Rob Thurman: Grimrose path

Then it hit me. F. Krueger, M. Myers, J. Voorhees. Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees. Three monster movie villains, and I-a monster killer-was carting around their names on my ID. Didn't I have one helluva sense of humor? I thought about the grenade I'd tossed into the ocean, that cheerful yellow smile on a potentially lethal explosion. A dark sense of humor, I amended to myself, but, hey, wasn't that better than none at all?

The rank smell hovering around me and my clothes was getting worse. The stink was incredible. Good sense of humor, good sense of smell, and neither one was doing anything productive for me right now. I left the ID and the money on the table and went to the bathroom. I toed off black leather boots that were scarred and worn, like the wallet. They'd been used hard. Well-worn, they would've been comfortable if they weren't wet and full of sand. How they'd gotten worn, what crap they'd stomped through, I didn't know. I dumped them in the tub that had once been white but was now a dull, aged yellow. It had been used hard, too. I related. I felt that way myself: used hard and put up wet. I threw in my jeans, T-shirt, underwear, and even the leather jacket once I removed the knives.

As I did, a small bubble of panic began to rise. I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember a goddamn thing about myself. I didn't remember putting those weapons in my jacket, although I knew exactly what they were for. Knives and guns and monsters, they were the things that I was certain of, but when it came to me, I was certain of absolutely fucking nothing.

Shit. Shit. Okay, I obviously knew how to stay alive; those monsters on the beach hadn't just killed themselves. People who knew how to stay alive also knew not to panic and I was not panicking. By God. I wasn't. I was sucking it up and moving on. I was surviving. With or without my memory, at least I seemed to be good at that. Calvin the survivor-watch me in action. I was alive to mock my fake names, and I planned on staying that way.

Turning on the shower, I waited until the water was lukewarm and stood on top of the clothes. There were two small bottles of shampoo and an equally small bar of soap. I used them all, letting the lather run off of me onto the cotton and leather around and under my feet.

I learned something about myself while scrubbing up. I killed monsters, and they tried to kill me back with a great deal of enthusiasm but not just them. I had a scar from a bullet on my chest, one from what was probably a knife on my abdomen, and a fist-sized doozy on the other side of my chest. It looked like something had taken a bite out of me and had been motivated when they'd done it. Man and monster, apparently they both disliked me or me them-could be a mutual feeling. It was just one more thing I didn't know. I moved on to something I did know. Besides the scars, I was a little pale, but that could have been from near hypothermia or I could have been anemic. Maybe iron supplements were the answer to all my questions. Iron and bigger and badder guns.

I had a tattoo around my upper arm, a band of black and red with something written in Latin woven in it. Funny how I knew it was Latin, but I didn't know what it said. Yeah, funny, I thought despite the lurch of loss in my stomach. There was my sense of humor again.

The rest of me was standard issue. I wasn't a porn star, too bad, but I had proof ofaYchromosome. That was all a guy needed. That and some memories. Were a dick and a mind too much to ask for? That was something every guy had to ask himself at some point, even if I couldn't remember the first time I'd asked it. This time the question bounced back and forth inside my skull, hitting nothing on its way. I guessed that proved it was too much… at least for now.

My head still hurt and trying to remember made it worse. I gave up, closed my eyes, and scrubbed at my hair. I shook from the lingering cold of the ocean, but the warm water helped. It didn't do the same for my damned hair though. It had been in a ponytail, shoulder length. I'd pulled the tie free, but there was something in it… sticky and stubborn as gum or tar. It could have been blood from one of those supernatural spider-monkeys from hell. It could actually be gum. Maybe I fought bubble-gum-smacking preteens from hell too. I didn't know, and it didn't matter. You didn't have to know the question to be the solution.

The answer ended up being one of those knives I'd taken out of the jacket. The shit wouldn't come out of my hair for love or money, and I finally stood naked in front of the cloudy bathroom mirror, took a handful of my hair and sawed through it. I let the clump, matted together with green-gray crap, fall into the sink. The remaining wet hair fell raggedly about two inches past my jaw. I didn't try to even it up with the blade, slender and sharp as it was. I could have, some at least, but…

I turned away from the mirror.

Looking at my picture was okay, not recognizing myself less okay, studying myself in the mirror, not okay at all. I didn't like it. I didn't know why, but I didn't. A quick glance was fine; a long look was a trip someplace and, from the acid sloshing around my stomach, it wasn't Wonderland. I had guns and knives, scars and dead things; maybe I wasn't a nice guy. If I didn't like looking in the mirror, it could have been I didn't like what I saw. Pictures were only echoes. The guy in the mirror was real.

But it didn't matter why I didn't like it, because I didn't have to look. Problem solved. I spent the next fifteen minutes drying off and doing my best to hand-wash the funk out of my clothes before draping them over the shower rod to dry. By then I was weaving, and I had the next best thing to double vision, and a wet towel in my hand, which I used to cover up the bureau mirror. I didn't ask myself why. I was only half conscious and barely made it to the bed anyway. So to hell with whys. I pulled the stale, musty-smelling covers over me with one hand and slapped the lamp off the table to crash to the floor. I was too clumsy with exhaustion to switch it off. This worked the same. The bulb shattered with a pop, and it was lights-out.

I didn't think about it then, but the next day I did, when I had more than pain and drowsiness rolling around in my head. I'd woken up with monsters. I was alone, and I was lost. I didn't know where I was; I didn't know who I was. It doesn't get more lost than that. Wouldn't you have left a light on? Knowing what I knew and not knowing anything else at all, why would I want the darkness where monsters hide?

Because killers hide there too.