Remembering what you didn’t know you were able to forget.
I get it now. In all those movies where people who are second from death say something about the cold, I always thought it was just a cheesy metaphor or something stupid like that, but now I get it, because I’m absolutely freezing. I can taste blood in my mouth, that unmistakable tang of metal and sweet sugar. I’m part vampire, I swear, just apparently not the part that doesn’t die.
That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it; dying?


I feel like Peter Pan, more apathetic than afraid, waiting to see what it feels like. That isn’t to say it doesn’t hurt...a lot. But I can’t even tell bruises from stab wounds anymore. It’s all just the same throbbing now.


How much blood have I lost? Every time my mouth fills with it, I either just swallow it or spit it sideways onto the concrete. The Tao of Fight Club tells me I can swallow a pint of blood before getting sick. How much do you have to lose consciousness? Before you die? How much did I even have to begin with?
This city is disgusting. What was the point of making the effort to roll onto my back if I can’t even see the stars? Too many lights reflecting off of too much dirty air. Just the high brick walls of the buildings on either side, and a thick band of greenish-black night sky in between them. That’s the last thing I’ll ever get to see. I focused in on the bricks themselves, but as I did, they grew fuzzy and misshapen; my vision was going. I blinked furiously, but it made my eyes want to stay closed. Oh no. No, no, no. Oh god, why hadn’t someone come to take the trash out or something yet? Why hadn’t the back door opened to let out some waitress on her break, or a drunkard who they wouldn’t serve any more alcohol to? How long had I even been here? An hour? Two hours? Twenty minutes? Twenty seconds for all I know. I have lost all concept of time.


Everything was now thickly outlined in black. I couldn’t even tell brick from brick. I couldn’t see the ground I was laying upon. Words and thoughts were no longer flowing like the autobahn through my head. I had always cursed them for doing so, but now a stream of consciousness was becoming an effort, and my own mind felt foreign. I pushed images and memories through my brain. What is my favorite song? How does it go? Can I keep the melody separate from the one playing in the bar? The sound had been floating out to clutter my ears for the whole time, and the song that suddenly came on brought tears to my eyes. I needed to seriously think for a minute to even figure out why. Clearly my heart was still more active than my brain. Who is this? Who is this? Of course: Springsteen.


I can’t forget Springsteen. Forgetting Springsteen would mean forgetting Sinatra, McCartney, Judy Garland. Forgetting them meant forgetting my father; sitting in his car with all the windows down, driving over the George Washington Bridge every time he had me for the weekend. The smell of his cigarettes I used to hate, I now clung to desperately: the strongest memory I could find, the most alive I’d felt all night. Tears streamed sideways towards my ears, filling the drums with water and I could hear the blood pound: proof that I was still human. I needed to know that I still existed, even if I never had another chance to roll down the windows in my father’s car, and play DJ with music from before my time, and breathe in the smell of the city, instead of the lingering stench of cigarettes.


Would my skin still be warm enough to make whoever found me curse themselves for being only minutes too late? The only fact I knew for sure was that someone would enter this alley in no more than an hour. My only variable was how long I would last, because I really wasn’t sure I could go for an hour. I concentrated on how I got here in the first place. I’m so stupid, too naïve to live in this city alone. He just wanted my purse, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t I just hand it over? What was in there that I’d really miss? Forty dollars, a credit card, some gum, and my keys. Why did I need those little things so badly? I didn’t, and I definitely would have rather given them up than been dragged down to this stinking alleyway, kicked ‘till I coughed blood, and stabbed in the side with God knows what, just for good measure. I remember watching his legs, hearing him open my purse, curse its contents, and crying out as he threw the worthless bag at my chest. I must have looked more affluent than I was. I could still hear his heavy footsteps running away...


And then, that was all I heard. The pounding of the footsteps in my head, and the pounding of my heart in my ears. I didn’t hear the music anymore. With dull shock, I realized that my eyes were closed. How long had they been closed? For how long had I failed to notice the blackness? I tried to move my fingers, but if I was successful or not, I couldn’t even tell. After some time of this, I may have heard the door open. I might have heard someone yelling. I think I heard sirens getting slowly louder, but I can’t be sure.
Because I don’t think anything anymore.