The Sheriff and The Amnesiac. Ryanne Corey

a lovely chemical trance, completely free of pain. End of memory.

      A few minutes, a few hours, a few days later, she opened her eyes again. She saw nothing but a bright white light, obscenely bright. She found a blanket beneath her fingers and pulled it up over her head, trying to escape the light. When she emerged again, she did it by painful inches, coming out into the world like a new chick hatching from an egg. She realized several things all at once. She was wearing a completely indecent and undignified hospital gown and nothing else. It was daylight. Most startling, however, was the life-size clown with a shock of orange hair and purple-striped pants floating in the air above the bed.

      As her foggy brain cleared a bit, Jenny realized she was looking at a stuffed toy dangling from a giant hook on the ceiling. She looked to her left and saw orange wicker shelves crowded with clowns of every size and every description. She looked to the right and saw a glossy six-by-four poster of a…clown. The bold caption at the bottom read, No Bozos Allowed.

      So this was what happened when you died and had too many black marks next to your name. Saint Peter locked the pearly gates against you and sent you to clown hell.

      Her vision was growing blurred when the door swung open and Tyler Cook joined her in circus purgatory. He was wearing a blue terry bathrobe and had wet, wild hair hanging down into his eyes. The robe dangled open in a wide vee over his chest and stomach, then was crossed and belted dangerously low on his narrow hips.

      He stared at her intently, obviously startled by her tears. “You’re crying,” he said, dumbstruck. In all the painful procedures at the hospital, she had never shed a tear, nor uttered a single ouch. She’d been a rock.

      “Am I?” Blinking in confusion, Jenny touched her cheek. Yes, her fingers came away wet. “I didn’t realize. Strange.” She frowned. “What happened to me? I’m feeling…really confused.”

      “You’re probably still in shock. You don’t get hit by a Pontiac every day.” Though he tried to sound bright and bracing, Tyler was still suffering the fallout of witnessing her accident. He’d seen one or two bad accidents in his career as the sheriff, but he couldn’t remember a time when he had felt more helpless. He’d seen the car coming at Jenny and had known instantly that he couldn’t get to her in time. He simply had to watch it happen. The horror and sickening fear was still with him, slipping beneath his skin and keeping him constantly chilled. “You gave me a pretty good scare.” A vast understatement.

      “My brain is all foggy.” Jenny tried to rub her eyes, then discovered the pads of her fingers were raw and sore, as if they’d been rubbed across a cheese grater. “What did you say? A Pontiac hit me? Well, of all the dumb—ouch, my poor hands…”

      Tyler couldn’t quite gauge the degree of her consciousness. She’d come to a couple of times on the way home from the hospital, but never seemed to be completely coherent. She had the same glazed look in her eyes now as she’d had in the emergency room. White face, overbright dark sequins for eyes.

      “We’ll backtrack a little,” he said gently. “I just brought you home from the hospital a few hours ago. You don’t remember being in the hospital?”

      “I remember…yes, I remember the hospital. And I remember being in a bowling alley. But after that…” She paused, frowning. “No, it’s sort of fuzzy after that. I don’t remember a car hitting me, Pontiac, Chevy or Ford. Although I feel like I took on all three. My whole body hurts.” Then, in a different voice, “Do I bowl?”

      “Well, you didn’t last night.” Tyler dredged up a wan smile, trying to look reassuring. Still, something about her glazed expression kicked his heart into double-time. “You were just visiting. You’re not in a league or anything, so relax. It’s all right, everything will fall into place with a little time.”