Forgotten in a drink

“So, you're a forgetter then?” I heard a question from somewhere behind me. The voice was shaky and hoarse.

I blinked in confusion. I was sitting on a bar stool, with a glass in my hand. There was still maybe about half of a shot inside, but a nice buzz in my head told me I already downed at least a half dozen drinks.

I turned around on the stool, slowly and carefully so I wouldn't fall. Four guys were standing there, all staring at me. And all looked as confused as I felt.

They knew who I was, so they must have been my friends even if I wasn't able to drag their names and faces out of my memory. I tend to do seriously stupid things from time to time, but not even I would get totally drunk with a bunch of enemies behind my back.

I wasn't sure where I was, but that's a state I'm used to, thanks to my professionally bad memory.

“Yeah, I am,” I nodded my head slowly.

The guy who asked me that question made a face like he saw something truly disgusting. “I just don't get it. How can someone be so mad to worship Als Hammer?!”

“Yeah, man, I know what you mean,” I waved with my glass. “Only a total idiot can worship the elder god of Entropy and Oblivion. But forgetter, that's a word that has... Ummm... three possible meanings.”

I showed him three fingers on my free hand and then tapped the glass on my thumb.

“The first meaning, and it's really inaccurate because only a handful of them actually has some talent, are those cultist idiots. The Hammerits. The second meaning...” I lowered the thumb and tapped my index finger, “... are mental forgetters. Guys who can make someone forget. I can do that a bit, so technically, yeah, I am a forgetter, but I seriously suck at it.”

I was speaking slowly to gain some time. I've been studying their faces and trying to squeeze something out of my buzzing head, to remember where and what, and who the hell. All those four guys looked like they were doing the same thing, which meant trouble.

“Listen, man, a normal mental forgetter can, if you let him, make you forget stuff. Did something nasty happen to you? Something so bad it gives you nightmares, keeps you up at night? You let a mental forgetter in your head, show him what's bothering you and he can help. He'll block the memory so you'll forget about it.”

I lowered my index finger and took a sip from the glass. I was surprised when the whiskey touched my tongue – it was something really good and expensive. Not the stuff I can normally afford.

“But, man, if you have a problem like that, don't you dare ask me. Not even if you'll find me sober. I seriously suck at this.”

“You can wipe people's memory,” he growled at me angrily. He was all blurry, due to all that high-quality booze I somehow managed to get, but he looked like a really tough guy. All four of them looked like tough guys. A lot of guns and knives and stuff, enough for a dozen average tough guys.

I was pretty sure that I was in serious trouble. I just couldn't remember why.

I snorted. “Unless you let me, I can do maybe a little trick if I'm really lucky.” I smiled at him and whispered: “Like when I make the barman forget that I hadn't paid for the last drink.”

And, suddenly, I remembered at least one thing: Why I'm so stupidly drunk. I have been using this trick for at least two hours now, from the moment I entered the bar and found out I have enough cash for one shot of a cheap rotgut... and a really strong need to forget all my troubles like a normal guy, for a change – in a drink.

“You know, that's a pretty handy trick,” said the tough guy on the right and put his hands in the pockets of his vest. He found something there, made a surprised face, and took out a piece of paper.

“Yeah, pretty neat,” I said happily.

“What about the third meaning?”

I took a look at my middle finger, still up, and realized what I'd been doing for the last minute. I stopped waving my middle finger at them and closed the hand to a fist.

“The third possible meaning of the word forgetter are the guys who themselves forget. Guys with memory so bad that if they forget something, they forget it so well that it changes reality. And that's bad. Forgetting always has these, what do you call it, side effects. Sometimes really bad. That's the real reason why people generally dislike forgetters and are afraid of them. Especially combat amnesiacs. That's a forgetter who can use his skill in combat,” I told them. I disliked what I was seeing in the face of the guy who found that piece of paper in his pocket and was studying it intently. I felt a trace of a memory...

“My bad memory made a mess of my life, so many times. One time I forgot...”

“You made us forget!” the guy with the paper interrupted me angrily and he showed the paper to his friends.

And, at that moment, my amateur attempt at mental memory block failed for all of us.

These guys... they were the bounty hunters. The bounty on that paper he was waving around stated that the price for my head was only half of what was offered for the full living package, so they tried to pick me up “peacefully”.

Their boss aimed a pistol at my head. A small automatic. I love automatics.

The rest of them just put their hands on their weapons, ready to draw, to show me that they mean business.

“Yeah, well, sorry man. I thought it's better if I try it even if I suck at it. If it would work, it would mean less pain and strain for all of us than if I fought with you.” I nodded my head sadly and finished my drink. Then I forgot that I'm drunk.

“Yeah, you're miserable incompetent little forgetter,” the guy with the pistol laughed at me harshly and then he clicked a safety on his gun off to show he means business. Idiot.

“Not the worst thing I've forgotten and blew it,” I said with a gloomy face and stared at my empty glass.

He snorted.

“Do I want to know what was the worst?”

I shrugged.

“I forgot my wife's birthday.”

They laughed. I did not. It still hurts, after all those years.

“She was never born,” I added.

They scowled at me.

“I suck as a mental forgetter,” I explained slowly, still feigning to be drunk. “But I'm fucking good combat amnesiac.”

I forgot that the guy with the pistol clicked the safety off. I just love those modern automatic pistols.

I also forgot I already finished the drink and threw the expensive good whiskey in their eyes.

It brought me enough time to forget about the barstool under my ass. While the surprised gravity tried to do its job, I pushed my legs against the bar with all my strength and flew in between them. An eye-blink before my hands touched the floor, in the last possible moment, I forgot about the friction. It made me glide on my palms through the room without slowing down, right to the closest wall.

It was pretty hard to do because the floor in the bar was made from rough wooden planks and the damn physical laws were shaking the surprise off and they were doing their best to work normally.

I touched my feet to the floor and used all of my four limbs to launch myself in the air, directly into the wall.

I managed to forget that the window was a few feet on the left, but it turned out I wasn't able to shake all the consequences of swindling the barman out of expensive whiskey. My forgetting was good... but my coordination was off, just a few inches off, but...

Instead of crashing through the window and getting out of the bar... I hit the frame and broke several of my fingers and my nose.

The confused window instantly returned to its normal position and there was a hail of bullets whistling angrily around me.

I forgot about the broken fingers and jumped aside.

I was lucky. The bar was half-empty and most of the patrons were trying to escape or hide under their tables.

The bounty hunters were actually helping me with their screaming: “Forgetter! He's a forgetter! Kill him!”

People generally don't know much about us forgetters, but they tend to be afraid of us. A bunch of miners in a tiny saloon in the middle of nowhere are usually no heroes. They're practical guys without suicidal tendencies, so it was just me against the bounty hunter foursome.

But they were probably rather good bounty hunters, based on how accurate their shooting was.

The quick escape attempt failed and I couldn't just repeat it.

A combat amnesiac can be effective only if he can keep the reality confused. He has to forget about tiny things, for the smallest possible amount of time. One trick works only rarely when you attempt to repeat it more than twice in a row. You have to keep changing them and use them in a seemingly chaotic flow that will take you where you need to be.

I've pulled down a table next to me, covered behind it, and forgot that it's made from soft cheap wood, offering no protection from bullets.

The tabletop shook as it stopped several gunshots and then started to vibrate as it was hit by a long burst of fully automatic fire. One of the hunters had a small subgun.

The table managed to keep its suddenly bulletproof wood between my sorry ass and the bullets long enough. The autogunner was a professional so he shouted: “Out, reloading!”

I let him. Then I forgot he just reloaded, peeked from behind the table, and started to shoot from my revolver.

The guy with the subgun was standing in the middle of the barroom and he was desperately and uselessly pulling the trigger. Two others were close by but I couldn't see their boss, that guy with a small automatic pistol. Maybe I unintentionally forgot him.

I managed to shoot ten times before the revolver made an empty click.

I was in bad shape. Normally, I can put out at least fifteen bullets from my six-shooter before reality realizes there's something wrong going on here.

But it was enough. The guy with the subgun was dead and one of the others should be out of it too, or at least seriously incapacitated.

The third guy dropped an empty revolver, pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of somewhere, and aimed at me.

When he pulled the trigger, I desperately jumped up and forgot about the gravity.

The desperation lent an unwelcome push to the forgetting. I switched off the gravity for a whole bar. The recoil launched the shotgun guy to the bar where he smashed in a wooden barrel of a cheap bear that ended up pretty much everywhere because the gravity was still off.

A combat amnesiac who wants to survive the battle has to carefully conserve his strength. He must keep his mind under tight control because every tiny manipulation of reality erodes his sanity and takes him closer and closer to a fit of full madness.

Switching off the gravity for a big bar? That's a huge leap right into the pit of madness.

For a few seconds, I was just madly cackling from my position under the roof where my jump took me. Then reality kicked me in my ass, which helped to restart my mind.

I've dropped down, no longer laughing.

I had to finish this quickly before I'll do something really stupid.

Or before the fluctuations in the fabric of reality will attract the self-proclaimed god of physical law, the ascended professor Zweistein. Most people think he's a stupid legend. He's not. Legend I mean.

The shotgun guy drenched in beer stood up, pulled another sawed-off, and shot at me but missed. I wasn't going to wait for him to reload so I charged.

He dropped the shotgun and pulled out another, out of thin air. He shot at me and then he repeated the sequence.

I could feel the reality grumbling, but it wasn't at me this time.

He had some kind of Talent. I was lucky his aim sucked.

I pulled a knife and threw it at him. I missed.

It was a nice surprise when he too missed with his shotgun, so I forgot I threw my knife at him and threw it again.

And I missed... again.

He summoned another shotgun.

Right at the moment when he pulled the trigger, I used all my strength to forget that the cheap beer doesn't have enough alcohol content inside to be flammable. I forced myself and the reality to forget that the beer can't ignite just from the backlash of shooting the shotgun.

For a second or two, the shotgun guy blazed like a giant candle. He probably wasn't even burned, but it gave me enough time to jump over the bar. I pushed him down and started to beat his head against the rough floor. I was cackling like a madman, which I technically was at that moment. One more trick and the madness would consume me completely.

But I made it. They didn't get me. I survived with my mind still recoverable.

“Well fuck me. Next forgetter I'm against I'm gonna shoot with a sniper rifle at half of a mile,” someone said behind me.

It was the last bounty hunter. Their boss with a small pistol that I lost during the fight.

I was dead. Except he just couldn't resist and had to tell me that wise idea he just had.

So I wasn't completely dead. Just lying in a grave and looking at the guy who's ready to throw the first pile of dirt over my body.

“I give up,” I said, releasing my last victim and starting to raise my hands slowly.

“Too late for that, you monster,” he said and pulled the trigger.

I forgot that normal shooting can't cook the rest of the ammo in the magazine.

I love automatics.

If he had a revolver, I'd be dead because all the bullets would end up in me.

But with an automatic pistol, I took just one bullet in between my shoulder blades and it made only a very painful bruise because, somehow, I also forgot that I'm not wearing a bulletproof vest.

It hurt me, but it hurt him more.

The explosion of remaining cartridges in the magazine blew his hand off.

I jumped up to my feet to finish him.

But he was a tough guy. He was squirting arterial blood out of his torn arm, but he managed to use his left hand to draw another pistol. And there was a shake in reality as the shotgun lover under my feet used his Talent again and summoned another damn boom stick out of nowhere.

There was only one thing I could do at that moment. It was my best trick, but it was also the hardest and most dangerous. The results were always totally unpredictable.

I never used it if there was any other way. There were many reasons for that. One of them was a simple fact – I could never do it with a sane, functional mind.

But at that moment, just one step from death, tired and more than half mad I closed my eyes.... and I forgot where I was.

For a while, there was nothing. Just dark madness full of chaotic ideas and feelings.

And pain. Mostly pain.

I was hurting all over. I was suffocating.

I tried to catch my breath and I woke up.

I was bloody, bruised all over, bleeding from scratches and small cuts from the broken glass I never even noticed during the fight. My nose was broken and full of drying blood.

I was somewhere in the middle of a desert. Without my guns and the backpack that I forgot, in the normal meaning of the word, in that stupid little saloon.

All that just because I wasn't able to resist a need to forget about my stupid miserable life for a moment like normal people do, in alcohol.

People like me... forgetting is always risky for us. There's always a possibility that the loss of memory would cost you a lot more than you thought...

And that you'll survive it.