Author's Notes: While this is not the final chapter (not by a long shot), this is the last installment of the Recent Farfarello arc that I've been working on. The warnings and disclaimers are exactly the same as in the former two fictions, but let me remind you kind readers yet again that I am a poor college student and could little afford a cup of bloody overprices chain-coffee (coughstarbuckscough), much less an anime, any of it's characters, whatever other references I might make, the island of Guam or the fluorescent light tubes in any nearby library. For warnings, as before, there is fruit, but not the kind you flavor pork chops with.
If you were too young (or naive) to know what that means, get out of here and go read your piddle books with happy endings…
The rest of you, enjoy, because if you don't, I would like very much to send Farfarello after you. As of this moment, though, he's…well…occupied…
Dandelions
1
"When I was a little boy, I wanted to become the President of the United States," I said with a smile over my open bottle of beer. Schuldig glanced as me as he drank from his own bottle, blue eyes quizzical.
"You're not even a citizen, Far, you can't be President," he replied, matter-of-factly. My smile went sour and I finished my drink so I could slam it down on the coffee table as I left. I figured it would make a good scene if I left like that, some real drama.
"Yeah, because every ten-year-old knows that," I growled, slammed my empty bottle down and got up to leave, stumbling stupidly out of the room. Yeah, real dramatic.I was in a hospital when I woke up. Even before I opened my eyes, I know. It was the smell; something I'd grown up with, something I believed I carried with me, in my hair, no matter how many times I tried to wash it out. That was the bleach and I knew the whole time I'd been doing it to myself. Either way, the smell was inescapable.
I wondered if I had ever really left, if Swartz and Tennyson and Esset and Schuldig's blue eyes were merely a dream. I wondered if it was all formulated by the sick side of my brain, like all my other hallucinations.
A nurse came in while I lay there wondering, I couldn't tell how long exactly since I woke up. I watched her move about the room, her scrubs decked out in pale blue splashes of lilac-shaped flora, her face ruddy, round and flat under her unkempt bangs. Against the hotel-white of the walls, she looked really rather pretty, but then I'm sure I might've been high on something.
"How old am I?" I croaked. My throat burned rough, like I had swallowed sand and it was still grinding its way to my stomach. It occurred to me that the word 'hurt' was inaccurate, but there was no other way to label my discomfort. I wanted a glass of water, but I shivered at the very thought.
The idea of water terrified me and I remembered something…
Falling, down, down, into the dark and raging depths…
The shatter of glass like the wind chimes kept in Japanese houses for good luck…
Someone calling for Farfarello…
The nurse turned to me and smiled, clapped her hands together in delight like a toddler. I briefly wondered if she was some kind of retarded case who'd wandered in unintentionally.
"Oh! You're awake!"
Way to state the obvious, now answer my question, I thought back at her. I was of the idea that most everyone in hospitals were idiots. Their doctorates degrees meant they only knew the mechanical parts of people, but that meant nothing of their actual social intelligence. So far, I hadn't been proven wrong.
"Let me call the doctor."
"How old am I?" I asked again, if not a bit desperately. For all I knew, I could still have been twelve. I couldn't get to a mirror, I didn't think I could walk to find one, but I had to know.
She paused, looked confused.
"Do you speak Japanese?" she asked, her joy rapidly disappearing in to something I recognized as worry, fear.
I speak any number of languages, I thought, but I didn't know how I knew this. Maybe this was another trick of the mind. Maybe all I was spouting at this very moment was gibberish. Maybe I had really lost it, totally, completely.
I groped for any words I could, strung them together in what I hoped to be a coherent sentence and flung it at her through my abused mouth.
"How old am I?" She smiled again.
"Oh, good, you do." I could smell her relief. "We don't know. You came in, no name, no ID. Someone found you on the beach near Takatori Towers used to be. Do you know Takatori Towers?"
Beach…the tower? Had I washed ashore? It wasn't a dream, it was a real-life nightmare. I gaped at her, nodding stupidly as I collected my thoughts.
A flash of orange, the glitter of lights on glasses…
"Others…" I began, but I couldn't speak anymore. My throat ignored my mind.
"Let me go get the doctor." She turned to leave, but in a moment of inspired strength, I snagged her arm and half-way sat up, my eye pleading.
"Schuldig!" I demanded, jerking her back to me, "Where's Schuldig?" She looked terrified.
"Please relax, Sir. I'll be back with the doctor."
"Were there others? Crawford, Schuldig, Nagi?" I gasped. I might've been crying. I wanted Schuldig to come and shush me, tell me to shut the fuck up…I needed him to shut off the visions in my head…
Nagi's pale face, huge eyes open as the sea pulled him down…
Crawford diving after our boy, his shoes gone, his suit wet and torn, his glasses missing.
Crawford swimming deeper into the dark…
Schuldig dragging me up, my head above the water, forcing me to swim toward shore…
Schuldig screaming at Crawford when he went down, begging him to save Nagi. I know I had never seen Schuldig cry like that before, the retching sobs while he dragged me toward shore…
"Please, sir, just let me get the doctor…"I was kept in the hospital for at least a month, hallucinations and nightmares raging between the sessions of questions and tests. Every doctor was different, new, and all of them wanted to know who I was and what had happened to me.
The doctor would sit in the visitor's chair, it's only occupant, his blue pens in the pocket of his white lab coat, his teal scrubs below the coat. This one had calloused, rough hands and ugly fingernails. The last one had balding brown hair on his sunburned head. The one before him had long, slender legs, like a woman's, a dark voice, and glasses.
"What is your name?"
"Jei."
"Jeffery?"
"Geoffrey, G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y. It's English. Like the writer."
"Are you English?"
"No, Irish."
"Why are you in Japan?"
"I don't know."
I never even paused. The doctor just looked at me, marked something down on his clipboard and moved on.
"How long have you lived in Japan?"
"Couple of years."
"Do you have any family we can contact?"
"No."
"Friends?"
"No."
"Coworkers?"
"I think they're dead, I don't know where they are."
Another pause, another look, another mark on his clipboard. I played with the IV tube in my hand.
"Where in Japan were you living before?"
"Tokyo."
"Where?"
"I don't know the number; the writing here all looks the same to me."
"You speak Japanese very well."
"Thank you."
"Do you speak other languages?"
"English, French, Latin, Gaelic, German, a little Italian."
He smiles at me.
Once, after the MRI, the doctor asked me:
"Do you have any addictions?"
"Coffee, tea, chocolate, television."
"Allergies?"
"Penicillin, mold, bee stings."
"Psychological disorders?"
"Advanced Auditory Schizophrenia, Paranoia and I'm Catholic."
That got him to pause, got me strange looks from the nurses and later on it got me a straight jacket and a lot of pills.
I wanted a morphine drip and all the time in the world to sleep my misery away.
Fin Chapter 1
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