Buckets

When I walked outside to get a breath of fresh air, someone threw a bucket down from a window, and I collapsed on the pavement. When I regained consciousness, people were walking around me without stopping. I lay still for a while, trying to remember who I was and where I was going? Nothing clicked, so I got up slowly and walked down the block to see if something looked familiar, but nothing did so I walked back the other way. I couldn’t remember where I lived. A young woman with a smile on her face approached me. “Let’s go home,” she said. “Where’s home,” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I remember is that a bucket hit me in the head, and you look familiar.”  I studied her face for a moment. She also looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t say why. We walked for a while and then she stopped. “I think I recognize something,” she said, and at that moment, someone threw a bucket down from a window.

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(p. 1, The Hong Kong Review, Vol. III, No. 3)