Amnesia

The ward was dark. It must be night, I thought. The bandages that had made it perpetually dark were off now. There was a glow through the window across and down the ward. The moon providing more light outside than existed inside what must once have been a ballroom. A screen had been pulled out between my bed and the next one down. Mine was the last bed down the long room from the door. How did I know it was a hospital ward? Was it just because everything around me was white and it was oh so silent, except for the grunting and snuffling noise? And why in blazes could I remember this afternoon and not earlier than that--and that tomorrow I'd remember the night, but not this afternoon? And four hours later the here, the now, would be gone. Did I want the here and now gone? Why was that even a question?

His name was Stanley--the orderly's name--I'd heard that this afternoon. I wouldn't remember it tomorrow unless I saw him again then and he told me his name. But would he do that, considering what he was doing now? He was big and heavy. He had to be fifteen stone, redheaded and florid, wheezing now. How did I know as dark as it was that he was redheaded? I just knew. I have no idea how long I would know that, however.

Just do it. Finish it and get off me. Why wasn't I shocked by the very act of it?

I tried moving my arms to push him away from me, but they were restrained with surgical gauze to the brass rail overhead of the bedframe. I wanted to scream, but there was gauze wrapped around my mouth too. My head was covered with gauze but, for some reason, that was as should be. It wasn't wrapped around my eyes anymore--if it ever had been. I couldn't remember.

That had become my mantra: I can't remember.

This, though. This wasn't what should be. Even I knew that, even with my head perpetually swimming in a daze and memories coming in and out. It wasn't as it should be that Stanley was on the bed, on his knees, between my knees, pushing my hospital gown up to above my belly, running hands up underneath and squeezing my pecs, thrumming and pinching my nipples. A hand grasping my shaft, squeezing it and stroking it. Me moaning behind the gauze gag, not reacting as I should, rising to his touch, digging my heels into the mattress and thrusting my pelvis up into his hand.

He gave a low, guttural laugh and fingers went to my entrance, penetrating me, moving in and out. Groaning, I pushed my pelvis up more, rocking on the fingers. I wanted him inside me.

"Like that, dontcha?" It was murmured. I almost didn't hear it. Another ten minutes and I wouldn't remember I'd heard it.

A moment of clarity, but not the here and now. A trench, mud everywhere, bursts of noise all around us. A field in France.

"Come on lads. Over the top with us. It's our time to shine." I was younger than most of them. How was it that I was the one giving the orders? Suddenly the trench and the mud and muck weren't what I wanted to escape. I wanted to sink down into the hole, into the muck, and stay there forever. Safe. But not safe. A shell burst in the trench just down around a corner, and I was calling the advance again. Up onto the rim of the trench, running in a crouch. Lads to the left of me and to the right. A shell burst and those to the left were gone. Just a bit farther and then another, deafening explosion. Bright lights. Searing pain.

This afternoon, Doctor... Doctor... I couldn't remember his name now. The doctor had told me when they found me, all they could see above the muck was one hand held up and my face. He said no one knew who I was. I couldn't remember his name now. Just this flash of memory of France--and of my boys going over the top because I had told them to.

But I remembered the orderly Stanley now, his belly pressing down on me. Dead weight. Fifteen stones of Stanley. And I remember the look he gave me this afternoon. I remember him asking something. I don't remember my answer. But I know the here and now.

I arched my back and cried out through the gauze of the gag as he entered me with his shaft. I wanted it. I wanted the shaft inside me. I felt myself spreading, stretching to its need and insistence. He was thick, as thick as... I couldn't remember. But I did know this isn't all that alien--that I felt completed when a man's shaft was inside me. He was hovering over me, his hands clutching and squeezing my bare butt cheeks, pulling me up to him. Deep inside me--me stretching to take him. Opening to him.

"Hot damn," I heard him murmur. "You want it." And he was right, I did. I didn't know why I did, but I did want it inside me. I couldn't wait for it to begin working me.

The muscles of my passage walls gripped his shaft, shimmering, and rippling over the hard, throbbing rod. I wrapped my legs around the small of his back briefly, holding him inside me as he engorged and I opened to him. This wasn't alien to me. Why wasn't this alien to me?

Inside me, stretching, filling me, working me. And me working with him. Moving my pelvis, establishing the rhythm of the fuck--with him. Him grunting and snuffling, hard at work--on me, in me.

It was all so comforting in its own way. Soothing, if having a thick shaft throbbing inside you wielded by a heavy grunter and snuffler can be soothed. I knew how to do this. I sighed behind my bandaged mouth as the shaft started to stroke inside me--in and out, in and out. He was in and it had begun. Set into this rhythm, I was calmed, anxious for the ending. I dug in my heels in the bed, my hips in motion, thrusting up as he thrust down. The low, guttural laugh again. Stanley released my cheeks long enough to grasp my legs and raise them, setting my ankles on his shoulders and then palming my buttocks again, pulling my hips up to him, putting my weight on my shoulder blades.

"If you gonna take this so good, let's do it proper," he murmured.

It was a proper missionary fuck. Picking up vigor, intensity. Fucking me hard and deep.

Another flash of clarity. In the trench in France again. The lieutenant's side bunker off the main trench. My back against the muddy wall. My knees hooked on Howard's hips. That was his name. Howard. Yorkshire. Completely improper, of course, Howard, as an officer, fraternizing with a soldier like this--in this way, certainly. But we hadn't just found each other, realizing both having a preference we shared and an arousal for each other, in the trenches. We'd come to war together. We were here together. We were together in an established unity, our bodies joined, close to coming together. Rigid everywhere but at the hips. Rocking. Rocking together. Thrust, thrust, thrust. Quick before we're discovered. No chance to savor it in the trenches. Just tension-releasing animal lust.

"I'm going to come!" I don't know who called that out. It could have been both of us. Suddenly blood all over the place. All over Howard. All over me. And Howard slowly slipping out and away, clawing down my legs to the muck at the base of the wall.

Thrust, thrust, thrust. "I'm going to breed you. You're a right good fuck you are," delivered in a husky whisper as fists buried on either side of my chest and red, florid, chubby face staring down into my eyes, Stanley--it had to be Stanley who muttered this; I could not--pulled back, thrust forward deep, and then again, and again, and, with a shudder, released inside me.

No condom. I'd been breeded.

We lay there, Stanley still on top of me, Stanley still inside me, both of us breathing heavily.

"Knew you wanted it," he muttered in my ear. He reached up and extracted the metal clip at each of my wrists holding the gauze in place. He unwound the gauze and my hands were free. I didn't know where to put them--put my fists against his chest and push him away? Try belatedly to sock him in the face? Or what? What I'd wanted from him--what I'd let him take without resistance--made that laughable. He was still wearing his medical tunic. He could be up and looking innocent before I could get anyone else here. I was here as a mental case. It dawned on me that I'd probably given what he took to others before him. I couldn't escape my androgynous looks and yielding manner.

It was "or what." I pressed my hands into his shoulder blades and lowered my legs to hook my knees on his hips. My now-freed hands went to clutching his buttocks, holding him inside me. He laughed, pulled his tunic over his head, briefly dislodging my grip on his buttocks, but only briefly, and pulled my gown over my head. We were both naked now, his chest deep, muscular despite the beer belly, and covered in what I knew, despite the darkness in the ward, would be reddish blond swirls of curls. We were going to fuck again now. A beer belly, but a man's cock.

"You want it again, don't you?" he muttered in my ear.

Giving him no answer was the answer he wanted to hear.

How did I know he was hirsute before his tunic came off? Had we done this before?

He pulled the gauze from my mouth, and, leaning down, exchanged the gag for his lips and his tongue, darting in, taking possession. I took the thick tongue inside me hungrily, just as I took the thick cock inside me hungrily. I clutched him with my claws and pulled my mouth away. "Again, now. Deep, hard. Fuck me again, Howard," I whimpered.

The laugh was low, guttural, husky. "Who the fuck is Howard?" I didn't answer--I couldn't answer--but I don't think he really expected one. I was just one of the loony bin ones in the ward--the cute piece that took cock.

He was coming alive again. I moved my hands back to his bulbous buttocks, holding him close to me there, as he regained my lips and his thrusts began again. The cock moved with less friction now, being well lubricated with his previously deposited cum. I moved my hips, knowing just what to do, having no idea at the moment why and how I knew what to do. But I did. We were fucking again. He wasn't just fucking me. We were fucking each other.

He pulled his mouth off mine, arching his head up, putting everything he had behind the deep thrusts, huffing his declaration of victory. He brought nearly all to the surface, gave me a cruel little smile, and then thrust it deep. Again and again. Groaning, I arched my head back, looking wildly at the ceiling tiles high overhead in the nearly total darkness of the old ballroom turned into a ward, and took it and took it, my fingernails digging into his buttocks with each deep thrust.

"I knew it. I knew you wanted it. I knew how you looked at me when I gave you the glad eye that this was what you wanted. This was what you needed."

Thrust, thrust, thrust. RELEASE--this time mutual.

* * * *

"It went quite well, I think. All of the shrapnel is out, I'm quite sure. The pressure on the brain is off. You should start regaining memories, slowly at first. At least we hope you will. We might know who you are when you've recovered more of your memory. The Army is working on that, although those wheels move slowly, I'm afraid. It will help if you are able to tell us what you remember soon. In the meantime, some time outside--in the garden, will do you wonders."

"Thank you, Doctor... doctor..." I couldn't remember his name. He had such a fine head of wavy chestnut-brown hair, graying at the temples. I thought I knew his name. But I couldn't come up with it.

"Baker. Ian Baker," the man hovering over me said, patting me on the arm as I lay in the bed, in the last bed down the long wardroom, formerly the ballroom at the stately old Caversham Park in Berkshire, near Reading--or so I'd been told. Did I denote a slight dimming in his eyes? A twitch at the side of his mouth as he looked up to the nurse standing behind him? Was I supposed to know who he was? Of course I was if he'd been the surgeon who had just taken shrapnel out of my skull at... at... wherever this was.

The nurse was a woman. I expected to see a man--a burly young redheaded man standing behind the doctor, a male orderly rather than a female nurse. I don't know why I expected that, though. It was just a passing snatch of memory that there had been a redheaded man there the last time that Doctor... that the doctor had visited my bedside.

The nurse disappeared from behind the doctor and he turned his head as if watching her move further down the line of beds in the ward. When he turned back and smiled down at me, I felt his hand go under the hem of my hospital gown to rest on my inner thigh, high up. Just how well did I know this doctor? How much of me did he know? Why was I so frequently thinking of men touching men? Who was I in life? What had I done? What was I willing to do with another man?

"I'm glad the surgery went so well," he said. "You are a beautiful, yielding young man. Thank you. You are a gift. I thank you for that."

For what? Why does a doctor care whether I'm a beautiful young man--and yielding--or not?

"You must get your strength. I suggest walks, a bit longer each time," he continued. "We can set my house on the edge of Caversham, on Kidmore End Road, near the Reading Golf Club, as a goal, if you'd like--if you'd like to visit me where we can chat... and be alone. Here, I've written out the address and given walking directions." He smiled at me and slipped the paper into the top drawer of the nightstand beside my bed.

Long after he was gone I wondered what the hell he meant by that--the part about me being beautiful and yielding--a gift. But I also remembered that, when he placed his well-manicured hand on my thigh, I had no desire that he take it away.

The flash of an image surged across my mind: An examination room, a padded table. Stirrups. My feet in the stirrups, legs raised and spread. Arousing pleasure, my hands cupping a head lodged between my thighs, my fingers running through wavy chestnut-brown hair, the fingers pressing through the gray at the temples. Wetness. His tongue inside me. The pleasure lifting me up into the clouds, using the leverage of my feet in the stirrups to raise and push my pelvis into the licking tongue and the nipping teeth.

Moaning. "Yes, yes, yes. Do it. Put it in." Hands running up my inner thighs. The white medical coat pressing into my chest. The snap of the condom being rolled on. The pleasure-pain of the penetration, and the stroking inside me of the hard cock. Panting, spreading open. All sensation centering on the throbbing, searching, sinking shaft. Remembering not required, the muscles of my passage grabbing and rippling over the cock, pulling it deeper. "Yes, yes, like that. Deeper, harder. Stroke me." Down, down into the soft, spongy, shimmering, hungry core. Explosion.

"Oh, doctor!"

A man's cock inside me. Oh, how I wanted a man's cock inside me.

The nurse--or a nurse--I couldn't remember if it was the same nurse who had visited me with Doctor... Doctor Baker--accompanied me out to the garden behind a stately old manor house. I had little idea why we were here. She'd said it was Caversham Park, but that meant little to me. I didn't know whether she was with me to help me find my way back... to wherever, or to ensure I didn't wander off. I'd been told that this place... Caversham Park, which had been given over to the Army as a hospital and rehabilitation center for soldiers, had extensive gardens undulating down toward the banks of the Thames River.

I was a little scared. The memories were coming and going. But increasingly they were coming, which was hopeful, I thought.

I sat on the bench, listening to Nurse Doris--yes, that was her name; she'd told me that some time ago--reading to me from a book of poetry, when I saw him come out of the house and onto the terrace above the lower one where Nurse... the nurse and I were sitting, and walk across the back of the house toward the service wing. He was a big man, a little pudgy. Florid, with flaming red hair. He was a hirsute man, curly chest hairs. Although, how I knew that, I certainly didn't know. He had on a medical tunic now. He was a big-cocked man. Not much older than I was.

I was touching myself and Nurse Doris brushed my hand away, with the comment, "We'll have none of that, young man." She put the poetry book away she was reading from and had told me she'd been given by Doctor Baker when she'd wanted something to read to me in the garden and picked up another book. "I suppose Richard Barnfield isn't the best of poets to be reading to you young men," she murmured, turning to a book of sonnets by Shakespeare.

The redhaired young orderly--Stanley--looked out in our direction, make an abrupt about-face, and went back into the building. It was a fine-looking building, a central section with columns set into the walls, with lower-roofed extensions on either side. I wondered what building it was.

Later, in the darkness of the night, men settled in their beds in the ward, fewer beds occupied now than before, there being a lull in the war making in France, I was told by my good friend in the next bed, Brian... whatever, I heard the scraping of the legs of the screen by the bed as it was being drawn between my bed, in the back corner of the ward, and the whathisname's bed beside me. The scraping sound registered with me, and I automatically pulled the sheet off me, turned onto my back, and spread and bent my legs, putting my feet flat on the surface of the bed and pressing my arms flat beside me. I started to pant a little. It was even darker now than before. I heard the heavy breathing, though, and pulled my gown over my head and lay, naked, on my back on top of the sheets.

He was on top of me, naked, substantial, heavy. I raised my legs, pressing my heels into bare thighs. and, as he pushed his knees between my thighs and under my buttocks, I sighed, "Yes, yes, do it." He pressed a big, beefy palm over my mouth and I raised my arms over my head, grabbing the brass rail of the bedframe to hold myself in place and arched my back, as he entered, entered, entered me and my passage fought to stretch to take him in.

I gasped when he took his hand away, pulled his hips back and then thrust them forward--and again and again. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist and lowered my arms, grasping and squeezing his undulating buttocks, holding him close to and inside me as we rocked together in the fuck. He possessed my lips with his, invading my mouth cavity with his tongue, which I sucked on as we moved together. His curly chest hairs rubbed against my chest--his red hairs, I knew was the case despite the darkness that enveloped us, as we moved together in perfect harmony, me sheathing him, him buried deep in my core, kissing my passage walls as he stroked inside me.

He took his mouth away, his chest rising up from me, his body straining in the last few thrusts before ejaculation.

"Yes, yes, give me your cum, Stanley," I murmured. I had spoken his name.

The response was electric. He reared up, pulling out of me, but ejaculating as he did, his cum spurting into my pubic hairs, as he rose, rolled off me...

... and was gone.

Stanley didn't come back on subsequent nights. When I asked the nurses about him, they said he had abruptly gone to London to work in hospitals there. I was disappointed. I would not have said anything negative about his services. But, in time, I knew I would forget him entirely.

* * * *

The afternoon I decided to see how far I could walk toward the doctor's house, I walked out onto Peppard Road, using the directions the doctor had given me. I made it as far as the intersection with Kidmore End Road, the road the doctor said he lived on, before I began to tire. I hadn't been on a walk like this outdoors for I don't know how long. There was a pub at the intersection, the Black Horse, and I stopped in there for a rest and a pint.

It was late afternoon, and others were there, working men and men just in from the fields, but not too many of them. Two were working the bar, a middle-aged man and a saucy young woman, who was chatting up the men bellied up to the bar. She immediately turned to me and gave me the eye as I walked in, taking my order and informing me that her name was Gertie and that I was the best thing she'd seen walk into the pub that month.