Loon

It’s like having a stuffed nose. You can feel it attached to you – the nose – yet it ceases to function. Stolen. You know what it was once like, to breathe and smell so blissfully and free, and you’d do anything to get it back. Never to take it for granted ever again. The only difference between a blocked nose and my situation, is that I don’t wait for it to return, I don’t wait to get better. I wait, drowning dry, for all that is left to be taken.

I try to picture myself – a normal lad – brushing my teeth in a controlled and calm manner, perfectly rotational, a gentle rhythm in my mouth. But that is not reality, that is not me. A normal lad.

I watch my arm. That limb of scars and scratches, all of which I cannot remember their origin or pain. Those filthy hands, grubby nails, gripping the toothbrush like a hockey stick, swinging it back and forth in my mouth until I taste homemade blood toothpaste.

I am a broken thing.

I have no full motor control over the method, nature, nuance of my body. My brain sends nerve impulses – electrical signals – down the cracked and leaking pipework of neurons. By the time they reach my toes, fingers, limbs, or lips, they’re distorted. What should be normal, is crazed. And what is crazed, is now my normal.

I look up. It’s a beautiful Bleed night.

“Staaars… stars everywhere. Too many–too many watching me, they’re watching me. Stop watching my dingle-dangle!”

It’s like a hiccup – a horrifyingly psychotic hiccup. Speech, like movement, is also commanded via nerve impulses. I had subconsciously thought about the beauty of the night. I had not wished to speak, yet a leak in my brain made it so. That’s how my thoughts, feelings, intentions, always come out. Chaotic. Tormented by the nonsensical drivel I spout from these crusted and cracked lips. How tragic it is that I can’t even talk to myself in a sane manner.

Lunticore Syndrome.

That is my situation. Or that is what the book diagnoses me with. Expressive aphasia, frontotemporal dementia, limbic dysregulation, nociceptive attenuation, systemic reproductive failure. Fancy words, all meaning I’m fantastically fucked.

Somedays I feel like I’m behind the eyes. Nothing more than a horrified witness on occasions. The brain sends. Somewhere the message is corrupted. The body receives and acts accordingly – corrupted. I know what I am doing, but I am not the one doing it.

My situation... it’s complicated.

I don’t have much in this sandy hole – a wide-open burrow I had excavated earlier in the evening. Night consumes all in black, hardly warded off by the rudimental fire flickering at my bare feet in the center of the temporary refuge. I dig a hand into my pocket, retrieving a torn piece of newspaper. My last piece of kindling.

My linguistic function is broken. But I can still read:

Scientists Monitor Ichor Comet

As we welcome 2032 with the newly discovered C/2147-Q2 entering our solar system, scientists stress there is no threat posed to Earth, and current projections show the comet will pass safely through the inner solar system. What has captured attention, however, is its sheer size and unusual red tail, which researchers say could make–

I chuck it into the fire and realign my view upwards where I behold the twinkling void. Ambered stars wink and the moon weeps. It lays there; that white sphere, shattered into three pieces, the rest into chunks like a smashed plate on a black gloss floor. A stunning red aurora bleeds from it, staining the night sky. The stars are my favorite. I am like an animal, dazzled by them. Fascinated by one in particular, tainted by the Bleed. Swollenly lit, unlike the others. A rusty amber light. I think that one does watch me – it’s gorgeous.

I continue to brush. The gums sting. I had wanted to stop 10 minutes ago.

What did I refer to myself as? A boy, was it? A normal lad?

I think I am close to the age of a human adult. I have lost count and memory of the years. I can only fathom my age, an inkling pointing to the late teens. For all I know I could be classified as middle-aged in this world. It is unbelievable to think humans once lived until one hundred, and that brings me to the only certainty of my being. Human, I am not.

This body, my existence, is an enigma to me. So much so I often contemplate if it were ever really my skin to begin with.

I am half nude. I wear a pair of worn, ripped, thick trousers. No label indicating where made. A stain that salvia can’t cleanse. I have no recollection of when I first slipped into them, or when they first fit around the waist. It could have been ten, or a thousand days ago. My skin is bronze, attuned to the world of sand I inhabit. I am thin, with ropey lean muscles and proud veins. The dark hair on my body grows slow and fine. The amount on my head is short; my eyebrows have the thickest growth. I am also certain human skin should not be so dry, hardened, nor as covered in such a rich tapestry of violence as mine. A scar hither and thither, of all shapes, of all horrors. The most egregious is on my inner left forearm. Several raised, parallel, lines. Elbow to wrist. The only scarring not a slash from a claw or teeth marks. A sharp instrument was used. I have no recollection when I tried it. I obviously didn’t try hard enough.

It’s not just the external I cannot comprehend. My senses: I can hear things like a bat in the night. Feel precisely how many grains of sand are in my palm. Smell things like an elephant – yes – elephants have an amazing sense of smell, which brings me to the pinnacle of my torment. Where do I know such an unusual fact from? How do I know the existence of numbers and letters, and the ability to utilize them? The difference between a hill and a mountain, or the scientific difference and functionality between the hippocampus and amygdala?

I once knew things. I once knew a lot of things. I was once capable of retaining new things. No longer. Rotten and jumbled. That might be the worst thing about Lunticore. I know there are 1760 yards in a mile. But I don’t know where I’ve come from. I know the current year, 2074. But I can’t remember when my birthday is. I know the sun sets westward every day. But my name never comes to me in the morning. I know every intricate part of the brain. But I’m lost inside mine. I do not know who I am, what I am, or the history that made me. Not even how I got to digging holes in the sand where I lay.

I am an abomination, as the book tells me. But in that, however, I am not alone.

A small four-legged hound – a Hyaenid – roasts over the flames that tickle its underbelly. It’s hairless skin sizzles and pops. A hybrid canine, with all the less adorable features of one. They make good jerky. Best to cook them to the crisp.

I stop with the brushing. I don’t recall sending an impulse to do so. My left hand is trembling, fingers curling. This time it only lasts a few seconds. I call this a glitch – where my body is working without the mind, without me. I have no idea how that is possible. It’s like postmortem twitching… well actually, it’s more like antemortem twitching. Either way, it scares the hell out of me. Watching your limb or limps move, strings pulled by some ghost puppeteer.

I feel hunger. That might be why the glitch.

This, in fact, might be the worst part of Lunticore syndrome.

“Brownie pudding!” I shout. I meant to say I’m not hungry.

My hand juts out towards the cooking Hyaenid and instead of ripping off a tasty chunk of gristle, I go for the creatures swollen, mustardy eyeball. I pluck it straight out, the optic nerve snapping, crushing it in my palm, and I force it into my mouth.

I am trapped in my own body, with no control over fight or flight, instinct or reaction. When I feel hunger, I will eat almost anything that no sane person would. When I run out of water, I will drink the blood of a day-old carcass. When I’m scared, I become rabies incarnate. Even if I willed it, I am unable to starve myself, unable to quench my thirst with sand, unwilling to let myself go extinct. Lunticore does not kill you, it rewires you. Devolves you. A curse, more than a syndrome.

Juices dribble from my mouth.

The eyeball is surprisingly sour and tastes predictably awful. I swallow it quickly, and I resume brushing my teeth until the worn-out bristles are wet enough with blood, juice and mucus.

Even without toothpaste, it is still a good habit to brush your teeth, especially with what I eat, and even in the harsh way I do it. More importantly, it provides an essence of normality that is in short supply. If I try my hardest, I swear I can register sanity, as though I’ve just finished a hard day at school. I’m home with Mamma, about to go to bed, ready for a soft blanket and plump pillow and a gentle kiss goodnight on the forehead. But not before I brush my teeth.

“Featherclock, humdrum heart—spindle the moon till it drips sugar! I walked on the ceiling of sleep once, and the floor forgot my name…”

I’m not sure what I was thinking for that to come out.

I reach into my knapsack: a small plastic water bottle, some rocks, my book – and the last item at the bottom.

This toothbrush fits perfectly into a four-inch barrel – a small gun. The moistened end goes in, and I begin cleaning it as gently as I do with my teeth.

I cannot remember how long I’ve had this toothbrush. I don’t brush my teeth and clean this gun every night because it keeps me alive. I do it because it repeats. Routine survives where I don’t. Consistency. Repetition. My body remembers what my mind cannot.

One tooth each night. I brush it until it bleeds and aches, then I leave it. The next night, I choose its neighbour. I move through my mouth, one by one.

Tonight, it is my left second bicuspid – the one I have brushed raw.

There is another that hurts. Back along the line. Thirteen teeth from this one. My right third molar. I do not remember brushing it. And that is the measure. It takes me less than a fortnight to forget my past. My hope is that this consistency – this nightly routine – will expose how I lose my memory, or how to slow it. And the method I use to test it is my favorite part.

I wipe the toothbrush on my trousers and stash it, along with the gun, back into my knapsack. I pull out a thick, leather-bound book. A soft, supple texture beneath my touch. The vanilla scent of musty pages. The black lettering on the spine has dulled with time, yet still bold and enchanting: Chimera – Twisted Tales and Sharp Teeth.

Unadorned by signature or authorship. I cannot decide whether this text is a diary or encyclopedia, possibly both. But what it certainly is, is invaluable. My hands are brutish things. With this, they are tamed. They are tamed by repetition, and by fondness – because fondness comes from remembering past joy. I taste calm chemicals in my brain; a part that feels numb. The pages are yellowed, their edges frayed and delicate from years of existing. Faded ink spills across the parchment in elegant script. Each page bearing the marks of its journey, from smudges and discoloration to the occasional tear. A sense of reverence, a feeling that it holds every little secret that shouldn’t be known, or privy to me:

The Draco Vastus, most commonly known as the Tumblebeast, is a fearsome creature that primarily lurks in the vastness of High Sands, blending seamlessly with the landscape and perhaps most attuned to its environment compared to any other chimera and pre-crack animal. Standing at only about 3 feet tall, with four stumpy legs and a full length of around 6 feet, Tumblebeasts are by no means agile creatures, but what they lack in agility they make up with cunning intelligence; while they are also known to actively hunt, these creatures are skilled ambush predators, using their powerful jaws and stealthy ability to catch prey off guard with surprising forethought.

I believe these creatures to be closely related to that of a Komodo Dragon, or at least some sort of blend from the monitor lizard family due to their long, forked tongues. In part what makes the Tumblebeast rare to encounter, perhaps fortunately, is their fascinating choice of camouflage. Curled up, sleeping and or awaiting in ambush, they perfectly mimic dead vegetation or, when mobile, a slow-moving tumbleweed. They possess a scaled body much like that of a normal lizard; bark-like armour plates its exposed body, shaded to a dark-sandy color, while wiry lengths of keratin quills grow from these plates, resembling small branches, both acting as defense and its disguise.

Its small black eyes are set deep within its skull, and within its mouth are small, sharp, curved teeth capable of tearing through flesh and bone. Despite their ferocious appearance and fiercer reputation, they are sought after exactly for their quills and their meat, but often is the case for an amateur hunter to become the hunted.

Multitude of pages; no blank space left unoccupied, no drawing left too undetailed, no name left to the imagination. The book is a bible, worshiping beasts with extraordinary detail and unbridled fascination. Beasts that are all specifically known as chimera; unnatural creatures that have made mysterious existence in this new world. The scavenger canines: Canis Hyaenid. The adorable survivalist: Yoja Fox. The mischievous Rust Monkeys. The rugged Redhorn. The skittish Grave Scorpion. The stunning Ember Coil. The oddly named Man-Eating Olive. And many, many more.

Along with chimera, there is mention of the remaining known world. It’s desperate state. It’s ecological change. The collapse of technological civilization. Pages worth on the Last City of Man, Rustford and its Gangdom’s – the last major metropolis. Ruled by competing Gang Lords and Ladies. It tells of the Thren-men and the Azul people and their atrocities. Paragraphs on the phenomenon that is Bleed Rain, space fragments of Ichor metal and the value of non-ferrous metal scrap that has become – as it puts it – humanities last currency. It tells of the Great Crack in 2036 which unleashed the Ichor Virus upon the world and the Dregs/Crownies that followed. How close it came to an end, and how humans are now classified as endangered. The sudden appreance of otherworldly animals, later called chimera and strange children emerging from mirages.

There are drawings of a landscape. Uvana. The first few pages are dedicated to its mapping. I reside under the horseshoe shape of the Azul mountains, which harbor the four Great Sands on the continent: Lau Sands, Hade Sands, High Sands and the Vas Blush. I reside in the largest of the occupiable Sands. High Sands.

I can spend hours sedated by this book. I fill my brain with as much as it can absorb. My goal is to remember it from cover to cover. Word for word. I am close to that. There is only one page I find difficult, and not because it’s dense.

It details chimera rather lovingly. But it scorns this creature. One simply named by a slur: Loon/Loony. The ones who are crazed. The ones with Lunticore. Like a cruel addiction, I can never not read that last single line:

… no one knows where they came from, but for certain, it was not mothers.

It cuts deep, guttural, severing an invisible umbilical cord. Maybe I read it because I need to remember reality. That all I want is impossible. That my bellybutton – a perfectly smooth innie – is a falsity. That I am not even considered to be from a womb, but a mirage. That if I was ever held and loved, I was subsequently abandoned and left to rot and never to know. To never know my name. To never be tucked in by my mother.

“Stomp the ducks head... nighty-night.” My mouth mumbles. I meant to say goodnight to my favorite star.

About the only normal thing that comes out of my mouth is bad breath and a yawn. I roll my back muscles and crack all 206 bones. Even a Loony needs sleep.

My knapsack, a tatty raggedy thing, looks comfy enough to rest my head on. Yet apparently not. Something compels me to seek hard comfort than soft. I chuck the knapsack off to the side and find under it a smooth rock in the sand – a hard pillow – to rest my head on.

I cuddle myself to the sound of the crackling and hissing fire, finding minor comfort in a body of discomfort. A final blink to the bleeding broken moon, glittered by the campfire. I try to prepare myself for what comes next.

Closing my eyelids, it sends me to a blank canvas – disconnected from my body, the neurons – left truly to myself. It’s quiet here – in my head. I am lucid. I watch a slideshow of confusion that I cannot tell if real or hallucination. I think they are dreams. They are odd and untranslatable. But there is one dream that comes to me every sleep. And that’s not how dreams work.