Blank Friday

When Daniel woke up on the morning after Thanksgiving Day, he did not know who he was. He knew his name, he knew his address and he knew his phone number, but that was about it. He could remember nothing about his past. Nothing at all.

He wandered the house in search of clues. There were framed photos hanging on the walls, Daniel posing with various different people who were presumably friends and family, but the faces did nothing to aid his recall. He found a small stack of bills on a table, but that only told him who was supplying his insurance, cellular coverage and gas & electric, and this helped not at all. He continued his search for clues.

He checked the leather wallet he found on the counter next to a set of keys. It only contained the usual things; a drivers license showing his face, the registration card for a 2023 BMW i4 (a very sweet luxury import), some credit cards, health care insurance info, etc. There was also a fairly large sum of cash. $1400 in c-notes plus a few twenties. No real help there though. He moved on.

He stepped outside the front door for a minute to take a look around and see where he was, thinking that maybe that would help. It didn’t. Zero recollection of his surroundings. He was on a very remote street and the closest neighboring house looked to be about 500 yards away. A murder of crows were pecking about in the front yard and there was a newspaper on the doorstep so he took it back inside with him and briefly scanned the headlines. The conflict in Palestine was escalating further. A major local employer had announced another round of layoffs. The city’s baseball team just lost their star pitcher to the Yankees via free agency. The police were searching for blah, blah, blah. All the usual stuff. 

He dropped the newspaper on the counter and went upstairs and searched the bedrooms. Not much help there. All of the kind of things you would expect to find. More pictures on the walls of people he couldn’t recognize. Clothes, shoes, all the usual bric-a-brac. He found a Glock .40 pistol in the nightstand drawer but there was nothing unusual about that. This is America. 

Then he saw an iPhone on the counter so he picked it up and without even thinking about the passcode his fingers just punched it in via muscle memory. There he found something interesting. There were 27 pictures of him smiling alongside various handsome young men, but he couldn’t remember any of them. Almost all had blue eyes. Some were gray. He wondered...Was he gay? He felt no stirring in his loins when he looked at the pictures. There was no sexual attraction at all. More importantly, no recall. He checked the text messages and call history. Nothing helpful there either. He kept looking around the house.

Inside a bookcase in the living room he found a large volume of novels. Johnny Got His Gun. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Dead Zone. The Old Man and The Sea. He couldn’t remember reading any of them. On the lowest shelf there was a photo album. He took it out, opened it and flipped through the pages. More pictures of him with people he didn’t recognize. Presumably friends and family. No pictures of him with any handsome young blue-eyed men though.

Daniel heard a sound coming from somewhere below. A faint knocking sound. He dropped the photo album and cautiously followed the sound.

In the rear of the house, just by the sliding glass door to the backyard, there was another door to a staircase leading down to the basement. When Daniel opened it the knocking sound grew louder. He descended the stairs quietly and with some level of trepidation, not knowing what he might find down there. He was ready to sprint back up the staircase if he had to. He remembered the Glock .40 in the nightstand upstairs and thought about going back for it. He was scared.

When he reached the bottom of that staircase he saw a handsome young man of about 25 years, naked, strapped to a steel surgical table. He was trying to free himself from his wrist and ankle constraints, banging on the table in the process. When he saw Daniel looking at him he stopped struggling and his bright blue eyes went wide. He reflexively tried to scream but the duct tape covering his mouth muffled the sound, for the most part.

Oh. Yes.

Now Daniel remembered.

Of course. Now he remembered everything.

This always happened the morning after he took another one. After he got them back home and put the Rohypnol in their drinks and then bound their wrists and tied them up on the table down in the basement. He always woke up confused. It always took a while to remember everything. Cruising the gay bars. Buying drinks for handsome young strangers. Flashing the cash and seeing who took notice. Who was willing to get in the BMW with him at the end of the night. He didn’t like brown eyes. He liked blue eyes, or maybe gray. That’s what he always looked for. He didn't think it was a sexual thing. It was just a thing. It mattered, somehow.

On a stand just beside the table lay a number of cutting instruments. He looked at them and then looked at the young man again. He put on the rubber gloves and the plastic smock and the disposable foot covers. His right hand instinctively reached for the scalpel, and now there was most definitely a stirring in his loins. He would use the surgical saw later, before it was done. There was a large garbage bin lined with plastic bags just at the foot of the table, right beside the catch-basin for the blood.

He knew that someday there would be a knock at the front door and a patrol car would be parked out by the curb. Probably more than one, and maybe no knock at all.

That would be okay. He could always tie a noose or pull a trigger and call it a life if things went badly. It’s not like he had a choice in this anyway.

He was who he was. He couldn’t change that.

Daniel had work to do now. He would be busy for a while.

And he had to remember to delete all of those photos on his iPhone afterwards.

THE END