THAT FALL

The best way to learn more about where I was and why I was there was from those casually chatting around me while I pretended to sleep. As a bonus, if I stayed asleep, the cultists or cosplay fans worshiping Dr. Who would stop questioning me. I tried to keep my breath slow and steady, my eyes relaxed and closed. Sam knew I was awake and pushed his head under my chin. He purred frantically. I fought my instinct to pet him, sensing he was afraid. Was anyone even feeding him? I refused to ask. He likes the salmon meals, I refused to say. The quieter I kept, the better. I considered all of what I was experiencing was part of my delusion, but it had become a reality to avoid.

A woman said, “She’s firmly Angie Krigare now. Even has human vital signs.”

The unusually tall blond man who was always around said, “You told me reduced contact with the humans would help. No more treatments. I am taking control.”

The one with the funny-colored skin costume who they called doctor said, “It is difficult with immortals. And I do not intend to make it worse by giving her some journal or whatever you have planned. In this state, she does not understand her abilities. Getting these Longwood humans off planet and taking away these constant reminders of her human persona is our best prescription. And if she is perpetuating this state as some act of revenge against you, there is not much we can do.”

The blond’s deep voice boomed: “Does everyone forget who she is? This is not some commoner. Nor am I.”

The others lowered their voices. The young woman spoke above them, insisting they should get me angry. To taunt me. It did not sound very nice. She said, “She told me ‘only I can wake I.’ Reynolds should give her the journal.”

The costumed doctor opined. “I hesitate to expose her to too much of the truth. It is dangerous, Onnage.”

Murmuring. Then yelling; the big guy firmly insisting they would do it his way. No more doctors. He told everyone to get out of the room. Movement. Someone released the restraints on my neck and wrists. A fingertip wiped across my brow. A caress over my cheek. Someone exhales. Footsteps. Someone turned off the light. Someone closed the door. Someone turned the lock. I squinted and confirmed I was alone with Sam.

Helpless, the tears that began to flow again. “Be logical,” I chastised myself. “You’re being a blubbering baby…” Sam meowed his agreement, but I could not stop crying. Sitting up hurt my back. How long had I been in a bed? Weeks? What day was it?

I took inventory of my surroundings, rising to peer out the curtained window. A neighborhood. A yard, three flights below. Not my yard. Not my neighborhood. I remembered a hospital. And a room with a damaged wall. I remembered a pool. And I remembered someone shot me. And they took my son. The tears started again as my madness took me. I have no son. I have no one. I have Sam the Cat who jumped onto the windowsill and shoved his body under my chin.

I tried to open the window and discovered they sealed it. Lovely. My desperate need to sleep overwhelmed my urge to escape. Perhaps I had the flu in addition to psychosis? Did psychosis make one tired? For once in my hectic life, I actually could just sleep. No work. No classes. No flights to give presentations. No appointments. And my captors did not care what I did, apparently, so I could nap the day away. In fact, they encouraged me to nap the day away.

Another tear. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. They could at least bring me a box of tissues. I looked around the room and found a towel. Wiping my face, I considered letting the sleep take me. Dizzy and lethargic, I surmised my exhaustion was chemically induced. I stared at the bed and hesitated. Sleep frightened me. Sleep meant I would lose myself in haunting dreams and the memory of my boy being swiped out from the bathroom stall. Hazy memories of being shot. Of destroying my office. A flash of swinging my bookshelf into someone’s face. I hurt people. How was that possible?

The tears welled up inside me. I must stop crying. I must focus. I took a deep, cleansing breath. I stretched up, then down to my toes, sweeping my hands up to the sky and down to the floor repeatedly. Probably gained ten pounds lying around for how long? Losing track of time was the most unnerving aspect. How long had I been in the room with the two-way mirror? I did not know. How long had I been in this bedroom? And where was I? I peered out the window hoping to collect as much information as I could. The sun was lost on the horizon and twilight embraced the street below. I stood there for a long while wracking my brain to recall how I came to be in this house dressed in only underwear and a t-shirt.

I thought I imagined the bright streak of bluish lightning hit past the tree line. One strike. Two. Three, four. I lost count as the blue light struck and ignited trees and a nearby house. The floor shook, and the windows vibrated, like that boom during the staff meeting. Floating above the tree line was a long, silver-grey spaceship firing blue lightning into the trees. I started to scream.

The large blond man appeared, came to my side, calmly looked out of the window and started to close the blinds.

“No. Leave them open,” I said as I watched the ship pass into the distance and the evening return to a quiet twilight. The moon was rising and looked as if someone had wiped a moist finger across its surface, leaving a smeared halo. Misty clouds drifted through the yellow fuzzy edges.

The visitor backed away, taking a seat on the chair next to the bed. He said, “Random strikes. Keeps the victims afraid.”

I looked upon the empty yard, struggling with whether what I had seen was a delusion. I could barely make out a fence at the end of property and the trees beyond the fence line. I thought I saw dogs at the back of the yard, but, when their shadows did not move, I concluded it was the shape of the undergrowth. I found myself unable to turn from the window, worried that the lightning would start again. Or that ship would return. October leaves fell from their trees and each tap of each leaf dropping onto the earth reminded me of a son I did not have. The sound of my breathing in the otherwise silent room made me painfully aware the man behind me was listening to me inhale, exhale, inhale.

He asked, “What do you remember?”

“Of the past few days? Not much.”

“Before that. Of your life,” he said.

“I remember two lives. My real life and memories I cannot explain. I told the doctors,” I sat on the bed and reached for Sam. He flopped onto his back and let me rub his stomach.

He asked, “How about the day before that?”

“How about you tell me where I am?” I asked.

“In a house in New Jersey.”

“Wasn’t I in a hospital?” I asked.

He folded his hands in his lap. “Yes. But, as you can see, aliens are invading and this house was safer than the hospital.”

“Oh, right,” I said. How was I supposed to sort out illusion from reality when crazy people who enforced my delusions attended me? “Are you saying you saw that spaceship?” Expressionless and silent, he waited for me to speak. I said, “I don’t know what’s memory and what’s delusion. And you people keep drugging me with who knows what,” I said as I rubbed my sore upper arm. I had four puncture marks in my chest, and those hurt, too. Complete madness. I said, “You people don’t even know my medical history.”

“We have your records,” he said.

“This is not a medical facility.”

“It is a field unit,” he said, as if that would be reassuring.

I turned to him. His sapphire eyes unnerved me completely. I spat, “A field unit? Because we’re at war?”

He said, “Correct.”

Turning to the window again, I nervously checked for that scary lightning. It must be the Russians. I had predicted escalation. I exhaled to steam the window and drew a circle in the condensation. It was obviously freezing outside.

“Just review from the beginning,” he said.

I smirked and asked, “How about I go backwards?”

“That works, too.”

“Fine,” I said, frowning against my constant headache. “I just woke a few hours ago after you people injected me. Again.” My tears formed. My throat tightened. “That was last night–the middle of the night. Or early yesterday morning…” Not knowing what day it was anymore was more terrifying than the blue lightning. Fear rose in me. I fought it.

“Go on.”

Go on, he says. “I remember a girl. The one from the hospital. She was trying to calm me down.”

“Yes.”

“I remember a pool. Lots of people who I don’t know.”

He just stared at me with those big blue eyes and anger overwhelmed me. I wanted to punch him. Stab him. Have a tiger maul him. Something horrible. I tried to take a cleansing breath but found I could only gasp. I snapped, asking, “At what are you looking? At the crazy woman?” I turned back to the window. My circle in the condensation was dripping. I rubbed it away with my sleeve. I said, “Before that, I remember a party. A pregnant woman. It was sunny. I remember a teenager with a picture of a cat.”

He asked, “Before that?”

“An observation room. The one with the two-way mirror. I remember you were there, too.”

“I was.”

“And this handsome, thin guy. I think he was a doctor.”

“Yeah, the handsome doctor,” he said as he balled his hands into fists.

“Distinguished, I guess. The doctor was standing next to the pregnant woman,” I said, as a frown covered my face. It was all very confusing. I said, “But she wasn’t pregnant then. Which makes no sense.” He nodded, pursing his lips, waiting for me to speak. “I don’t think this is helping. Repeating my delusions. Shouldn’t I try to recall my real life?”

“Just keep going with anything you recall.”

“Are you a doctor? Because you don’t seem like a doctor. You remind me of a cop,” I said, pausing Sam’s belly rub. Sam nipped at my hand. I resumed stroking him.

“I am a cop,” he said.

“Well, at least my spider-sense is working,” I said and almost smiled. “And the doctors are letting you question me without them present. Am I in some sort of trouble?” The memory of striking someone with my office shelf floated into my mind.

“Just continue,” he said.

His blank affect started to frighten me. “At the hospital… two men in suits were there.” I felt the tears coming again, and said, “The men who took my baby….”

He stiffened, sitting taller in his chair. He asked, “When did that happen? When was your son taken?”

“I don’t know…”

“Take your time. Take a deep breath.”

I did. I said, “Are you investigating that? Because that’s the memory that’s not a memory.” Fighting the rising sob, I added, “I have no son.”

“Tell me about that memory. Go right to that.”

“That memory is insane,” I said as my throat tightened and I held back tears.

“Just tell me what you remember.”

“This… this memory was so strong after my ring broke,” I said as I looked at my finger. The cut was completely healed. I must have cut it at least a week ago. How long had I been in this place? “I told the doctors already.”

“Tell me,” he said.

I sighed loudly. Did I have a choice to be silent? If I continued, would I wake from this nightmare? I said, “I’m looking at the whole thing like I am not in my body. Like I am looking down on myself. I think I was driving home with my son. I think his name is Evan?” Pushing back tears, I continued, saying, “I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone–Evan was very frightened.” He waited for me to continue without blinking. I waited. He still did not blink. I said, “We stopped at a diner. A little dive on route nine. There were a few people there. Mostly locals. Some guy with a knit hat; a tall girl with short blond hair. Sipping coffee.”

He still had not blinked. I was never good at guessing anyone else’s weight, but I figured a tall guy like that must be about two-hundred and fifty pounds. I tried not to look him in his unblinking, disturbing, blue eyes. He had this way of holding me to him with his stare. I knew they, whoever they were, had this guy question me strictly because he had those weird eyes. Mesmerizing. I continued, tearing my eyes away from his stare. “I needed to go the bathroom. Evan was playing with the stall lock and I told him to stop. He was always fiddling with things. He had opened more than one stall door on me…” How could I remember this? I held back more tears.

“You are having a memory, like it is someone else’s memory?”

“Yes! These things never happened to me. Although I may have been in that diner–or one like it.”

“Try to go with it. Just keep talking,” he said, seeming happy with what he considered progress.

I felt much worse. “I told this over and over,” I said.

“Tell me again.”

“Then there were the hands,” I said, shivering. “The hands under the stall door. I saw cuff links and a white shirt….” I gulped as fear filled my chest. “Two hands grabbing Evan’s ankles. And he was gone.”

He waited. I waited. “That’s it?” he asked.

“The story has not changed in the last twelve times I’ve told it.” I knew he wouldn’t allow me just to stop, so I started again: “Two hands, man’s hands, reached under the stall door, grabbed his legs.” I started to cry again, blubbering my words: “Pulled him down–his little chin hit --” I couldn’t. I just couldn’t tell it one more time. I turned and dropped my head onto the pillow and wrapping my forearm over my face. Sam jumped onto my stomach. I stroked him with my other hand. The blue-eyed monster did not prompt me this time, but the obligation to continue impinged. I said, “Someone kidnapped my son. I distinctly remember this impossible memory.” I raised my arm, looking towards him, but not at him, and saying, “Which is why they took me to that hospital. Because I’ve obviously gone insane.” I covered my face again.

“After they kidnapped your son, do you remember anything else?”

A flash of an image in my mind. A farm. A long road. Horses. I stood, shaking off the thoughts and returning to my condensation-coated window. I whispered, “I… I don’t know.” The sound of the bastard breathing as he waited for me to continue reminded me that I wanted to punch him. Is this what every kidnapped victim suffers? Questioning. Drugs. Weird costumed people? Not likely. The reality hit me I might be so delusional that I believed I was in a house when I was still in a hospital. Maybe these people were not in costumes. Maybe I just saw them that way. Maybe I was not even talking to anyone. “I’m really confused,” I said as I traced another shape on the steamed window.

“I know you are confused. Just take your time.”

I closed my eyes. Funny, the cuffs of the suit of the hands who grabbed my son’s legs. They were, I don’t know… I said, “Vintage.”

“Pardon?”

“The clothes of the people in the diner. The kidnapper’s cuffs. The clothes were what I would call vintage.”

He asked, “Like from the 1970s or something?”

“Yes. Like that.” Weird, I thought. I said, “I’m probably having some delusion based on a television show or something.” He was silent. “Right?” I asked as I turned to him.

He said, “Or something.”

“All I know is I have this weird memory and this intense need to find my kidnapped son. And I have this urge that I want… I want my son.”

“I know.” He was quiet for a while, then added, “Tell me more about that night. After they took him. What do you remember?”

I sighed. Nothing. I remembered nothing. A flash. A kitchen. A dog. “A dog bit me,” I said as I looked down at my right hand, staring at the skin.

“Go on.”

“I was just thinking I couldn’t blame that dog.”

“Sometimes things have to defend themselves,” he said.

“Like against me?” I smiled, asking, “Afraid I bite?”

“Oh, I know you do,” he said as he leaned forward.

Curious, I thought. “I just I want my son,” I said.

“You’ll have him. In fact, only you can get him.”

“Well, that makes no sense at all.” I dropped to the bed curled into a ball. I want my son I want my son I want my son. My tears came no matter how hard I fought them. Where was my son I did not have? Why was I so emotional over a delusion? But it seemed so real. The pain. The loss.

He whispered, “This process… talking. Talking with me. It is the way to get him back. To remember.”

“How?” I opened my eyes and sat up, enraged. I asked, “How can sitting here in this room talking to you help me get him? Or clear up this confusion in my head.” I hit my forehead with my palm. “What’s wrong with you? I need to get out of here now. I need to be out there! Don’t you get it? They took him. I don’t know who they are. They could be in Chicago by now! Shouldn’t you be out there looking for him if you’re a cop?” My chest hurt. My head hurt. Wave after wave of pain flowed through me. Sam sat on the edge of the bed, his ears perked, watching me rock back and forth, screaming out my pain.

The big guy with the deep eyes waited until my sobs subsided, then asked, “What happened after they took him?”

I told him. Again. “I remember I ran to my car. I drove to a farm. And there were people there…”

“Yes?” he asked as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

I did not smoke. I have never smoked. But I wanted that cigarette. I gestured for one, asking him, “I guess you’re a cop.”

“Why do you say that?” He handed me a cigarette and a lighter.

I lit the cigarette and took a long, satisfying inhale, marvelously warm in my chest. I said, “You have not raped me or tried to kill me yet. And you’re not a machine. Unless you’re a cyborg. I’ll believe anything at this point.”

He said, “Good,” through a sincere smile that I almost let touch me.

Almost. He seemed familiar, like a favorite blanket stored over the summer you unpack in the fall. He had those disturbing eyes, so blue… like the ocean… the deep ocean… His spiky blond hair was the shade of wet sand. It seemed he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The beard suited him. I fought the urge to punch him in the face.

He shot another question at me: “And what do you remember before that?”

“And before that? Before these memories that could not have happened? Before that I had a life.” I took a long drag. The cigarette was delicious, but I failed to enjoy it because he would ask again. And again. After so many hours of doing this on and off, he would ask again. I ranted: “I had a professorship. A good one. I was supposed to meet with my publisher. I just finished a book on the history of war tactics of ancient civilizations. Greece.”

“And before that?”

“I went to school. I fed the cat. I don’t know… I was born!” I slammed my hand on the bed and the tears welled in my eyes. One escaped down my cheek and landed on the comforter. Sam pushed his head against my arm, begging for attention. I took another long drag exhaling my question: “What do you want from me?”

“For you to remember.” He placed the pack of cigarettes and the lighter onto the old dresser. He stood and hesitated at the door, turning and asking, “Did I tell you my first name?”

I took another drag of the cigarette. Boy, that felt good. “No, you have not told me much of anything.”

“It’s Sam.” Then he was gone.

Sam. Like my cat? The blue-eyed cop was mocking me. What did he want me to remember? Thoughts and memories and delusions were running together like the droplets through the condensation. Remember what? Remember, before I was born? This guy was a nut. Or I was. I took another drag of the cigarette and tried to be mindful but continued crying as I smoked the cigarette like a pro. Some yoga health nut I am, I thought. I stamped the cigarette out on the plate that had had my untouched dinner on it and laid down on the bed. My head hurt again. This guy, this Sam, seemed to believe I had a son. Maybe the memory of being Professor Angie Krigare was the false one. Maybe I had a son.

Those booms started again. Blue flashes intermittently brightened the room. The window rattled. I wanted it dark. So dark. I dropped onto the bed and covered my eyes with my arm. I wanted to be numb. No more explosions. No more noise. Let me drift into unconsciousness. So many memories were flying through my mind. I am teaching a class on modern warfare. The new technology. Drones. I am taking a yoga class in Bali. I am hiking with my friends along the Appalachian trail. My son is playing football with his father. My husband and I are on a skiing trip. I am in a garden under a dome and a starlit sky. Two men shoot me with darts and I scream in pain. I touch the pregnant woman’s stomach. My son is playing with kittens. I am trashing my office and swinging a shelf into someone’s head. I see a man in a white coat fly into a wall and a big crack is forming… glass is shattering. My son’s little chin hitting the tile floor as two hands pull him under the bathroom stall door. My tears flowed strongly then. Sobs overwhelmed me.

The next memory so strong, like the Christmas morning you get that doll you begged Santa to bring. Like the first moment you steady your two-wheeled bicycle. Like your first kiss. I had burst out of the bathroom stall like some warrior. A Wall Street executive or some guy with fancy cuff links had my son. The IRS? Who were these people? I broke open the stall, forcing against the person holding it shut. He ran. I pursued. But when I got outside, he was gone. I asked the diner counter girl with the long braids. She looked at me like I should take lithium. The waitress asked me if I wanted a drink of something stronger than coffee. There was no one else there. The guy with the hat was asleep. They said that they hadn’t seen anyone. We searched the bathroom. They asked me where the boy was. I was crying. That’s what I was asking them! Didn’t they see anyone? No. No. I rushed outside, and I was driving. Driving to the farm. To the man. The tall man with blond hair. My husband. My husband with the ocean-blue eyes.

In the small bedroom somewhere in suburban America, with my cat next to me, with my arm over my face, I started to wail.

The tall man burst into the room. He knelt next to the bed and wrapped his arms around me, and his warmth exploded through me. Visions of swimming naked under two orange moons. A ride on the back of a winged horse. Laughing in a field of flowers–butterflies the size of planes around me and he puts a flower in my hair. A passionate kiss overlooking a galaxy. His hands on me. Giving birth to a child and the man’s joy. Dragging a knife across someone’s back. Blood. Three little girls playing with what was not quite a deer. A little boy playing with kittens. Kittens with three eyes. A soldier receiving an award. My gown is a deep emerald. He waves at me from the dais. We are dancing under a dome of stars.

I heard myself screaming: “Onnage, help me!”

I opened my eyes what seemed moments later, but I must have drifted to sleep. My throat was raw. My swollen eyes were almost closed shut. My headache was debilitating. I tried to focus on the person at my beside finding instead of the blue-eyed guy, an old woman at my bedside, watching me.

I again considered leaving, but the voices outside the locked door and the sealed window dissuade me. So here I am, locked in a bedroom in suburban America somewhere in some hospital tee-shirt and someone else’s underwear. I don’t own granny panties. Why had they not just killed me? What was this game? I struggled to open my eyes.

That old woman had Sam in her lap now. Sam was toying with gold chains that pool on her chest. She smiled at me and asked, “Hey, how are you?”

“Thirsty,” I said as I smacked my lips together. “What time is it?”

“It’s morning. You were restless all night,” she said as she reached and poured water from a pitcher, handing me the cup.

I drank greedily. My mouth was so dry. “Where am I?”

“Still in New Jersey, dear. Some crap town. Near the ocean,” she said, adjusting strands of gold necklaces around her button-down blouse. Sam kept pawing at the chains as if they were cat toys.

I said, “I would love to go to the ocean…” I drank more water, finishing the contents and handing her the cup. She seemed familiar to me. She seemed trustworthy. Like a friend. I didn’t ask her name, embarrassed I had forgotten.

She took the cup from me, then reached for my hand and held it so sweetly, tears welled in my eyes. She said, “I’m going to say things. I want you to tell me what you feel, or any thoughts that come into your mind. Can you do that for me?” I nodded. She said, “Good. So, I convinced them to let me come in here and talk to you.”

“Them?” I asked.

“Sam Reynolds. And your doctor,” she said.

“He’s a pain in the ass. That cop,” I said.

“Your son needs your help,” she said.

I frowned and asked, “I have a son?”

“You do. That’s all I can tell you.”

“And a husband?” I asked.

“Yes, but let’s start with one thing at a time.”

Am I crazy or not? I thought, asking, “So, I’m not Angie Krigare?”

“No,” She added, “You have a son. He needs your help.”

So, my perception of self as Angie was the delusion. Or this woman was. Maybe it all was.

She continued: “And you’re the only one who can help him.”

I frowned at the questions banging inside my pounding head. I have a son? The only word I was able to conjure was: “Okay…”

“But you refuse to clear up your head. You’ve been, let’s say, hypnotized. But not how you think… not what you believe. You are not Angie Krigare. That is the delusion.”

I continued to frown and tried to sit up taller. “That’s frightening me. You’re frightening me…”

“You don’t get scared. Focus to help your son. To help many people. People are counting on you and you’re screwing it up,” she said, once again adjusting the chains around her neck.

I don’t screw up, I thought as I narrowed my eyes.

“Yeah, get mad. Because you’re one hell of a fuckup. It’s almost a week and a lot of lives are in danger. And it’s your fault.”

A heat grew in my chest and I blurted: “It is not my fault. It is his father’s fault. Always fighting. Always pushing him.”

“There you are!” the old woman said, adding, “Keep talking, Renya.”

Tears formed in my eyes. I wanted to sleep. I asked, “Who’s Renya?”

The old woman frowned and placed Sam back on the bed. “They’ve ordered me to leave with the others. I hope to see you again, but that depends on you. Get better.”

I nodded, accepting Sam. He purred loudly. I started to focus around the room. Every wall had deep cracks through the plaster, and something had shattered all the windows. Tape held together spidery slivers through the glass panes. I stared at the windows and the walls, and asked, “Who did that? Dear God…”

The old woman paused at the door and with a surprising frankness said, “You did.”