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He pieces together his life from his dreams sometimes, when his memory isn’t good enough. There is a problem with it, though – his dreams are a mere reflection of his feelings, no matter how colorful, how reoccurring, how significant they may be.
Brian Thomas, the bright kid.
His dreams never include his family, so he doesn’t remember if he has any siblings. He knows that in order to be, he had to have parents. A mother and a father. Even if not there for him, at least biologically. He has memories of a man, and dreams of a woman. He calls them his parents.
Brian Thomas, the young adult.
He once were given a four-dimensional cube. He doesn’t remember who gave it to him, or when that was. Whoever did that, went on a tangent about how it was supposed to be, and that some might consider time to be a fourth dimension of sorts, and then something about the string theory. Time wasn’t a fourth dimension, though.
Brian Thomas, the patient.
His psychologist had a lot of ideas how to trick his mind into believing lies. She used to tell him that even if there was three a.m. in Alabama, it was simultaneously three p.m. somewhere in Russia. Time is a construct created by mankind. A day is not even strictly 24 hours, it’s 23 and then half a hundred minutes and then some more on top of that. That’s why sometimes a year has one additional day in February. A three a.m. mark on a clock is always a different time of a particular turnover of our planet around the Sun. She used to tell him that his believes were actually called delusions.
When he looks in the mirror at exactly three a.m. he still sees a tree with bark missing in places, though.
Brian Thomas, the victim.
He was a kid, of no age in particular, but weak enough to not be able to lift a piece of roof pinning someone down. That would turn out to be the only thing that mattered. The man he calls his father took him on a business trip up to Oklahoma. June of no particular year, no particular date assigned, no particular time that matters. The morning was clear, humid, warm, and charged with energy. The evening was rainwrapped, tall and menacing, blowing in all directions at once, filled with the sound of no particular origin. The tree that was in front of their car was big and old, with bark missing in places, and with long dark branches all broken. The house they went into asking for help was battered, missing a roof. The woman that lived in that house was middle aged, blonde, half covered by the piece of the roof of her house, spitting out blood and pained screams, the blood pooling under her was dark red and mixing with rainwater, making the puddle that much bigger. The hail that started was big enough to knock out an eye. The ER was too slow.
The night was quiet. The mourning was solitary.
Brian Thomas, the student.
Psychology was a passion. It started with tests, it went and went and then he learned what he needed to say for her to believe he was getting better, and now he was in the University. His program had mandatory anatomy classes. They were boring. Anatomy classes had practice. Practice was boring even more so. They once went to look at the room full of refrigerators holding human-sized figures under the white sheets. That was boring. He liked the books more. And he liked spending time with his friends even more than books. He had some friends that were closer to him than others, but he never really liked the color of the rain, so Alex was nice.
Brian Thomas, the star.
He doesn’t know how he managed to convince them he was normal. He is starring in Alex’s movie now. From the corner of his eye he can see the dark broken branches of the tree with bark missing in places finally give way to the businessman the man he calls his father was meeting one day in June. The man tries to hide in the corner, but he seems to like Alex a lot. Brian watches as the man stops hugging Tim and goes to hold hands with Alex. He thinks this man is a little gay, but who is he to judge.
Brian Thomas, the missing.
This is a reoccurring theme. He is missing from movie-Sarah’s life, so she can be mad at him. He is missing from his room and from his house sometimes when Alex brings the businessman with him to show him around. He is missing rehearsals in the evenings, because he tries to not miss too much blood, just like that middle aged blonde woman. He is missing Tim, because when Tim puts on the other face that is missing all of Tim’s features, that face is missing a voice, and Brian would really like to know what is going on. He is missing time, too, as of late.
Next thing he knows, there is a poster on the wall that says he’s missing. Next week the poster is missing too.
Brian Thomas, the betrayed.
The missing face with missing voice is now missing from the forest. Brian knows why. When Alex showed him an old hospital and said to pretend it was an old school, when Alex went poof right behind him, when there still was the poster that is now missing, back then Brian didn’t know. He does now. He found the old hospital that was the old school, and in it he found something of Tim’s. He couldn’t find Alex, though. The businessman that was holding Alex’s hand must be hugging him now, so Brian can’t see him from behind his back. Brian doesn’t know if the businessman was Tim’s friend or if he was friends with the missing face with missing voice, but Brian was friends with both, and none told him.
Brian Thomas, the betrayer.
He once was a student who was studying. True, true. He knows what a bottle of pills looks like. He has seen it. He has even seen some with his name on it. He is now looking for the ones that have Tim’s name. If he eats enough of those, he stops missing blood like middle aged blonde woman had, and the tree with bark missing in places and dark branches all broken is hugging him instead of the businessman the man he calls his father went on a trip to sometime in June of no particular year. Brian likes to collect the pill bottles with Tim’s name. The problem is just that he runs out sometimes and he has to go collect some more. Tim is sometimes sad about his missing pill bottles, and sometimes he does this strange thing on the floor as if he is missing something too, and sometimes he is crying, but Brian thinks that if Tim misses his pill bottles so much he really should’ve told him that he was hugging that businessman.
Brian Thomas, the runner.
Tim has found a new friend. Jay is missing time a lot, so much more than Brian ever did, and sometimes Jay is missing common sense as well, but he’s alright. He’s a fast runner, though, so Brian has to be a faster runner. It’s sometimes hard to run faster than Jay, because some days he has the businessman the man he calls his father went to meet sometime in June hanging from his back, and some days the tree with bark missing in places and dark branches all broken obscures his vision, and then on the rest of the days he is lucky to not feel nauseous from all the food he doesn’t eat. But Brian has to run faster than Jay, because if he doesn’t then Alex will catch someone, and then Tim or the missing face with missing voice will get to him on the day when he can’t run at all. On the days when he can’t run at all he leaves little notes to Jay, so Jay would have to run in a different direction. Away from Alex. Sometimes away from Tim, too.
Brian Thomas, the hooded man.
He overhears someone calling him that. Then he overhears Tim saying something. Then he overhears a gunshot somewhere in the basement of an abandoned school, this time no longer an abandoned hospital. Then he overhears Tim again. Then he is running, but it is one of the bad days, and he doesn’t even know if it is Tim or the missing face with missing voice, but none of them are friends with him anymore because it seems Jay is now missing just a bit too much blood too, though there is no rain and no hail this time.
When he falls, he knows it’s Tim, but it doesn’t matter.
Brian Thomas, the found.
When he finishes piecing together everything from his memories and his dreams, he is in a white room, wearing a white gown. He is missing his second face, but he doesn’t miss the fact that there is Jay in the bed next to his. There is also Tim right in between them, on a plastic white chair. The ER is on time this time. Turns out the hail was the problem, then.