The Note – A Short

It came in the mail.  It came with the bills and junk that came every day.  It didn’t stand out as anything too unique, just a rumpled manila envelope with a funny bulge in one end.  John grabbed it and everything else with it out of the mail box, shoved it and everything else into the side pocket of his laptop case and headed into the house, more concerned over the text message he had just received then the mail crumbled into his bag.  His current flavor was demanding more intimacy and the one he was ready to go after was more interested in his friend then him.  So he tossed the mail onto the kitchen counter by the sink and left it there.  And there it stayed a mangled mass of print ads and bills while he cajoled the woman he wanted and broke up with the woman he no longer did.  For three days it sat there in an ever growing pile of mail, forgotten.  Only boredom and a spilled beer saved it from being ignored for too long.  His elbow caught the bottle and it toppled over sending a stream of liquid into the nest of forgotten mail.  Panic flooded him as was natural and cursing he scooped the beer and much of the liquid into the sink, then began picking his way through the sodden mass.  The junk mail he discarded, the bills he frowned at and set aside to dry and the package, dirty, manila and now wet with beer stared at him.  His name and address had been scrawled across it with a black marker, but there was no return address and the handwriting he did not recognize.  Curiosity had him picking up the package and feeling it with his fingers.  It was thin, with a soft bulge at the end.  He slipped a finger beneath the flap and ripped it open.  He pulled out the single sheet of paper then, turned the envelope over to dump the rest of the contents into this hand.  For a moment he just stared blankly at the eye patch, a leather eye patch that any pirate could be seen wearing in any movie.  He turned it over, saw initials stitched into it, his initials.  Still confused he looked down at the note and read it.

John,

You won’t understand, you won’t believe, but you must.  I’ve been looking for you for a long time.  This was once yours.  Put it on and try to remember me.

Victoria

           He turned the note over, but that was it, there was nothing else written on it.  Ordinarily he might have just thrown the whole thing away.  But there was something vaguely familiar about that patch.  He hesitated for a moment, then put the patch over his left eye.  Nothing happened and he stood there, feeling the fool.  What did he expect?

           John.

           He turned, heart suddenly in his throat and there she stood, her face pale, transparent.

           I’ve waited for you.

           He ripped the eye patch away, but she was still there, wavering like a mist just out of reach.  “Who..?”

           Remember me, John.  She reached out and her hands seemed to pass right through him, right into him and it was a cold, very cold.  Remember me.

           He felt the rise and fall of a deck beneath his feet, felt the wind harsh against his face and smelled the salt brine that was tossed high with the spray. 

           Remember me.

           He remembered this; somehow he remembered this in the depths of his soul.  But he did not remember her.  She came closer and he saw tears, spectral tears in see through eyes.

           Remember me.

           Again the surge of deck, the creak of rope and rigging and then into his vision it all came, the memories of the life that had once been his and the woman he had once loved.  She stood before him, wavering like the memory, but more tangible.  She lifted her face to his, lifted hands to cup his cheeks and though they were cold, her lips were warm when she kissed him.

           Remember me.

           He remembered her…