Story
I began to take my meals at the table, eating with Atya and Marianne. Walking got easier, memories got clearer. We talked a lot more about where we were in relation to the city, how I got there, what the neighbors who passed me along were like. Turns out I was at least thirty miles south of the city. Wright, the neighbor on the north-northeast side, brought me to Atya and Marianne on a wagon, and asked that I be kept here to recover.
"Why didn’t Wright keep me there, then? I’m sure I could have recovered there, too."
"And my dear, I’m sure Wright would’ve loved to have you there, but his wife Donna’s not doing so well, and he’s got to take care of her. I think it was just too much for him, poor guy."
"Didn’t he tell you about how he got me?" I felt strange talking about my past self like a pass-along item.
"Didn’t say much about it. Someone came by, said you were in an accident and needed to stay somewhere. That person left, and didn’t come back. So he brought you here."
"That person?"
"A man, I guess. Wright didn’t know him."
"And the pendant?"
"Didn’t even mention the pendant. Don’t see how he could’ve missed it, but he didn’t say anything either. We just figured you were wearing it before the accident."
Atya had wanted me to go to the last regional council with him, but decided I wasn’t up for it at the time. He said that members of each farm in the area, including Wright, attended, and it would be a good chance to meet him there, ask him about it. I got the feeling that wasn’t the only reason Atya wanted me to go, but I didn’t bring it up. I agreed to go to the next one, which was in three days.
I offered to help Marianne with dishes. I felt like I had to do something, even something so insignificant. In part to try to pay them back, but in part because I was going mad doing nothing. She let me help cleanup, but refused when I offered to help with laundry. She said she didn’t want me to overwork myself. Ha. Overwork. I felt like a vegetable.
I tried to sleep as much as I could, if nothing else to try to remember more, but I also found that when I slept more, they fussed less over me. I did remember more, continually adding to my list when I could. Some things stayed with me easily as soon as I saw them again. Others were difficult to retain once I awoke. Sometimes I remembered in daydreams, sometimes just like an idea that you’d forgotten and finally recalled.
Names like Hachi, Steve, and Faren came up. I soon placed Hachi as... that man. I was sad to learn that Faren was a fed-eating tool, and that Steve was a plant. To be fair to Steve, he was a very nice, very personable plant, and I liked him a lot better than Faren or Hachi.
That night, I dreamt a memory, one that I felt had led to me getting here. I couldn’t even scrap it together with the white room, but it gave me more hope that my memories would come back to me eventually.
I remember a stone wall with a massive iron gate, at least three times as tall as me. Long iron spikes lined the top of the gate and the wall.
It led to the scourges.
I remember the horrid smell of scourge-smoke, much stronger than anywhere else in the city, much worse than I’d ever thought possible. My eyes stung from the dry, filthy smoke. It wasn’t just the burning of wood and coal, but of rubbers and plastics, of all things rotted or moldy, the scorching of metals, all pressed into that pitch-cloud that rolled constantly from those terrible, Jenning-forsaken chimneys. And those awful chimneys towered like great brick sentinels over thousands of workers who pressed endlessly on through scorch and sweat and despair.
The human languages once had words for the afterlives of the sinful, with fire and brimstone, the devil and so forth. What we found was much worse. Those words lost their lash, and we called our torture "scourge." And so it did; our lives, our spirits, the land. Scourged, all.
And it was the first time, the only time, I’d been so close to that. I remembered, and it made me sick. What I couldn’t remember was why. Why did I need to be there?
~~~