Periphery's Questionnaire

I live in the books that live on my shelf that live in my house where I do my work. A small Victorian house with chipping wallpaper and a brick fireplace and windows and walls and doors. A small library of books and diagrams and secrets with a small window obscured by the London fog.

A small Victorian house with a basement, a basement with fluorescent lights and tables and cloth and tools. The freezer lives in the closet. 

A small Victorian house with a spare room that houses a table and board, two wooden chairs, many cards and many more crystals. 

The rooms are dark, but there is mercy in shadow. 

I do work in the basement, they bring the bodies and I clean them and dress them and make them look alive again. I console those who grieve and let my body become a vessel to speak for those who have lost their own, I speak of memories and feelings and regrets. Sometimes they stop crying, sometimes they smile, sometimes they're quietly lost in thought. 

And when they leave I go to the basement.

When I am alone in the basement, I carve.

I carve what I can and I pack it away for later. They do not need this vessel anymore.

I cannot remember. 

I think I am in my late twenties. I think I am a woman. I think I enjoy the solitude despite the emptiness.

I remember when I go to sleep at night. I go through the woods. I see the doors. I see dark streets illuminated by lanterns. I see bloody shoes and bloody hands and bloody knives. I see bodies piled. I see nameless faces that feel vaguely familiar. 

I see a different house. The rooms are white and pristine. The shelves are small and hold little potted plants. The wallpaper is covered with framed paintings. 

There is a beautiful woman. She always smiles at me. Then I wake up. 

I do not remember.

But I want to remember.

I remember darkness. It was cold. There was something wet. I remember voices. 

Then I woke up. 

The lights were bright and blinding and my head was pounding and there were doctors standing around my bed talking over me. I was dry and covered and an IV was sticking out of my arm feeding me fluids and medications and my head was pounding. I stayed for two months before they finally let me go. They said something about an infection and monitoring me. 

My feet guided me to a small Victorian house. It was empty and quiet and dusty. Some things were packed or covered and rearranged, I think.

I cannot remember. But I know this new hunger is a stranger to me.

The woman. I do not know her name. It sits on the edge of my mind, just out of reach. Her features are fuzzy in my dreams, but I can always see her smile clearly. She is the most beautiful I have ever seen. I feel empty and sad whenever she visits my dreams. I want to see more of her.

The Doctor. He has given me his name many times, but I forget it each time. It slips from my mind like rain on glass. He doesn't seem to mind. We talk in his office about the dreams. He gives me medication. Sometimes I take them and the cravings get weaker. Sometimes I forget. 

Auclair. A young, pale woman who came by to check on me after my release. She is small and frail, guarded and quiet. Her voice is soft, but her tongue is sharp. She lives down the street. She said we were good friends before the accident. Sometimes we sit together outside and smoke. She is always kind to me. 

I've had some dreams, dreams of being small and running and playing with children with blurry faces with dirt and messy hair. They would sometimes be kind, while others were unkind. These fragments came and went and I dreamt and I don't know if they were real, but it felt real enough. Their clothes and hair and smiles would change every dream, but over the years I began to notice the features that always stayed the same. I wrote down their descriptions and sketched what I thought felt right so I could remember them. 

Sometimes there would be adults, two with black hole faces standing in the distant and I could feel their missing eyes burn into me and sometimes they were there and sometimes they were not. They felt important. They felt familiar. They are nameless, and that is the extent of their importance to me. I wrote their descriptions. I never bothered to draw them.

I do not remember. I cannot remember.

The feelings feel lost. I cannot remember.

How do you know if you are in love? I cannot remember.

What does it mean to be in love? I cannot remember.

The old paintings are packed and stored and I think there were empty plant pots. I cannot remember. 

There is a ring in a box in a drawer in my room, from who? I cannot remember.

But her smile was captivating. I cannot remember.

My stomach twisted and turned when she looked at me. I cannot remember.

Her skin looked so soft. I cannot remember.

I wonder what her lips tasted like? I cannot remember.

Her name...I want to remember.

I have a painting I keep in my living room. It is big and beautiful and brings the whole room together. I don't know where or why I ended up with it, but it was among the others hidden under a tarp. It is a monochromatic portrait of a woman with short black hair facing the side. Her eyes are closed, but in a way that feels...peaceful. Seems to be oil, painted in soft hues of blue and black and white. Parts are smeared, but I think it adds to the uniqueness. Adds to the story.

But she will live in my living room and bring comfort to my guests. And maybe one day I can learn more about the subject and the painter. Paintings like this always have fun secrets and stories, right?

My tarot deck is also very important to me. The cards are a conversation, and I offer readings to those who are grieving. I have other tools of the trade, but since my memory is filled with holes it feels more...genuine. I only need to feel and draw my cards, and they will provide something to me. Sometimes I can put the pieces together immediately, other times the answers arise later, but they always come.