Forgotten Past: Chapter Five- Without a Name
The man looked at the young woman in front him and frowned. “You don’t
your own name, suga?”
She was clutching a greasy burger in one hand and a soft drink in the other. She
shook her head slowly and set the drink down to run a hand over her hair.
She looked up at him, feeling confused and lost. He had a nice face. Not
gorgeous, but pleasant. His hair was shaggy and fell over his forehead and he
had a gold loop in each ear. His black leather coat was open and she could see
the white t-shirt underneath.
“Where am I?” she asked him. “I mean, what is this place? The name of
it.”
The man twisted then leaned back to he fell into a sitting position next to the
woman. “This is N’Awlens, darlin’,” he answered her quietly. At her
confused look he elaborated. “Earth?”
Her brow was furrowed, as if in deep thought, and the confused look didn’t
fade. She struggled to make the name fit in somewhere, but drew another blank to
match the ones she’d had earlier.
Finally she shook her head and popped another french fry into her mouth, chewing
it thoughtfully. She didn’t seem to be worried about the fact that she
couldn’t remember her name.
“Who are you?” her voice startled him slightly. Partly because she said it
without looking at him, and partly because he’d been staring at her while she
ate silently.
His voice seemed to stick in his throat for a moment before he could talk.
“I’m Sly Waters.”
She turned to face him. “Sly?” she questioned.
He smiled slightly. “Yeah. When your folks name ya Sylvester, you think of a
nickname. The only one I’ve heard of for Sylvester is Sly.” He watched her.
She was frowning again, and looking at a place over his shoulder. “You sure
you don’t know your name, darlin’?”
She shook her head and he looked her in the eye. Or what he thought was her
eyes. He couldn’t tell through the dark glasses she was wearing.
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine I guess.” She looked away and bit into her burger
again.
“Hungry?” he asked finally. She nodded but didn’t answer, instead opting
to chew. “You’re going to need a place to stay,” he told her.
She nodded again.
“Do you have any plans?”
She answered him around a mouthful of burger. “None that I know of.”
“I know a place you can stay.” Sly waited for the blonde’s reaction to his
statement.
She finished off her meal before turning to face him fully and he got a look at
the job that had been worked over on her. The skin beneath her left eye was
blackened to a bruise the shape and size of a man’s hand. The underside, just
below the glasses, was punctuated by an angry red cut that had dried blood stuck
around it where it had dripped down her cheek. Her upper lip was split wide open
and it puffed out in a harsh swell that matched her eye and right cheek. The
right cheek wasn’t as bad as the left, but it was accentuated by a dark purple
bruise and swelling was evident.
“It’s bad,” she whispered, watching his eyes roam over her face. She
touched the cuts on her lip and below her left eye lightly. “I know its bad. I
saw it when I bought the glasses.”
“Are the glasses to hide the bruises?” he questioned, feeling rage build up
in him that someone would do this to a woman. His mama would kill him if she
ever found out he didn’t something like this to a woman.
“Are you kidding?” she scoffed. “Of course not. They don’t hide the
bruising for shit, now do they?”
He laughed slightly. “No, I guess not. But if not for that, then why?”
She glanced around then pulled off her shades. He gasped at her eyes. They
glowed like eerie silver orbs, reflecting the light at him. “Shined,” he
breathed.
She looked confused. “Shined? Is that what it is? What do they look like.”
She spun the glasses around to face her and looked at them, checking her
reflection in them. It was upside down in the curved lenses. “These things
don’t refract for nothin’,” she spat out, trying to grasp what her eyes
looked like. She couldn’t remember.
“Yeah. Mercs and Rangers do it so they can see in the dark,” Sly told her.
The woman nodded like she understood. It seemed to be her favorite response.
“Do you think you might have been a merc? Or a Ranger? Because if you were, we
could try and contact some different people and they might know who you are.”
She shrugged helplessly. “I might have been.”
“You woulda had to be good one to need your eyes shined,” he said. Then,
figuring that a good merc or Ranger would have some well honed reflexes, he
picked up her cup and threw it directly at her face. Her hand shot up without
her even looking at him and caught it a few centimeters from her face.
She looked at him sharply. “Don’t.” The word was hard and commanding and
her eyes widened.
He grinned. “You were something, that’s for damn sure.”
She looked at the cup. “How did I do that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Most people can’t, but every once in a
while you meet someone who can. Most folks learn to do it out of necessity.
I’m sure that’s why you know how. I’ll bet you were a merc. You have the
look for it.”
“What look?” she asked incredulously, eyeing her torn pants and shirt.
“Only look I got is a dirty stinky one. I’d kill for a shower. I remember
what that is, thankfully,” she tacked on, scrunching up her nose disdainfully
at the obvious smell coming from her.
“C’mon,” he said, pushing to his feet and offering her his hand. She took
it warily, her eyes locked on his face. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him,
she just had a feeling she didn’t trust anyone. He was “anyone” at the
moment.
They walked in silence, she scrounging her brain and picking it until her
temples burned, him wondering what to do with her.
She started when she heard him talk, her head jerking towards him. “We’re
gonna have to think of something to call you,” he was saying. “‘Hey,
you’ just won’t do.”
She didn’t know what she should be called. She didn’t know what she was
really called. She shrugged, “I guess not.”
“Any tattoos?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t stripped down to look.” She lifted her arms in
front of her and shoved up her sleeves, checking her forearms and biceps.
Nothing there. She shrugged again.
***