Charlie Sinclair

Hm hmm hmm hmmmmm, da dum da da, summer was great and sun was fun. Or was summer fun and sun great?

Actually, summer could be both because then he could be too, ha ha!  Oooh, he should try to remember that while talking to someone at some point.  Because his last name was Summers.  Even though he was born in a place that didn't have summer by the standards here?

What was he rambling about anyway?  Oh, his pun!  His delightful self-referential pun.  He wanted to remember that.  He should put it in his phone.  Which was even in its usual pocket, delightful and perfect and easy, and the battery was mostly charged!  When had he gotten into the habit of checking that?  Whatever, it helped.  It wasn't as if he didn't know his memory was worse than a goldfish's.  Goldfish memories were rather more proportionate to their lifespans.  Whatever his was, his memory couldn't be proportionate.

Oh, unless it was proportionate to the time since he last died?

When was that?

Hm.

Oh, phone memo!  Memo to Memo, awesome pun:

Shoot.  What was it again?  Something about....

Summer!  That was it.

Memo to Memo, awesome pun: Summer is awesome therefore I'm awesome.

Oh hey, was that a fast-moving taxi not swerving far enough around him?  He'd been on a crosswalk, hadn't he?  He certainly wasn't now; he wasn't dead, which would have been less painful than whatever was going on with his leg (seriously, owwwwwwwwwwwowowowowowwwwww), but he was kind of sprawled on the curb?  And sort of hooked on a sign post.  Bus stop?  Hard to tell at this angle.  Felt like he might break his neck trying to see the top of the sign.

"^&*(ing idiot, what were you thinking?"  That was probably the driver.  Memo hauled on the sign post to drag himself more upright, at least until his leg - woowwwww that hurt and yes it was definitely super broken - caught on the curb.

"An ambulance is on the way!  And the police.  Even if he was jaywalking you shouldn't have hit him!"  Oh, now there were passersby getting involved?  It was apparently a pretty busy time of afternoon.  Lots of people.  And ambulances coming.  Um.

"Excuse me, but an ambulance isn't needed.  Really, I'll be fine."  At least he probably would.  Hm.  If he didn't forget about it, would it not go away?  "Just distract me or kill me or something."

Oh. Someone got hit by a taxi. Well, that sucked a lot.

Charlie stood across the street, a frozen yoghurt spoon in her mouth as she watched on. The guy looked pretty mangled from where she was standing, but he was clearly still alive and talking. From her position, she could hear a little of what he was saying. It wasn’t often that someone claimed that they would be fine if someone just killed them.

It was a bit of an understatement to say that Charlie was intrigued. She couldn’t even begin to count the number of times she’d told someone just to shoot her so she wouldn’t have to deal with some horrifying injury. Usually, whoever was near her would just give her a terrified look and leave her to do it herself.

If what she thought might be happening was actually happening, though, then she would gladly step in and finish the job for him. She was carrying a gun, so she wouldn’t even have to get her hands all that dirty.

Charlie stepped out onto the street and walked over to the crowd of people, pushing her way to the front so that she could drop to a crouch and look the guy in the face. Yeah, he was in rough shape. Poor guy.

Her frozen yoghurt cup hung loosely in her hand as she cocked her head at him. ”So you want to die, huh? What’s that gonna solve?”

It was always good to check before shooting. She didn’t exactly want to kill a guy on a hunch, even if he looked like he would be better off if she did.

Finally, someone coming over and not panicking. Memo sighed and leaned back against the post as much as he could. This really hurt. Why couldn't he forget pain as easily as he forgot dying? Oh, person. He was kind of light-headed, but forgetting who he was talking to wasn't the kind of forgetting that would be at all helpful right now.

Cooonnnncennnntraaaaaate.

"It solves remembering," he said with as much cheer as he could muster. It was an oddly large but not overwhelming amount, neither hysterical nor in step with the whole mangled leg bleeding on the pavement. "It'll go away if I forget about it." Except talking about it reminded him, like repeating something over and over so that he didn't forget it because he didn't want to forget it. Except he wanted to forget this. "You don't seem very surprised. Or grossed out. Are you a nurse or something too?" Too? He probably remembered something, someone, but maybe it would come to him later.

The guy was weird looking and he was saying some very weird things. There was no way that he wasn’t a mutant. The question was whether or not he was the kind of mutant that she thought he was. Charlie just wasn’t into shooting random people in the street for no reason.

>>"You don't seem very surprised. Or grossed out. Are you a nurse or something too?"

The blonde jutted a hip and considered him for a moment. She shook her head after a second. ”No, just someone that understands better than most,” she replied. It was likely true. Often, she wished that someone would just come around who understood her when she was in situations like that.

She bent to her knees and reached into her jacket, pulling her gun from the holster. As subtly as she could in the middle of a crowd of people, she held it to his head and looked him in the eyes. There was an audible gasp behind her, to which Charlie responded by glaring at the various onlookers.

”I have a few minutes before the authorities arrive and you’re on your own. Are you sure that this is what you want?” she questioned one last time.

Nurse. Why was he thinking about a nurse? This person just said she wasn't one, but he was still thinking about a nurse. Hmm. Maybe this had happened before, and a nurse talked to him last?

That made sense. This didn't feel especially new. And he only remembered so much at a given time. Not that it was consistent how much he remembered, or how long. Or short term versus long term. Sometimes it was like the thing he forgot never made it to long term, or like it got there but got lost and he couldn't find it again. Or like it got deleted to make space for something else, like a super cute cat video that made him snort hot tea through his nose - ohhhhh that burned. Like, actually burned in the present. Memo clamped a gloved hand over the bridge of his nose, face scrunched up in discomfort. When he lifted his hand away, the black streak across his nose was dull, lacking the glossiness of his other markings.

"Is what what I want?" Memo asked, innocent confusion and honesty all the way through. Unintentionally potentially helpfully, he shifted to pull his outstretched leg more comfortably underneath him. His pant leg was still wet and heavy with blood, but there was no sign of the injury itself anymore.

Yep, the guy was out of his mind. For a moment, she thought that he was considering her offer as he lifted his hand to his face and scrunched it up, but that wasn’t the case. Either he had some really bad brain injuries, or he had no idea what he was really talking about.

He didn’t even seem to be injured by that point, either. He was just a guy lying on the road, his clothes soaked in blood. Was it some sort of practical joke? Were there cameras waiting to jump out at them from behind a bunch of bushes, or something? Whatever it was, it wasn’t funny and Charlie wasn’t interested in playing.

”The f***ing gun to your head, idiot,” she huffed, shaking it a little so that he could hear the click of metal near his skin. She was getting close to just shooting him out of pure annoyance. The world needed fewer idiots anyway. ”You asked for someone to kill you. Do you. Want me. To kill you?” she spoke slowly and intently, making sure that he caught every word.

Either he gave up the act or he really was as stupid as they came. Whatever it was, her trigger finger was getting antsy.

She was right: she did have a gun to his head. Was she mugging him?

Oh. Another one of those awkward moments where he asked for something and then forgot by the time it showed up. It was great when he was in a restaurant or something - delicious surprises and all that - but when he asked someone to kill him... yeah, that was a lot more awkward.

What made situations like this less awkward? Grinning. Definitely grinning, in an honest and open friendly manner. "I probably did. The point would have been to forget what happened, though, and it seems I've already done that. If you really want to kill me, though, I won't complain. Just maybe not in the head. Blood doesn't like washing out of my hair." He poked the gun's muzzle farther down.

He also really wouldn't complain if she didn't shoot him, of course, because it hurt until he forgot. He didn't always forget the fact that it hurt. Facts were tiny little fragments that fit in amongst bigger feels.

A heavy sigh escaped Charlie’s lips as he pointed the muzzle of her gun downward. He probably asked her to shoot him? She was officially done putting up with whatever stunt he was pulling. It wasn’t funny or interesting, and whatever footage he had of this was probably going to flop on ViewTube. 

She put her hands on her knees and pushed off to stand on her feet. With an annoyed noise, she turned around and shook her head. Why was she still standing there? She should have just gone on her merry way and forgotten about whole things. That was the smart thing to do. She had no stake in what was about to happen there, and she didn’t really care about what the people that had surrounded the area were going to do with the man.

”Do you get off on this kind of thing? Is this some sort of sick game of yours?” she hissed, pointing the gun around as she used her hands to punctuate her comments. Someone was going to get shot like that.