Rob Thurman - Blackout

“And I’m not him?” He already regretted what he’d said. I saw the rise and fall of his shoulders, his head bow, and a spine stiff enough I was surprised it didn’t shatter like brittle ice. But it didn’t as he walked over to one of the cabinets next to the refrigerator and brought back a neatly folded map of New York City.

“You could be, but, no. You’re not.” I could be, but I wasn’t? Unless my memory came back and then I would be. Or would I? He said I wasn’t his brother with as much belief and conviction as if that brother truly was dead and buried, his coming back an impossibility. That was confusing and then some, especially after he’d spent so much time on the drive back from South Carolina convincing me he was my brother. He all but stopped at a drugstore to see if they had a Whozurbrudder box next to the Whozurdaddy paternity test. I’m your brother. I swear I’m your brother. Hand to Buddha, I am your brother. On and on.

The mummy I couldn’t or didn’t want to remember, but that endless debate I couldn’t forget. Figured.

But, now, wait—this guy suddenly thinks, maybe I’m not his brother after all? The “What the fuck?” thought bubble over my head was implied, because, seriously, What the fuck?

I sat down on the workout mats and he sat opposite me. He pulled apart his braid with impatient fingers. Callused hands, hair long and from another time, eyes the color of an iron sword. If it weren’t for the darker skin, I’d expect him to be leading a charge of Vikings, swinging an axe, and taking the head of everyone who passed his way. Born too late, he was meant to be a warlord or a general or a god to both, with blood-soaked altars and every first son named for him.

But this wasn’t then and he’d shown himself to be a man of control, because if he wasn’t, what might he do with what nature had given him? His mind knew that, but his body belonged to the past. Warlord, general, god. All three sounded damn lonely things to be. You couldn’t be friends with someone who might die that day or the next. If you did, you’d pay. For every friend or comrade, you’d pay. Those days were ancient history, but we were living a reflection of them now. When you fought for your life, wouldn’t you need someone—just one person—who would always be there? Who was good enough to win those fights? Wouldn’t you need to know you wouldn’t end up a sole survivor? Alone in a world where the monsters never stopped coming? Wouldn’t you need that to not go out of your damn mind?

Fuck, yes, you would.

I spread out the map. “So I’m not your brother … yet. But I will be. Stop tiptoeing around me. Smack my head when I deserve it. It’ll remind me.” I’d seen aborted twitches several times before he managed to pull back in time before he swatted me. “I had a setback last night. Big deal. The venom can’t last forever. I forgot part of one day. I’ll remember it all soon enough. Then it’ll be the good old days again.”

He didn’t comment as he unfolded the map on his side. All that former optimism had disappeared, when he or Goodfellow was telling me every other minute on the trip back from South Carolina that I’d get it all back. Wait and see. I’d get it back. No time at all. She was coming round the mountain, riding six white horses and pulling my memory like a U-Haul. Now we were playing no comment on the subject.

With the map laid out, he did find something to say. “I said something idiotic. I’m sorry. You are my brother, only without certain … memories.” Memories hadn’t been his first choice of words, but I didn’t know what he had almost said instead. “I think you’re happier as you are now,” he went on, weighting down his two corners of the map with two of his steel bead mala bracelets. I remembered those when he’d grabbed me to stop me from stabbing the puck with a fork. “Our childhood wasn’t the best, and there’s no escaping it made us who we are. If you can’t remember those things and you’re more content this way, perhaps it’s better if you stay like this. Maybe I’m being selfish to want you to be who you were before.”

Ah, that was it. Guilt. Throwing himself under the bus. He certainly seemed the type from the bits and pieces floating around inside my skull. But, Jesus, how bad had our childhood been anyway? Slutty mom—I’d picked up on that, but to think I’d be better not remembering any of it? At all? That sounded much worse than a mom who screwed around a lot and liked to stay on the move. Goodfellow had said that, not Leandros. A puck, a trickster, but oddly more truthful than my own brother seemed now.

I looked up from the map and raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you happier? The way I am now, you don’t know for sure anymore that I’m your brother. That’s what you said, idiotic or not.” Despite the conversation, he frowned at associating himself with that particular word although he’d been the one to first say it. That cracked me up. He was vain about his intellect. That I would have to remember, no matter what. It was mocking material too good to pass up. “I have amnesia, but I can still hear. Tell me, are you happier if I stay like this?”

His forehead furrowed as if he weren’t used to me backing him in a corner. That was the great thing about control. You rarely lose a little. You usually lose it all. I smacked the side of his head just as he caught my wrist a fraction of a second too late. With his speed, “too late” meant a definite loss of control. I’d kicked the hell out of his toaster all right. “I didn’t think so,” I said, answering my own question. “I’m your brother all right, and one of us doesn’t get to be happy and one of us miserable. Now, get me a Magic Marker and I’ll make you glad your obviously not-that-bright other version of me isn’t totally back yet. I’ve got an idea while he’d probably be out hunting for offensive shirts. Take advantage of my usefulness. Soon I’ll be back scouring the city for the dirtiest T-shirt in existence.”

He let go of my wrist, rubbed the side of his head, but got up and returned with a marker. Sitting back down, control already back in place, for the most part anyway, he flipped the marker like a knife, flipped it again, and at last got around to asking, “Do you think you could call me Niko? Or Nik? Leandros, every time you say it …” He handed me the marker without the rest of the words. But I still got them.

It was like a kick in the gut for him, every time I said his name as if he were a stranger. I should’ve figured that out sooner. “Niko. Gotcha. Any nicknames? With your nose, I have to give you some sort of hell over that. Pinocchio? Never mind. I’ll figure something out. Now, show me where all the bodies were found or went missing.”

That was another memory that unfortunately hadn’t disappeared this morning—all the details on Ammut and how we were going to find Ammut—and Ammut the goddess, but not a goddess, but she could suck your life force anyway. Between Leandr … Niko and Goodfellow, they somehow managed to make simple life-threatening killer monsters boring.

“You know, pissing me off to force me to release a little tension, that is very much my brother all over. And you, too often, call me Cyrano.” Too often. That was what he said, but that wasn’t what he meant. I’d been right. Niko wasn’t a good liar, not when I was the one doing the listening. Another observation to push me a little closer to the old me.

Too bad you don’t remember the mummy. Too bad for the mummy he did remember the old you.

I didn’t bother to twitch at that one. The voices could kiss my ass. I was done with them. They were nothing but Muzak. “Cyrano. Ain’t I the educated one?” I snorted and kept my eyes on the map. In Nevah’s Landing, I thought a brother was something I could never get used to, but now I was more used to it than the brother himself. Those first few days in the Landing when I’d been lost and alone, I’d kept looking back over my shoulder. I hadn’t known for what … or for whom. Now I did. “Genetics and memories aren’t everything, you know,” I said, directly contradicting what I’d thought barely a few days ago. “Think of me as Sven, your adopted foreign exchange cousin, if it makes you feel better. Now, enough with the therapy. Pretend we hugged. Now, dead bodies. Go.”