PART VI: Memories of Places I have never been.

I was born Christian Alexander, it’s on my birth certificate at least. My parent’s names are David and Michelle Alexander. This was twenty five years ago, the day my past began, and the point of origin for the now. I have only ever lived in one place, in this same city for all my life. I attended East Rose Grammar for seven years before breaking through puberty with all the finesse of a wounded bull, and moved onto Herald’s High School. From there I gained an honours degree in history at U.W.C University, a year later I fell under the knife of Dr Fleuriciam, and I began again.

These are my beginnings; this is what Felicity is telling me like she is reading it from a book. I sit here and she tells me about my life and I recognise it, I remember it, all of it except for the parts that include her. It’s like she is a faceless entity lurking in the ether of my life, a shadow caught and never seen. I do not remember her and yet she knows everything about me, more than she possibly could unless she was indeed a part of my series of events.

My mind cannot comprehend.

We drive through the city, to where, I have no idea. Shadows roll through the car and it feels like they are pulling on my eyelids, trying to force me to slumber. I sit with my head pressed to the cool glass of the window. I watch the streets stream past, a blurred mess of light and activity. People are out in full force, crowds caught up in the chaos of a Saturday night. I watch them interact against a backdrop of neon light. They are silhouettes against vibrant purples and reds, puppets dancing to a tune of debauchery against intense yellows and virtuous greens. All this light and all this life, never resting and always searching; this is our world. This is my city like it was a living creature and we are the blood and cells that flow through the venous network of streets and cul-de-sacs.

Felicity is telling me about the day I met Zach. We were in our sixth year at East Rose and he was getting a severe beat down from a couple of guys from the year above. They were on their way to high school after the summer and they wanted to leave a mark on the kid they had tormented for three years straight. I had watched from across the playground, stared as they struck him like they actually hated him. To me, it just wasn’t right and I made a choice, one I find incomprehensible now. I strolled over and let those guys know that I didn’t agree with what they were doing. They broke my nose, damn near cracked a few ribs and my mum was very upset, my nose has had a slant in the bridge ever since. Zach and I became firm allies.

Felicity tells me this and all the details are in place, she tells it and my mind remembers it. She tells me the following day was when I first met her. “I was watching you that day,” she says, “and my god, I was impressed. Those two shits were the biggest bullies in the whole school. They beat on whoever they wanted and everyone just accepted it. No one did anything, and then that day you just went right up to them and told them to leave Zach alone. I mean you took one hell of an ass kicking, didn’t even land so much as a slap, but you took it. So the next day I came up to you, my hair all in braids and a lollipop in my cheek, you were my hero.” She laughs and I can see the fondness she has for this memory, it’s there in the sheen of her eyes as they stare intently at the road ahead.

This I do not remember and I tell her so. We drive in slience for a while and she then goes on to describe my parent’s old house out in the suburbs. She gets it to a tee. She describes the textured exterior walls and how they were painted a horrible shade of burgundy, tells me about the plum slate roof that my dad was forever trying to fix, so much so we thought he was often sabotaging it so he could go back up again and escape my mother’s nagging. Felicity tells me how we used to lounge on the decking at the front of the house and listen to my mother’s ridiculous wind chimes that seemed to grow from the wood like a cancer, there were so goddamn many, she tells me about all of this. She describes the apple tree in our back garden, how in the summer when the sun was setting its shadow looked like a giant hand reaching for and strangling our house.

“I can remember your room, we used to hang out there most of the time, watch films and listen to music,” she says. “It was blue, small but with enough space for you to try and teach me how to cartwheel.” She keeps looking at me, searching for some kind of recognition on my part, but it’s not there. She is a stranger to me. “You used to keep your stash of porn and weed between the two mattresses on your bed.”

Nothing, she is nothing to me.

“How can you not remember me? How about Annabelle, do you remember her at least?”

Rain falls from the darkness and applauds against the exterior of the car. It streaks across the windscreen and turns the word into a smear. The wipers squeal as they scrape across the glass. I can hear the tyres splashing through the surface water on the road, it sounds like large sheets of thin paper being torn in half. These idle sounds are calming. I think the mixture of alcohol, painkillers, and a severe blow to the head is beginning to take a toll on me. I barely have the energy to ask Felicity any of the questions that, inside, I so desperately want answers to. I murmur, “Whose Annabelle?”

“She was my sister, you dated her for the last two years of high school before she moved away to go to an upper crust university. She was my twin sister actually. We weren’t identical, but we looked similar enough that I convinced myself that if you found her attractive then you must have harboured a secret crush on me.”

“Did you and I ever..?”

She laughs and I notice that outside, it is getting darker, the buildings losing their light and becoming slumbering shapes crouched in shadow. I realise we are moving away from the centre of town, pushing out into the outskirts and into the industrial sites with their giant barn like buildings that always smell like they’re burning when it gets too hot.

Felicity says, “No, we talked about it and all, you know, when we were consumed by hormones and a need to bust our cherries, but we didn’t want to ruin our friendship. And I was a shit hot friend I’ll have you know.”

I shake my head, watch as the world slips from view and all that’s left is what the headlights of the car allow us to see, two pyramids of light that turn everything into ghosts. The road is a silver path that twists and turns, the trees along side it are spindly phantoms that watch us pass. We are out into the surrounding countryside now, out into what night-time is supposed to be, an absence of light. “I don’t understand,” I say. “None of this makes any sense. How can I not remember you if we were such good friends? I mean, I remember Zach, he was that guy I was with at the bar.”

She nods. “I recognised him, we were friends too but we didn’t get on like you and I did.”

“He didn’t recognise you either.”

A sigh, her slender shoulders rise and her arms tense against the steering wheel. “That doctor you saw for your appendix, I remember him. I went with you for your referral, held your hand in the waiting room while you bricked it. Do you remember how for the first few days you thought you were severely constipated?”

A laugh escapes my lips, “Yeah I remember that. I think it was after three days that...” I stop, my mind trawling through my memory but not finding what it’s looking for.

“...That what?”

“I don’t know, I can remember someone telling me to get to the doctor for a check, but I cannot remember who it was.”

Felicity looks at me. “That was me Christian; I told you that there was no way that constipation should hurt that bad, that maybe you had a problem with your appendix.”

I look at her and our eyes meet for the first time since we started driving. Her face is cast in darkness, the bags beneath her eyes more prominent, the grooves that contain her cheeks more distinct. She is like a sketch, all deep lines and shadings, except for her eyes. They are two pools of intensity that seem to be pleading with me, willing me to remember...but I can’t.

I look away and allow my head to press back into the window. I watch the forest rushing past me, see the trees light up for a second and then disappear into the night. I see nothing and it’s like I’m trying to look into the part of my life Felicity is trying to claim.

“How about after my operation, tell me what you remember from there.”

“I came to visit you a lot. I kept bringing you flowers because you were always insisting that I didn’t, it wound you up something awful. You were really miserable in that place. Anyway, after you got out things went on as normal for a couple of months and then you began to change. It was small things at first; you became more withdrawn and quiet. I remember thinking that maybe you were depressed or something like that. I can’t quite pin it down, but it was like you just stopped caring or something like that.”

This I can remember. This I am all too familiar with. It was a slow descent into a dank pit which I now have no will to pull myself from. I became something else; I accepted the darkness inside of me and told myself, this is what I am now. Things that used to matter, friends, family, futures; they held no place in my heart. Instead there was a vast vacancy in their place, a hole that I am yet to fill and in my eyes, there is only one way to make the emptiness go away. I care for nothing; my moral compass spins with no direction. I do not hesitate, there is never any doubt, I do not flinch and I have snuffed out life without giving it a second thought. Am I a monster, am I any more so than any other man? I have to find Fleuriciam, an explanation. A purpose will grant me salvation and maybe then, only then, might I feel something again.

Felicity goes on. “We would watch those adverts for those third world charities, the ones with those starving kids with their pain scrawled over their tortured bodies, and you wouldn’t flinch. You would stare and there was nothing there, no empathy when before I could always see it. That boy who stood up for his friend in school, that compassionate soul was lost behind a mask of unwavering calm. You were just different...so different.”

She sighs and her dull sadness is palpable in the stuffy heat of the car. I don’t feel sorry for her, I feel nothing. I can not bring myself to care. This I say in my head, over and over like I have to convince myself.

“I watched all the colour fade from your life and it broke my heart. Then one day you were gone, you disappeared and I have been trying to find you ever since.” She glances to me and I can see a tear balled in the corner of her eye. I don’t know if what she is claiming holds any truth, but it seems she certainly believes it all. Inside, I feel nothing towards her evident pain. I know that there should be something, my memories remind me of a time when I could react to these kinds of things, that there was a time when I knew how to. But that’s just not who I am anymore. The guy she claims to have known, he is not me, not anymore.

What have I become? Am I nothing more than one man’s dirty secret?

“Before, in the bar,” I say, the words heavy in my throat, “you said you weren’t one of the villains I was chasing. How much do you know about me, about my life now?”

She shifts uncomfortably; I sense a change in her. “I know that you have done things, questionable things in pursuit of this doctor of yours. I know more than I am willingly to share with you at this point.”

“Then you know that I have killed people?” She doesn’t answer and I look to her. She stares at the road, feels my eyes on her and she nods. “And that doesn’t scare you, do you not fear for your safety being here in my company?”

She shakes her head and still does not look at me, so I stare at her and will her to look me in the eyes. Eventually she does. I can see the wet trail left by the tear that hangs off the point of her chin. She shakes her head and it falls. “I’m not afraid of you Christian...”

And this strikes me. Staring at her, her eyes on mine, it feels like our souls are meeting and brushing against each other, it’s like we are trying to share something of ourselves. A foreign sensation plucks a chord inside of me, one that I cannot put a name to and I have to look away from her. I don’t realise it, but a deep sigh whispers from my lips. I chuckle in attempt to brush away this new feeling. “Yeah, you don’t have to be. Not right now anyway.”

“How reassuring,” she laughs nervously and we drive in silence until eventually I slip into a deep sleep, my questions can wait another night.