Acutely Senseless

The earth rumbled with an intensity that tugged me into cloudy consciousness. My left cheek burned with the grating of gravel as it dragged against the rocky ground. I could hear nothing through the churning vortex rushing through my head. The base of my palms, my forearms, and then my knees came into painful and distorted focus as I realized that I wasn't being dragged at all. At least not by someone else. I was grinding my own face into the ground as my body, on all fours, almost subconsciously tried to sit up, to get some sort of orientation to the world. I started to feel other parts of my body, slowly, one after another, or so it seemed. I righted myself and squinted at the looming silhouette of... what?... a truck? Worse yet, a garbage truck. The thunderous metal scavenger passed slowly, its low frequency rumble creating a confined earthquake that seemed to reach for me, it's rough hands dragging me into awareness. The thunder and the shaking eased as the truck pulled away, and my head became quieter. But not completely quiet. Some of the thunder really was in my head.

A disharmony of perceptions and sensations enveloped me. My body ached everywhere, and the throbbing intensified with every beat of my heart. The pain differed in severity by injured body part, and piqued in my head. My face felt swollen and my vision was blurry. There was movement that I couldn't pinpoint. Was I dizzy? Spinning? Turning slowly? Or maybe I wasn't moving at all. Maybe everything else was moving. There was something, some feeling, something foreign, a sensation of profound dread and impending doom. Impending doom? All this wasn't doom enough? A terrible stench split my thoughts. Rancid food, sour milk, and... blood? My blood. My left nostril was clogged, but the foul mixture of smells still permeated. It was so pungent and repulsive that I wondered why I was just now noticing it. As the repugnance gripped my senses, a tide of nausea choked and squeezed my body. My body's contractions drove spikes of pain into me as I puked in wave after wave.

I sat up, fighting the fog that blanketed my thoughts, and trying to reconcile many images into a coherent view of my surroundings. My thoughts were a paradoxical mix of confusion and clarity. I saw the unpaved path crossing in front of me, and the four trash barrels to my left, now empty and inverted. I noticed crushed drinking cups, sandwich wrappers and half-empty cardboard french fry containers strewn in a random scatter pattern across the path. Disdain for a job poorly done by people obviously unwilling to pay attention to detail inappropriately penetrated my thoughts. I could barely see, and didn't know where I was, but my immediate surroundings were becoming clearer by the minute. Or was it by the hour? Time had no frame of reference for me.

I sat against a cement wall that was painted with a thick coating of bright white, and took some slow breaths. Things were starting to clear up. I could see better, and I began to distinguish sounds and sensations. There were large air conditioners, contributing to the persistent roar. It became evident that I was sitting behind relatively small building. The air conditioners, the debris, and even the sour odor of rotting food told me it was a fast food restaurant. I wasn't hungry.

I swallowed a shriek as I realized that something terrible had happened to me. I was beat up, bleeding, and vomiting, and up until a few moments ago I was confused and almost blind. A spark of surprise and a flicker of relief hit me as I discovered that I didn't have amnesia. As I thought about it, I knew I was Colby Parker, I was 36 years old, I lived in Miami, and I had a dog named Zonker. I knew whatever I wanted to know, but answers were only revealing themselves one at a time. I knew there was much more. And then I remembered it as though I had never forgotten... I was a doctor. A research doctor... not with patients, but in a laboratory. As I realized I was a doctor, I realized that I actually did have amnesia. In most cases of amnesia, a traumatic event, usually an injury, causes loss of short-term memories. The loss is usually temporary, but how and when memories return are variable. I decided that must have been what had happened to me. I suffered some sort of trauma, and maybe I was mugged. The pockets of my brown dockers were empty. No wallet, no money and no keys. I knew these were things I should have expected to find in my pockets if I had not been mugged. I was recovering my memories quickly, but there were still overriding sensations towering over me that constricted my chest and sapped my breath. The more I thought about it, the worse it became. Fear. Dread. Fear and dread, and doom.

I startled as a door lurched open. A teenage boy, or maybe a young adult with acne, emerged wearing a pointy white paper hat and carrying a heavy black plastic garbage bag. He pitched the bag near the trash barrels by rocking his whole body to gain the momentum he needed to toss the sack. Then he looked down at me with disgust.

"Get your ass outta here, you bum!" he sneered. "And I don't wanna catch you eating our garbage either. We don't want your type here at Happy Burger."

"It's not what you think...," I started to say, but stopped almost mid-sentence. The feeling of fear intensified as I envisioned this puny runt going for reinforcements and coming back out with muscle-bound bouncer types. I didn't know why I was afraid. He certainly wasn't all that threatening in his Happy Burger Hat, and something told me there probably weren't any bouncers, but the fear was palpable. I ached as I struggled to get up and move away, and the limping seemed to diminish as I took more steps. I'm sure I looked drunk.

I made my way out to the street and looked around. It was morning, and sunlight painted foggy streaks through the trees and between the buildings. A thin coating of dew on cars and windows had not yet burned off. Had I slept back there all night? I recognized this area as being my neighborhood. I remembered trying to get home, but on foot. Running actually, in a frenzy. Was that last night? As I tried to probe my memory, it came back to me. My memories readily revealed themselves, but only if I asked myself to specifically remember something. I had been running toward my apartment. There were people trying to catch me, so I detoured through an alley behind some buildings. As I rounded a corner I got smashed in the side with something and went down on my knees. It was a bat, or a two-by-four, or something equally effective. I thought I remembered the next blow coming toward my face, but nothing after that. I must have been mugged and robbed, and hit in the head giving me amnesia. As I recalled the event, I instinctively reached up and touched my fingertips to the left side of my face. The spongy swollen flesh crackled with fire, even from my light touch. I wished I hadn't done that.

Why had I been running? Where was my car? I still couldn't remember all the details, but I knew I had to get to my apartment. There I could clean up and eat. Maybe some food and rest will bring everything back to me. One thing I knew for sure. I couldn't call anyone. I couldn't trust anyone. Why were people after me? Were people really after me, or was I recalling my ineffective attempt to escape a mugger? Fear remained my most constant emotion.

More to come...
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