| |
Scratch walked along, head down, trying to remember. He'd been Scratch for so long, he had forgotten his real name and the harder he tried to remember, the further it seemed to float out of reach, like grabbing at smoke. John? Pete? Charlie? Shit! Why couldn't he remember?
He shuffled down Broadway, not caring that he missed his dumpster stops. They didn't matter today. The name thing did. He felt as if his life depended on it. When was the last time anybody had called him by his real name?
His life had gone fuzzy. Everything. His mind. His body. His legs dragged like two wet bags of sand, and his eyes—he wanted so bad to shut them; shut out the world and lose himself in the release that sleep brought, but he couldn't do that now. Not in daylight. If the punks didn't beat him or take the few measly possessions he had, the cops would make him miserable.
His thoughts drifted the way they did when he slipped off to sleep. Faces floated by; older people first, then younger ones, then guys his own age. All nameless.
A flurry erupted, reminding him of the cliché that your life flashed before you when you were dying. Places. Blue eyes. Lips. An eyebrow. An old house. Rice paddies. Guns. Uniforms. He looked down at his ragged field jacket.
They felt familiar, but he couldn't make any connections to times, places, or names. Couldn't remember who he was or where he had come from, but he knew—where was he going?
Looking up, he saw mist and the fuzzy outlines of buildings. He blinked at the blur of passing cars. The sun looked weak and washed out. His footsteps sounded muffled like walking in deep snow. The sound of cars and the noise of the streets came to him as if he lived on the other side of a thick padded wall.
A tall man in a gray suit frowned at him and made a wide berth, eyes looking everywhere but at Scratch.
Looking down at the sidewalk, Scratch moved one step, then the next. Forward. Going nowhere. He saw patterns in the concrete that he hadn't noticed before. Kaleidoscopic forms that interlaced and connected into a larger snowflake that wove itself into an even larger one that continued on to still more.
He rubbed his eyes with balled fists. The patterns looked darker, and in their darkness more distinct, as if the blackness had substance. He saw that they tied into the sky too. Different sizes and patterns intertwined in an intricate web of snow flake doilies set off against a background of infinite black.
A gang of punks rounded the corner, coming toward him. Scratch braced himself for the inevitable abuse, but they walked past him without acknowledging his presence. Why had they ignored him? He stopped and looked down at his shoes. His hands. Fuzzy like everything else. He understood that he should be feeling fear, but instead he felt numb, empty, and without purpose; the same way he'd been feeling for as far back as he could remember.
And he was tired. So tired. It took all of his will to keep his feet moving. One step. The next. The giant snowflake web, or whatever it was, grew; each tiny kaleidoscopic pattern changing in unison with the larger whole. Scratch realized that the patterns weren't growing. Instead, the empty black behind them was emerging.
He stared at the sky, back at the ground, the buildings, the cars, the people, and saw that they too were part of the web that held and contained them. He studied his arms, then his hands and saw that yes, he too was part of the diminishing web.
Keeping his momentum, he accepted his fate and shuffled forward into the darkness without hesitation, fading as he'd been fading for as long as he could remember. Fading into nothingness until oblivion embraced him and he was no more.
No one noticed.
