The nighttime landscape that passed him by felt strange and foreign, though nothing was visibly out of place. Clean streets greeted him, lighted by posts at convenient intervals. Passersby were uncommon, but not rare.

He stopped the car, and propped his forehead against the wheel, closing his eyes. He took a deep breath. He was shaking.

He just killed two people.

He shook his head. No, he killed one. The other was clearly the victim of a giant bat. He would not claim that murder. He felt sick. He felt lost. He felt like he had no choice. The dead man pointed a gun at him and clearly had something bad planned for him. It was self-defense!

He gripped his wrist and pressed until the shaking subsided. He calmed down.

He had no idea where he should go, he realized with an annoying migraine. A hospital maybe, which raised another question, where was the hospital? Maybe he should ask for help.

Before him, he saw the lights of a bar. Why not? He thought and parked the car nearby, opting to abandon it in an inconspicuous and out of way place. Its owners were dead, after all.

The bar had a moderate amount of customers. A group of four was making a row at the corner; a few others were drinking rather sadly among the tables. Behind the counter, a bald, pudgy guy was staring at the entrance expectantly. A woman, no, a girl, possibly a teen, was serving the customers. Was that legal?

He approached the counter. The guy behind looked up at him without interest. “Back again, eh?” he said.

That was surprising. Had he been in here recently? Was he leaving town?

“What do you want?” the guy behind the counter asked, not unfriendly.

“I came here before?”

The guy snorted. “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Lots of out-of-towners pass by here; I haven’t got to remember all of you, do I? Grab a drink or leave, stranger.”

Undaunted by the rudeness, he gave a brief look at the collection of drinks behind the guy. “Cuba libre,” he said as the name jumped to the forefront of his mind.

The barman mixed his drink in seconds, not even bothering to check what bottles he used.

He nursed his cup at the counter, drank in sips, wondering what he would do next. The answer was, ask for another cuba libre, and another one after that until he had to go to the toilet.

He came back, and asked, of course, for another cuba libre. It was the only drink name he could remember. It was possible, of course, that it had always been the only one he knew.

A youngster sat beside him at the counter. A man, just short of a boy. Probably not even twenty with stylized hair and a nose-ring. He asked for vodka and cried at his cup as he drank.

He immediately hated the young man.

“What’s the worst thing a man can lose?” the young man asked to no one.

“Himself,” he answered, feeling that he was somewhat tipsy.

The young man looked at him and harrumphed. “There are plenty of things more important than me. Now if I can just drink enough to forget everything.”

“Forgetting is terrible, trust me. Don’t do it.”

“My goodness, it’s true what they say, there really are moral dispensers in bars ready to turn you the right way. But trust, well, trust is hard to earn, man, I can’t just give it to you like that.”

As it turned out, the young man was a friendly drunk, and the two lost themselves talking to each other through the night as patrons arrived and left. The barman cleaned cups and refilled their drinks.

It was so very strange to be there talking to a young man he barely knew hours after crashing his car and forgetting everything.

§

He opened his eyes to a grey ceiling. To his right, he saw iron bars.

He felt a terrible headache. Groggily, he sat up, then looked to his left and saw a hole in the wall, sealed by more iron bars. He looked at himself, feeling disgusted at the dried puke on his shirt. Every muscle hurt.

“Ah, you woke up.” The voice belonged to the young man, and accompanying it was the sound of a page turning.

He realized he stood inside a cell. Bewildered, he looked around.

“Is it your first time?” asked the young man, smiling maliciously. He leaned against a wall, wearing a light coat above a red t-shirt with a band name; both with puke over them. He was reading a comic book.

“Where are we?”

The youth looked around in mock confusion. “In jail?”

“Why are we here?”

“Because we drank too much.” The young man nodded at his own assertion, sighed, and continued to read hic comics.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Paul!” a new voice shouted.

He turned at the sound. It was a guard. He came up to the cell, looking displeased at the young man. “How did you get that book in there?”

Paul knitted his eyebrows, seeming genuinely confused. “Kevin gave it to me, to kill time ‘til I can leave.”

The guard bristled. “Paul, is police a joke to you?”

“Bill, I am just saying what happened,” Paul said, bewildered. “What else do you want me to say?”

The guard sighed deeply, seemingly filled with disappointment. Then he turned toward the only other man in the cell. “Mr. Adam we’ve found your crashed car. Your firearm permit was inside. Next time you’re involved in a bar fight make sure it stays in the bar. It’s a good thing you didn’t pull your gun, or we would be having a very different conversation. Be more responsible in the future.”

The guard called him Adam. Was he Adam? If the cop thought so, he probably was.

The guard then shook his head. “I can’t believe Kevin brought you here instead of the hospital. You seem fine, but do a check-up, okay? We called your wife. She’ll be here soon.”

Adam’s face must have been quite the sight, but the guard misinterpreted his confusion. “Don’t worry,” he said, almost like a friend. “She seemed more worried than upset. Well, considering everything, it’s no wonder.”

The guard seemed to think for a second. “Oh, yes, what is this?” He pulled out the knife.

Now that he took a good look at it, it was a beautiful thing, with a sinuous curve and artistic engraving. “It’s an antique,” he said, hastily, but quite naturally, after looking at it. “An ornamental item. It’s not a weapon.” It was probably not a lie.

“And from where did you take it?”

Again, the guard interpreted Adam’s silence by himself. He smirked, knowingly, and shook his head derisively. “You can’t go around taking Good’s belongings before the inheritance is properly divided. And don’t go around drinking and driving in my town. Well, I’ve heard the story from your wife. I’ve lost my father too, so I can’t very well say I don’t understand your feelings, so, well, it might be a little derelict but I won’t pursue things further this time. No one got hurt but you after all, and Kevin did neglect to bring you to the hospital. But watch yourself ‘round here, we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, seriously.

The guard fixed him with a look, grunted, and walked away.

“Jeremy is a weird one,” Paul said once the guard was out of sight. All this time, he hadn’t stopped reading the comic book. “He acts like a tough cop, but truth is he doesn’t really care much what people do around here. Well, unless someone dies. He spent a long time investigating Good’s death, seemed sure it was a case, but everyone knew it was really sickness. Overall, he’s pretty laid back.”

“You come here often, then?”

The young man smiled sheepishly. “Only recently, only recently. I’ve been drinking too much. But this was the last, I swear! Buying a fight with two lumberjacks was a little too much for me.”

“Two lumberjacks?”

“Yeah, you started swearing at them for no reason, don’t you remember?”

“I don’t remember a single thing at all.”

He chuckled. “It was pretty funny. You asked if their boss asked them to take their clothes off very often. No, without alcohol, it doesn’t sound that funny. But I did laugh very hard and they got pissed.” He turned the page and laughed at something in it. His eyes were sparkling with merriment. At length he gazed at Adam with an upward gaze and cocked an eyebrow. “Want to read?” He offered the comic.

“A comic?”

“They had books before,” Paul said, defensively. “But they burned down in the fire.”

“The fire?”

“Yeah, the fire. Took half the buildings in the street. It began in an abandoned house near the drugstore. They ought to have teared the place down long ago. So wanna read?”

Adam looked at the professed book. It was spider-man. “I started the fight?”

“Yeah, you did,” Paul answered.

“And you helped me?”

“We were drinking together.” Paul shrugged. “And I did think it was pretty funny when I was drunk.”

Adam looked at the comic, still being held toward him. “I think this will be the first comic I’ll ever read.”

“Oh, come on now,” Paul said. “You’re what, twenty-six, seven? There’s no way you didn’t read a comic when you were a kid.”

“Even if this is not the first I read, it would still be the first I read.” Adam accepted the book.

“You will like it,” Paul declared, almost too friendly for someone he barely knew. “Spider-man, the hero who always tries to be a better person.”

“Is he that kind of hero?” Adam tried to remember anything about spider-man. Nothing came to mind.

“Read and find out.”

§

Paul asked the cop to buy them food, promising he would pay him back. Surprisingly, the cop agreed.

He and Paul ate chicken wings in the watch-house, while Paul told the sad story that led him to the bottle. In short, his girlfriend cheated on him.

“I don’t think that’s a good reason to get drunk.”

“Can you think of a better reason to get drunk?” Paul scoffed. “I mean, I loved her, you know. I trusted her, depended on her. I gave my heart to her and she tore it open. You know, the people we love, who we put our trust on are those who can hurt us the most! They can take advantage of us like no one else. We give them this power anyway, hoping they won’t use it. When they do, it’s soul-crushing. Have you ever been betrayed like this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, it’s like having a knife piercing your back!”

After talking a little more with Paul, he was called away.

His bail was paid. When had he even agreed to bail? He was told his wife paid for it and awaited him.

He felt no small amount of trepidation at the thought of seeing her. He would need to tell her he lost his memory, and hopefully have her help him navigate through daily life. Hopefully she was not a backstabber like Paul’s girlfriend. She stood as soon as he entered the room, which he was thankful for, otherwise he wouldn’t be sure she was her.

After a brief study, Adam wondered if he was rich or just very good-looking. He badly wished he had seen himself in the mirror to know for sure.

She had a lovely face, sharp, but also slightly round, childish, like a young cat. She had a small nose; long, light-brown hair fell around her waist; her blue eyes looked at him with worry. She wore a brown cardigan and jeans, slightly dirty with mud at the knees.

“Adam.” She hurried to his side. “What happened to you?”

He was not sure what to say, so he said nothing.

Strangely, she seemed to come to her own conclusions on his silence. They took his things, including his wallet that he hadn’t realized was left behind in the crashed car.

“We need to take you to the hospital,” she said when they were inside the car.

“Yes,” Adam said, reading his identity. His name was Adam Good. What a good name. He liked it. More importantly, it felt like the kind of name he had heard many times before.

“Pence came to the house asking for you last night. He shouldn’t have done that,” she continued, slightly angry, oblivious to his confusion. “What were you thinking, disappearing like that?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking.”

She gave him a dirty look, unamused.

He worried for her reaction when discovering he lost his memory. He pondered how best to tell her he had no idea who she was. But her next words gave him pause.

“If we make more mistakes we could die. It’s not the time for carelessness.”

It was a good thing that she kept her eyes on the road because Adam was sure the face he had on would startle her.

“I know you are uncertain about what we are doing, Adam. But we can’t back away now. Go talk to Pence. I’ve told him we’re meeting at the hospital.”

Adam just sat there, silent, while she drove down the road.