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It was all she had ever known, she was convinced. The fumes of the factory, the blank eyes all around her, the hazy smog that stuck in her throat and clouded her mind. She had always been faceless, voiceless, forgotten by the world and forgetting the world she was never part of. Good for nothing more than to lay bricks on a wall that never seemed to get any higher, to fill in spaces that were empty again the next morning.
She meant nothing to nobody, she knew nothing about herself other than what her duty was; nobody looked at her, nobody saw, nobody cared. She was just like them, a broken-winged bird that was too weak to fly away, a body to be used and discarded, who ached and sweated and sobbed even when she wasn’t sure what she was crying about, why she felt so sad if it had always been like this. She didn’t know why she felt incomplete, like something was missing, if this sweatshop was where she belonged. But it wasn’t right - there was itching, burning in her thoughts. There was an irrepressible feeling of losing something.
There had been something before - she couldn’t cling on, couldn’t pull it from the raging river in her mind, which swept away her identity and her memories. There were colours, red and white flowers lining her vision. There had been a before. She had been somebody , someone who felt the sun on her skin and danced among blossoms, someone who had worried and fretted and made a terrible mistake. It was torturous to think - to be so almost whole. To think of what she had once known and not know it anymore, to have doomed herself to oblivion, to not remember who she was or where she had come from. It was a nightmare, knowing that there were pieces of her scattered on this road - but she was blind, grabbing at loose ends in the dark, tripping and falling instead of discovering the truth.
She’d had a name once; somewhere in the shadows of her memory she could hear someone’s voice. Faintly whispering, sweet and melodic, uttering her name with all the love in the world, as though he revered it like a priest does holy scripture. Singing her name like he was worshipping her, the purest sound, like honey melting or the soothing rain after a drought. She had been loved, she had been something (no, everything ) to somebody, and it was agony to not remember his face, to not recall her own name. There was a story there, history she shared with him, and all she could find when she searched for answers was the sweltering heat of the furnace and the back-breaking manual labour and the existential limbo. How was she supposed to handle knowing she had lost something special, but not knowing what that thing was, and why she had chosen this fate over it? She could see blurry figures in the background, a life she had run away from, half answers that only hurt worse the more she strained.
And she fought against herself, against the whiteness in her mind. The harder she pushed - it felt like pins in her skull, like being crushed alive - but his face was getting clearer, and the hope in his eyes was a beacon encouraging her and it would be soon - she would pull everything together, make sense of this riddle. She would know who the boy was, who sat beside her in the flowers and strummed her a musical poem on his - guitar? No, that didn’t feel right, it was another instrument, one with strings he played so expertly, one he carried with him everywhere. She wanted to scratch at her head - until it bled with a steady flow of gushing crimson memories. Until everything came back into tune (why did that sound so familiar ?). Until she could make out his features, until she could retrieve every moment they’d shared together from the furnace her past had been dumped in, until she could remember her own fucking name.
It was so close, like she could reach out and unlock the part of herself she’d lost. If she squeezed her eyes shut, concentrated with all her willpower, she could smell flowers, she could see the outline of a boy, who was singing her name. But still the sounds were muffled, as if underwater, and no words could be recognised, it was just a tune that wormed its way into her ear and sunk its claws in (and the melody was so eerie, like she had heard it countless times before). It was proof of there being something before, someone who she had mattered to, someone who had loved her enough to sit in a field of poppies and serenade her. Someone who she must have abandoned, who she’d left behind, who she must have betrayed - whoever he was, was he missing her now? Was he mourning? Did he know where she was, what had become of the girl who had once walked under the sun and now rotted underground like those red petals would in winter?
There was something else. There was the light in his eyes, and then there was guilt. Guilt on his face - she could feel it, the palpable self-loathing radiating from him, the remorse. Had he done something wrong? Surely his error could not have been as catastrophic as whatever she had done to end up here ? The hunched figure - a voice uttering her name - and then an absence, a void. What could he possibly have done? She remembered walking a long way, exhausted and ready to collapse, she remembered him in front of her, his pained and determined steps enough to motivate her to keep going. And then it ends. She could scream, she could go mad with the knowledge that she knew nothing (she remembered the cold, the wind, and then shelter, safety in his arms). She remembered a journey, a rescue. But then why was she here, physically and mentally decaying? Why did it end like this?
A tragedy.
It was just too painful, chasing after these mysteries, too painful to fight against her own mind. She closed her eyes and willed herself to forget - fully - to be set free from this hell of grasping at the ends of strings, of resisting a powerful tide, of knowing that there was a boy somewhere who loved her. She let it wash over her, the calming relief, the numbing bliss of letting go. She lay down and slept in the soot and ash and sunk into the darkness, one last tear falling as she said goodbye to the boy she would never remember again, praying that he would give up on finding her, that he would find someone else to sing to. To find her now would only break his heart, to see her like this, a shell wearing the same face she always had, but one that could only stare at him blankly without recognition.
She forgot about him, and hoped he would do the same.
Eurydice has no choice but to go inside. There’s no shame in admitting that she could do with a little heat, that the chill in her bones is starting to drag her down. She’s well-versed in being independent, but she’s not stubborn to the point of killing herself by staying outside on the coldest night of the year. It’s a small bar she stumbles into, a little shabby and dated, but full of laughing people and the warming scent of alcohol and the richness of cigarette smoke. She’s never visited this bar before, but there’s something homely about it, like she could curl up by the fireplace, relax in its jovial atmosphere. Her hands tremble as she shuts the door behind her, noticing immediately the way a boy on the other side of the room snaps his head up from the table he’d been cleaning.
The boy is staring at her. His eyes explore every inch of her face. He is wearing an apron, a rag in his hand and a lyre on his back (why does she know what such an unusual instrument looks like? Why does the sight of one stir something deep inside?), his expression unreadable. He looks like he is searching for something he recognises, as someone lost in a different country would desperately seek something that reminded them of home. Eurydice knows she should leave, but the bartender has already given her a match and it is too tempting to hide in here from the weather, no matter how strange the boy is. There is something in the way the candlelight illuminates his face that keeps her rooted to the spot.
When she sees him, she thinks of flowers. She doesn't understand why, but it feels important.
There’s something about those eyes, the way they demand her attention, something about the sadness in his brow, the way he looks so fond and familiar and foreign all at the same time, like he’s someone she’s always known. Eurydice has never needed people, never desired company, but she’s compelled to get closer to him, to banish that heart wrenching expression from his face. She feels it’s her responsibility, like she is returning some long overdue favour that she can no longer recall, by making sure the happiness never dies in his eyes. But they look so tired, so heavy, and she can feel the weight of a burden he is carrying. She feels the way gravity seems to change, so that all the forces of the universe are directing her towards him.
And something about it feels right, like this is the way the story is meant to go.
She doesn’t know this boy, has never seen him before, yet she can hear his voice in her head before he speaks (it will be shaky, uncertain, but lilting and lyrical in a way that captivates her), can picture the way a smile would look on his face (it will be crooked, innocent, endearing ), knows exactly how his hands would feel against hers (there will be calluses on the fingers, built from years of playing the lyre). She knows how he will sound when he sings, knows the haunting falsetto that will come from his throat, and wonders if maybe she has been wandering past this bar before, if she was shivering outside one night and listened to him perform through the window. Perhaps that is why she feels like their souls are connected, why she holds eye contact with him from across the room and feels her harsh breath as her heart pounds.
Perhaps that is why, when he finally asks, “Do I know you?”, she answers:
“I don’t know.”