Guava, Fudge Ripple, FOTD and Sprinkles
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Remembering
Rating: PG
Challenge: Fudge Ripple #1: distraction, Guava #7: no boys/girls allowed, FOTD: nepenthe
Toppings/Extras: sprinkles, pocky chain
Wordcount: 700
Summary: Victor Blackledge is yet to discover his personal nepenthe.
Notes: Pocky chain for the BtS challenge! The FOTD was just too perfect for Victor to pass up. Nepenthe (noun) 2-anything inducing a pleasurable sense of forgetfulness, especially of sorrow or trouble.
Victor used the back staircase because it meant he wouldn’t encounter anyone. He didn’t dislike people-but they had a tendency to dislike him, he’d found over the years, and he really didn’t want to be a bother. Most people used the elevators anyway, and the few people that decided to traverse the two-hundred-storey building by stairs used the main stairway at the front of Hamlet Tower.
He quite liked the back staircase: it was older, and a spiral staircase to boot. People didn’t usually like being unable to see what was around the next corner, but Victor enjoyed it.
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Once he got out of Hamlet Tower he walked quietly with his hands thrust in his pockets. He always had his fists curled tight, because he needed to stop the Remembering. Not many people knew how much it hurt to have eidetic memory-to have every single memory at perfect recall; years, decades after it had happened.
It wasn’t enjoyable.
At best, it hurt his head when he was trying to sleep or to concentrate. At worst, it made him feel as though his skull were slowly ripping open, as though screaming voices were tearing mercilessly at his cursed mind.
-----
Series/Batch/Number seemed like an odd name for a bar to most, but it made perfect sense when people realised it was a Blackledge-only bar. There were only scattered hundreds of them, but it was a niche in the population that entrepreneurs had filled willingly for the money they earned.
Blackledges were a good demographic to target because they rarely spent money, meaning that a lot of them had quite a lot saved up to whittle away at bars and such.
As a rule, Blackledges were not sociable, but they could cope with other Blackledges. There was an understanding with them.
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“Thanks,” he said blankly to the barman: Felix Blackledge. His Remembering began to mutter in his ear, stray bits of information that he had heard and now would never be rid of: his favourite fruits are oranges... he has two kids, Abby and Cillian... once, he spat while he was talking and it landed on the counter next to your hand and then...
Fists clenched, Victor willed the insistent voices to stop. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.
The genetically engineered “children” of Professor Gideon Blackledge were a strange bunch, and once they were freed, it somehow got much worse.
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Some of them had healing capabilities. Some of them were a little stronger, a little quicker, a little nimbler. Perfect balance: that had been Series H. And the Series K children had all been able to carry seven times their bodyweight.
It was when it got to him-Series V-that Professor Blackledge had started messing with the delicate genetics of the brain. He was a Rememberer, with absolutely perfect memory concerning every sense, about everything that had ever happened around him. There were others like him. Some of them had killed themselves, but not most. Victor was fine. Generally.
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“Hi,” said Celia Blackledge to him. He knew she was Celia Blackledge because he had met her exactly two times, both times over ten months ago, and he knew that she didn’t remember him because she was the kind that made conversation with strangers. Victor hid the fact that he knew her because some people found it unsettling. “I’m Celia.”
“Hello,” he replied. Blackledges made conversation with Blackledges and it was normal, except even among them Victor couldn’t keep the voices away. He would never be normal. Celia fiddled with a beermat and made it catch fire with one touch.
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He didn’t go home with her, although she was the kind that wouldn’t mind. Blackledges used different things to deal with their oddities. For Victor, it wasn’t sex. He found sex... hard to deal with. It was hard enough to concentrate on keeping the Remembering at bay as it was, without adding so much physical distraction to it.
Plus, the Remembering kept talking to him-
She’s lost three eyelashes since you last met...
Right, Victor would think back bitterly, Do you really think that’s something she wants to know? That I want to know? Really?
But thinking this was pointless.