What: Memory Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Experiencing it Warning, this memory contains: Sexual references.
The light is sharp. It anchors in the mussed sheets, slanted through lopsided blinds that are askew, drawn in haste rather than with any degree of care. The light intrudes, it invades. You are not deeply asleep but in the light state between shades of sleep and you have not been sleeping long and any rising awareness is stubborn about remaining asleep. The light bleeds against your eyelids and you are slowly rising through the stupor to wakefulness by degrees.
The sheets are scratchy. They are either new and cheap or they are dirty. The lower half of your right leg is warm and lacking in sensation: the sheets are twined around you from kneecap to heel, and your left foot is dangled over the edge of the bed, numb. You are flat on your belly, with a pillow rucked against your cheek. It has shaken itself loose from the casing and the seam is a raised edge you are aware of below your lash-line.
Your head pulsates. This is the sensation that protrudes beyond closed eyes. It is pain, dull and throbbing and insistent and you are awake because you cannot sleep as the contracting band of pressure settles above your ears.
You can hear the passing whine of traffic, sirens, people over the wush-wush-wush of a fan at a lower level than the bed. Now you can hear it, you can feel the push of listlessly warm air as it rotates backward and forward. You draw your foot in and are rewarded with the sharp tangle of blood-flow returned, you flex toes restlessly and push down the sheets.
The air smells of salt and sex, recognisably so. It is a thick and present smell, cloying. Your skin itches where sweat has dried, and the sheets stick as you roll over. Your tongue tastes bitter and the insides of your mouth are sticky. As you turn, the pillowcase detaches from clotted blood and pulls, the sensation is both sharply stinging and damp and there is now a throb consistent with a swollen nose.
As you spread your hand for purchase on the bed, your eyes are grainy with lack of sleep and you keep them closed. The fingertips of your right hand glance against warm and very present flesh and your body contracts with surprise. You are upright and you are awake, lividly so. Things become apparent at speed: the scattered possessions around a one-room studio, the blinds hang awkwardly and the fan is in the far corner, aimed at the bed. It is morning, perhaps as late as mid-morning and the street outside is busy enough to be the city. Over the side of the bed there is an open door to what looks like a bathroom, you can see the rim of a toilet seat. On the floor are the snakeskin-shells of used condoms, you can see three before you stop counting, and your jeans are a puddle by the far door. The man in the bed is face down. The knobs of his spine are apparent so he is thin, perhaps of average size, and he is naked and you do not recognize him whatsoever.
Adrenaline is a sharp knife-point in your throat. Cortisol contracts your stomach, panic and the residual dehydration and hangover pulsates up through your throat. You push off from the bed and stagger two steps toward the bathroom. You manage the sink. Vomit splatters on dirty porcelain, your elbows rest on the sides and your head is bowed beneath the faucet. The smell in here is old urine and the musk of sex.
You have no fucking idea where you are. The memory breaks on the sensation of fear, pressure around your scalp, pain and the billowing of adrenaline up into your throat once more.