Forget

I am left with nothing but the clothes on my back and some few possessions in the middle of a jungle. I know nothing but the present, I remember nothing but the jungle. Nothing but a calming man.

It began one evening. Maybe a month ago, maybe two; I don’t remember. To me the days blend together with the night, the constant fear always keeping me awake. I am beyond tired at this point, sleeping with a gnarled piece of sharpened wood and iron in my hands and wake screaming and in sweats. My dirty blond hair has now clung together in horrible strands and dirt stains my face like when…

See this is the point. The only thing I know, the only thing that rings in my blank mind is a man, tall and bald but with a huge beard. I don’t know why I’m running; I don’t know why I’m fighting through this endless jungle.

My heels and hands are scraped and scarred with blood and grime, as are my shoulders and my face. I am alone, so terrified, so scared. I need someone, I want someone. But this man keeps me stumbling through the sharp ferns and the never ending trees.

I only remember this man and his hand, a soft and trusting hand. But he was the most trusting and most feared man of my life. But what was not my life worth when I don’t even know my own name, nor my friends, did I have a lover? Who was I?

But I just keep stumbling, not even daring to talk to myself for the fear that the Trusting man might find me. I don’t even care about my tattered clothes and the badge…

I have a badge? I stopped suddenly, puffing and panting, not taking in the luscious but deadly scenery around me, threatening to kill me.

My cracked lips parted into a smile. Something at last! I felt much needed salty liquid slide down my grim ridden face, but I didn’t dare touch them. It was in really bad condition, probably from when I went face to face with that crocodile. It was a bronze colour but the shine was almost lost to the dirt, as was the writing.

I wanted to spit, but I constrained myself. Despite this being a jungle, clean water was hard to come by. Be patient, soon I will come upon a water body, and when I do I will know something about me. I haven’t washed myself since I found myself. The only food I have found is what I have hunted or gathered and the only water from little puddles left in the darkness of the Jungle.

I could hear it in the background, a thundering roar that penetrated the last rays of the quiet jungle in the purple haze. I must get there. I put the badge into my pocket and kept stumbling along into the sunset. My stomach seared in pain and I grunted, breathing out a slow, shaky breath. I glanced at my hands to find them trembling, despite my slow breathing.

I must’ve lost time, because when I focused back into reality it was dark. The moon was a half-moon with the stars accompanying it in the symphony of light, though it wasn’t much help down in the depths of the endless trees.

I started grabbing kindling from the floor. This place hadn’t yet been touched by dampness, so I quickly grabbed a few dead pine leaves, as well as a giant stick in which I shoved into a skinned swamp rat. Not a nice bit of meat, but it’ll do. I also found some bigger logs and using a smooth grey metal flint I struck a spark and lit the fire, cooking my Swamp Rat. I also had foraged a bit while on the run. Some berries, fruits and nuts, beetles and other miscellaneous things. I put them into a metal small square box and with some water, created Swamp Rat stew. I ate it with my fingers greedily. Not the best thing in the world for you, but the boiled water with the rat and the bugs provided some protein and carbohydrates and the fruit and nuts with Vitamins. Don’t ask how I knew this stuff, but it was like an instinct to me.

I don’t remember falling asleep next to the fire, but I only saw black, until a man came into view. He held out his hand. “Take my hand and we will rule as Gods!” He whispered almost, but I shied away, afraid.

“Fine, but you can’t run forever. I will find you friend.” He reached his hands out to me and dived forward, but despite by best efforts of will, I couldn’t move. I tried to shout and scream but he reached me and with his soft hands.

“You will lose this game.”

I jumped up and screamed, clutching my gnarled knife in my white, bony hand. Sweat was slick all over me and my heart pounded.

I looked up at the sky. The moon was about three hours away from setting and the sun rising. The fire was almost embers. I almost didn’t want to leave the heat, the warmth that embraced me. It was the only thing I had, fire. The way the tendrils danced and twirled, it was mystical and engrossing. I grabbed some wood blindly as well as a thick dry branch. With my knife I made a makeshift torch and lighting it on fire, I went ahead.

It was midday when I stumbled out of the dense roots of the jungle. I shielded my pale form from the sun, wincing in the face of the golden sun. I looked down.

I gasped in awe and happiness, feeling a single tear mark its way down my cheek. I threw away my torch.

A huge waterfall was down a valley, a rumbling seething mass of clean, crystal water. Foam splashed everywhere over bare rocks. I was on top of the valley and just maybe ninety meters beside me a fast rushing mass of dirty, cold horrible water.

I stumbled down the valley, knowing the stuff of the waterfall would be the best.

I climbed down a small incline and onto the bottom of the waterfall, feeling the cool spray hit me in the face. It was nigh forty degrees, with not a cloud in the sky. At that moment I felt well and truly free. I scrambled to the bottom and quickly with glee peeled off my destroyed clothes and dived into the water. The water wasn’t fast, a nice even pace of clear water in the baking sun.

I dunked my head under the water and drank deeply and just sat there on the bottom of the slow flowing river, watching the dirt from me float downriver.

I stumbled onto the bank of the river and washed my clothes out. I could live here, I thought, as I began to fashion myself a spear. Not even the badge mattered. I don’t need to know who I was, or who the man of my nightmares was. That was another lifetime.

Forget. A lovely name I thought. I grabbed the badge out of my pocket, flipping it around in my hand. This will condemn me to my past life. Let the man try and find me. I don’t care now as I did before to know who I was, because all it would do will bring up more questions. I will become a lost soul again, searching answers.

Here, now, I am Forget until someone tells me otherwise.

A peace flooded me. Forget. A lovely name for a lovely meaning; I forgot, and now I am at peace with this, I just had to let go of myself. I was haunting myself. The only man who was haunting me was me.

I stood up and with all my strength, I let go of my past. The last remnant I knew of my life made a little plop in the river. Sinking or rolling downstream, I don’t care. I am now Forget, and am now living in…

Peace Stream; I smiled to myself and lied down on the rocks.

“You’re a hard man to find Mr Osaka.” And just like that this sunny paradise of Peace stream shattered.

I twisted around in my flax and jungle leaf hammock and my eyes went white in the sun and my gnarled piece of wood and iron in my hands being squeezed so hard the knuckles turned white and then purple.

No, please no. This can’t be! I screamed.

I’m Forget, a man in the wilderness lost, nobody living a nomadic life for countless months. I killed my prey and ate it, bathed when I needed and lived as part of the jungle, even replacing my clothes to ones of grass and weed.

The man was standing on the rocks beside me, a white man with a wrinkled face squinting in the sun. He was a stocky man, maybe sixty years old and wore a black pressed pin stripped suit, slacks and polished black shoes. Even his undershirt was black. He wore one ear, the other a small coli flowered stump. The black tie blew in the slight breeze. He held nothing though, an open man. His eyes betrayed him though, he was ready to kill. A predator looks not unaccustomed to the various Shadow Cats that live around here.

I gulped. He found me, despite me, he found me.

He held out a well-manicured but heavily calloused hand. “Mr Osaka, there is work to be done. I told you before I would find you, and even the mighty Amazon Jungle can’t hide you from me.”

A single tear ran down my face.