Nameless, p.1
Nameless, page 1
NAMELESS
By
Marni MacRae
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing by Laurel Heidtman
©2017 Marni MacRae
For Dannette, because she saw angels cooking hamburgers.
And for Chandelle, because we finally got our high heels.
Thank you for being my sisters.
Chapter 1
I don’t know who I am.
Not in an existential I-need-to-find-myself kind of way. I actually don’t know who I am.
I awaken to my not knowing on my knees.
Instinctually my senses reach out, fighting panic, probing my surroundings, quickly categorizing and filing as my synapses fire, filling the blank slate that is my memory chalkboard.
I'm in a field. Expanses of dark, tilled earth stretch out as far as my eyes can see, the scent of the soil filling my nose as I gulp in a breath of crisp air, choking on a scream bubbling in the back of my throat. A muddy field in the middle of nowhere. Swiveling my head around to make this determination tells me something else. My head hurts. Not in any one spot, but all over, as if my brain has been in a fight. It throbs. My eyes feel puffy and swollen like I've been crying, and my skin catches the chill of a breeze gusting from a leaden sky.
It's starting to rain.
I'm kneeling. In a field. In the rain.
I don't know what to do. Panic and confusion tickle along my spine, yet neither chooses to lead. They tangle together, squeezing my heart, and I push back, trying to find calm, trying to sort this out. The rain is cold, but cold is like an idea, it doesn’t touch me. My heartbeat thrums inside my skull accompanying a distant ringing so high-pitched it almost isn’t there.
Somewhere in the back of my throbbing mind I know it's not normal to not know…anything.
Wait, that's not right. A thought forms in the fog of beaten gray matter. An attempt to reason, to know me.
I do know things. I take hold of the confused, shivering me gawking about, head swiveling, trying to make sense of the world. The ringing, thrumming, pounding in my head has spread to infect my heart, and a shaking begins that has no relation to the cold. I take another gulping breath of cold wet air, shushing down the panic, attempting to soothe and reason out an explanation. Work it out. Breathe.
I look around again. This time with more intent. I slow my gulping breaths and focus on my surroundings. The field is planted with corn. Tiny green sprouts emerge about two inches from row upon row of tilled field. They haven’t yet begun forming stalks. Just new shoots that my knees crush into the dark, wet earth. Corn. I know this. It is a beginning. Grasping at the word and vision of the little corn shoots growing tall through the heat of summer, I hold on to this one thing I know. Corn.
My vision blurs for a moment and the world goes fuzzy. Earth and sky meld together in a slow melting convergence, and for a moment, I can’t make out the horizon. The foggy, swimming sensation makes me feel dizzy, and I raise a hand to my forehead to hold my mind steady. Squeezing my eyes closed tightly, I take a long deep breath and then let it out.
I’ve hurt myself. The most logical leap gives me direction, and I grab onto it like a buoy. Work it out. Still kneeling in the mud, I begin running my hands over my face, my body, searching for an injury, a lump on my head, an origin point of pain, something to explain the throbbing, but more desperately, to explain the emptiness. The cold is beginning to become less of an idea and more of a threat as I feel the temperature of my skin. My fingertips leave icy trails as they travel my face, my neck, into my hair laying wet and limp against my skull that pounds, pounds, pounds.
My exploration finds nothing other than damp skin, and I reflexively hunch in on myself as a weak protection against the drizzle lazily misting from the sky. I seem to be intact. At least not bleeding, no head gash, no bump, no immediate proof or tell as to why I feel so empty, numb, and confused.
Surely, I know who I am. I feel myself growing angry, the frustration burning away confusion and heading straight into denial. My name is…blank. Not even a picture of my own face comes to mind as I struggle with my thoughts, straining against the thick, muddled pounding to dredge out a memory of me. Still, nothing.
The denial slips away quickly, allowing an exhaustion that so thoroughly pervades every corner of me I find it almost impossible to care about the cold, the muddy field, the emptiness inside. I feel so tired and dizzy I contemplate lying down on the wet earth.
Giving up feels wrong though. I have been no one for only moments, but defeat does not feel like a natural avenue to me. There is a stubborn determination growing inside the thrumming in my head, and it pushes me to begin.
Begin what?
Work it out. All things have a beginning.
Begin. I resist the call of the muddy bed, ignore the cold that every moment becomes more and more a medicine to wake me, shock me into dealing, and begin.
I have been kneeling here for only a few moments, but as each second ticks by, my head clears a little more and I know I won’t find answers in a field. I need to get out of the rain.
The earth smells new and full of promise. The air, though not freezing, isn't warm at all, and the rain chills me as it hits my skin like tiny pricks from dozens of thorns. I'm not wearing a coat. I should be. It's early spring. I'm guessing, but I add it to my short list of things I know. Spring and chilly and I have no coat.
I struggle to my feet, pushing my hands into the wet field to steady myself and glance down, taking quick stock of me. Or shoes. My feet are covered in the soil I had been kneeling in. And blood.
Now I begin to feel. All at once. The soles of my feet sting and scream at me. The rain and chilly air bombard me from every angle, and my skin breaks out in gooseflesh.
My head is still pounding and I feel like I may faint, unsteady on cut feet, but I must begin. I need shelter, a doctor. I know I can find both at a hospital and maybe some answers.
The ringing in my head is subsiding and my thoughts feel less panicked, more purposeful. I know what a doctor is, a hospital. Although these details please me, I still find none forthcoming regarding me, but I have a goal.
The corn field is expansive. Low swells of tidy rows of corn crest and fall to crest again, blocking my view in any direction for more than a hundred yards before baby corn touches wet sky. I can’t see any roads from where I stand. But I have to choose a direction. I need to move, need to get warm, find something. I’d settle for anything. A house with a phone—I know what a phone is—a trail, or a path.
Begin. Part of me clings to this spot. This muddy field where I was born. A scared shaking inner child who doesn’t know how to take on the largeness of all that I do not know. I hesitate a moment, clasping my arms around me, staring at my bleeding feet that are all but buried in my muddy birthplace. The warmth of the tears that begin to flow down my cheeks mark their journey against cold skin. I let them fall. I let them have their release. I watch as they disappear into the soil, my head bent over my chest, my feet screaming at me to move, to do something, to stay and cry harder, curl up here and give in to the panic that I know will warm me. Burn through me like fire.
A gulping sob escapes and I catch my breath, clamping my lips together. Enough. I shake my head in defiance of the fear that holds me, and the movement brings back the ringing, the dizziness.
Begin.
I take a step. My feet scream and my legs try to lock up, keep me from causing myself pain, but I take another step. Standing or walking I will hurt, I try to reason with my body. I assure myself that if I just put up with the pain I will find help and the pain can stop. I know full well that I’m arguing with no one, that my self and myself are the same. But now is not the time to question my methods and I continue taking steps.
The grayness of the sky is complete and unyielding in every direction, it divulges no hint of sun to help my bearings. I head forward. It could be north. It could be south. It is the easiest choice—forward.
The rain is just a drizzle, but it’s enough to soak me. My body begins tremoring with the cold and the stress of my mind beating against the wall of questions. The ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ and constant nagging query of my name—why don’t I know my own name?—run in a loop that feed the fear I am barely holding at bay.
I begin to list the facts to myself as I stumble forward. I am female. I glance down at my breasts, just for affirmation though, this detail is one thing I hadn’t not known. Being female comes with its own set of instincts. My shirt is becoming soaked with the rain, my nipples responding to the chill. Oddly the reaction validates a small sense of self, and I begin to feel a bit more certain of me. Female and cold. Next.
My age? I strain to think of it, pushing my beaten-up brain to its limits and no number comes. Am I eighty or eighteen? Suddenly I need to know this. A tickle of panic grows into a burning, and I struggle to manage the rising distress. I clamp down on the rush of blood suddenly accelerating through my veins and thrust my hands out in front of me. With no reflective surface in sight, they are the quickest part of me I can confirm. Aside from my breasts.
I have young hands. Firm skin. Pale, unscarred. I’m not eighty. Or eighteen. I'm going to guess mid-twenties and be happy with that assumption until I find a mirror.
Walking helps to keep me focused and I feel my heartbeat begin to even out,
I walk for three hundred and twenty-two steps. I count them to know them. I'm desperate to add anything to my list of knowing. The other list overwhelms me and I forced myself at one hundred and six steps to stop asking me questions.
Step three hundred and twenty-three takes me onto a dirt road. I realize it is a road in the field the farmer must use for his equipment, but looking down along the field-road I see in the distance a real road. A break in the expanse of green and brown, separating this field from the next.
I sense another emotion begin, a small, frail seedling planted inside the heavy fear. Hope.
I can do this. I begin the chant, blowing life into that hope, feeling, finally, something that doesn’t fill me with a sullied sensation. The sight of direction gives me a path, a destination, and hope that at the end of that road I will find answers, healing. Warmth.
I turn right and follow the field-road to the next thing I know. Reaching it, with its black, hard, wet surface I come upon the next thing I don’t know.
Which way now?
Decisions ground me. They feed the growing certainty that everything will be all right. I find with each choice I make, the fear retracts minutely and my mind clears a little more.
I turn left. Right would take me back to retrace the three hundred and twenty-two steps I had gained. Forward. Always moving forward.
The wet pavement helps to wash out the cuts on my feet. I know the water isn’t clean but it's better than forcing more mud into the wounds. I step in each puddle I find—instant foot bath, instant cold. I'm so cold now my arms are wrapped around me, clenching at my sides, holding the shaking me upright as I slowly move forward.
I hate being cold. I add it to my list.
If I had awoken in a warm place, or on a summer day in the same cornfield with its stalks reaching toward the sun, creating a maze to navigate rather than the mud and cold of a spring rain, I wonder if I would feel as miserable as I do. Aside from the temperature and the wet clothing, the cuts on my feet and the shaking as I try to hold together a scrap of body heat, my largest discomfort is the disorientation that nags at me. I feel a lack of reference, a missing certainty that belongs inside me. My thoughts collide against each other without a home to go to.
What is my name? I can’t even come up with a list to question against. A name that I like or a place to put the thought to find later. It is a screaming, muted by the many other panicked queries that pop up in groups, one triggering the next to feed a family of questions I want so desperately to soothe, answer, assure.
I am a failure to myself. No amount of desire fills in the spaces, and so I let the tears come again. I still hope, and I move forward, but I have lost something, I have died and been born in a field and cannot even fully comprehend the girl who perished. But I mourn her. I miss her terribly, and I don’t even know her name.
I keep my head down to keep the rain out of my eyes. I can’t let go of me to wipe it away. Instead, it drips down the back of my neck into my shirt and continues down my spine to my waistband. As the rain washes the field from me, my tears cleanse the tightness in my heart. They help to release the tension of fear and open more room for the tiny shoot of hope to put out roots.
It occurs to me as I trudge forward that I am not as empty as I think. I seem to understand the world around me. Hospitals, doctors, phones, roads, and corn fields. I am close to positive I could look around and identify a significant amount of my surroundings, like the tall sycamores that loom up ahead or the horizon that boasts gray at every compass point. Compass. I can picture one perfectly. My mind does work. It seems to work decently well, apart from any information regarding me. I know that eagles mate for life, but I don’t know the color of my own eyes. With each step I take my mind seems to feel increasingly secure in its new decision. It has chosen to erase me and is now settling in for the show.
I hear a faint droning sound I at first believe is the thrumming in my head returning, minus the high-pitched ring. After a moment, the sound grows louder and I raise my dripping face, tears mixed with rain, and pause in my journey forward.
An engine. It’s coming from behind me. Following the now loud and definite sound, I turn around. A white truck appears at the end of my line of sight, following the straight, wet, black ribbon to where I stand. I know I should move from the middle of the road. It doesn’t feel safe to stand in a street. But I can’t risk not being seen, helped. I know I can’t walk much farther. Though my feet are not deeply cut, the damage mostly superficial, they are numb now, and I fear the cold has seeped too far into me for me to fight it on my own.
The truck slows long before it reaches me. It’s a large vehicle, with a big grill. As it comes to a stop about forty feet in front of me I see a blue oval with the word FORD written on it. I don't know what Ford means. I hate that the other list got another point.
The driver door opens and a man in a brown jacket with a cap on his head approaches me slowly. I’m suddenly struck by a paralyzing dread of not having the tools to convey myself.
What do I say? How do I ask for something I cannot get from him? I need so much, in so many varied states of importance that my mind locks up and I don’t know how to move forward.
“Are you hurt?” His voice is gentle. It has a smooth warmth that begins to loosen my mental bindings, and I take a slow breath.
He doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t draw close. He stands with his hands in his pockets, giving me plenty of space. He looks a little scared.
I nod my head.
“Do you need help?”
His curiosity seems simple as if he often finds women standing in the road and I will say ‘no thank you’ and he can go on his way. He catches my eye and I return his questioning gaze. His eyes are kind. Gentle. I nod again. He hesitates and then pulls a hand from his pocket and holds it out to me.
“Do you speak?” He says it with a smile, but the question hits me hard.
Do I speak? I have had many conversations with myself during my journey from the muddy patch of field to this cold wet road, but none had been aloud. I hadn’t even made a sound when I cried. Suddenly I wondered if I could speak and the thought of losing something else fired an arrow of anger through me.
Of course you speak, I chide myself and take a step forward, wincing with the weight on my cut feet.
“Yes,” I say, hearing my own voice for the first time. With the sound, vibrating out from my throat, a piece of the damn breaks and I see.
I know why I don't know. And I scream.
Chapter 2
There’s a girl in the middle of the road.
It’s been a long day. I’m beat and ready for a warm meal and a nap, but I know I’m not so tired I would hallucinate a very wet and frail-looking girl standing on the yellow line of Highway 83.
I slow the truck and come to a stop, fifty feet from her. She doesn’t move. What the hell is up with this chick? I hesitate a minute and then open the truck door and step out into the rain.
Rounding the front of the truck I can see now that whoever this lady is, she’s hurt and maybe a bit crazy. A quick scan doesn’t reveal any obvious injuries—no blood or broken limbs that I can see. But her posture is all defense and there’s a look in her eyes I can’t quite place, like a lost puppy or an injured bird—frightened, but curious.
She’s wet through to the bone, standing in a puddle with no shoes and only a thin shirt hanging down to a ragged skirt covering her pale skin. She’s hugging herself to keep warm, and as I stand looking at her, she doesn’t respond to my presence at all. I figured she would at least explain herself, say, “Hey, my car broke down,” or “I’m lost can I use your phone?” Something, but she just stands there shivering, clasping her arms around her shaking body and looks at my truck, then at me.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
I don’t draw too close, but scan her again. It’s possible I missed something. I can see her feet look cut up, and her ankles and calves are wet and muddy. How long has she been walking? I keep my distance, giving the crazy chick her space.
