though I wasn’t looking at it. “Good. I’m happy for you, Jeff.”
“Let’s go back inside.”
“Wait a minute… you don’t see him, do you?”
“I don’t see him.”
“Swear to me you don’t. Swear to me on my life.”
“Emmy, I swear to you on your soul I do not see him.”
She released my hand and hugged me. I’m sure the disgusting fatty across the street was thinking I was a pervert right about now. Her lank blonde hair smelled delightful. I think it was Herbal Essences I smelled. When she lathered it into her hair so recently ago that it was still damp, she was probably singing a song, mirthful, wondering which boy in science class might have a crush on her and which party she should attend this Friday evening. She wasn’t worrying about when she might next encounter that damned man in black, or where exactly that guillotine blade might be today. She was the sweetest thing, Emmers, and I was lucky to have her in my family.
She took me by the hand once again and led me back to the house. I found it peculiar that she did so. Once inside I closed the door and removed my glasses.
“Thanks for coming over, Emmy. It means the world to me.”
“I hope you can confide in me more often. I’m here for you if you need me. Always, okay?”
“Thank you.”
“I should be on my way. I have a big exam in History. I didn’t study as much as I should have, so wish me luck.”
“Consider your luck wished. Take care, and drive safe.”
She smiled at me, gave me a brief hug before heading for the door. She opened it, took a step out and looked back at me.
“I believed you when you swore on my soul that you didn’t see it.”
“As well you should.”
“But I have a feeling if I re-worded it to are you looking at it, my soul might not have been so sworn upon. Prescription sunglasses, huh? I really do hope your eyes were open, Uncle Jeff. I love you. Call me soon, I mean it.”
“I will.”
She even inherited her mother’s smarts. She was right. Had she said, “Your eyes are open and you don’t see him, right? Swear on my life, Uncle Jeff,” I would not have sworn upon it.
Well I’ll be damned! It was a person I had spied from the top of the rock! I increased my pace to a jog at the woman (yes, she was wearing a dress) in white. White, yes, but it was as filthy as the tee-shirt clinging to my sweaty torso. And it was much too small for her. Too short. The hem was well above her knees. She was sitting on the gray dirt, her arms folded over on her knees, head inside the nook. Her hair was brown and disheveled. She heard my approaching footfalls and looked up fearfully, gasped. She sprung to her feet and rounded on her heels, began to run.
“Wait! Don’t run! I mean you no harm!”
She ran anyway, throwing glances over her shoulder as she went.
“Please! Please don’t run! I’m lost and need help!”
She looked more keenly at me, brow knitted together, and slowed her pace before stopping altogether. I continued jogging toward her. The closer I got, the more incredulous I became. Hair a crow’s nest, dress dirty, pallid skin mottled with dirt; yet she possessed the face of an angel. Pretty, yes, but more than that, she was… sweet looking. The girl next door. The girl you leer at in church while secretly wondering how much better you’d have to be in every aspect of life to land a girl like that. My incredulity was in that an example like her was in a place like this.
“Hi,” I said, panting. I took a few more steps, stopped just before her. “Sorry to scare you like that. I cannot believe I found someone out here. I’m Jeff.” I extended my hand to shake.
“Hi.” She accepted my hand tentatively and shook it.
“What’s your name?”
“I… I’d rather not say.”
“You’d rather not say, or you can’t remember?” Her eyes widened just enough that I knew I was right. “Don’t be embarrassed about it. I couldn’t recall my own name, either. Any idea why you’re out here? Or how you got here?”
She shook her head. Her eyes were raking over me curiously.
“Well that makes two of us,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure. A couple of hours, maybe. I saw something—”
“I’m glad I found you. I thought I was losing my mind. Maybe I still am. I can’t make any sense of it all. Who would abduct me and dump me in the middle of nowhere, huh? And you, I guess.”
“I don’t think this is real,” she said.
“Don’t think this is real?” I pondered that. I guess I wasn’t so sure, either. “Like I’m dreaming?”
“No, like I’m dreaming.”
“Where does that leave me? I’m part of your dream? I don’t really exist? Gosh, I hope that isn’t the case.” It was my attempt at bringing levity to the situation. Perhaps it was ill-conceived.
“I’ll wake up soon,” she said determinedly.
“That you think this is a dream, doesn’t that hint that it isn’t? When we’re dreaming we don’t know we’re dreaming.”
She frowned at that. “I have amnesia.”
“It’ll come back to you. I only woke up a half hour ago or so…” I checked my calculator wrist-watch. “3:01?” I reflected back to when I checked it last. It had been 3:36. “Unless time’s moving backward, my watch is busted.” I looked at her large eyes the color of dark chocolate. “Or whoever this watch belongs to. It isn’t mine. Strange, huh?”
“This dress,” she said solemnly. “I didn’t think it was mine, either. At first. But you see this?”
She lifted the hem of the dress up to show me something. I stooped and observed a little discoloration. It was brown, sort of, but not like dirt. Like dried blood. Just below it the fabric was torn and frayed.
“It struck a chord in me,” she said. “Made me feel… funny. Like remembering something you thought you’d never think of again. I remembered crashing on a bicycle when I was a little girl, and hurt my knee. This is my blood.”
“So you’re wearing a dress from your childhood?”
“It appears so.”
“You can recall a biking accident but not your name?”
“I guess seeing it is why I remembered it. You don’t happen to know where we can find water, do you? I’m really thirsty.”
“As am I. No, I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for interrupting you earlier; what were you going to say? You saw something?”
“Yes, that’s why I know this is a dream.”
“What was it?”
She shook her head.
“Come on, tell me.”
“It was bad, Jeff. Something like that doesn’t exist in reality.”
“Okay then this is a dream, and because it is a dream you can tell me what your imagination conceived earlier. Was it a man in black? With a mask?”
Her brow furrowed. “No, why do you say that?”
“Never mind. Tell me, what was it?”
“It was an animal, I think. It was sort of far, so I’m not sure. It moved like an ape, using its arms as it went. It was olive green, hairless. I think it was coming from me. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up: it running away from me.”
I hummed. “You think it brought you here?”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t very big.”
“A green hairless ape,” I mused, then chuckled, which offended my new friend.
“That amuses you, does it? Well I’m happy for you.”
“No, it’s just… well I don’t know what else to do but laugh at this situation. It’s a nightmare, I think we can both agree, but I don’t know what else to do but laugh at it all. The more I think about it, the more I’m leaning toward dream as well. I’d guess that you didn’t save that dress from your childhood only to wear decades later upon your abduction.”
“Decades? Am I that old?”
“Don’t you know how—” I guess she wouldn’t know how old she is, being that she couldn’t even recall her name. I didn??
?t know my own age until I began recollecting the past recently. Emmy is eighteen and I’m sixteen years her senior, putting me at thirty-four. “I guess you don’t. No you’re not old, I shouldn’t have said decades. You’re probably younger than me. I’m thirty-four, I think. Want to hear something strange? I have no idea what I look like. None whatsoever. I wish I had a mirror.”
She cracked a grin. “Me too.”
“I can tell you this: you’re very pretty.”
“You ain’t so bad yourself.” She sighed and looked around. “What should we do?”
“No clue. What direction was that thing headed in?”
She pointed.
“Well I’m under the assumption that an animal in this heat wouldn’t stray too far from water, so if we can find where it went maybe we’ll find something to drink. And if nothing else, if we find it and it’s dead, we can still have a drink.” Under my breath I muttered, “Even if it’s not yet dead.”
She looked sharply at me, her disgust palpable. “I couldn’t do that.”
“I think you could if you’d die otherwise. I know I sure would. Let’s get a move on.”
We began our long and arduous journey across the barren wasteland in the direction she had pointed. Something she had said reverberated in my mind, and that was this being a dream; chiefly, why she had thought that. The old dress from her childhood. My jeans and tee-shirt were too ordinary to spark any recollection in me, but the watch had evoked a strange feeling in me earlier: was there a reason for that? I studied it as we walked. It was familiar, all right. I couldn’t attach a memory to it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t from my past, my childhood. If it was, what does all that mean? Why were we stuck in a nightmare with hooks into our past? If it was a dream, it was she who didn’t exist, not myself. She who was a figment of my imagination, not vice versa. Her only chance at existence is in this being real. And I have to say, if this is real, that sneaking suspicion of where I might be that I had earlier mentioned—it is difficult for me to just come out and say it—if this is real, I think I might be in hell.
We were quiet for some time. It gave me more time for remembrance.
She broke the silence with, “Why did you ask me if who I saw was a masked man in black? Is that who you saw?”
“Funny you should mention that. I was just thinking of it. No, I didn’t see him here. It was one of the first memories I had.”
I commenced to tell her every detail pertinent to the ordeal. She only spoke once during it, and merely said, “Emmy…” as if it meant something to her. But she let me continue my story.
It had lifted my spirits, Emmy’s visit. Her smile was brighter than the darkness of my imagination. I sat on the couch, kicked my feet up on the coffee table and sighed greatly. I really needed to finish the piece of shit novel that some hack with minimal talent had written. It would have been more properly edited by throwing it in the trashcan and lighting it on fire. But contracts are what they are, and income is what it is. I had a few more days before the deadline, anyway, which was probably more than I needed. I only had two chapters to go, then a quick re-read to catch any errors I may have missed on the first go-round.
I was hungry and not in the mood for macaroni and cheese or soup. And besides, without milk or butter, mac and cheese is pretty terrible. I had exhausted all the good stuff in the fridge and freezer. What sounded good was pizza, and that could be delivered. I should have thought of that before now. A made a quick call to Pizza Hut and put in an order. It would be a half hour before it arrived, so I figured I’d work on the novel.
“Emmy,” my female companion said again, interrupting me this time.
“Yes?”
“I… I think that’s my name.”
“Your name is Emmy?”
“I don’t know. It might be. It kind of feels like it is.”
“It’ll come to you in time. I think.”
When I opened the door for the pizza guy, I was wearing sunglasses. I didn’t want him to see me actively avoiding the porch behind him. My eyes were all but shut as I gave him twenty (keep the change) and