Tread in My Shape

It’s strange when everybody in the world knows more about your past than you do. It’s a bit disorienting to wake up cuffed to a hospital bed and be interrogated for crimes that I didn’t remember committing. People never forget those crimes. I’m haunted by newspaper articles and distrustful cops. Most of all the cops. 

They thought I was faking it when I first woke up in the hospital. Then when they realized I wasn’t there was a nationwide debate over whether or not I should stand trial for my apparent crimes. It was a whole big thing, and I guess I should thank social media because public pressure is the only reason I get to run free. Props to Gen Z.

I didn’t pay attention to any of it. I just let my lawyer and the police handle it all. I didn’t want to know what I had done. I avoided the news and deleted all the social media from the phone that I knew how to work despite not remembering ever using it. I got a police escort when I left the hospital and a house arrest bracelet strapped to my ankle while I stayed in an apartment under a name I didn’t remember, Delia Evans.

That was over a year ago and my story faded away from the mainstream once the dust settled. I got to start figuring out what the hell to do with my life. I rearranged and painted everything in the apartment they let me keep wanting to make it as different as possible. As if interior design would prove that I wasn’t the criminal who lived there before. She’s me but not me, my evil twin.

I stayed in the same city, because it is the closest to familiar I can get. It’s nice to live in a big city, because even if I just put a hat on I blend in with the crowd. Normally I try to wear as plain clothes as possible because my evil twin had a thing for fashion.

There is a nice little coffee shop down the street from my apartment.The owner recognized me the first time I went in, I had gotten really good at reading body language, but she still served me. I go there every morning like exposure therapy, but I’m not sure if it is for me or her.

“Morning Patty,” I say going up the counter. She just nods. It’s my goal to have her say good morning to me at some point. 

“Two caramel lattes.” She nods again, keying in the order. She purposefully glances at the corner of the room. I glance back and hide a grimace as I see a group of young kids in the corner with their phones out and pointed at me.

This shop is small and that’s why I like it. It’s the same people and they have gotten used to me. They come here for the same reason I do. If people know I come here regularly they would come in droves. These kids are young enough that whatever I did is just a story to them. They are going to plaster my picture on their instagrams exclaiming how cool it was or playing that they were so close to danger.

I would need to take a break from the shop for a few days. 

“Sorry about all this.” I hand her my card. 

“They just think it’s all a joke. They don’t realize that they are dealing with real human’s lives.” She swipes the card and glances at the kids again. 

I blink as she hands me my card. She is irritated with the kids, not me, and as she goes off to make my drinks I realize that I might have a small bit of loyalty from Patty. It makes my heart ache dangerously with something like hope.

She hands me my lattes and I leave the shop. The park is next in the routine. I don’t change it much. I have this silly idea that if I tread on the same ground for long enough I can create a shape that is me and not my evil twin. I think it makes the cops less nervous too.

I sit down next to the fountain and a few minutes later Freedman sits down next to me.

“Morning Freedmen,” I hand him his coffee.

“Morning Delia.” Freedmen is an undercover cop. He is one of the many that check in on me, but he is the only one actually willing to strike up a conversation.

“I had some fans at the coffee shop today, teenagers.” 

Freedmen scowls. “I don’t get the obsession some people have. It’s not like your life is very exciting.” 

I let out a laugh. “Not anymore it isn’t. Those first few months were doozy, tests and interviews and therapy. If I didn’t have people telling me where to go all the time I would have been completely lost.” 

Freedman just grunts as he drinks his coffee. He has something on his mind today. I don’t know much of anything about him other than what I see everyday. He is the same age as me, but he is already graying. He was a police officer during the time of my evil twin, but he thankfully never talks about it. He doesn’t talk about his personal life which was fine with me. It is just nice to talk to someone.

We people watch until we finish our coffee. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I get up.

“Delia,” I looked back at him. He seems to hesitate for a second. “Keep your phone on you. You might get a call from an interviewer today.” 

I frown. “I wish they would just leave it alone.” I wave and leave. I avoid the coffee shop on my way home. I doubt the kids are still there, but I don’t feel like chancing it. 

I make it to my apartment and lock my door setting all the deadbolts that were installed by my evil twin.

A hand goes over my mouth with a cloth and someone locks their arms around me. I buck slamming my head back. The person cries out as another one grabs me slamming me into the wall. Other people are yelling. The cloth is over my mouth again as I cough in a breath inhaling something sickly sweet. 

The world tilts and I see blurred people standing in my apartment.

“We are here to free you.”

I blink and look at the person beside me, but I can’t see anything except a mask on the bottom of their face before everything goes black.

I don’t know where I am. I try to sit up, fear spiking through me that it is happening again. My memory gone, waking up strapped to a bed, machines strapped to me. It takes the dark warehouse ceiling above me to finally think logically. I’m not in a hospital and if I remember losing my memory then I haven't lost my memory.

People are grouped a few feet away from the bed. One stands with his arms crossed like he is the leader of this band of misfits with a tattoo on his shoulder of my evil twin’s mark.

“For the love of-” I slam my head back into my pillow. Superfans.

“You’re awake finally.” 

“Well I wouldn’t have been asleep if you hadn’t knocked me out.” I roll my head back to him.

The boy walks up to me, college aged. His head is shaved on either side and his blonde hair was gelled back. He’s like a stereotypical movie villain. I scowl at his tattoo. 

“It’s your symbol. We all have it. We studied your life and we thought you knew what you were doing. You had a direction that the world needed to go in.”

His tone has too much reverence in it. “Listen kid. I’m not that person anymore and I am not ever going to be that person.”

“We know you aren’t yourself. You’re lost. We are going to free you.”

I want to crawl out of my skin. “I don’t need to be free. I’ve got enough freedom the way I am.”

“Yes, with cops following your every step doing the same thing day in and day out. That isn’t a life. It's a prison without bars.”

Like always no one really cared what my opinion was. “How exactly do you plan on freeing me? You can’t go up against the entire police force.”

“No, but you can?”

“What?” That sounded like a horrible idea.

“You fought against the police for years. We can bring you back.”

“Doctors have already tried to bring my memories back. What makes you think that you can?”

The boy scoffs. “Do you really think they wanted you to get your memories back? They didn’t actually try to help you. They wanted you to stay in this docile version of yourself so that they could control you.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I like this docile version of myself?”

“But this isn’t the true you. The real you is buried deep in your mind and we are going to draw it out.”

“What makes you think that this other version of me is going to want to do what you say?”

“We don’t expect you to. We just want you to return to what you did before, free to fix the world as you see fit. Eliza.” He waves his hand at the group of misguided followers.

A girl comes up to the bed carrying a laptop and the slide show starts. She made it on powerpoint like some school presentation. It starts with where I was born, what my childhood was like, what happened to my parents who had died when I was young, and how I was put in foster care. These are things that I know. The information that isn’t dangerous. 

The girl brings up a picture of me in a foster home and my gut clenches. I try to keep my face smooth as images flash in my mind. A dark closet, my hands over my ears. There is angry yelling outside. I know someone is coming for me. I had only known that I was in foster care. I didn’t know any details about it. If I remember this memory, what will stop me from remembering everything else.

“This is ridiculous. Your fangirl slideshow isn’t going to make me remember my life before.” I try to push as much arrogance in my tone as I can to cover up everything else that I am feeling.

“Keep going Eliza. We want to try everything.” 

I try to space out after that. Try to look at the screen without looking at it, but the slide show gets to crime scenes and my stomach churns. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to see, but I can’t pull my eyes away. I could never make myself look at these photos, but part of me always wanted to. 

They are full of destruction and blood. They begin to blur together, looking the same. Relief floods through me when we reach the end and nothing has been dredged up.

“Nice try kid.” 

“We had hoped that the gentler measures would make you remember something, but it seems we will have to be more extreme. Electroshock.” They roll the device over to the bed.

“You can’t be serious.” I tug on my restraints. “You can’t torture the memories out of me.”

“We will do what we have to.” The boy snaps his fingers and people are pushing my shoulders down as I try to twist out of their grip, the leather cuffs digging into my wrists. I am out of breath when they finally strap my head to the bed, but one of them is going to have a nice teeth shaped mark on their arm.

“How do you know that this other version of me won’t kill you for all of this?” Bravato is all I have to work with now, and for a second I wonder if my evil twin could get out of this.

“If that is your will then so be it.” 

This was a religion to them with my evil twin framed as the savior. They are worshippers, cult followers, willing to do anything for their supposed leader. 

They put a piece of rubber in my mouth. I breath quickly through my nose and my heart slams into my ribs. I look at everyone that surrounds me, hoping that someone will think that this is a bad idea and stop this, but each of them has a hungry look in their eyes. 

They put the devices on my head, and I don’t know how to prepare for this. The boy nods and my entire body clenches as electricity courses through me. I know nothing in that moment, but pain. It stops and I try to breathe.

“Again.” 

I shake my head and this time I scream. The sound ripping through my body, tearing at my throat. 

A loud noise rings through the room that I barely register, shouting. There is only pain that goes on for eternity. I fall back on the bed, pain gone. I gulp in air trying to focus, the world spinning. Someone removes the restraint on my head and I fall to the side.

Hands are on my face, pulling my head up. I feel like a rag doll.

 “Delia, look at me.”

I blink. “Freedman?”

“We’ve got you, just hold on.” The straps on my arms are taken off, but I don’t have the energy to move. The memory of me in the closet resurfaces and I see the door open. I look for Freedman, but he’s gone.

The next few minutes are a blur of activity. EMTs surround me pulling me into the ambulance. I see people being put into police cars. They run tests on me at the hospital and ask me questions. They assure me that there is no permanent damage, but they are going to keep me in observation anyway. I think that has more to do with my memory than my health.

I am finally alone with my hospital food on a tray. I didn’t miss it, but I am wolfing it down anyway because it has been hours since my coffee breakfast. I hear someone talking outside and know that there is a guard there. The door opens and Freedman comes in. I stop eating.

“There you go saving me again, Micheal.” 

Freedman freezes. “You remembered.”

“Only one thing.” Freedman had been the one to open the closet door in my memory, fifteen years younger. He had gripped my hand and huddled in next to me. “So you were a foster kid too.” 

“I was.” He moves slowly towards me. 

“I have a lot of questions that I don’t think I want to ask.” 

He sighs and sits in the chair by my bed. “I’m not sure I would want to answer them.”

I offer him my jello cup. “It’s not coffee, but it’s all I’ve got.”

He smiles and takes it. “You’re sure you haven’t remembered anything?”

“If I had remembered more do you think I would tell you? I was a bad guy you know.”

Freedman nods, taking a bite of his jello. 

I poke at my food.

“Will you answer one question?” 

“Depends on what it is.” 

“How long did we know each other?”

Freedman stops eating his jello to think, debating if the knowledge would trigger anything. He starts eating his jello again. 

“Two years.” 

“That’s a long time.” Two years and all I have is one moment.

“Yeah it is.” 

He looks up at me and I see memories swimming behind his eyes. If I could have just those memories. I don't want anything else, but knowing what my life was like with Freedman before seems like the safest memories I can find.

I continue eating and Freedman stays even after he finishes his jello. My chest aches painfully at the thought of carving an actual life out for myself. One where I’m friends with the boy I met in foster care and that’s the only part of my past that matters.