Failing To Forget; We Happy Few (not quite AU?)

[not_mephistopheles]

The day began so extraordinarily typical. Erik woke up and put on his mask just like every other respectable citizen of Wellington Wells. And alike to every cheery neighbor, he never neglected his morning dose of Joy. From there he washed, dressed well, and followed the rainbow painted road to work, like he has as far back as he can remember.

Which isn't actually that long at all, but that’s the comforting bit. Everyone in Wellington Wells has something to forget, which makes the Joy go down easy. Comfortable, blank blanket happiness.

When he arrives, it’s obnoxiously sunny and the vivid blooms upon the windowsill bask in beautiful appreciation. The birds sing lyrically and the air is laced thickly with the calming perfume of flowers and lavender. Coworkers chat pleasantly and hover around the tray of fancy sandwiches, which smell like fresh crusty bread, crisp veggies, and roasted chicken.

So his senses report. Those who fail to take their Joy see true gritty rotting reality of things; who on earth would ever want to experience something like that?

Every face that turns to greet him on his way to the auditorium is smiling broadly beneath a white mask exactly like his own, and it feels especially safe for reasons that are fuzzy behind Erik’s blotted out memory. Oh, well. It’s not like anyone else remembers anything. He’s just one of many in this cheery little town.

Erik has a Very Important Job at The Center for Musical Censorship; it is his task to judge what music is of sufficient quality to be allowed exposure to the civilized masses of Wellington Wells. All manners of musical things pass beneath his scrutiny; he reads sheet music, listens to records, and even judges live performances. Not a bird sings in town without Erik’s cheery nod of approval.

Which isn’t always won. So sorry, your music is not sufficiently Happy, and insights some unpleasant emotions; and as we all know, emotions are the enemy of happiness. Only elated music is allowed public exposure.

Erik spends the morning inside the greenhouse off the main building with a set of headphones and a modernized record player; he’s judging the quality and appropriateness of the music he meticulously inspects. The happy, cheery, peppy music make it into the neatly stacked Pass pile, while the others are broken into pieces and discarded like trash. No need for depressing music here.

It’s pure coincidence that a very particular aria passes beneath his meticulous attention. The melody molds around his mind and whispers of wonderful, terrible forgotten things. The voice of the songstress seems so irrevocably wrong-- like this music was never meant for her. So then who exactly would it be meant for?

Erik twines his spidery fingers around the headphones and yanks them off with a sharp jerk; he fails to place them down with grace. His heart is hammering, and his face aches behind his mask as though fighting the smile it forced upon it. When was the last time he wanted to do anything but smile?

The wisdom of the masses in this precarious situation?

When life annoys, pop a Joy!

From the discrete pocket inside his coat, Erik’s fine fingers fetch a small smooth wooden box. The compact container can pass easily as a sewing kit, but that isn’t the cheery truth. Unlike most civilians, he doesn’t carry a dandy pill bottle.

He carries a syringe and a small glass bottle of specially made liquid Joy.

Popping a pill is just impossible, when his mask keeps mouth sealed into a silent smile. Other citizens don’t have that particular freedom revoked, but Erik is a rather unique case. Huge portions of his memory are numbed and obscured by a blessed blanket of warm fuzzy Joy, and something in the back of his mind still yearns the comfort of forgetting; the Doctors that oversaw his ‘welcome’ to The Village were not overly informative, but they had made sure he remembered one thing.

His voice is a curse. It wrecks the comfort and bliss of Joy’s effects on anyone that hears it, and no one that is here, Erik included, wants that. No one wants remember a what they came here to escape.

He fills the syringe with motions both mechanical and graceful, and glances around briefly before peeling back his sleeve. Speckled pinprick bruises scatter along the inside of his grimly grey slender forearm. They cluster at the inside of his elbow around a thick bluish vein visible beneath his thin pallid skin. The tip of the needle ghosts down his arm in an eerily tender caress as the medically inclined man pinpoints the precisely perfect spot.

But a butterfly that may or may not even exist floats beneath his gaze and for whatever reason he follows its graceful path all the way to a stunningly beautiful woman perched upon the garden’s cobblestone path. Some indescribable pain knifes him between the eyes and through his chest; memories crashing and churning just beneath the too thin veil of chemically induced amnesia.

It’s really too bad that a tiny devious tremor takes the syringe from his fingers and it shatters on the stoney path. He… he knows her, doesn’t he? And something about her sparks a reckless masochistic need to remember.

And it terrifies him. It terrifies him that he doesn’t remember her name, and how badly he needs to. For the first time in far too long he tries to speak, before remembering his bondage to silence. He swallows thickly, finally managing to tear his eyes away and hastily seek his forgotten stash box.

But he can still feel her standing there; her presence floods his veins with each manic hammering heartbeat.