r (reposeremembers) wrote in repose, @ 2020-04-20 08:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | holly nicodemo-webster, ~plot: memories |
[Memory]
What: Memory
Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: First-person viewing
Warning, this memory contains: Not much, child in mild distress
It's almost like a scene from a movie. Where they try to get really artsy, and you're seeing the whole thing, shot as if the camera is the actor, but you're still just an audience member, watching, right? Like, you get the sounds and pictures, whatever it is the director is trying to impart, bound by the usual limitations of film, but, unless there's that weird narration, it's not like you can actually know what the character is thinking or feeling, physically or emotionally. It's like that. Like you're in a nice little chair, nestled in the confines of someone else's skull, cozy in gray matter, all of that. You're a witness, but not a participant. You're you, he's him.
It starts with him waking up. You don't know who he is, if he's a he even, what he looks like, any of it. But, eyes open, blink, blink, blink, and your shared vision is blurry. A swimming, smeared set comes into focus. It's a small room. A bed, one corner of the mattress bared. It's that cheap satin-y fabric that shows every stain. The bedding is pinkish, girly, but a little frayed and a little faded. The walls are close, the room is small. But, even if you want to look around more, the boy is looking away, toward a cracked door. A girl's voice calls out. To him? "Baby, come out there!"
To him. He moves into action. One hand goes up. You can't feel it, but maybe he's mussing his hair. He slips from the bed. The boy must be cold, you might reason, because he grabs his jeans from the floor and jumps into them. He follows that up with a shirt found near the curled up corpses of empty socks. The shirt is too big. You can't feel it, but he looks down at himself, and it reaches past his knees, a swaddling of acid wash cotton that says something about 1999. You could reason too that he's young, or small, because once he's off the bed, it's obvious his height is that of a child. Low to the ground. The doorknob looms at about chin height. Chubby little fingers, nails dirty, reach and open the door. You can't feel the knock-off brass off the knob, but you can see where it's chipped and you can see, if you look closely, that the door swings too fast to be anything but hollow particle board.
He's rubbing his eyes with the back of his arm as he walks. So, he's familiar with the space. And he's moving on bare feet that he glances down at once, before, without transition, he's still. Maybe he felt something? Smelled it? It's hard to know with nothing but sight and sound, but, you can catch the way he looks hurriedly back at the room, then down the short hallway he's in, toward whoever it was who called him. In fact, she calls him again. "Baby!"
Hesitation is obvious in the half-step backward, then the boy moves forward, almost trudging. He peeks into what could be called a living room, though it's the same sun-faded pink tones and the kitchen is kind of crushed into it. The carpet is worn into a halo around the one chair that's facing a TV and a girl is leaning against the back of it with her hip. She's maybe 20. Around there. In the chair is a man. You don't get much of a glimpse, because, once the boy manages to make out the back of the dark head—with curls that look similar to those that fall occasionally into his/your vision, he's looking right back at the girl. Her face still has baby fat on it. It's soft and roundish, with the hints of the woman she'll become. Her hair is lighter and pulled up. She smiles at you. No, at the boy. "Hi, baby, look who's here."
The man in the chair turns his attention from wherever it was to you, to the boy. He doesn't smile. If anything, he frowns. The girl, perched behind him still, appears to have forgotten that she was playing the part of seduction or what passes for it. Her shirt is something she's knotted above her navel, and something she's cut down the center of, to show off cleavage that the man doesn't appear to notice. Forgetting her part, she's smiling at the boy and inch-worms her finger—c'mere! The boy doesn't c'mere. It's like Vaseline being rubbed on a camera lens for a gauzy effect. Shared vision starts to swim again, and it might take you a minute, but maybe you can tell the boy is crying, even if you can't feel his heaving chest or the burning tears.
And instead of going to the girl, he scampers unsteadily across the tiny space, to the front door or what must be it. He flings it open in a clack of tin to tin. Behind him the man is yelling and the girl is telling the boy to come back, Daddy's just visiting, Noah, come back! But, the world outside has already tumbled into view as the boy falls down the stairs to the trailer. You can only make up reasons as to why he seems to, in a shutter-snap of blackness and more tears, vomit on the ugly sidewalk, but it's hard to even know what's happening. The world starts bobbing and dancing and weaving and it's because the boy is running. Running, running, until the memory tears off into nothingness and the projector runs out of film and the show's over.