26 Fics in 26 Minutes

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A story for a song by a band starting with every letter of the alphabet. Ranging from angst to fluff to humour to porn to general whimsy. Encompassing Boosh, RPS, Nathan Barley, Robots in Disguise, and Asylum, and probably a few other things too.

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Length: words

Madness – One Second’s Thoughtlessness

Contents

Madness – One Second’s Thoughtlessness

“Anyway, this is all your fault.”

The man sitting next to you on the sofa is glaring at you, but even as you look at him his expression softens, turns into confusion.

“Okay,” you say slowly. “If… if you say so.” You watch him carefully, knowing that his name is on the tip of your tongue, but not being able to reach it. He’s familiar, you know him and you know that you know him, but at the same time you can’t remember anything about him. Which is unusual.

“That’s just… how I feel. I think.” He narrows his eyes, looking at you in the way you know you’re looking at him, searchingly.

You close your eyes, put a hand to your forehead and half-laugh. “Sorry, this is embarassing… what did you say your name was again?”

The man licks his lips, eyes wide, and then speaks all in a rush. “Uh, you first. Your name, I mean.”

“Oh, it’s–” One hand up in the air, you freeze. “Well, I mean, it’s… it begins with…” You have no idea. It’s like meeting up with an old school-friend, you can hear sentences where it should go, you can almost hear rhymes, it’s John or Jack or James, but it’s… like trying to move your hand when you’ve slept on it. The command goes out, but nothing comes back.

“I can’t remember my name!” you admit in a horrified tone of voice, because whoever this is, you feel like you know him, and you want him to help.

This man, dishevelled hair, moustache, dressed in tones of brown and black, looks equally worried. “Me either.”

You sit up properly, taking a good look at your surroundings, muttering, “and where the hell are we?” Some garishly decorated flat, all bright colours and sparkles. The two of you are on the sofa, and when you turn to look behind you, something rolls across the cushions and hits you in the thigh. A blue bottle, empty.

You pick it up and rest it on the coffee table, and continue looking around. “This is weird. This is very weird. I can’t remember… anything. At all.” You feel your head for a bump or a bruise, but nothing.

“Ohhhhhh shit,“ says your maybe-friend, and when you turn back you see he’s peering at the bottle, eyes narrowed and mouth open. He reads out the label. “‘Memory-B-Gone. Clears your mind – FAST.’”

“We drank an amnesia potion? Like, magic?”

He swallows, you see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I suppose.”

“But why? What did we want to forget?”

He looks around at the flat and wrinkles his nose. “Maybe we wanted to forget we lived here.“

You slump back down into the sofa, trying to work out what would make the two of you wipe your memories together. An argument? A horrible crime? Maybe it was an accident. Either way, you have no memory left so trying to work it out is fairly pointless. You look up at the other man, who’s stroking his face.

“I have a moustache,” he says, looking confused.

“Yes, you do. What are we going to do now, then?”

He sighs. “Well, I suppose… we try and get our memories back. If we took a potion to get rid of them, there must be one to bring them back.”

You bite your lip. “Is that such a good idea? I mean, if we had something to forget… it could be dangerous.”

He looks worried for a moment, then nods firmly in a way that makes you feel better. “We don’t really have a choice. We can’t just sit here forever.” He starts to go through the pockets of his jacket and trousers, and you move to copy him, then realise that you’re in a T-shirt and jeans, and you can barely get your hands into your pockets, let alone any form of identification.

Your friend pulls out a battered old leather wallet, and opens it. “Here we go – driving license. My name is… Howard Moon.”

“Howard,” you smile. “That’s a nice name.”

His eyes flick to you and he frowns. “A dull name.” He lays the driving license on the coffee table and keeps going. “Credit cards… library card… membership of a Jazz Club? Oh, great.”

You shift along the sofa, trying to see. “Anything about me?”

“Bus tickets, there’s a receipt for what looks like hair products,” he runs a hand through his hair, “probably yours.”

He unbuttons the last part of the wallet and flips it open, revealing a picture of him and some younger guy, black hair, tight clothes. He’s got his arm around him, and the other man has his head on his shoulder. Howard’s smiling at the camera, but this other guy has eyes only for him, staring up at him although all he can see is hair and cheek.

You get a little falling sensation in your stomach at the thought of him already having a boyfriend, which is quickly followed by the realisations that you’re gay and that you fancy him. You put a hand over your mouth and frown, but there’s no reason to be upset exactly, you never knew different.

Howard bites his lip. “Well, I’ve got a picture of you, but who’s this guy?”

And you grin, an all-consuming grin that threatens to crack your face in half. You wonder if he knows what you know. “Is that me?” You point at the dark-haired man.

“Oh, sorry, yeah.” It takes him a fraction of a second to work it out, hand brushing against his moustache and eyes staring at his moustachioed double in the picture. “And that’s… me.”

You spy a mirror on the wall opposite you, and get up, noticing that you appear to be wearing heels. It doesn’t make sense until you’re standing in front of the mirror and you see him get up, looming over you. Of course you’d wear heels. Can you imagine the neckache without them?

It’s weird looking into the mirror at this guy you don’t recognise. You pull faces, waiting for something to click and for you to go, oh yeah, that’s me. You put a hand up to your hair, and when you pull it away your hair is now all sticking up on that side. You try and smush it down hastily, but that only makes it worse, and you force yourself to leave your hands by your sides until you can figure out how everything works.

Howard stands behind you, rubbing at his face and frowning. “Great, how old am I?“

“The perfect age,” you say without thinking, and wrinkle your nose at the fluffiness of it, but Howard just smiles.

You wonder how best to approach the subject. “So, we’re lovers then?” Ah, that should do it.

Howard just nods. “It looks like. I mean, the picture and all.”

“And this place.” You gesture at the flat, which looks like a colourblind artist’s paintpot has exploded over it. “It doesn’t exactly scream ‘heterosexuality’.”

“Plus,” Howard says in a rumbling voice that makes your stomach squeeze with pleasure, “when you got up, I couldn’t stop staring at your arse.”

You turn slightly, trying to peer over your shoulder. “Oh, is it a nice arse?”

“I think so.” He runs his hands over it, stepping closer and letting his hands slip from there to around your waist. “I mean, so far it’s the only one I remember seeing.”

You lean back, put your hands over his, and let him sit his chin on your shoulder. You fit, and it looks that way in the mirror too. You frown. “But we still don’t know who I am.”

His eyes meet yours, and he smiles slyly. “Who would you like to be?”