She never said nothin', there was nothin' she wrote
She's gone with the man in the long black coat[continued from here]Her breath fogs the air. It’s a struggle to keep walking. It’s so
bright. And so loud. And her head
hurts. And everything in her wants to sink to the sidewalk and clutch at her head and cover her ears and wait for the hurting to stop. But she keeps walking, palm flat against the brick building to her left for constant support, forcing herself to stay upright.
Nothing looks familiar. Nothing sounds or smells or feels familiar. She doesn’t remember walking this street or turning this corner or every laying eyes on this stretch of concrete sidewalk before. Her insides twist and she has to stop walking so that her stomach doesn’t heave, so that the pain doesn’t explode behind her eyes again. She pushes through it and propels herself forward. Something will have to look familiar eventually. She had to have gotten here somehow.
She follows the sidewalks when the pain subsides and she can function. She wanders. No one looks at her twice, and she’s too dazed to even think to ask for help. Eventually someone calls her name. She doesn’t turn because she doesn’t recognize it as hers.
A hand touches her arm. She doesn’t jerk away or scream, merely turns and looks into the wholly unfamiliar face of the its owner. Shock of red through dark hair. Dark eyes. Fair skin. Black coat. “
Bee,” he keeps saying. “
Bee. Baileigh. Bee.”
She shakes her head slowly. Tears gather along her eyelids, like some part of her realizes that she’s broken, but she doesn‘t feel the sting of them. “I don’t…know.”
But he must know her…right? Why else would be have chased her down a crowded street? Why else would he still be talking, why else would he hold out his hand to take hers?
She takes it without thinking, without
knowing to think, to mistrust, to even wonder who he is, and how he knows her name.
Baileigh. He tells her that her name is Baileigh, and when he speaks it,
yes…yes, that’s her name. She
knows it. And yet…
And yet even in knowing that, her name, her
name…she doesn’t really remember who she is.
How can she know her name with such clarity, such certainty, and not know who she
is?