Like I Forgot Yesterday

The wind knew the change was coming, probably before anything else. It danced the fire colored leaves around in little circles, as if in contemplation. Mulling it over; chewing it out. The tired buildings and the forgotten graveyard overgrown with moss all knew after a few days. The cobble walks and clay flowerpots that cast long shadows in the evening sun knew by the end of the week. In fact, the last to know were the people who built the buildings, forgot the graveyard and neglected the flowers in the long-shadowed pots. They didn't know about the change until it happened, and then, only in passing.

But one day, the sun winked out. It winked back on after only a moment, but when it came back, it wasn't the same. Not the same at all. The people who saw the change didn't really think they saw it: they must have been mistaken. Most of them were too busy driving their expensive cars or listening to their music to really care at all. Of course, some people saw the change and thought it strange, but only a few, a very few, saw it and knew what it was.

Margo Giddings was one of those people. She had always been different from everybody anyone had ever known, but, like the change, people noticed only in passing. Margo wore this difference like a badge on the inside that everyone could see. Most chose not to look.

Margo never had to look both ways before crossing the street: she knew instinctively whether or not a car was coming. Hours before people opened their mouths to speak, Margo knew what they were going to say and had a witty remark ready for them. In school, Margo knew the answer to every question before it was asked.

Margo *knew* things about other people that they did not know about themselves. Knew it like the back of her hand, only twice so. Margo knew, for example, that her mother had been mourning the loss of a husband that she could never hope to have had, and in a fit of self-loathing, married Margo's father. Margo's mother had merely fancied herself in love.

When people met Margo for the first time, they could sense that there was something...not 'abnormal' because that word implied disfigurement of body or mind, but *un-normal* about the way that she looked at them. *Through them.* A stare that said she had already read their life story like it was stamped across their faces in bold letters. It was as though Margo had stripped them naked to see right through their skin. Like she could see into the beating part of their soul. So, they protected themselves using the only avenue that seemed open: they didn't tell Margo their name. It was as if revealing this small yet vitally important piece of information would open the floodgates and leave their souls naked and vulnerable, like a kite dancing in the breeze right before a thunderstorm. And, though Margo could not tell their names just from looking at them, she *knew* so many other things about them. Margo just knew.

And, Margo knew what the change was when it happened, though she had not been expecting it to happen until next Tuesday. Perhaps the Tuesday after that at the latest. Instead it happened on a Wednesday.

Margo did not like Wednesdays. They were sandwiched in between two halves of the week and, in Margo's mind, did not accomplish anything other than boredom and voodoo. Well, more boredom and less voodoo because, as is often the case, when there is an abundance of voodoo, there is a complete absence of boredom. But the Perpetual Wednesdays seemed to drone on for hours longer than they should and eventually bled into Thursdays, creating a feeling of malaise and carefree depression that lingered until Friday morning, after which nothing would ever be wrong with the world. At least not until the following Monday.

The question that Margo presented to herself as she walked down the street that abnormally precocious Wednesday afternoon was simply this: what was to be done? To the best of her rather sketchy knowledge of past events in history, this was the first Wednesday that had seen enough action to get its blood flowing. This was not how the universe worked, and hence, how could she save the world before another Perpetual Wednesday came to pass? Seeing as trying to rescue the world from itself seemed the only viable option to prevent total mental meltdown before lunch, Margo walked with a more exuberant air towards the starting place for her journey.

It has been theorized by Modern Science that the end of the world would begin on January 1, 2000. Of course, that was before Modern Science had consumed enough coffee to really think straight and quickly re-theorized that the end of the world would come a lot later than the first theory specified. Having thus staved off total global annihilation for a few months, Modern Science decided to get decidedly drunk. He always did his best theorizing inebriated, anyway, and so promptly left for his favorite pub. After walking a few blocks, and then walking a few more, Modern Science realized that his favorite pub was in England and he was not. The best place that he knew of to get drunk in Washington DC was Margo's house, so he went there instead.

Modern let himself in by the side door and quickly discovered that most of the hard liquor had been set out on the dining room table with a note attached to it:

"Modern - don't drink too much. We're going to go and save the world. Hope you packed light. - Margo"

Modern fondly eyed the array of imaginatively expensive alcoholic beverages before him, and rather conversationally, mumbled "where, exactly, are we going to do this?" Not that he expected an answer because Margo was not, to the best of his knowledge, currently home.

"I don't know" was written near the bottom of the page.

Margo returned to her house three hours later to find Modern in an Extremely Drunken State.

"Where've you been?" Modern mumbled dejectedly. "I had to drink most of this stuff without you." Actually, due to the amount of alcohol that Modern had consumed, it sounded more like 'WervUuben? Ai adt'dink mos uv dis stufff w'ouw y.'

Margo sighed. It was apparently going to be one of THOSE days. "Modern, I told you not to drink so much. We have to go and it would be a big help to me if you weren't so...how do I put this delicately? Pissed! Something bad is happening and we have to stop it! Don't you even want to hear about it? One of those things you theorize about all day might have actually happened!"

"Don't care." 'donkaar' "I'm going to be SICK." 'aimgonnab SICK.' Modern yelled as he plunged bravely into the bathroom for an intimate interlude with the toilet. Margo sat down and tried her best to look nonchalant, but this was a major setback. Not Modern's being drunk, that was to be expected, but the fact that he didn't care about the apparent validation of one of his theories. So unlike Modern. He would usually discuss his ideas with a stop sign if he thought that he was getting through to it.

After a few minutes, Modern crawled back into the room, flung himself on the floor in front of Margo, and began singing in his deep, slurred voice about the fact that he was a material girl living in a material world. Margo sighed once again and tried to order her thoughts so as to bring some semblance of normalcy back into her living room. After Modern had finished his song and began explaining that he was a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, Margo decided that 'normalcy' would never be achieved. Heck, it hadn't even been a word until Warren G. Harding invented it. She decided that her best option was to cut her losses, quit while she was ahead, and follow countless other clichés that tripped through her already cluttered mind. Margo grabbed Modern by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to his feet. Strange, she thought, that Modern had a scruff of the neck to grasp, but she had more important things to do than contemplate the significance of this.

"We're leaving. I'm driving, and if you throw up in my car, you'll just have to buy me a new one."

With that they took off for...well, Margo didn't exactly know where they were headed. They were going to have to follow her instincts and hope that they were not going someplace cold.

Three days later, Modern was sober and driving while Margo slept in the passenger seat of the car. She had explained to him what she thought had happened. How the world had changed in some way. She didn't go into details because he had had a life threatening hangover at the time. Now he was his old sober self again and was driving towards the place that Margo felt was the focal point of the whole...whatever. Though one of his theories spoke of the sun blinking out, in reality it had blinked back on, so his theory was null and void in this case.

(Modern had always believed that the sun was in fact a giant light bulb in God's fridge, and one day it would burn out. Of course this would mean that the Earth and its entire population would have to be some type of condiment on a week old BLT sandwich that God had simply forgotten to throw out. The whole cosmos-as-fridge theory revolved around another one of Modern's theories: that when the fridge door was closed, the light remained on. But, since the sun had turned back on without a giant hand replacing a new bulb, Modern's theory de jour was not valid in this instance. Not to say that some time in the future his theory would not be validated. If there was one thing that Modern Science believed in was the advancements of Modern Science.)

Margo jolted awake. "STOP THE CAR!!!! We're there!"

The car screeched to a halt as Modern tried to re-start his heart. "This is where we were driving for three days to reach? It's an old burned out barn in the middle of no where." Modern had been expecting something a little more welcoming, a little more cozy, a little less country, a little more rock-and-roll, and a little more likely to have a well stocked liquor cabinet.

Instead, this barn looked like it had not seen humans in over one hundred years. The roof had caved in a long time ago, like the weight of the years of solitude had finally broken its spirit. The ground surrounding the barn had long ago given away to the onslaught of weeds and now surrounded the fallen down fence in a harsh embrace. Though the barn had probably once been a proud shade of red, it had faded, aged, and saddened to the point where it's hue now was the color of clotting blood. This did not make the house any more forbidding, just a little more pitiful. The windows looking out on the troubled landscape showed signs of water damage, as though the house had recently been weeping. A small wheelbarrow still partly full stood rusted against an old fashioned well that had long ago dried up, and a rotten rope fell from the leaning supports of the well's roof to a pile of slag that had once been the bucket for gathering water.

"Yup. This is the place. Let's go inside." Margo said as she practically jumped out of the car and ran towards the barn.

"It doesn't look too safe. Why don't you check it out while I stay here and guard the car. You never know who will want a 1987 Honda. I better make sure that we still have a mode of transportation when we get back."

"Fine. Whatever. I'll go save the world and you'll stay here like the cowardly fucking lion."

Modern nodded. "Good plan."

Margo sighed and headed towards the barn.

The man lay on his side. A stillness had touched his body that needed no explanation: he was dead. Time had also caressed his ghostly features, leaving nothing but his bones and some tattered clothing behind. Yet, with each passing moment, his body seemed to almost breathe solitude, as though life had clung to his form long after the heavens had intended. In one hand lay a gun and in the other lay a dried and disheveled flower. The musty atmosphere hung thick with his dying thoughts: 'may in death I find the peace that never found me in life.' A smack struck Margo full in the face as, through time, she heard the shot that ended the life of one so lost already. Being in that barn and seeing his crumpled form, the skull set in a toothy grimace of pain, made the dead man's soul more intimate with the onlooking stranger than it had ever been in life to anybody.

As Margo moved deeper into the murky glow of age that covered the interior of the barn like a thick fog, she saw a tattered yet alive man hunched over in the corner. He seemed to be cowering from himself, his thoughts, his past, present, and future. All of his energy had focused inwards long ago until he was cocooned in a blanket of denial so thick his spirit had suffocated.

His dry lips made a croaking sound that tore through Margo. "Thhhha..." But his voice was too raw from crying and it faltered. He cleared his throat, anguished at his voice's failure. "Thaaaat maaaa..." But he failed again. It had simply been so long since he had last used his voice for anything other than crying. Wailing. Coughing. All grew from a sorrow too deep to ever understand. But Margo tried.

She knelt down beside the man, smiling as reassuringly as she could, and carefully took his head in her hands. With a cry as entrenched in misery as the ones coming out of the man in front of her, Margo lost herself in the pain and longing and self-hatred that she saw within his bloodshot green eyes.