proper crooks.

I end up walking for about half an hour, following a path that’s been permanently burned in my memory--most likely for the rest of my life, at which point, I find myself standing in the middle of a field overgrown by dying, dried-out grass surrounded by trees and the same red-brick buildings I remember from what you could call the “good ol’ days.”

Some days they were. I suppose I could call myself somewhat of a high school king, but never in the sense that I was a sports star or super student. I did win Prom King senior year and stay apart of all kinds of leadership clubs, however. But there were only two important things that I ever did in high school, the first being picking up a guitar freshman year and the second being mustering up the courage to say hi to that gorgeous girl in the rehearsal room after school one September day during junior year.

I look around the field--there’s the auto class where we tried to fix my Beetle’s busted engine after I’d only had it for two weeks. We never did. There’s the basketball court, the cracked asphalt where some of my friends tried to teach me how to play basketball. I never could. There’s the baseball field where we’d hang out after school, whether there was a game or not. Oh, and there’s the tree where--

A round, yellow light in my peripheral vision catches my attention, startling me right out of my reminiscent cloud of high school memories that would be better off forgotten, anyway, so in a way, I’m grateful for the distraction. I watch the light grow brighter and larger until I see what appears to be a police officer approaching me with a torch in his hand.

I tilt my head back. “What seems to be the problem, officer?”

He tilts his head to the side. He’s not wearing those blue hats like they do in London. It makes him look less comical, I’ll give him that.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me gruffly.

“Me?” My eyebrows pull together. “Nothing much. What d’you think you’re doing?”

Light-heartedness has always been one of my less-desirable traits. There’s no limit for the extent I will go to to make someone laugh, even if it’s a police officer. I’ve been tormenting them since I was ten years old. I think I must get it from Charlie.

“You better watch your mouth, boy,” he snaps.

I shrug. “It’s just a question. You asked me one, huh, now why can’t I ask you one?”

He snarls and shines his torch into my eyes. I instinctively shut my eyes and look away, finding a bald spot in the grass to focus my attentions on instead.

“What you’re doing here is loitering,” he explains to me as if I’m really two years instead of twenty-two.

“Loitering?” I echo in my best attempt at an American accent. It comes out sounding exactly like that kid at the airport did. The fat one.

He’s already lost his patience, I can tell, but he clears his throat and stretches his neck anyway. He looks like a dilophosaurus, but laughing now would probably not be in my best interest.

But when have I ever heeded to that kind of warning? I don’t remember the last time I did something because it would “be in my best interest.”

“It’s a crime,” he says.

I nod, eyes still glued to the ground and let out a short, almost sad and disbelieving laugh. “Well I say you should run along catch some proper crooks, huh?”

psst.

there's a poll at the bottom of the page! check it out!

this still needs a name.

To wake up without the slightest clue as to what one’s name was never a good thing.

However, that was exactly how he woke up at the end of one long, blistering day at sunset under the close surveillance of a seagull pecking at the filthy, warm pavement he shared. At first, his vision was blurred and it was nearly impossible for him to move his head without paining his stiffened neck, but after a moment or two, he was able to deduce that he had woken up in an alleyway in some coastal, tropical city with nothing but the torn, dirty dress shirt and stained black slacks he wore. He didn’t have a wallet, any money, keys or even shoes. He had no knowledge of where exactly he was, why he was laying face-down on the pavement or how he got there. He didn’t seem to have knowledge of much else, either.

Slowly and carefully, he pushed himself away from the ground, his spent arms trembling underneath his own weight and his back, neck, hips screaming in protest. He felt as if he’d fallen from a twenty story building and somehow survived. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea to check for broken windows above him once he had somehow struggled to appear standing.

There weren’t any broken windows in the tall buildings that rose on either side of him and he hadn’t woken up in a mound of broken glass, so he could assume that a failed suicide attempt was out of the picture.

Possibly.

Pressing a hand to his hip, he glared around the alleyway, sure he had never felt so lost in his life--

Life. What about it? What could he actually remember about it?

What had happened before . . . this?

The questions haunted him, sending his stomach down to his knees as he staggered out of the alleyway, gritting his teeth to compensate for the hot pains shooting from his hip to his ankle.

Away from the shade of the alley, the setting sun glared bright in his eyes, but the rest of the scene seemed lovely. The lights were beginning to come up in the skyscrapers all around, sparkling in the reflection off the widest river he’d ever seen. People everywhere were laughing, shouting things in Spanish, greeting friends and some were even dancing to live music played on the city streets by grungy young guys in ratty clothes. The hot air smelled of grilled beef, pizza, garlic, vinegar, onions, sweat and fish while noises like city bus brakes, rushing cars, honking horns, yelping seagulls and the overall buzz of a crowd dominated his sense of hearing. Nobody gave him a second glance, not even when they brushed his shoulder, but maybe it was because they were all headed one way while he seemed to be trudging on against the flow.

He turned to see the majority of them catching cabs rolling up and down the street he had just crossed and an excited buzz had come about the air as the sun sunk lower and lower into the brilliantly painted sky, throwing rays of goldenrod and magenta out across the buildings’ windows, the surface of the river and on the sleek exterior of nearby cars.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity, he stumbled back, tripping over his own feet a little before making a full turn and starting towards the street, calling for a taxi in a voice he had never heard before.

Startled by the sound of his own voice, he hesitated for just a moment as the cab came to a halt. There was that gut-sinking feeling again. What? What was going on? First, he had woken up without the slightest clue as to where he was, and now he didn’t recognize the same of his own voice? Who was he, some new Jason Bourne--

Exactly. Who was he? What was his name?

He didn’t know.