Memphis

Whatever name he was given when he was born was gone, wiped away by years of stolen identities and various lies. He went by Memphis Joe now, he wasn't sure why, it just sounded right when he mouthed it into the mirror. He rubbed a chunk of brylcream in his hair and combed it over with the switchblade he had found by the tracks. He couldn't remember what he looked like before but this, this was right. Memphis Joe. With his slicked back hair, a voice like Elvis, and a temper like a drunk. That's who he was, he could feel it.

He walked out of the washroom with a swagger in his step. The house was dark and silent, but why wouldn't it be, it was the middle of the night. He slowly crept up the stairs and stared blankly at the family photos hanging on the walls showing people he didn't recognize. He paused as he reached the hall at the top of the stairs and closed his eyes. He thought of his childhood growing up in Memphis, his failed attempts at a singing career, his failed marriage, his job as a construction worker. It all flashed before him as if it were some divine revelation.

He pushed open the door at the end of the hall and walked into the room. His bedroom. Although shrouded in the night, he could see a figure slowly heaving with breath on his bed, under his covers, a figure he did not recognize. He dragged the switchblade out of the waist of his jeans and stormed over to the side of the bed. that temper his father had given him flaring through his veins.

He pressed the tip of the blade against the sleeping man and dug it in, the man's eyes shooting open as his head jolted back with a line of blood now tracing down his cheek. Joe could see the man's eyes in the dark, swollen with fear, the man sat in the bed on his knees and whimpered as he struggled to comprehend the situation. Joe reached over and grabbed the man's chin with his right hand, slashing him across the cheek with the switchblade with his other.

The man stumbled backwards off the bed and fell against the wall. "What are you doing in my house," Joe said as he stalked around the bed towards the wounded animal on the floor. The man slid himself up against the wall, a streak of blood running up along with him as his cheek pressed against the white wallpaper.

"This is my house," the man said as he backed up against the nightstand beside the bed. "I don't know who you are but you're mistaken, I live here!"

Joe tilted his head to the side and stared at the man for a second. His brain was thinking something but he couldn't understand what it was saying, as if it was speaking some language he had never heard before. He grabbed the man by the waist and heaved him back onto the bed with a grunt. Joe's eye twitched.

"I just don't understand why you can't answer my question. Why are you in my house?" Joe began to circle the bed.

The man began to sob. "I don't know who you are or what you want. You're in the wrong house. I live here. Look around you - this isn't your place."

Joe began to pull at his hair as if it were a weed. "Do you take me for a simpleton? Some Southern rube? I am so sick of this kind of...behaviour." Joe's fingers began to curl like burning wood. "I've worked too hard to have my life taken away by a rat like you. And that's what you are - a rat, sleeping in my bed. Trying to claw your way into my home. I should crush you under my boot."

The man on the bed grabbed the lamp off of the nightstand and flung it at Joe. It him across the forehead and sent him reeling back. He could feel something running down his forehead, brylcream or blood. For reasons, he didn't understand, those words echoed about in his brain. Brylcream or blood. Brylcream or blood.

The man rolled off of the bed and dashed out the door into the hall. Joe began to follow him but he was feeling dazed. He ran his fingers along his face and thought back to his childhood. He could see Memphis but it wasn't moving. He could rememeber his mother but her face wasn't there. He clenched the blade tighter in his hand and charged into the hall.

There was a loud thump and Joe stopped running. He stepped to the edge of the stairs and looked over them - the man had fallen down and was lying in a shuddering heap at the bottom step. Joe laughed although he didn't find it very funny. He sauntered down the steps, playfully tossing the knife between his hands, and didn't look at the pictures hanging on the walls.

"Please...don't hurt me," the man cried. "I'll leave. This is your house."

Joe stopped at the middle of the stairs. He looked down at the man and felt a tinge of pity traveling through his brain. "You're not just saying that, are you?"

The man shook his bloody head. "No, man. This is your house, I'm intruding. I just...I just wanted a place to stay for the night. I'll leave and you go back to sleep. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Joe laughed and slid the switchblade back into his waistband. "Get, then. Drag your sorry hide out of here and never show your face again."

Joe kicked the man and pointed to the front door. The man slowly pulled himself up - his left leg clearly broken from the tumble down the stairs, the wound on his face still bleeding. He inched towards the door and wrapped his hand around the twisted and broken doorknob. He turned back and looked at Joe who leaned against the banister on the stairs, a goofy grin across his face.

"Can I ask you a question?" The man's voice trembled.

Joe stepped down the last few stairs and now stood tall in front of him. "What?"

"How long have you lived here?"

A piano wire snapped inside Joe's head and he twitched. "If you really ought to know, I've been here for 8 years." He caught a glimpse of something he might have remembered and smiled. "I moved here from Memphis."