Tabula Rasa (3 page)

When I thought really hard, I got a fuzzy image of a white room and
Trevor’s face. But then it blurred back into nothing but a bright
white visual noise that made me dizzy. I gripped the edge of the
stainless steel island for support.

“Are you okay?”

“F-fine. Just a little disoriented still.”

Trevor nodded. “Given the spill you took, I’m sure that’s quite
normal.” He left the dishes to drain near the sink and joined me on
the other side of the kitchen.

“You can explore the park tomorrow. Just don’t climb on any more
pirate ships.” He gave me a handsome crooked smile that somehow
still felt overwhelmingly ominous despite how hard he tried to make
it endearing. “Would you like to see the first floor?”

“Sure.” What I really wanted to say was ‘not really’, but I
didn’t want to piss off the only other person possibly for
miles—the only one who knew how to navigate this fresh new
hellscape.

On the bottom level, Trevor turned a crank. The drawbridge we’d
walked across to get into the castle actually came up, closing us in
for the night.

“You can never be too careful,” he said.

It had taken a lot of strength for him to turn the crank and raise
the drawbridge. There was no way I could do that on my own. It might
be easier to lower it, but that was just me guessing because it
seemed like letting it down
should
be less strenuous than
bringing it back up. I didn’t like the idea of him being the one
who said whether or not I could leave the castle by a simple display
of brute strength.

But that was life now, wasn’t it? In a civilized world, there might
have been some level of equality, enforced by laws, but mostly
enforced by practicality and technology. Now, everything was back to
the law of the jungle. And brute strength was king. This wouldn’t
be a world of happy equality, no matter what type of person Trevor
turned out to be.

“I’ll show you the castle ride. It’s the only one that works.”

Right. Because of the solar panels. Everything else in the park was
dead, except for the scurrying creatures that had made the husks of
rides into dens and nests. I shuddered at that thought, unsure I
wanted to explore too deeply even in daylight.

When we reached the entrance to the ride, Trevor flipped a switch.
The lights came on, illuminating wooden doors that ostensibly led
into the castle ride. A carriage with cracking and peeling gold paint
lurched forward and stopped in front of us. After about half a
minute, it moved on and pushed its way through blue wooden doors,
beyond which played the creepy music that went with the ride. It was
made all the more unnerving by the fact that it didn’t play quite
right as if the sound came from a record that spun on a warped
turntable.

A second creaking carriage emerged from the same darkness the first
one had.

“They’re on a timer,” Trevor said. “It keeps everything
evenly spaced while giving the tourists time to get on or off the
ride.” He spoke as if the park was still in operation, as if a
swarm of people would be forming a line to ride this monstrosity at
any moment. He held out a hand to me. “My Lady.”

“I don’t know if I want to...” The whole thing just felt fucked
up to me. This isolated half broken down ride that time and the world
forgot out in what felt like the middle of nowhere. I felt as if
getting in that carriage would edge out the last bits of sanity
contained in the universe.

“Come on. It’s not like it’s a run-down roller coaster. It’s
perfectly safe. I’ll protect you.”

It wasn’t worth fighting over. I tried to remember what I’d
decided about just trying to get along with him and took his hand and
got into the carriage. I was barely inside when it pitched forward
sending my chicken nuggets rattling around in my stomach.

The music was even more disturbing inside the ride. It was a song
about a princess who had been captured and locked inside a castle
tower (why did we have to be staying in the tower?) by an evil king
who wanted to marry her. But she didn’t love him.

At some point in the story/song, there was a witch and some evil
magic. Because how could a fairy tale even work without a witch and
some evil magic? That part of the story seemed superfluous. The king
was villain enough. There was no real need to add any magic, but the
flashes and noises probably appealed to the children the ride was
intended for—unless it gave them the awful nightmares I was sure it
would give me.

Much of the story was the princess crying and hoping some prince she
actually liked would come rescue her. The ride was a visual of the
contents of the song. It really shouldn’t have taken an apocalypse
to shut this place down.

The whole thing would have been better without the song. Maybe they
could have just played some violins or piano without lyrics instead.

As our carriage moved deeper into the bowels of the ride, I closed my
eyes against the eerie animatronic people and the wooden way they
moved. It didn’t take long for rides like this to fall apart if
unattended, unused, and uncared for. A few of the moving characters’
eyes were popping out. I imagined without the air conditioning
constantly running, the humidity had just squeezed them right out.

Here or there an arm had fallen off. It was macabre. And I swear one
of them looked right at me. Yeah, this was super fun.

I looked over to find Trevor watching my reactions. “You thought
this was a hoot the first time we were on it,” he said.

I shrugged noncommittally, waiting for it to be over.

Finally, the carriage went through a second set of wooden doors.
Right before it did, an animatronic court jester jumped out, waved,
and laughed like a maniac, asking us to come back soon. Why on earth
would we do that? I think my heart stopped for a second when the
jester jumped out.

When our carriage came to a stop, I couldn’t get out of it fast
enough. Trevor followed me and shut the ride off.

“I’m sorry, I thought you’d think it was funny. I thought it
would lighten things a bit.” He flipped the switch. The lights
faded off, and the music ground down into silence.

I wondered about the personal hell of the operator who had to listen
to the front end of the song as well as the back end of the song as
both sets of doors opened over and over for hours on end. And that
creepy court jester. There wouldn’t be enough money in the world
for me to take that job.

“It’s late. We should probably head back upstairs for the night.
You can explore the rest of the park tomorrow. You need to exercise
and keep your strength up.”

I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out the truth about how strange
I felt. Had he noticed?

I wanted nothing more than to get out of this dead theme park, but he
was right on the practicality of staying. There was clean water here,
and it seemed to be a good store of food, and electricity with two
large fireplaces to keep warm and plenty of wood to chop down. There
were beds and linens. It was survivable. Whereas, we had no idea what
awaited us on the outside beyond this tangled oasis.

As we made our way to the tower, I couldn’t stop thinking about
that stupid ride and the even stupider story. I couldn’t shake how
much I felt like that princess in the tower, and I knew in a way I
can’t explain that there were things about our relationship Trevor
was keeping from me.

There was a sofa in the tower suite, but only the one bed. It was a
room meant for a couple, not a couple and a bunch of kids. Maybe it
was the honeymoon suite.

I looked away as Trevor took off his shirt and then his pants.
Thankfully he stopped at his boxers. He slid into the bed while I
stood awkwardly, my arms wrapped around myself as if to ward off a
chill that wouldn’t arrive for months yet.

My gaze shifted to the sofa, wondering if I could make that work and
how offended he’d be if I did it. Shouldn’t he have the decency
to take the sofa and offer me the bed? If he was my husband? If he
supposedly loved me? Shouldn’t he be more concerned about my
memory? About my general physical and mental well-being?

He seemed in denial, like he just refused to accept the facts of the
situation. Somehow he’d accepted the rest of the world as it was,
but me not being able to remember him or our life together was too
much. That was his line in the sand.

He turned off the lights. “Elodie... get in the bed.”

I kept all of my clothes on and slid in on my side, staying as close
to the edge as possible. I closed my eyes trying to get that ride out
of my head, trying to get everything that had happened since I’d
woken in the pirate ship out of my head. I wanted nothing more than
to dream of a world where everything was normal, and all the trucks
and trains still arrived on time.

I felt him scoot up behind me. His arm came over my waist like the
safety lever on the ride downstairs. His warm lips pressed against my
neck.

I tried to squirm away from him. “Please don’t. I don’t know
you.”

“Goddammit, Elodie. I’m your husband.”

I cringed at his tone. There was no one I could go to for help here.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the drawbridge that effectively
sealed me in with him until he decided to let it down. I was now
convinced that I probably couldn’t even turn the crank to lower it
down by myself. Maybe I was being irrational, but I felt so helpless.

“But I don’t remember that,” I said. “Please be reasonable.
You’re a stranger to me. Can’t you understand that?”

He stroked my hair and let out a long sigh. I lay there stiffly, just
waiting for him to stop touching me. After a few minutes of this, he
backed off to his side of the bed.

I sat up against the headboard. Carved golden cherubs stabbed me in
the back. I put my pillow between the carvings and me. “Can we talk
about this?”

“Talk about what?”

“I don’t remember anything about my life, about you, about our
life together. And you’re acting like I never told you I couldn’t
remember anything. Like nothing out of the ordinary happened today.”

I heard him sit up and silently prayed he wouldn’t turn the lights
back on.

“I just think it’s fucking convenient that you fall and get
amnesia of all fucking things right when we were in the middle of a
fight.”

“So you don’t believe me?”

He shrugged. “I just think it’s fucking convenient. Do you know
how rare and unlikely amnesia is? Especially the kind of full-on
memory wipe you seem to be suffering from. On a soap opera, fine. In
real life, absolutely not. I just don’t buy it.”

“Well, I’m sorry you don’t
buy
it.”

Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. If our positions were
reversed and the only person I had to count on in impossible
circumstances suddenly didn’t remember me or anything that had
happened to get us to that point, I’d be pretty upset about it,
too. Maybe his anger masked loneliness. Or fear.

“I’m really scared,” I said.

“Yeah? Join the club.”

“I can’t believe my husband would act this way.”

“Well, I can’t believe my wife would climb around on an unstable
pirate ship like a monkey despite how unsafe I told you it was. If
you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be in this situation!”

“I’m sorry.”

He snorted. “No, you’re not. You can’t remember doing it, so
how can you be sorry? You’re just trying to appease me. And I
fucking hate that even more. I hate that you’re afraid of me.”

“I-I’m not afraid of you.” I was so glad the lights were out,
that the darkness that enveloped us was so total and complete. He
would have seen in my eyes that I was lying. I
was
afraid of
him.

I was pretty sure by now that he was being honest about being my
husband, but that didn’t make him a good guy. Millions of women
were married to abusive men. And he seemed to have a short fuse. More
than once, I’d already been afraid he’d just grab me and shake me
or something.

Even if I couldn’t remember him, if he was the kind of man a normal
woman would want to be married to, wouldn’t I at least feel safe
with him? Instinctively? He was definitely good looking. I couldn’t
imagine it would be too much of a strain to take comfort in those
arms going on appearance alone. But something felt so
off
about him.

“Like I said, I’m all you’ve got. And there’s only so long
I’m willing to wait for your memory to come back.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. The only good thing I had in my life was
you. The only comfort I had at night was you. And now you’re
ripping it all away.”

What a selfish bastard. He should count himself lucky I’d agreed to
marry him to begin with.

I heard him scoot back down on the bed and felt him jerk the covers
over his body, ripping them half off me. I didn’t say anything
else. I was too busy going through the horrifying idea that he’d
put a deadline on my memory retrieval, and if everything didn’t
come back... if I wasn’t in love with him, he’d just... take what
he felt was owed? We really were back in a pre-civilized world.

“T-Trevor?”

“What?”

“We can’t... I mean... I can’t get pregnant out here without a
hospital. Women died in childbirth before hospitals. They sometimes
do even with them. But my odds wouldn’t be good without a doctor.”

“You won’t get pregnant. I got snipped.”

“W-why?” Didn’t he want kids with me? I mean, don’t most men
want kids with their wives? Isn’t that part of the dream of
normality?

“I just did. I didn’t think the world was worth bringing kids
into even before it pretty much ended. I’m glad I did it now.”

Yeah, I could feel his smugness oozing over to my side and hoped it
wasn’t contagious.

I scooted down back onto the bed and stared out into the blackness. I
jumped when Trevor’s hand landed on my waist.