As the Tattooed Man looked over his notes, the Girl saw how he self-consciously rubbed the spot where a Wedding ring would’ve been. That was when the Girl noticed his bruised knuckles.
“What happened there?”
He looked at where she was pointing, and stared at his bloody hands. “So that’s why they’ve been hurting so much!!”
“Let me guess - you don’t know how you got those?”
“It must’ve happened when I was punching the snot out of somebody. Even though your mind may forget something, your body doesn’t. Muscle memory is funny that way. Chances are, I know lots of deadly killer moves. There must be all kinds of latent talents just waiting to be revealed.” He then took an open defenseless position inviting anybody to hit him. “Go ahead, try to kill me!”
She stared at him aghast. “I’m not attacking you just so you can beat me up.”
He crossed his arms in a pouty manner. “Spoilsport.”
“There’s whole crowds of potential targets over there. Why don’t you use them for practice?”
“I don’t want all of them ganging up on me.”
“Spoilsport,” she said, mimicking his earlier behaviour. “Didn’t you have someone else to help you out with this?”
“Probably, but I don’t know what happened to them.”
Even though she had trouble recalling things properly, she still could gleam subtle clues from her current surroundings. This was her first sign that this man might be trouble, and alarm bells were ringing in her head.
“WHY exactly did you want me, and only me??”
“It’s better that we don’t have too many people around.”
“Why not.”
“The fewer people travelling with us, the better. We can recall information the other members forget. But we have to keep our numbers at a stable level.”
“Again, why??”
“The saying “Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd” definitely applies here. The restrictions means that we can only see three familiar faces in a crowd. It’s recommended that you don’t move in groups of four or more, otherwise, you’ll forget even yourself.”
He pointed out to a large crowd - a different crowd than the one that had been following the Girl before.
“You see that crowd there? It started out relatively simple. A gang consisting of a guy, a girl and the other guy. They got in all kinds of trouble, getting into crazy adventures together. Then they started attracting a large following. It started out small. A few people here, a few people there. Then various couples started to notice other people in the crowd that were potentially interesting, and left to see them, abandoning their friends in the process.”
“They started mixing and matching. Couples who’d been together for years suddenly found themselves split up and paired with new attractive faces they’d only just met, ruining the old social structure, causing power vacuums to open up from the collapse of their stable relationships. People are still swapping partners around like they’re money, hoping to get ahead, even as they can’t see further beyond the nose on their faces.”
“Lost souls can find themselves inside a huge crowd without ever realizing that they’re caught in one. Ironically enough, it’s when you see a crowd from a distance that it counts as a single item. It’s when you break the crowd down into smaller components that it becomes harder to remember.”
The Girl stared in perplexed wonder a the Tattooed man’s remarks. “You don’t remember whether you can fight, but you remember all THAT?!”
“I must’ve heard about it before I was dumped here... wherever “here” is. It only takes the slightest stimulation to recall a specific memory. It can be the inflection of a voice, a familiar smell, the sound of a... what was I saying again?”
He was momentarily distracted by the sound of something off in the distance. It was a large vehicle with an open-ended trunk carrying a wealth of material that was spilling out from behind it. There didn’t seem to be any windows, doors or openings for the cumbersome vehicle. It couldn’t even be told if anybody was inside it. It’s only function seemed to be to drive around haphazardly, and spill its contents around the outside.
The Tattooed Man suddenly grabbed the Girl by the arm, and made their way towards the truck.
“We need to get closer to that thing. I don’t know how or why, but I just know... wait, now I remember! It’s our source of food!”
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