Zero

Zero (chapter two)

CAPTAINS OF THE SKY

Paige is already home when I hit the floor, returned while I was still asleep. She rushes in from the kitchen where she had been putting away groceries.

“Did you fall off the couch?” She asks crouching down to where I sit.

I'm rubbing my forehead, sore from where I hit it on the hard wood. “I was dreaming,” I say dazed.

Paige sits cross legged in front of me. “Dreaming? About what?”

“There were people around me, holding me down on a table. They were giving me this...” I say reaching up to show her the tattoo she already knows about.

“Giving you a tattoo seemingly against your will?” She questions. I know it sounds crazy.

“I was only five years old in it,” I say to myself.

Something clicks in her brain as she breathes in sharply. She holds her breath, and looks as though she's thinking about how to word what she's going to say. “You don't think this was just a dream. You think it was...a memory?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” I say to her this time.

“No, it makes sense,” she tells me, “sometimes things we forget can come to us from our subconscious mind.”

I raise my eyebrows, momentarily shocked by her knowledge of the subject however brief.

“But anyways,” she continues dismissing her thought, “I bought you some things at the store. Like, a razor, a toothbrush, and some shampoo among other things because you look like you could use a shower.”

I can't deny her diagnosis and graciously accept her gifts and head up to the bathroom. It feels amazing to stand under the constant stream of hot water and wash all the grime off of me. For the first time in a while I smell good.

I think about my dream a lot. Try and decipher what the images I saw could mean. But yet again, I'm left with more questions, questions that a fully restored memory could most likely answer.

It's only when I finish showering that I realize I will have to put on the old clothes I was wearing, the same gray jeans and white tee-shirt I'm borrowing. I debate going into Paige's room and getting something clean. She did tell me to go in there if I needed anything, told me it wasn't being used anymore. I open the door a crack to peek down the hallway but find a small stack of clothing just outside the door. Paige, of course, is already one step ahead of me.

I get dressed into a red plaid flannel shirt and a pair of worn jeans. This is something I feel comfortable in. I walk down the stairs, my hair still damp, a new life breathed into me. I find Paige in the living room, trying to scrub a crayon drawing off the wall courtesy of Stella's artistic technique.

“Hey,” I say analyzing the blue and red scribbles marked on the yellow walls.

“Hi,” Paige grunts as she wrings out a cloth into a bucket of soapy water. She turns around after a moment though as if suddenly remembering something. “I should probably change your bandages.”

I also think this is a good idea as they're not only old, but soggy from my shower. She leads me back into the kitchen where the first-aid kit is already sitting on the table and motions for me to sit in a chair, She pulls up a chair to my left and prepares her equipment.

“Do you think you could pull down your sleeve for me?”

I nod and undo the first three buttons so I can pull the sleeve over my shoulder. She carefully peels off the tape and removes the gauze over top of the wound. The hole is still ugly, though now it's closed off with stitches, it's yellow and purple from the bruising, the skin held by the stitches still red.