The Man In The Glasses (Who Could Not Remember His Own Name)

“I remember nothing.” The man said. 

He was sitting down in an inch-high pool of water, more of a puddle really. There was some moss growing around its edges and a lily pad or two floating around. Beyond the puddle was an expanse of uncertain shapes and colors.

“You must have some recollection.” Another man said. He was standing beyond the rim of the puddle. He pulled the tips of his sagging glasses back onto his eyes and squinted. He was struggling with his sight, more so than he usually does. All he could see was a blur sitting in a puddle. It was as if someone had gone under the hood and crossed a wire or two, obscuring most of his vision, leaving a clear spot or two. Beyond that, he had absolutely no idea why he was here and what he was to do. Like a sixteen-year-old who smokes their first joint, hazy. Everything was hazy. “What’s your name, at least?”

“Don’t have one yet, I suppose,” Wimeron said. “Oh, there it is. Wimeron is my name, apparently.” 

“What do you mean apparently?” The man with the glasses said. 

“Not sure, jus’ felt right. Like it came to me jus' now.” Wimeron said. 

Wimeron’s figure had begun to appear sharper, more defined, to the man with the glasses. His eyes were a bulging, pale blue and they showed no mercy towards the man in the glasses, piercing him like a spear. His spine curled up from his rump, like a tentacle rising from the ocean, holding his mustard-stained, bare-fleshed gut upright. He was completely naked and eating a mustard-smeared hot dog. If the man in the glasses was two steps closer, the stench of rotting teeth, mustard seeds, and pondweed would fill his nostrils and burn his eyes. Wimeron sat in his puddle with his legs needled-out obtusely, one move from the splits. Whether or not the man in the glasses appreciated his regained vision remained unsaid, for Wimeron was not a ‘looker’ in the traditional sense of the term and the man in the glasses was trying to be polite or at least inoffensive. He searched for words, a comment or greeting, but he decided to just ignore what he’d seen and ask another question. 

“I don’t suppose you know where we are? I’m having a bit of trouble with my eyes-”

“Ain’t that what the glasses ‘re for?” Wimeron blurted.

“Yes, well usually. But I think my problem goes outside the usual in this instance.” The man in the glasses felt a creeping suspicion that his time was being wasted.

“Gotchya, ok. Ain’t really one for the unusual, I like to know what I’m lookin’ at, ya know? but I’ll try to help you out, best I can.” Wimeron takes another bite of his mustard and washed it down with the hotdog below it. “S’pose I should know your name now, huh?”

The man with the glasses opened his mouth to answer the odd bum’s question, but no words came out. He felt a prick in his brain, a mosquito bite where his name would usually be. That’s strange, he thought, how on Earth could I have forgotten my own name?

“Well that’s just it, friend, we’re not on Earth, I think. It’d make sum’ sense then, that you’d not ‘member your name.” Wimeron said. 

The man in the glasses stood upright, petrified like an old dead tree. Did I say that out loud? I could’ve sworn…

“Weren’t aloud, friend. T’was’n yure edd, it was.” Wimeron’s speech had begun to slur, not that he was a master orator before. “Funny thing, innit? Reeed’n mighnds nnn’ suuch…” His body had begun to melt into the puddle like a great mound of cotton candy. The man in the glasses looked on in horror. 

Steve, that’s his name. Steve looked on in horror. 

He approached the pond slowly, timing his approach so as to not interfere with the events transpiring in front of him. Once Wimeron had completely dissolved, Steve came to the puddle’s shoreline and looked into the mess. There were still bits of Wimeron floating in the shallow water, waiting for their turn to disappear.

“Steve- is my name. I just remembered. But I suppose you already know that?” Steve said to the puddle, trying to count the remaining pieces of Wimeron still left in the mixture. He was attempting to gauge the possibility of reconstruction. From behind, another voice came.

“A bit uninspired, I could probably give you a better one…” 

Steve turned around to see a great oak tree, lively and green - nearly 500 feet high, and began to wonder how such a thing went unnoticed by him for so long. There was a scribbly-scratching noise coming from inside the tree’s many branches.  

“Who said that?” Steve said.

“Whoo.” the voice said back.

“Yes, who? Who’s talking right now?” Steve said.

“Whoo is. I am Whoo. but the real question is, who are you?” The answer given by the mysterious voice served to reduce confusion just as much as a raccoon barging into a child’s tenth birthday party yelling ‘tomato!’ while riding a unicycle would. Steve looked up at the tree. The never-ending weave of branches and twigs hung above, hiding a great secret from him. The scribbly-scratching noise was coming from its depths. He grabbed a low-hanging branch and started to climb in search of the owner of the voice and the source of the peculiar noise.

Steve seemed to climb for hours. Then it felt like days, then months, and then a better part of a year and a half. He had climbed through all four seasons starting from spring, through summer, fall, and winter, all the way to spring again. A large amount of sweat collecting on his brow and armpits led him to believe he was entering summer once again and he began to despair. He wondered if he’d ever reach that maddening noise, that scribbly-scratching cacophony ringing through his ears.

He climbed and climbed and climbed, ever higher. When suddenly, deep within the branches and the twigs and the summer smells, there sat a brown owl, no larger than a loaf of wheat bread, scribbling away with a pencil, precisely, neatly, within the margins of a leatherbound journal. It looked at Steve, stirred from its work.

“You!” It hoots.

“You!” Steve hoots back, unsure of what to say.

“You’re mispronouncing it, Whoo, not you. Double-you, haitch, oh-oh. My name.” The owl explained.

“None of this is making sense.” The sweat on Steve’s brow started rolling into his eyes and he took off his glasses, wiping his eyes with his wrist, one at a time. The owl raises his left eyebrow, examining the creature in front of him, then decidedly starts to erase hundreds of words on the pages below him. 

“I really didn’t make you smart, did I? I need you to be of at least a passable intelligence for this narrative… perhaps I shouldn’t have spent all that time on Wimeron or this tree for that matter. I need to focus on him…” The owl had gone back to his scribbling, satisfying everyone in the tree besides Steve. 

“What are you doing?” Steve asked.

“Oh for the love of-” The owl watched his temper and practiced a little patience. He changed his meter, speaking evenly. “My name is Whoo, I am an Owl, and I am writing a story. Now if you don’t mind I'm trying to write. Please scurry off.” The owl went back to work, but after noticing Steve hadn’t let him be as he desired, he closed his journal and looked at the man. “You clearly require some sort of assistance, do you not?”

Steve’s brain had not made sense of one single thing that had happened to him since his meeting with Wimeron, that naked puddle man, so the only thing he could muster in response to Whoo’s question was an unsure “yes” and a “what is going on? Why did a man melt into a puddle?” as if it were his fault for not understanding his surroundings. Whoo spun his head around back and forth, a nonverbal sign for writers meaning: “I’m burnt out”. 

“I know, I know. I need to get better at grounding my scenarios. People won’t get invested if they don’t know what’s happening. Wimeron came to me in a dream, it only seemed fair to try him out but that idea wasn’t exactly stable, as I’m sure you can recall.” Whoo opens his journal again and feathers through its pages, looking for something. “Look, I have a meeting with a penguin in half an hour that will no doubt end disastrously, but perhaps if I decide on a name things will start to clear up. For you and for me. Steve was always just a placeholder. Let’s see… how does Francis sound?”

“I beg your pardon?” Francis said.

“No, much too uppity. Howabout Caraginnian Fungerblunger?” Whoo asks.

Caraginnian Fungerblunger cupped his face, trying to decide whether or not he should give up and try to dissolve into Wimeron’s puddle down below or if he should just keep climbing and hope for an owl that makes some actual sense. After Whoo suggests “Frangelica Von Curglersnurglerson” as a possible name replacement, his mind was made up and he hoisted himself up towards the branch above him. 

“Where are you going?” Whoo demanded, offended that Frangelica Von Curglersnurglerson would just up and walk away, mid-conversation. 

“Up,” Frangelica said.  

“You can’t!” Whoo snipped.

“Why not?” Franglica asks, already a good 15 feet up.

“I haven’t written you to do so.” The owl proclaims while holding the book up, shaking it like a matador would present its red cape to a bull. But to this matador’s surprise, the bull kept climbing up the tree. Whoo got up from his perch and flew after Frangelica. “I am the author! You are my character, you have to listen to me!” The owl chirped, swooping around him. “Look, I didn’t like Frangelica either, let’s just change it back to Steve!” Whoo opened his book, holding it in his beak, and scribbled “STEVE” on its pages with one gangly talon. He showed Steve proudly. “See?” 

Steve continues to climb, unbothered by the owl. Whoo was furious. He shot around the branches and twigs like lightning dancing through storm clouds. After a small stint of pleading and then a few hours of swearing and cursing, Whoo had decided that Steve was a flat, boring character. He no longer served any purpose in his story and he needed to pivot to a more interesting subject before his meeting with the penguin. So he began to write him out. He wrote a horrible sequence of events: a nasty, gory, gruesome death that Steve would endure once the last period was placed and the last vile word was smeared in the owl’s journal. He finished - and then - nothing?

Steve climbed on. He had somehow been untethered from his creator’s words. The bird was confused, then furious, then a little frightened. This had never happened before. His character was free, coincidentally much bigger and stronger than him, and they weren’t on the best of terms as of late. So the owl retreated down below, deep into the nucleus of the great oak tree, deciding it best to let climbing giants climb. Steve never heard that scribbly-scratching noise again. Perhaps Whoo became crestfallen, outgrown by his own creation, and returned to his day job: brewing hot bean-water for the masses. 

Steve reached the top of the tree. He looked out upon the landscape before him. It was drab and boring, most places were unfinished and some space was just white emptiness, biding time before it too was turned into something drab and boring. Steve still didn’t remember anything, but he’s pretty sure there was never anything to remember. How dull. He thought.

He looked around himself. The summer leaves on that mighty treetop, glinting like emeralds, were dancing on the wind. Tree’s not bad, though. He thought. Wouldn’t mind staying here.