” her name comes back to me through the void, short and clear.

Her expression wavers. She scrutinizes my face, scowling, appraising me, looking for something. Then she takes a sharp breath and shakes her head in disbelief.

“Marn. I’m sorry if I did…I don’t know what I did. I’m so, so sorry,” I tell her in a voice I don’t recognize. “Marn, what’s going on? I’m scared.”

“Oh my God,” she mutters. “Oh my God,” she says again. She gently sits back down on the step and lets her head fall softly into her hands, tears running in streaks down her skin as I watch. “What the hell am I meant to—” She’s sobbing.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her.

“Marn, I don’t know what I did,” I say, to comfort her. “You have to tell me…what I did.”

    She looks up slowly.

“Marn, I’m scared,” I tell her. “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m sorry if I did something. I’m so sorry.”

She smears the tears from her eyes with the back of her shaky hand.

She seems to make a choice, her energy changing. She wipes her hands on her trousers and smiles at me with forgiveness; I’m flooded with relief.

“Yes, I know you’re sorry, Matthew. It’s okay now. Everything is okay. It’s all going to be fine.”

She sets down her gun on the step and slowly makes her way toward me. “Are you in pain, Matthew? Where do you feel it?” she asks softly.

“I can’t feel much, Marn. Is that okay?” I peer up into her face and she nods gently.