[RiddleRose]: 298.Gold Dust - NaNoWriMo '07.Chapter fifteen

Chapter fifteen.

The first strange thing was that he had a splitting headache. The second strange thing was that he appeared to be naked. The third strange thing was that he was lying in a large sink. The fourth strange thing was that there was a girl on the floor next to the sink which was cramping him, and she was wearing only one thigh high stocking. She was also asleep.

Wren wished he was still asleep. The dream was still very present. He was very confused as to why he was in a sink. To be fair, he wasn't all the way in the sink. He wouldn't fit. One arm and one leg were sort of draped out of the sink. Both of these appendages were completely numb. He couldn't feel them at all. He wondered briefly if they were still actually attached to him, but when he looked, they were.

He tried to move, and his headache got abruptly worse. He also had various aches and pains in very unlikely places, such as his left earlobe, and his right calf. He assumed that this was what he got for sleeping in a sink. Why he was sleeping in a sink, he had no idea. Perhaps he had been drunk? But no, that would have had to have been a lot of alcohol, since he didn't remember it at all. And anyway, there were no empty bottles and cans.

There was the matter of the girl. Wren wondered if he had had sex with her. It certainly looked like it. He was beginning to be a little worried. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know why he was there, and he didn't know what he had done while being there. 

He tried to extricate himself from the sink, but was unable to stand on his numb leg. He fell over, and dragged himself over to the bed, which was visible in the next room. It was in a complete state of disarray, and there were various undergarments strewn about the room. There were a few very identifiable stains, and Wren decided that yes, he had probably had sex with that girl. He just wished he knew who she was!

He tried to remember. He tried his best. He could remember the previous morning. It had been a bad one. He checked his now pins and needles hand, and yes, there was a burn on it, of the sort that coffee might make if it was boiling hot and held under your hand for ten seconds.

He could remember... Neil crawling over his head, and licking up coffee from the floor. He could remember Livia in a corner, looking shell shocked. He could remember crawling to his own corner and whimpering. And there, right there, in the middle of a perfectly awful morning, and a perfectly good whimpering session, his memory cut off, as if with a knife.

He sat heavily on the bed. A spring groaned and snapped. The whole bed shook a little. This was going to be hard to explain. Especially since he was now completely freaked out. His memory was generally very good. He had trained himself to notice and remember details, conversations, dates, and times. He had a phenomenal memory for faces. He had a vague memory of this girl, associated with the park and Livia, but he didn't know her name. 

He scoured his memory. He was down on one knee... propositioning her... yes. He remembered meeting her in the park, and telling her to meet him there. Yes. Well, that had obviously been successful. But where the hell had that day gone? Whole days do not typically disappear as if they had never been.

He wondered if it was another inconvenient side affect of Gold Dust. He had connected the weird dreams to Dust by now. But did one typically lose days? Neither Wren nor Livia had mentioned that. He hoped it wasn't. It seemed like a drug that would be impossible to get off of. His headache got worse. He could feel most of his arm and leg now, though they were both tingly and didn't want to hold much weight.

The girl on the floor was waking up. Wren, hoping to avoid confrontation, hastily pretended to be passed out on the bed. He was very good at faking being asleep. It had been a technique used to deter his mother from bothering him when he was little and wanted to lie in bed for a while in the morning. She had always disliked waking him up, so whenever he heard her coming he would just pretend to be asleep. It worked well, until she caught on. And even then he could still fool her a lot of the time.

The girl looked at him, jumped, looked around, jumped, looked at herself, jumped, and rushed into what Wren assumed was a bathroom. She came out wearing a bathrobe, and screamed very loudly. Wren pretended to wake up, and put on a credible act, “What? Where am I? What? Where are my pants? What's going on? Who are you? Help! What?”

He looked around wildly, apparently searching for answers. He watched he slyly though, wanting to see if she bought it or not. She did. He could practically see her going through her memories of the events of last night. But then suddenly her face went blank. She looked at him wild eyed, and said, “Why don't I remember meeting you for the second time at the park?”

Wren looked at her blankly. Then it clicked, “Wait, you don't remember that either? Whoa. That's too freaky. My memories cut off yesterday morning. What's your name? I think we maybe had really awesome sex. I'm sad I don't seem to have been there. Um. I'm Wren.”

She was still looking wild. “I'm Lisa,” she said, in a very high voice, “And yeah, it does look like we had sex. But I was a virgin!!! I refuse to forget my first sex! That SUCKS! Plus, this is too freaky. I suspect you of lying to me. Except that you look awfully shocked and a little scared, and like maybe you think that aliens are messing with us, or Men in Black, or something, which is exactly how I feel. Where the hell are your pants?”

Wren looked around, and spotted them eventually, hanging from the light fixture. He stood on the bed, which popped another spring and creaked alarmingly, and managed to get them down. He extricated his boxers from a pair of lacy panties, presumably belonging to Lisa, and put them on. Then he put on his pants too. Feeling a little more normal, he sat on the bed again. This time pone of the legs shook and cracked. He got hastily off the bed.

Lisa was staring at it in disbelief. “Don't tell me we broke the whole bed!” she said.

“Looks like it,” said Wren, “I really wish I could remember that. When a bed breaks you know it was DAMN good. Or that you're into rough stuff, but I'm not, so it was probably just damn good. Damn.”

Lisa looked a little depressed. Wren thought she was taking the whole thing remarkably well. He suspected that most girls would have called the police by now.

But she was beginning to rummage through everything now. So maybe she was just preoccupied. Or crazy. Or something. “What are you looking for?” he asked curiously, “You want help?”

“Sure,” she said, “I'm looking for my memories. I thought maybe you had knocked them right out of my head or something, and they might be lying around on the floor here, but I don't see them, which is a bit depressing, because as I said before, I seem to have completely missed losing my virginity, and by the looks of it, it was really awesome, and I want that memory. I also want to find out who you are, and where my bra went.”

Wren noticed that she spoke in run on sentences a lot, and then thought that perhaps he was spending too much time with Neil. At that thought, his headache pulsed sharply, and he winced. A thought had almost surfaced when he thought of Neil, but then it had been pushed down again by the headache.

Wren stumbled his way to the bathroom, peed for a very long time, and then came out. Lisa was still looking for her memories, and Wren stopped to marvel at what a nice butt she had. She was bent over, and the bathrobe was quite short. He gave himself a pat on the back for his good taste, and left the button on his jeans undone, just in case she would fall for whatever he had done last night again.

He decided that her idea was as good as any, so he began to help her. He didn't find a memory, but he did find lots of books, assorted and sundry items of clothing, both his and hers, and lots of pillows and bedclothes strewn all over the place. There was also a jar which was only half full of hot fudge, and some whipped cream. Wren gave himself another pat on the back.

Lisa somehow ended up very close to him, and he brushed against her subtly. She definitely got the hint, and managed to somehow end up leaning down, apparently to pick something up, right in perfect range. He slid one hand down her back, giving her a pat on the bum as well. She jumped away from his hand- towards him. Wren had time for a very pleased thought, and then spent and enjoyable few minutes kissing and stroking Lisa. 

She made lots of pleased little noises, and seemed quite amenable, so Wren continued for a few more minutes. His headache receded a little while this was going on, or perhaps he just didn't notice it as much. Eventually though, she rolled out from under him, and retied her bathrobe. “Okay. Okay, now I really really really want to find that memory. If you kiss that well, I can't even IMAGINE how amazing last night must have been, and if I don't find this memory, I absolutely insist we try to reenact it so that I can lose my virginity properly.”

“How about we do that anyway?” asked Wren, reaching for her lazily, “I myself am quite in favour of that notion.”

“No, I want to be able to remember what happened last night first.” she said firmly.
So they continued searching for several more hours, in the process cleaning up the room a little, and also ending up on top of each other at least five more times. Finally, when shaking out the comforter to see if there were any chocolate stains on it, they found something that didn't belong. A few crumpled up pieces of paper fell from the creases and folds of the comforter, and tumbled to the floor.

Lisa smoothed them out, and read: