Prince Nothing
Part 1
Blame/Prologue
If you wanted to get technical with the blame, it was her fault I ended up there in the first place.
She forgot. She was fine the night before, but by morning she'd forgotten everything. It wasn't supposed to happen for another couple of years, though. I'd done the research, knew all the factors and statistics; even spent a few days a week with the school nurse, feigning a stomach virus and reading her manuals when she wasn't looking. By the time I was nine years old I probably could have passed EMT certification—the nurse was convinced I was agoraphobic, but didn't mind too terribly as I also turned out to be a more than competent secretary. Perhaps there was still the vain hope that when it did happen, when she did forget for good, I'd be able to patch things up—patch her up.
My first mistake, as it turned out, was attempting to validate my existence to someone who insisted I was the fragment of a dream of a past life. She was scared—here was this child, who for most accounts didn't look shit like her, telling her that he was her son. I should have known better, but I was nine and just as frightened and determined to keep her with me as she was to leave. She didn't belong here, she told me, she was a freelance writer in New York with deadlines, a cat, and a loft apartment in The Bronx. None of it existed but in her mind at that point, but I knew it would in a matter of months if I let her leave. This was fugue...a rare mental disorder that allowed the sufferer to fabricate personal realities, memories, names, professions, at the cost of the life they had lived before. My mother, Dalia Jeevas was diagnosed when I was six. She was a proud woman, so treatment was out of the question—what happened happened and we'd enjoy what time we had together, to hell with a contingency plan. I was a bright kid, I'd figure something out.
Those three years were seriously the best of my life. We ate like kings every night whether we could afford it or not, I got every new game and console for Christmas that I wanted. We were already living like madmen and it didn't matter, not a fuck of it. It was just life. I remember after that last doctor's appointment, she took me out for ice cream and told me that no matter who she thought she was two years, ten years from then, deep down she'd always remember me, her light, her reason for being and all that other stuff moms call their kids when they're young and naive enough to believe them.
But one look and her eyes said it all, she'd forgotten everything and nothing was going to bring it back. So I did the only other thing I could, I conceded to the 'new' Dalia and grabbed the backpack that had been gathering dust for the better part of two years. As soon as I told her I was mistaken, she calmed down and called me a cab. I'd been clever with our finances over the past few years so there was at least three thousand dollars at my direct disposal, stuffed under a blanket and few changes of clothes,lists and names of soup kitchens and hostels from Ontario to Philadelphia. She hugged me, briefly, all a fluster and full of apology for snapping at me—to this day I still wonder how the hell I was able to let go when the cab showed up. I still think of her, standing on our porch, smiling, waving, wishing me luck—her peachy fleece robe crookedly arranged over her body, hair usually bound tossing lightly about in an early spring breeze. I don't remember exactly where I told the cab driver I was going, but I ended up in Hamptons, just outside of the city proper. Derelict central.
Even in daylight, menace prevailed on every street corner, unmarked cars, men in large coats with greedy, searching eyes. Crumbling apartment complexes hosted every vice humanity could offer: avarice, jealously, gluttony...miserable people all the self proclaimed stars of the world's greatest melodramas. At age nine I knew this because I'd lived that way too, the only difference being that my drama wasn't great. And apparently, I wasn't a good enough actor to stick around for the call back. Cut from the roster after the first audition. Time to find another play.