Phil was in my dream. Of course he was. When I was really stressed out, my brain had no mercy, and berated me even in sleep. Still, he wasn't the main character. I always held that spot.
The dream was exactly like my memory, though some people were switched out for others. My brain filled in the words I couldn't remember, but those were few and far between.
Louise and I disembarked the jet on unwary legs, clutching each other. We hadn't spoken the whole ride there, and we hadn't spoken more than three words to each other in a week. Not that we needed to. Erasing ourselves was hard enough— we didn't need the added pressures of pleasantries.
The first thing we did was get rid of all social media. Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr. Gone. Then our emails. We cancelled billings and alerted the landlord of our upcoming departure. We wouldn't get everything, of course. But the government would consistency-check everything, and it wasn't entirely important we never existed. Just that we weren't traceable.
They had said we weren't able to keep anything with our names on it. At first, this was fine. Just toss out magazine subscriptions, things addressed to us. Then it got harder. Awards. Trophies. A signed Origin of Symmetry vinyl; Dan, thanks for listening! -Matt.
It was hard throwing our lives away. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have second thoughts at least once. Was it really worth it? How safe could we possibly be wherever the WPP was sending us? How much danger could we possibly be in if we stayed?
I was lucky I had Louise. My voice of reason. My light in the dark. She was my best friend. The first person I came out to, the only person to really not care. My flatmate since we graduated. The only reason I kept my sanity as I shredded the cover of the vinyl.
Maybe I was putting us in danger. But I could not get rid of my keychain, the one my dad got for me from New York, shaped like a license plate with just the three letters of my name etched into the smooth metal side, most of the paint worn away from years of constant rubbing. One of the only things I had to remember him by. I tucked that in my pocket instead of throwing it away, and I was almost sure Louise saw me. She just pursed her lips and looked away, pretending she hadn't.
The tarmac was slick and wet from the recent rain, and Louise gripped me tightly as she walked, her heels clicking. The electronic hiss of the retracting staircase made Louise and I pause and look back at the plane. This was it. With the closing entrance of that jet, our past lives as Dan and Louise were over. Here was where our new lives began.
The large lock clicked, and the thick metal door opened with an indignant creak. Behind it stood Phil, all smiles, sympathetic to be sure, clipboard in hand. It hadn't been Phil in real life, no. It had been a man called Agent Liguori who gestured us inside the government building in the middle of nowhere, fear making our hearts pound in our ears. But Phil had invaded my subconscious, so there he stood, one of three government officials who had clearance to work our case.
We walked down a long hallway until we came to another heavy metal door. Phil pushed it open and had us sit down at a table in the middle of an otherwise empty space, the three chairs surrounding the table the only real furnishing. Glancing up, I saw that two corners of the room had big black cameras hanging from the ceiling, pointed at the table, each with a red, blinking light that alerted us it was recording. One wall of the room wasn't a wall, but instead a one-way mirror, behind which I knew stood two federal agents. But Phil just sat at the side with one chair, and offered the other two to us. We glanced at each other and sat gently.
"So," Phil started, placing the clipboard on the table. Louise's leg was shaking with nervousness, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. I was still. My heart was still pounding in my ears, as it had been for 170 hours, 34 minutes and– I checked the clock– 17 seconds, the amount of time that had passed since I discovered the truth about my old school friend.
Phil pulled two contracts off the clipboard, and slid one in front of each of us, then placed a black pen beside each. He was still smiling. I wished he would stop smiling. "Are you ready?" I felt myself nodding, and Louise nodded too, uncrossing her arm and taking the pen. She read over the contract, but I couldn't bring my eyes to focus on it.
"Testify?" She questioned, glancing up at Phil. The man just nodded, gesturing to the paper as if perturbed we hadn't jumped at the chance to sign it.
"Just an agreement that you'll testify in the court case when it comes about. Sign that, and you'll have the UKPPS's full protection, complete with round the clock guard and relocation services. Oh," he added in afterthought, looking through the rest of the papers on his clipboard. "This will be the last time you will sign your real name for a while, so... make it a good one." Louise and I looked at each other for a long moment, and then, with that telepathic connection we seemed to have, we both looked down at the sheet and signed on the dotted line.
Phil clapped his hands together, looking between the two of us with a wide grin.
"Now, the fun part," he explained, dividing the stack of papers into two and handing one half to each of us. "Re-documentation."
* * *
My eyes peeled open, breath harsh and heavy due to the backlash of the memory. It's weird, how sometimes dreams can be more realistic than the event itself. Sure, there was the part about Phil being there, but I could feel the cold wind ripping at my clothes, could see as far as the horizon in every direction, the late day sun making the fields of wheat grass that hid away the government's secret building glow a delicate orange. I could smell Louise' perfume.
Well, perhaps that last part was because Louise was asleep next to me, arms wrapped tightly around a pillow. It was hard at first, sharing a bed with her. We had to learn to be comfortable with a lot of things a normal married couple did: sharing a bed, holding hands. We hadn't kissed yet, but I was sure that if that Phil character kept pestering us, we'd have to, or things would not add up. Luckily, we knew our back story perfectly.
Maybe that wasn't luck. No, we had practised our story until the late hours of the night our first and second night here, when the boxes were still taped shut and our real names hovered on our tongues like the persistent flavour of mint or a lie. I shot rapid fire questions at her about James and Darcy McCloud: where they met, where they were from, how their wedding was, the flavour of the cake. If we wanted children, what I got her for our year anniversary, if I was romantic, if she had second thoughts about marrying her high-school sweetheart. Every bit of it we had down. So much so that I didn't even blink when asked.
I pulled on a robe after a glance at the flashing red display on the alarm clock beside our bed. I could use some early morning fresh air. I slipped my hand into my pocket and began rubbing my thumb along the keychain, and pushed our flat door open, walking down the hall to the community balcony at the end behind a closed glass door.
Of fucking course Phil was there.
He glanced up when he heard the door shut, dragging on a cigarette. He looked startled when I first happened upon him, but relaxed slightly, still on edge but with a smile. I tried not to let this perturb me, and just moved to the other side of the porch, looking down on the parking lot.
Phil put his ember out on the banister, blowing out one last breath of smoke. "I've been meaning to quit," he commented, tossing the butt into the bin. "Not as easy as it sounds." I just stayed silent, but he continued. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Never can," I replied, my voice flat, still looking out. The city was bustling beyond the thin line of trees that blocked our tiny residential district from the hub. The city never sleeps. Compared to the quiet country life I led before, it was no wonder I couldn't, either.
"I know it's bad for me," he said, still staying as far away from me as he could as he continued his previous conversation. "But it's nice to have guilty pleasures." He sighed. "I don't know." He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. I pretended not to notice. "Stuff from your past. It just sticks with you sometimes."
That was when I decided to lock my keychain somewhere very far away from Phil.
YOU ARE READING
After James // phan
FanfictionThey told Dan that he and Louise would be safe under their watchful eye. That all they had to do was move to Manchester, take on new identities, and no harm would come to them. The Witness Protection Program controls everything in their new lives; t...
