Awareness slowly bubbles to the surface like air escaping from ice at the bottom of a stiff bourbon, languid and uncertain. Pain hits me, a harsh overhead light stabbing me in the eyes—calloused fingers rub at my temples but there’s no relief. It’s a pain I recognize, but the feeling of a dry tongue sticking to the roof of my Saharan mouth, I think that’s a new one. My joints are on fire, pinpricks of sensation rippling across and beneath my skin as I dry heave, as if my budding consciousness reminded my body that it has needs.
Shading my face from the cruel overhead lamp, I dare to crack open my tired eyelids. A small room, not much bigger than I am, with a light brown trench coat hanging from the door directly ahead of me. Ah, that makes sense—I’m in a bathroom stall. How many times had this little scenario played out before? I tried to remember the tally of my misdeeds and ill-spent nights but the question slid atop the black oil slick of my memory, refusing to give up its secrets.
Great, I’d drunk myself to blacking out, and the mind’s taking a while to catch up. I can’t remember the name of the bar I’d passed out in, or even my own damned name. Just another loser who drowned his sorrows, unsure whether they’d catch back up to him before he found the next bottle of booze. Whoever I am, I sure think like a fun guy.
Reaching for the coat—the color of which matches my trousers, at least I have some fashion sense—my left arm tenses with a new pain. My cream-colored sleeve is unbuttoned at the wrist, and drawing it back I see a small pinprick in the crook of my elbow, scabbed over with dry, rust-colored blood. Tightening and relaxing my fist to urge the pain to pass by, I look around the white-tile stall, but don’t see any syringe or other paraphernalia. I get the sinking sensation I didn’t do this—whatever “this” is—to myself. That’s rarely a good sign.
Patting down the coat’s pockets, I hit the jackpot. Some loose change, a nice silver lighter and a sturdy white handkerchief—both emblazoned with the initials “J.S.”—and a pair of sunglasses. Most importantly though, a thin leather wallet. Dropping the other items back in the coat, I flip open the billfold, hoping for an ID. Lady luck does not smile on me though, and while the $20 bill is a nice find, it doesn’t help with my little amnesia problem.
I hear as much as feel my back crack one, two, three times as I straighten, letting out a groan as I stand up from the uncaring porcelain toilet that was my throne for who knows how many hours. Straightening the brown-and-mustard tie loosely fastened around my neck in what approximates class, I slip the wallet into my back pocket and don the coat. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that it fits, but at this point I’ll take all the good fortune I can find.
What I do not expect is the heavy revolver and holster that was hanging on the door behind the coat. Even before I pull it out I can tell it’s a .38 Special, in the same way I know the difference between red and blue. Popping open the cylinder with a practiced ease—though with no memory of when or how I practiced the move—I note the four bullets chambered, one having been fired. Sniffing the barrel, I catch the unmistakable tang of cordite; the weighty gun has been fired recently, possibly even while I was passed out here on the can. The thought is almost as worrisome as the needle-mark on my arm. I take off the coat long enough to strap on the shoulder-holster, frowning as I realize it’s sized to fit me perfectly.
Pulling open the stall door, I’m faced with a grimy, poorly-maintained washroom. The naked bulb on the ceiling buzzes with an irritating frequency as it bathes the dank room with off-white light. The half-height wooden paneling is splitting, the tile floor’s grout is green and slimy, and the whole place reeks of neglect. What kind of deadbeat would find himself in a place like this—I think to myself just as the realization hits that “I’m” probably the exact deadbeat who would, drunk and/or drugged in the bathroom stall.
Wiping at the mirror with my coat sleeve, I get the first look at my own face, a face that mirrors all my own movements but remains a perfect stranger. Several days’ worth of dark stubble on pockmarked skin, sunken eyes sitting hollow in their recesses and without any semblance of recognition or understanding, and brown-almost-black hair that was once styled in a fashionable wave with plenty of oil that has since become loose and ratted after whatever evening debauchery its owner had gotten up to.
I know staring at myself in the mirror won’t bring any answers. With a sigh I turn away, pushing open the tiny washroom’s door and clicking off the light, hoping I can leave the darkness in my mind just as easily.
This is the inaugural post of a new series I’m tentatively calling “The Deja Vu Chronicles,” a first-person noir story about a man with missing memories, a dead body, and his bloody fingerprints all over the crime scene.
Header image by ntnvnc from Pixabay, a great source of royalty-free images
