Page 119 of By the Pint

“I’m watching telly,” he said. “It’s about dogs. Do I like dogs?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

He didn’t answer me. “Am I handsome?”

“You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen,” I replied.

Nina gave me a warning look over the top of her puzzle book. She had cautioned me that my own emotions could be too triggering for Casey. She’d told me to let him figure things out on his own.“Remember, to him, you’re just a stranger,”she’d said.

How could I ever forget?

He spent the next few weeks learning about the world through documentaries and pre-approved Assembly of the Undead training videos. Designed to get you ready for life after undeath. In a brilliant and cruel twist of irony, the ‘vampires’ in the videos were all humans in costume. Obviously.

Sometimes Casey and I watched the programmes in silence, sometimes he would ask me questions. There was never any sign he remembered anything about me, or us, or anything from his human life.

We were watching a documentary on the founding fathers of Borderlands, Darren the Great and Todd the Enigmatic, and perhaps I’d finally find out which was the human and which was the fae, but Casey turned to me.

“You like blankets,” he said. His voice had long since lost the childlike innocence it held. Now it was deep, insistent, powerful, sexy.

Nina lowered her magazine and peered at him, mouth open in amazement.

How did he know? Did he remember?

“Y-yes, I do,” I said.

“You made this one?” Casey pointed to the colourful patchwork quilt draped across the back of the sofa.

Nina pinched her face into a ball, her eyes screwed up tight, like she was arguing with herself inside her head.Do it, find out how much he knows,she said into my mind.

“Yes. Do you remember it?” I asked, trying to play it cool, but I felt as though I might throw up all my internal organs.

Casey thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “I don’t know why I know that. Did you make it for me?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “You stole it from me. Well, you accidentally stole it the last time I saw you before you came here.”

“That sounds like something I would do,” he said, casual as fuck.

Nina’s magazine hit the floor. “Casey, do you … do you remember what you were like?”

He thought again. “Nope,” he said, popping the P.

But Nina and I shared a glance, and something ignited within me. A tiny spark of hope.

And so it went for another few weeks. Every now and then, Casey would drop a little bomb, hinting that maybe, tucked somewhere deep inside him, were his human memories.

“It’s always cold in the city.”

“I’m not scared of heights.”

“Kosmoceratops!”

That sort of thing.

Nina was beside herself with excitement.

“I know it can happen. But this is the first time it’s happening to one of my patients. It’s bloody incredible. I’m buzzing. Look at my hands, they’re shaking.” And she held out her hand so that I could indeed witness it trembling.

But every time we asked Casey if he remembered anything, he would shake his head. And every time I snuck into his thoughts, I saw no signs of those memories.

---