2019-05-19 - Consensus

There's always a well-stocked first aid kit in the bathroom.

Alexander sheds his bloody shirt as soon as the door closes behind him. He doesn't cut on the light, trying not to wake the bird. It doesn't work. There's a sleepy distress call, then a furious rattling of the cage as Alexander walks past without opening the cage to get to the bathroom. Tiny fury batters at the walls of his mind; he's going to pay for that later. The shirt and pants go in the trash, his wallet and phone on the rim of the sink, and the first aid kit comes out. He sits on the toilet in his boxers, trying to decide whether the gashes in his flesh will scar. These ones don't look so bad. He's had worse. It doesn't stop him from cursing under his breath as he pours on the disinfectant. It hisses and bubbles. It reminds him of Larry dissolving into goo.

"That didn't happen." Larry is fine. His wife isn't a mermaid. He didn't dissolve. If he knew their last names, he could track down their phone number and call them right now, just to hear their voice and remind himself that it didn't happen.

He wishes he'd gotten their names. Maybe what didn't happen was them coming back alive. Maybe they were dead now, and he was remembering it wrong. If he'd gotten their NAMES, he'd have a better chance of remembering it right. Or getting someone to remind him.

Alexander took a deep breath, let it out. "It did happen," he tells himself. "There were other people there. They'll remember how it happened. I'll remember it. It'll stay real, this time."

Are you sure? his doubt whispered back at him, soft and poisonous at the back of his brain. No one ever remembers it the way you do, Alexander. You never remember it right.

"I do," he says, softly. "I remember this."

You've thought that before, haven't you? Remember getting lost with that boy in seventh grade. You were happy, weren't you? So happy that finally someone SAW what you SAW. Alexander's fingers faltered as he wrapped the bandage around his arm. He had been happy. Not that the boy had been scared, or that they'd almost died, but that finally, someone else was with him. He'd been bruised from head to toe, but shouting at his parents that finally, finally someone would back up one of his fantasies.

Except the boy didn't. He had an entirely different story. And that had to be the true story, because everyone agreed with it - the boy, his parents, Alexander's parents. Alexander was remembering it wrong.

Alexander remembered things wrong a lot. "Maybe it'll be different, this time. There were a lot of them."

You don't really think that, do you Alexander? By this time tomorrow, it'll just be a rogue seagull attack. Maybe that's all it ever was. He looked towards the phone, and the nasty little voice in his head sniggered. It was his own voice, of course. Go ahead. Call. They'll laugh at you for making up stories. Again. Alexander Clayton, Town Crazy.

He shook his head, and bandaged his chest. He wasn't going to call anyone. Not tonight. Tonight, he'd just go lie down for a bit.

See if he remembered things differently in the morning.