UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

“I was wondering when you’d wake up.”

She wears dark pants and a blouse. Pattern of the blouse too blurry to make out. And the color. The color. He can’t put a finger on the color.

“ROY-G-BIV,” he says, searching. “Yellow. Blue. No.” He grunts. His throat hurts when he speaks, and the words come out raspy. “Grass. Trees. Devil puke.”

“Green,” the woman says. “That’s the word you’re looking for, isn’t it? My blouse is green.”

Can the woman read minds? Maybe not. Maybe she’s just clever. Her voice is gentle and refined. There’s an accent to it. Slightly British, perhaps. It automatically makes him want to trust her.

“Do you recognize me?” she asks.

“No. Yes,” he says, feeling his thoughts cinched in bonds tighter than the ones that secure him to the bed.

“Fair enough,” says the woman. “This is all very new to you—you must be frightened.”

Until that moment, it hasn’t occurred to him that he should be frightened at all. But now that the crossed-legged, green-shirted woman says he must be, then he must be. He tugs against his bonds in fear. The burning itch begins to hurt even more, and it brings forth a jagged shattering of memories that he must speak aloud.

“Hand on stove. Belt buckle—no, Mom, no! Falling from bike. Broken arm. Knife. He stabbed me with a knife!”

“Pain,” says the cross-legged woman calmly. “ ‘Pain’ is the word you’re looking for.”

It is a magic word, for it calms him down. “Pain,” he repeats, hearing the word as it spills from strange vocal cords, and over unfamiliar lips. He stops struggling. The pain fades to burning, and the burning fades to an itch once more. But the thoughts that came along with the pain are still there. The burned hand; the angry mother; the broken arm; and a knife fight that he never fought, and yet somehow did. Somehow, all these things happened to him.

He looks again to the woman, who studies him coolly. Now that his focus is better, he can see the pattern of the blouse.

“Paste . . . palsy . . . hailey.”

“Keep trying,” says the woman. “It’s in there somewhere.”

His brain twitches. He struggles. Thinking feels like a race. A long, grueling Olympic race. What is that race called? It starts with an M.

“Paisley!” he says triumphantly. “Marathon! Paisley!”

“Yes, I imagine this is as exhausting as a marathon for you,” says the woman, “but it was worth the effort.” She touches the collar of her blouse. “You’re right, it does have a paisley pattern!” She smiles, this time for real, and touches his forehead with her fingertip. He can feel the tip of her nail. “I told you it was in there.”

Now that his thoughts are beginning to settle, he realizes that he does recognize the woman, but has no idea from where.

“Who?” he asks. “Who? Where? When?”

“How, what, and why,” she adds with a smirk. “Your question words have all returned.”

“Who?” he demands again, not appreciating the joke at his expense.

She sighs. “Who am I? You can say I’m your touchstone, your connection to the world—and in a sense your translator, because I can understand you, where few others can. I’m an expert in metalinguistics.”

“Meta . . . meta.”

“It’s the nature of the language you speak. Metaphoric associations. But I can see I’m confusing you. It’s not for you to worry about. My name is Roberta. But you wouldn’t know that, because I never told you my name in all the times you’ve seen me.”

“All the times?”

Roberta nods. “You can say you’ve only seen me once, yet you’ve also seen me many, many times. What do you think of that?”

It’s a marathon again as he searches through his mind for the word he wants to say. “Gollum in the caves. Answer, or you can’t cross the bridge. What’s black and white and red all over?”

“Work for it,” says Roberta. “I know you can do it.”

“Riddle!” he says. “Yes, marathon but worth it! The word—riddle!”