INDUCED AMNESIA

Part 1 Chapter 1

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self, but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

 

 

Henry James

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART I

 

 

“I had dreams – I believed in true love, in real romance – but that was before the cold, damp and raining, winter of my soul moved in. My memories are now poison, edging my soul toward madness.”

“The quiet is when the pain comes over me with a heavy sweep, in a torrent gaining force by night silence. The day noises of friends, co-workers, strangers, anybody – are usually enough to keep the swell low and yet, they don’t know that, these people; and so, they get busy, they go home, they forget about me – and ever slowly each night, I’m pulled down again. It’s a cycle. I’m broken – and every night, I feel the ruin.”

 “By morning, I’m back, craving the noise again, seeking solace in other people – desperately needing it. Over time though, this tidal flow has weakened me. It’s pushed my longing for freedom into an obsession. My strength to fight is gone, and far more profound than the heartache is that my soul has started to slip away, separating from its core and aching for another place – but that’s not what really frightens me. The cold truth is the fact that I want to disappear with it. I’m craving and reaching for true freedom, for death. Yes, that’s it – death or something like it.”

“And yet, I never thought I’d be that girl…”

“I wanted the fairytale, the prince, the knight, the never-ending love - instead, I’m left feeling like I’m fucking crazy. I am lost. I have nothing I desire anymore. Trust is my enemy. Love is terrifying. My heart died and with it, I lost everything.”

~ Chloe Gunn

CHAPTER 1

 

Chloe sits on the edge of her bed with her shoulders slumped and her head hung, and feels defeated. It isn’t the way she wants her story to end, but she isn’t able to pretend much longer.

She looks toward her bedroom window where she lives in a quiet suburb two-level condominium on the second floor, and where the midnight moon never has opportunity to impress from this view ever. The intense, yellow parking-lot lamp overshadows the presiding planet’s greatness here, and Chloe likes that because her little car - a mint, black twelve-year-old Porsche 911 - and one of the very few joys in her life, sits protected within view, right under that artificial light.

She turns to her nightstand and hesitates briefly, before reaching for a jagged and creased magazine page sitting on top. She looks at it, just as she has a million times before. She took it from her doctor’s office during one of her visits. The doctor had been running late and Chloe had to wait in an exam room, bored. She picked up one of the doctor’s recent medical journals and there it was, shining like a beacon.