Unclaimed.

To the consternation of the amateur psychologists in the audience, the identities of the secondary characters in this narrative will be jumbled. Jumbled even more so than normal, this taking place within a dream.

"But you still love me, right?" she asked. It was almost accusatory.

"Of course." I replied, and realized this was all wrong. It seemed like the dialogue should be reversed, because I was the one that was caught in the act.

I should probably back up, but I won't.

To gather my bearings, I'll describe my surroundings. Even that is complicated, however, because I will have to describe both what I see and what I know. I see that I am sitting Indian style on a linoleum floor in a nice, if economical, living room with the sunlight caressing my knees and the rest of a three-bedroom house to my back. I know there is really only one room, the walls are corrugated metal, the floor is dirt and it's the middle of the night.

I don't want to go outside. I don't want to look at or think about the stones.

I see that I am tinkering with something mechanical in my lap, but I know I'm holding the tool wrong. More like the way you'd hold, say, a knife. I hope there is not blood involved.

I know behind me, in a drawer, will be found a lot of stuff that will get me in trouble. I had spent the afternoon dismantling all the recording heads in all the VCRs in the house. For the life of me I can't remember why and I know I have neither the ability to fix or the money to replace everything I broke. The more I add it up, the more I realize I ruined with my tinkering.

But yeah, the stones make me uncomfortable now. Now that I understand them better. I'd seen them before dozens of times, a whole field of them. Featureless yet intentional. Intentional was definitely the word that came to mind. It made me think of a cemetery, but without paths or flowers. Without, you know, evidence of visitors. Just a bunch of neat rows and the corrugated metal shack at the far end. I may have even thought at one point it was just a blank headstone storage for a funeral parlor. For some reason I can't even picture a gate; does the caretaker just leap the fence? That seems silly.

It was explained to me later that it was a plot where they deposited the unclaimed from the mental institution. Unclaimed. Like luggage. Abandoned. Seemed silly at first, like an urban legend, but it began to eat at me the more I thought of it.

I think that's why I was begging her to tell me whether she still loved me. I'm sure it sounded almost accusatory. I had broken something, I had fucked up bad, and I was scared of being abandoned.

Unclaimed.