Shrouded

.VII.

I pondered the words on my hand. Thievery and murder were etched into my skin, the black words slightly raised, like old scars. I ran the tip of my finger over the lettering, tracing the font of ambiguous handwriting. The word murder was lighter than the thievery, the lettering more grey than black, as if the word were uncertain.

Thievery. I tried to think. Had I stolen something? Murder... I didn't think I murdered anyone... I counted back my memories as far as they went. The tall man. The grey door... Was there something before that? There must have been... I felt a vague tickling of remembrance in the back of my mind, a shrouded sense of something, and I grasped at it before it could wriggle away. Headlights, shouting... pain... rain? I mentally prodded the veil that the memory sat behind, and suddenly doubled over, my head pounding, throbbing like it was about to split open.

I hunched in the dead field, hands on my knees, shaking until the hurt stopped, breathing deeply through my nose as it subsided. The air smelled like nothing at all, unflavored by the world around me.

I stood when my head stopped aching and turned in circles, staring at my surroundings. On all sides, the field stretched endlessly. The brittle, brown-green of dead grasses, the husks of dried flowers, and scraggly, thin trees flowing over the ground for, seemingly, forever.

I looked up, searching for the sun to give myself an orientation, at least, but the light-giving body was nowhere to be seen. The heavens were a uniform slab of beige, with spirals of tea-dark clouds drifting throughout.

Pick a direction, I told myself, and I started walking.

-

I hiked for what seemed like hours, although I had no way of knowing. Gradually, the dead grass crunching underfoot became shorter, and I saw on the horizon a line of roofs, the start of some city. My legs were sore and tired, but the change in scenery gave me new energy, and I hustled toward the skyline, stopping on the outskirts of a sprawling, seemingly abandoned metropolis, barred entry by a rusty chain-link fence slightly taller than my shoulders.

Peering over the barricade, I took in the sad, brown shapes of the buildings nearest me. The walls of the structures sagged like wet cardboard, windows dark and foreboding. I started as a cough broke the silence around me, and looked for the source, spotting a thin, frail woman sitting on the ground, back pressed against the wall behind her. I had thought she was a pile of rags, at first sight, with her torn, unkempt clothing and the way she sat completely still until a cough wracked her body.

She hunched in on herself as she hacked, shaking with the force of her coughs. Concerned, I gripped the rusted fence and climbed over the top of it, causing the old metal to rattle loudly, staining my hands with red-brown corrosion. I walked slowly to the woman, cautious, like she was a wounded animal. She didn't seem to notice me as I knelt beside her, but when I put my hand on her shoulder, she whipped her head towards me and thrust her face close to mine.

I recoiled at the sight of her, matted white hair hanging in dirty clumps around her blank, heavily wrinkled face. Her eyes were wide and empty, the cloudy, blue-grey of cataract blindness. She opened her mouth, the pink of her gums glistening in the absence of teeth, and coughed on me. I shuddered and wiped at the flecks of her spittle that had landed on my face, scuttling backward as I did. The woman looked, unseeing, in my general direction, and fell into another fit, her thin shoulders heaving. I used the hem of my loose, brown shirt to wipe at my face until my cheeks felt raw, and I stood, skirting the woman to walk through the alley that she sat in, emerging on a wide, stone street flanked by endless, dilapidated buildings.