Evelyn Brown

One man's internal struggle.

Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing.

My feet pounded the ground like hammers.

Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing.

I imagined that they were nailing the world shut behind me.

Bodies remember nothing. Bodies remember nothing.

I prayed that the noise of metal being driven into wood wouldn’t wake it before I finished.

Bodies remember nothing.

Finally, I collapsed. I lay on the ground, my chest contracting painfully. In that moment, if you had asked me what was happening I would’ve told you that my body was, in the span of a couple minutes, making up for every breath I’d ever forgotten to take. As the movement of my chest settled into a shuddering but steady rise and fall I discarded the notion. It was nonsense: bodies remember nothing. I knew that to be true. I’d repeated the mantra enough that it had become my new silence: my lifeline to humanity.

Bodies remember nothing.

I crawled to the base of a tree and pulled myself up by a dead branch. I counted the time it took to become sure of my footing again, but I counted heartbeats instead of seconds and their racing, jumping, bending nature lost me and left me with no insight into my condition. I could have been leaning there for hours and I wouldn’t have known, nor probably cared.

However long it took, I eventually began moving again. I shuffled around slowly, picking up sticks with calculated movements. It wasn’t cold, but I knew it would be when night came. I prepared for sundown, but was all the while never fully aware that its coming was inevitable because, in my mind, I was being overly cautious. In my mind, I wasn't preparing for a fixed, unavoidable event: I was preparing for a disaster that would, likely, never occur. In my mind, I was nothing more than an an ant, suspended securely in the amber of dusk.

Bodies remember nothing.

I ended up sitting in front of a reasonably sized tent of dry wood, only half aware of how it had been construted. My hands shaking, I slipped my hand into my right pocket, being careful not to accidentally graze my left pocket in the process. I wanted to be able to pretend it was empty. I ran my finger across the edges of the matchbox I had exposed, a simultaneously idle and desperate gesture, and wondered if I should wait until night to light my fire. I'd spare some of the wood for when I really needed it. I decided against it. I needed, more than air or shelter or water, to see something burn. I couldn’t have taken sitting by, waiting to set something ablaze.

Bodies remember nothing.

I had meant to use the same match for the fire and a cigarette, but my hands trembled so badly that I dropped it into the fire and had to get a new one. I lit the cigarette slowly and deliberately. I must have sat, knees tucked towards my chest, lit cigarette held loosely between my index and middle finger, for at least a full minute before inhaling hot smoke into my still aching lungs. I couldn’t tell if it stung or soothed. I guess I’ve always had trouble telling the difference between things like that: things that should be opposites; things most people distinguish between without a second thought. I had always thought of myself as just a little colorblind. Black and white both only ever looked gray to me and, when all was said and done, their true shade seldom seemed to matter.  

Bodies remember nothing.

A strong gust of wind blew through the clearing. It was strong enough to blow out the fire, but I wasn't watching the fire. I was watching a leaf, smaller than the others, as it was jerked violently from its trembling perch. I followed it with my eyes as it drifted with a sickening slowness towards the ground. I envisioned myself plucking it gracefully from the air, laying it protectively between my feet. Instead, I just watched it, struck by how much its thin, smooth surface resembled pale human flesh. Suddenly, the wind changed direction and the leaf helplessly changed trajectories. I still just sat and watched as it landed directly into my fire. I tried to ignore the fact that my eyes were growing wet.

Bodies remember nothing?

The resolute chant had become a desperate question without my noticing and I didn’t trust myself enough to answer it. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, hoping grimly that if I put enough pressure on my lids some of the pressure that surrounded my thoughts would be relieved.

The moment I opened my eyes again, a log shifted in the fire. The flames jumped and, for a split second, I saw her face outlined in fire. She was smiling the way she did before she got sick. Her large eyes were wide and focused: her face frozen in that seemingly constant state of surprise that I had always teased her about. There was such a gruesome naïvety to her expression that I could feel directionless rage rising in me: water into a bucket left under a downspout. I knocked the now blackened tent of wood down with my hands. I hardly felt the burns.

I had received my answer.

I pulled my cell phone from my left pocket. My hand suddenly steady, I had no trouble dialing the correct numbers.

“My name is James Moran.” I felt as though I was pouring myself out my mouth and into the receiver. “I killed Evelyn Brown.”

I waited for a response, my ears ringing with the sound of a new silence.