The man who was not Simon dug around through the dirty laundry scattered across the cramped bathroom, searching for some sort of identifying article. His pleas were soon answered upon the discovery of an old, rugged wallet of flaking leather and loose threads; inside the crumbling thing was a long overdue driver’s license—a small, folded-up piece of yellowing paper with each credential manually stamped on by a typewriter, save for the cursive signature at the bottom.
1944
Issued to: SIMON PIERS
Date of Birth: 11/21/1929
Several other listed attributes were scratched out with a black pen, desaturated underneath a primeval coffee stain. There was simply no possible way the thing could still be valid in any state, country, or stronghold—not in 2007. Nevertheless, the man had still managed to connect the name on the card to the face in the mirror, in spite of the absence of reason.
His head was spinning like a faulty record player, and he could all but hear its discordant medley as he pushed his bulk against the bathroom door. The greater structure was much narrower than he had been expecting—almost like a railcar with each necessary amenity anchored to its sides. As he walked through the motorhome, his wet feet sopped the velvety blue carpet that stretched across it. The cockpit was separated from the rest of the vehicle by a thick curtain of beads, a Bohemian behemoth that berated his bare skin as he broke through its breadth.
Behind the curtain lied the driver and passenger seats, each sporting their own overtly obnoxious covering—one contrived to mimic the style of a conventional Baja jacket, stitched of jerga and cultural appropriation; the other, an amateurly crocheted thing of loose ends and sunflowers.
Before long, the man’s gaze fell upon the landscape beyond the motorhome’s dusty windshield—a wide stretch of verdant trees as far as his twitching eyes could see, a flimsy hammock tied between the thickest, and a makeshift clothesline hanging betwixt the thin. A campsite, no less, and a camp one at that. The entire operation spoke similarly to a certain dissident the man had known in a previous life, though the thought was buried deep—some hippie from his college days, showed him just how creative he could get with a little assistance of the chemical variety.
As the beaming sun was let into his eyes, the man’s brain began to overheat, collapsing backwards through that dreaded portière and marking an end to his new record of consciousness—a whopping five minutes of languid lucidity. His last thought before his eventual syncope was something along the lines of…
Not again.
The bustle of busy bodies and chirping machines disturbed his soporose state, prompting his eyelids to once more pry themselves apart. He was strapped into a bed, his head was in bandages, and his body was wired to all sorts of superfluous apparatus. Standing over him were men in white coats and blue gloves—acolytes of Asclepius, no doubt. They were babbling amongst themselves in some high-culture medical jargon, a language of its own to the ears of any layman. His vision continued to fade in and out of darkness, until—
“He’s awake.”
The man attempted to sit up, only to be pushed back down by the closest doctor.
“Now, wait just there, sir. We just got through with your stitch-up—you need to rest.”
Seeing as he was tied down and hooked up, the man was in no right condition to argue, but had never been to biggest fan of orders.
“I’ll take it here, men.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
In an instant, the gaggle of quacks waddled their way out of the room, leaving the man with the head duck—a clinician whose nameplate simply read, Watkins.
“You’re a lucky man, Piers. Had Shelley not sent me looking, we probably would never’ve found you. You’ve ought to be more careful out there in the country, we’ve got enough hopheads as it is, coming in from that rally down in Bethel. You’re even luckier that I managed to get you your own room—the ward is packed.”
The freshly introduced information was laid out as if it were already known to him, yet the man could not figure out for the life of him what the good Dr. Watkins was talking about. He failed to connect any of the proper nouns to one’s reserved in his own personal cache, save for that name again—Piers.
“If you’d like to try and speak, now would be a great time.”
The man could open his mouth, he could enunciate words, and he could sure as hell arrange them, but not one came to mind. He simply stared at the doctor and grunted.
“Alright then, whenever you’re ready. Hopefully you’ll be spry and happy when she gets here, I know she’ll be when she sees you’ve sprung up. In the meantime…”
The doctor removed his gloves and grabbed hold of an old television set that had been fixed to a rolling support, orienting it towards the man before flicking it on—the box emitted a loud buzz as static barreled around the screen. He then picked up the remote control adjoined to the set by a thick, long cable and handed it to the bedridden man.
“...you should still be able to catch Mannix, but I’d take it you’re more of a Columbo.”
And just like that, the phantom was alone with the clicker and a gallery of noise. As he gripped the fat, plastic rectangle, he couldn’t help but feel a certain air of anachronism about his surroundings—whether it be the eggshell wallpaper, the tacky plaid drapes, or the apparent informality of the institution he was stationed. Still, the man moved on, attributing any and all malaise to his quite conspicuous head injury.
After a frankly ludicrous amount of time trying to figure out the remote, he finally managed to put on something familiar—some horrid stop-motion picture about a little clay choirboy—it had felt like an old favorite, but he knew it wasn’t the same. Nonetheless, the show had managed to sustain him for a couple of hours, with Dr. Watkins dropping by at least once to check-up and feed him before the aforementioned she arrived.
And arrive she did—a 20-something blonde in a patterned, yellow jumpsuit with a black cinch belt—nigh-barging into the room before strutting up to the man and slapping him clean in the face.
“Where on God’s green earth do you think you’ve been, mister?” she stomps her foot in anger, “I’ve been sitting at home all week fretting, and Terry finds you out of your tree in the middle of damn-all nowhere, bleeding out in a bus!”
Something felt oddly routine about this outburst.
“And don’t even try and pretend you weren’t at that godforsaken festival, Simon, he already checked your blood. THC, LSD, DMT, PCP, Psilocybin, and rum—what the hell were you thinking! It’s a miracle you are even alive, let alone stable.”
Finally, words the man could understand, though he can’t say he’s familiar with the whole lot.
“And that rolling opium den, where did that come from? I don’t ever remember discussing a bus, and Terry said the thing was well lived in!” the woman whom he had pinned as Shelley paused as her expression softened, “You could’ve died had I not sent my poor brother to fetch you.”
She spoke with a hacked-off and sharpened tone, the kind of which can only be born from both fear and love. Shelley cared for the man who had once been called Simon, cared enough to tear him to shreds. Of course, the man tied to the bed hadn’t been Simon for a least a couple of hours, yet somehow he shared his pain.
“I’m…sorry.”
The words felt foreign on his tongue, yet he knew they were the right ones. No motive, no malice, no manipulation, just the echo of apology resonating out of the cold husk. Shelley was taken aback, that’s for certain, almost as if it were the first time she had heard the phrase—and it probably was.
“We’ll continue this when you’re back at home” she sighed as she moved to undo the man’s binds, ”you need some real sustenance.”