The hairy shirtless man sitting next to me on the couch started laughing.
"Oh, man, how far down the deep end did you go last night?" he said. I continued blankly staring at him. I had no idea who he was. There wasn't a single memory of him in my mind. There weren't any memories of the apartment we were in either. My only memories were loose blank abstractions, fuzzy images at best. The last thing I most vividly remembered was that black void with the purple orb. Now I was in this random apartment sitting next to some big, sweaty guy who seemed like he knew more than he let on. After a few seconds, he realized I was serious. His expression changed. His brow lowered.
"You really don't know who I am, do you?" he asked. I shook my head.
"Do you mind telling me how I got here?" I asked.
"Okay, before we end up figuring this whole amnesia thing you've got going on here, let me get another hit in." He lit the pipe and inhaled another large cloud of smoke. He exhaled slowly, but started to cough as the smoke came back out of him. "Whew, shit, alright. Let's figure this out. What do you last remember?"
"I was in this black void. A purple orb spoke to me—said something about angels being real, or some crazy thing like that," I said. "Then I woke up here."
"Anything before that?"
"Not really. I have vague ideas. Like I remember being in a field at one point. Somewhere in the distance there was a fire. Not a whole lot I really remember from it, though."
He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "So what you're saying is that you have no idea who I am? Like at all?"
"I really don't. Never seen you before in my life."
He chuckled. "Welp, so much for making a lasting impression. But seriously, that's it? Do you remember who you are?"
"Yeah, I think so. I'm—"
A loud ring came from the hairy guy's shorts. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a cellphone. He answered it.
"Yo, what's up, Stu?" he said. He sat there listening to the other voice on the line. "Yeah, yeah, I'll give it back to you. You gotta come out here. Chuck's got some serious amnesia or something. Spooky." He hung up the phone. The door in the hallway past the stairs opened, and footsteps creaked the floorboards. A balding man with glasses walked into the living room. He was short and thin. A neat button-up white shirt clung tightly onto his torso, and his navy slacks did the same to his legs. On his feet were black socks, not a speck on them. He looked at me and squinted, then adjusted his glasses.
"Well, you look like shit, Chuck," he said. "I told you to lay off that stuff, and what do you do? Finish a whole eight-ball yourself. Now look at you." He paused, took his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "You know that stuff gives you brain damage, right?"
"What stuff?" I asked. The shirtless, hairy man began to laugh loudly. Stu covered his eyes with his palms, tilted his head upward, and groaned.
"Oh my God, I think Chuck actually has brain damage. I knew it," Stu said. "If you have any of it left, get rid of it."
The shirtless, hairy man began to rummage through the coffee table. He picked up a small plastic resealable bag that had a white sugar-looking substance in it. He flicked the bag. "Looks like you were wrong, Stu-boy," he said. "Chuck didn't even go through half the eight-ball." Stu stepped forward and snatched the bag from the shirtless, hairy man. He was more athletic than he looked. "And he never will," Stu said. "This is going straight down the toilet. Let whatever mutants are in the sewers deal with it."
The shirtless, hairy man bolted up from the couch. "Hey, wait a second. We paid good money for that moon dust. That shit cost six hundred for the eight-ball," he said. "Let me hold onto it."
Stu put his hand up and turned his head. "You don't need any more either, Harry," he said.
"Last thing we need is two brain-damaged idiots in this house."
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