Forget Yourself (12 page)

Frederick was kneeling on the edge of his bed, naked bar a pair of socks. Before him were tens of tiny towers, each arranged in squares, streets branching out from one another, a series of cracks surrounded by buildings. Frederick stood and carefully trod his way through. His cock hung half-limp half-heavy as he stepped toward me.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I muttered, casting my gaze down each lane and avenue.

“Well, that’s—that’s okay,” he answered. “It’s finished, more or less,” he motioned to the new world he had formed.

We all remembered cities. Tall, empty buildings, long empty streets, faceless shop-fronts. This wasn’t a new memory, but Frederick had brought our shared flat vision to life, carefully building a world we had lost but almost remembered, bringing it a little closer to reality. It was living, breathing evidence that we could re-make the world. I was drawn in further, over roof terraces and archways, around apartment blocks and over boutiques. Down back alleys and side-alleys and tiny lanes. This was the old world. It brought something back. Perhaps we had lived in those flats; perhaps we had worked in those offices and shopped there, or there, or there. Perhaps we had idly wandered at night around those streets, down that alley and along there, a million-million people around to keep us from ever feeling lonely. It did everything the book did and more.

I wanted to ask him something or tell him something but there wasn’t anything to ask, there wasn’t anything to tell.

“Lie down with me,” he said.

So instead we lay down together amongst the bricks, bringing buildings to eye-level and streets within grasping-reach. I felt his cock press against my thigh and let the dry scent of beetroot cover me. I pressed my face into his neck, young and soft. He didn’t make a sound. I was tired but waves rolled over my skin, tiny pins pressing themselves into me, curling my toes and pulling us closer. I lifted my face and saw the pinnacles of towers peering over his shoulder. He lay me down, pulled up my shirt, and ran his tongue over my breast, stopping at the nipple. I leant my head back and could see the base of two-storey homes, before they were obscured by his hair, his forehead, his eyes and broad nose and mouth. I sat up and took him fully-hard in my hand, his leg scraping a skyscraper, my leg drawn around him, his arm around my shoulders, my ear against his ear, and there we were, two giants, having sex in the middle of a real city.

FREDERICK LED ME TO THE WALL
.

I asked him what we were doing.

He told me we were to stand here and think.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Don’t talk Blondee, just—just think.”

I thought, but I didn’t know what to think of. I thought about the usual things: what I would eat, what the neighbours were doing. I thought I felt a little thirsty. Then I thought I was bored.

I told him so.

“Think Blondee. What—what do you think is on the other side? Right there?”

“I have thought about the outside before, Frederick.”

“No, he said, I—I mean
right there.
” He pointed at the wall.

“What do you think is there, Frederick?”

“A windmill.” He answered straight away.

“A windmill?”

“Yuh—yes, a windmill.”

He was sincere—he truly believed what he said. He felt that there was a windmill, not ten steps away.

“Why a windmill, Frederick?”

“It isn’t something—something that I can explain. I feel that there’s a windmill there. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you think so?”

I didn’t lie. I had the need to tell him the truth. I told him that no, I didn’t feel there was a windmill there, and that I didn’t understand why he felt there was.

He told me that sometimes we could know things and not be able to realise why. That not everything was ordered.

“S—sometimes, Blondee, things don’t make sense. They don’t fit together. And they don’t need to. We can’t—we can’t explain everything, Blondee, and there’s no need to try. Sometimes things are as they are.”

I didn’t lie to him. I simply nodded.

Later I relayed the conversation to Burberry.

“A windmill?”

She seemed interested, but she had her own opinions on the matter. She didn’t agree, she said that the truth might be elusive, and that we might often get it all wrong, but it was there somewhere. Maybe we didn’t have to find truth, but we certainly shouldn’t pretend to know things we don’t.

She was as sincere and determined as Frederick.

I knew they had to meet. I could never live with the two halves of me so separate. Each was new, and fragile, I knew that, but each time I explored with Frederick or felt Burberry’s lips with my own I knew that they couldn’t be kept apart. They had to meet.

I mentioned it to Burberry first. We were cooking together—she stirring and I watching—when it burst out. She listened to me with patience and a slight smile. She had no objection. She lifted the spoon from the pan, blew on it, and brought it to my mouth. We kissed.

Then Frederick. We were sitting drinking tea together—tea was plentiful for him—and I told him what I had said to Burberry. He stammered and his nerves were plain to see, but he agreed. I put my arms around him in comfort. I told him that it would be okay. There was nothing to worry about.

Now this was indeed a lie—I was worried myself. So I brought them together as carefully as I could. I met Frederick and drew a voiceless circle in the sand by the pool, end-to-end, breath steady, closed to the world. I gave him a hug goodbye and withdrew to my land, the land of the minors.

There was Burberry, and I took her hand in silence, leading her to the land of the least, to the pool—I forward, she in tow.

She did her best, forcing herself into focus, though once or twice the excitement of sneaking through the land of the least caused her to yelp in pleasure or grab at my arm in fear. Her head darted to and fro, she gulped down the sights before her: the unbelievable luxury of a hut painted rose pink, with matching pink windows with matching pink curtains; the opulence of private trees; the unbearable beauty of stones neatly arranged into swirls of a garden. I saw each of these through her, my heart and mind racing, the splendour of the land painted fresh. As we made our way through the shrubbery she wrapped her arm around mine.

We stepped into open space. There was the pool; the circle; there was Frederick. Burberry jumped away from me.

We said nothing.

Frederick stepped forward, the three of us standing in front of one another. We stood together in the circle.

We said absolutely nothing as the air changed around us, as the breeze moved to wind and calmed to stillness, as the sun sank and the sky darkened, as the pool lapped unending against its shore.

We said nothing but felt everything, us three: we poured anger into one another, spread fear to one another, spun jealousy and curiosity; hurt and hope. But no words. Movements were tiny, a flick of a finger, the barely-seen squint of an eye. A toe’s length toward, a fraction away.

They lost sight of me. They saw only one another. I was lost. The sun vanished in a dance of colours and it grew dark. Burberry’s arms opened a little, Frederick moved forward. The circle grew outwards, ever outwards, diminishing all before it, collapsing to nothing, it grew through the walls and out further, into other worlds, on and on.

At its edge the stone woman, charging its boundaries, leading it forward, away into the darkness. All around the edge her dogs, pushing it, further, further, smaller and smaller, vanishing in all directions.

“Blondee.”

Frederick and Burberry were together, arm-over-shoulder; arm-over-shoulder. They pulled me toward them. We embraced.

The circle fell and everything returned.

THE WIND HAS STOPPED
: everything is quiet. The ground is starting to freeze beneath my limbs. The hole is getting cold.

Frederick and I only had sex the one time. I loved him, I wanted him, I wanted to pull him close, to smell him and feel him. I did. But we remained how we always were: soft and dry and happy.

Burberry and I were different.

We had sex in the triangle hut

we had sex by the fire tap

in-between huts

and anywhere and everywhere whilst we giggled and came with her breath spread over my face. We were hard and wet and I was happy.

And when I came home from Frederick’s hut, with its colours and its buildings and its whole-other-world,

there she was, smiling and biting her bottom lip.

I remember thinking that Pilsner had been right all along: I had no memories. I didn’t need them. The world was how I wanted it. This was who I was, this was my life, I was Blondee and I loved two people.

It’s coming. I’m getting tired. Soon I shall enter sleep. Soon I shall be born anew.

IT GREW, FACELESS AND ANGRY
, restless and slow.

The world had known I was with Burberry. Neighbours had stood by and watched as she moved her fabric, her plastic, her metal, into our hut. It had been such a short time since Burberry and Tanned had parted ways, but it was a shining example of the new rule, how we shouldn’t dwell, how we needed to get over these things.

You should get back on your feet at soon as possible.

They were Tanned’s own words, in Tanned’s own handwriting. Page 16.

They all felt we were just a little closer to the outside, to how things should be, to how things always were. We even got a gift with the next rations: brown-and-black scraps of wallpaper, the dark colours dancing, driving one another to and fro in elegant swirls. Burberry wanted to place them around the hut. I piled them one atop the other and bundled them under the bed.

We weren’t accepted, I told her, not really. I was with her and I was with Frederick. It was just that no-one knew.

Burberry giggled and without a word picked them out again, sticking them to the wall with whatever she could find. As I opened my mouth to object she covered my lips with hers and pressed me to the floor, covering my arms with hers, my legs with hers. The black-brown swirls were to stay on the wall, and by the time my limbs were limp with exhaustion and my skin slick with sweat it was like they had always been there.

I went about my life. With Frederick I wallowed in the chlorine-waters or quietly skulked about to spy on other people’s huts late at night. No-one in his land knew who I was and I made sure never to be seen. Not until—