Awakening
David Orth woke up. He knew his name, but nothing else about himself. He did not know where he was, how he had gotten there, or what day it was. He opened his eyes and looked around.
He had awoken in an alley. It was like many other alleys in many other cities. There was a hard-dirt path running between two buildings. They were brick buildings with no alley-access doors. There were a few puddles of stagnant water. David Orth was laying in a dumpster, half full of discarded paper, empty cardboard boxes, old scraps of food, and—
“Man, smells like a dog took a dump on me,” he said out-loud to no one in particular. The smell of rancid dairy products burnt his nostrils. His voice was a little hoarse, like he hadn’t used it in a while. He coughed and glanced over at the entrance to the alley. There was a smallish dog standing there, looking at him. He had short blond fur and a white belly. His tongue lolled lazily out of his mouth. “Wasn’t you, was it?”
The dog cocked his head to one side and whined. His tail, which curled up towards his back, shook excitedly back and forth.
“No, I suppose not,” David said. He stood up and brushed a couple pieces of eggshell off his clothes. He was wearing a tuxedo, it appeared. Black slacks, a white shirt, floral vest, a jacket, and when he touched his collar found out that he was wearing a bow tie, untied and ruffled. The outfit was dirty and torn. As he started to walk toward the street, he noticed something else: he was not wearing shoes.
“Like John McClane,” David said out-loud, then he laughed. “I don’t even know who that is. The name just popped in my head.” He laughed harder. “I feel a little crazy, talking to myself. ‘If a tree falls in the woods and nobody's around, does it make a sound?’” David knelt and began rubbing the top or the dog’s head. “But you’re here, huh? So I’m not totally crazy. Not really talking to myself.”
He started walking down the street. It was similar to any other street he’d seen (though he couldn’t remember being in any particular city). Three and four storied buildings lined either side of the pot-holed cobblestone street. Most of the plate-glass picture windows at the street level were broken out and the windows above the street were boarded-up. What was missing was—
“It’s too quiet,” David said to the dog. He recalled hearing car horns or urban beats when in cities before. In every other inhabited city (that he couldn’t completely remember), there were sounds of life. The urban area where he and the dog walked now seemed totally abandoned.
After a half hour of aimless walking, David had seen no people, nor even any very recent signs of inhabitation. No billboards, posters, or potted plants. Before he even had a chance to tell the dog how odd that fact was, the dog ran off between a couple buildings to their right. He disappeared into the increasing shadows. Thunder clapped in the distance. Clouds swelled in the evening sky.
“I better find some kind of shelter because it’s about to be a noisy night.” David laughed, because now, he really was talking to himself.
The room David walked into was musty and dark, but it was very dry. And dry was what he had really been looking for since he pulled off the loose board and climbed in the side window of the derelict apartment building. The floodgates had opened up as soon as he climbed inside.
Whenever lightning flashed outside, he had been able to see enough of his surroundings not to run into walls. Still, he had stumbled slightly as he made his way down the empty hallway on occasional loose tiles or pieces of broken plaster from the ceiling.
He imagined a red carpet running down the hall he had first entered and could picture in his mind’s eye that each of the empty doorways he past was a different apartment.
Near what had probably been the middle of the building, David Orth walked into this musty room. Even the largest lightning flash hardly penetrated this interior room. He could make out the darker black outlines of the doorways, but not must else. David stood in the doorway to—
He suddenly remembered growing up in a small flat in London. There was a counter dividing the living room from the kitchen. A counter with orange formica on its surface. Against the wall, across from the plaid sofa was the console television. It was a huge thing, at least twenty-five inches across. The tube and cabinet had been heavy. Three neighborhood teenagers had helped them move in and all three of the boys had worked together to get the teevee up the three steps on the stoop in front of the building. He used to sit on the carpet at the coffee table in front of that huge set, watching cartoons and eating cereal.
--thunder crashed, shattering David’s vision. He advanced into the empty room and curled up in the corner. There was no threadbare sofa or shag carpet here. It was just cold, dry cement.
It was fitful at first, but eventually David Orth slept. When he did fall asleep, he slept hard.
It could have been a century for all David knew. It had only been six hours, though. The loud claps of thunder had not been what woke him, even the ones that had shaken the very walls of the building. The strong gusts of wind that swept down the hall and chilled the room did not cause him to stir.
What brought him suddenly awake was the sweet smell of the dog’s fur as it curled up against him. He had dragged a dusty blanket out from somewhere and pulled it up next to David Orth before curling as close to his body as he could.
“Trying to earn the ‘Man’s Best Friend’ title, huh, boy?” David covered himself and the dog with the blanket and settled back against the corner. The blanket was probably wool and was a little scratchy, but it was a great improvement to sleeping with nothing. “Thanks.”
It was well after daybreak whenever David Orth opened his eyes again. The room’s light was still quite dim, but the light that came in from the hall showed that there was full sunlight outside.
David looked around and was again reminded of the flat where he’d been a boy. This time, the memory was fleeting; he didn’t latch onto it.
He just looked around and noticed right away that the dog was gone. He had apparently left to forage for breakfast. He picked up the blanket the dog had brought for them in the middle of the night. It was dark gray, probably army-issued.
The room was empty, mostly. ‘Mostly’ because against the wood-paneling on one wall was an old wall mirror. The pane was cracked down the middle, but as David stepped closer to the shattered surface he was able to get his first look at his face.
He was a young man, but far from being a boy. There were slight creases beside his eyes and mouth. He had dark hair, almost black. It was a little shaggy, but cut fairly short. He had bright eyes, sparkling violet even in the low light. His features were not angular, but not entirely soft either. He guessed at somewhen in his early thirties. David rubbed his chin.
“I could use a shave,” he told his reflection. From the looks of it, he was four or five days from being clean-shaven.
Before he could marvel out-loud about the glory of the unexplained bacon smell that started invading his nostrils, the dog yelped beside him.
David looked down to see that the dog had dragged a brown paper bag full of cured meat and set it on the floor next to him.
“You are so full of surprises,” David smiled and reached for the dog. Instead of a pat or rub, he scratched him rather roughly behind the ears. “Timber’d love this when I did this. I’d scratch him for hours whenever we went down to the creek. After a romp in the water, we’d lay there in the grass and—I’ll call you ‘Timber,’ too. You’ve got the same eyes.”
The eyes were light brown, almost golden around the edges.
David Orth absently stuck his left hand into the bag and grabbed a handful of dried bacon, without stopping the ear-scratching with his right hand.
“This would be good with some coffee. You don’t have some of that, do you, Timber?”
In answer, the dog pulled away, walked a few feet, then turned and whined. David smiled. He followed him. The dog moved forward and turned to make sure the human was following every few feet. He led David out the apartment and down the hall past the doorways of three other ‘neighbors’ and to a downward stairwell at the end of the hall. In the basement, where it was much darker than in the hallway on the first floor, Timber stopped in front of a closed door.
He scratched a paw against the wooden door. A frightened voice answered inside, “Who is it?”
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