The Amnesiac

Part III: Chapter One

Anatoly's head rested on the table. He felt empty. A husk. A shell.

Every now and then a string of thoughts would flutter across the void and then vanish again into mist.

I hate this. I hate myself. I... hate.

Where was he? He'd forgotten again. He looked around and remembered in excruciating detail. The blood. The look on her face. The siren. The flashing lights.

He wished he could forget again.

Loathsome. That's a word. Loath-some.

Detective Martin Shurle kept trying to play the good cop without there being a bad cop in the room. Bad cop was to come perhaps. Pathetic.

If I'd gone with Solomon I....

and what would I have done?

Been there, at least. I might have been there when she...

"I know this is hard son, just take a couple breaths and-"

Anatoly lifted his head. He'd heard that line enough times already to know it by heart. "And tell you what happened?"

The detective was a fat little man with a greasy face. He made every stereotype about cops seem true. Everything about him was phony and... and loathsome.

"I'm tryna help you out here, you know that right?"

Anatoly saw that he'd worn down the man's patience. The detectives voice seethed with thinly veiled contempt. Had he been difficult? He didn't think so. If anything they had been the difficult ones, separating him from Sheba, sitting him in that dank room with that dim man.

"Where's Sheba," Anatoly asked. "Where is she? Is she alright?"

"She's fine. She's in the other room talking to Detective Cole. You should take a page out of her book and start working with me instead of fighting me on every little point."

A soft wheeze of laughter escaped Anatoly's chest before he could suppress it.

The detective slammed his hands down on the table. His chair made a screeching sound as he stood. "You think this is funny, huh?"

Look at this little man, Anatoly thought. He was the sort of person Anatoly hated most. They say everyone is the main character of their own life's story, but that isn't true. Martin Shurle wasn't. He was a writhing sack of shit, that's what he was. He was worthless. Some stories aren't worth telling. Some actors are unfit to take the stage.

"I'll tell you what's not funny. An innocent girl is dead."

He thinks that was an awfully clever little line, doesn't he? Disgusting, wretched heap of rotting shit. That's all he is. Does he think I need to be reminded that SHE was innocent? Or perhaps he thinks I've forgotten that she's DEAD?

Martin Shurle was an idiot. Anatoly wished he could make the man see how insignificant of a worm he was, but he knew it was impossible. Martin Shurle thought his breath meant something, he-

"Then kill him. You're alone, aren't you?"

The voice seeped into Anatoly's mind with a burning sensation. He grunted, hands rising to his temples.

Detective Shurle smiled his trademark, coffee-stained grin. You have to get tough with these kids nowadays, he thought, They're entitled, they don't take anything seriously unless you sit them down and force them to.

"I'm sorry I had to raise my voice," Shurle said, sitting back down smugly.

Anatoly said nothing. His head felt full of boiling soup.