Eluding Memory

Chapter 1

It was late on a Wednesday night when I observed it for the first time. I was tucked under a warm and snuggly blanket in bed. The room was almost entirely dark, only faintly lit by the bedside lamp. It wasn't too hot or too cold, and I had found a comfortable position to sleep in. I had exercised aplenty and was so tired that I kept yawning throughout the evening. All the signs pointed towards a restful sleep, except for my brain. My brain just wouldn't shut off, unlike my phone screen. I didn't know it at the time, but my phone's battery was steadily draining, and it would run out entirely before my morning alarm could ring.

Despite everything being just right, I simply couldn't fall asleep. My brain was proudly presenting the chosen embarrassing memory of the night. It had a wide range of options ranging from fifteen years ago to earlier that day, and even what I had the capability of doing the next day or month. On that night, the memory that had the absolute honour of being selected was from the previous year. My brain incessantly played the memory on loop. The memory was a mere face-palm moment of me saying something that made no sense. It wasn't small enough to be an "it happens" moment, and it wasn't big enough to make me cry. It was just the right amount of cringe to keep me from sleeping.

The memory wouldn't budge no matter what I did. I tried to think of something else, even trying to forcefully focus on something random, but my brain was too fast. It would embark on a complicated thought train that would switch tracks rapidly until it somehow came back to that annoying memory. I kept cringing every time I came back to that memory. I restlessly tossed and turned for maybe two hours before my eyelids decided to droop. Right at that moment, a mosquito decided it had to serenade me and flew near my ear. The irritating buzz was enough to wake me up. I swatted away the mosquito and tried to fall back asleep, keeping my eyes shut the whole time. The mosquito came back a couple more times, and I unsuccessfully tried to use the blanket as a shield. My frustrated sigh sounded loud in the otherwise quiet room, the only other noise now being the fan's sound. The fan sounded louder all of a sudden, but I chalked it up to voltage fluctuations.

When the mosquito came near me again, I shot out of bed and chased it around the room. I finally managed to trap it against the wall and celebrated with a victory dance. The dance was cut short when I stubbed my toe against the bed frame. I sat down to look at my toe closer, relieved to find that the nail hadn't broken off like that one time. That's when it hit me: Why was it so bright in the room?

I was pretty sure I had turned off the tube light and kept the bedside lamp on before I jumped into bed. And yet, the room was bright as day, bright as noon on a summer day on a tropical city's beach. Instead of the sand reflecting the light, it was the granite tiles and white walls of my room. I wondered if I had actually fallen asleep and slept till day, but not realised. I checked the wall clock, which read 3:30. I panicked, thinking I had slept till afternoon. I whipped open my laptop, expecting to see at least a handful of messages and emails reprimanding me, maybe even one firing me. However, there were no new emails in my inbox. Nothing had changed from the previous evening. I refreshed the page multiple times, even restarting my computer, but nothing changed. I checked the time on the laptop, which now said 3:42 AM. Wait, AM? I hadn't actually fallen asleep?

Nothing made sense. The sleep I was slipping into had vanished into thin air. The bright light was giving me a headache. I thought of drawing the curtains shut and switching off the light. But the curtains were already drawn shut. So the light was coming from inside the room. I went to turn off the tube light when I saw that the switch was already off. Only the switches for the fan and the dim bed lamp were on. I switched off the bed lamp, but the light stayed on. Maybe there was some fault in the wiring? I couldn't even hope to get some sleep with such an eye-piercing light in the room, so I threw the thickest clothes I could find onto the lamp. Finally, the light was dimmed, and I could return to my comfy bed and doze off to sleep. I was drooling in dreamland soon and didn't notice the light dim and flicker out shortly after.

I woke from a peaceful slumber the next day, when I realised my phone had lost all its charge and the alarm never went off. I immediately sat up and opened my laptop. Fortunately, I still had a couple of minutes before my workday began. I quickly ran to the bathroom and ran back to work, pausing only to open the curtains to light the room. Amidst all the hurry to catch up that day, I didn't notice that the bed lamp had turned off. When I switched on the light again that night, it was working just fine.

It didn't happen again — well, until a month later. By this time, I had convinced myself that it was all just a weird dream. My brain had gone easy on the every-night embarrassing memory showcase. On the evening of the Wednesday exactly four weeks after that night, I was nibbling on a biscuit while I was waiting for the electric kettle to boil water for my tea. I suddenly remembered an embarrassing memory of me dropping a biscuit into a cup of tea a few years ago. I had gotten distracted and couldn't save the biscuit from sinking to the bottom of the glass. I quickly got out another biscuit to rescue the drowning one, but the mission was unsuccessful and both drowned. The worst part was that my crush had seen me do all that from right across the table. I hissed at the memory, cringing at how I was laughed at. The kettle immediately started hissing too, spouting streams of steam.

I waited for the steam to thin before picking up the kettle, which took a good two minutes. It was strange for it to take so much time for something that normally took no more than ten or fifteen seconds at the most. Nothing poured out of the kettle when I tipped it into a cup. I angled the spout away from my face and opened the lid of the kettle. A sea of vapour fled the kettle immediately. After cautiously making sure there was no steam, I peeked into the kettle. It was empty. I had filled it to the top, but now it was entirely empty. Had all of it vaporised?

My cheek accidentally touched the inside part of the kettle when I looked into the kettle again to confirm if it was really empty. I flinched at the heat, dropping the kettle to the ground in the process. I quickly ran water over my cheek until the burning sensation reduced. When I returned to the kettle later, its indicator was flashing bright red. How was the kettle's light on in spite of it being disconnected from the power source? I understood nothing, and watched the indicator until it faded out within a few minutes.

I decided to forgo the tea and was putting everything back in its place in the kitchen when I stepped on something. It was the remains of the biscuit that I had dropped on the ground when the kettle hissed. I had dropped the biscuit just like I had dropped the two fallen soldiers into that cup in the cringe-fest memory of the day. I quickly scooped up the crumbs of the biscuit, and, when I stood up, I saw that the kettle's indicator light was back on. I re-checked it, only to see that it was disconnected, but the light was still on. I started to panic, wondering if I should shut off the mains and call an electrician. With every rambling train of thought that scared me even more, the light flickered stronger and weaker repeatedly.

The doorbell rang, but I couldn't take my attention away from the kettle and its indicator. Whoever it was kept ringing the doorbell repeatedly until I got too annoyed and ran to answer the door. It was a woman trying to sell me clothes. She kept trying to sell me on purchasing from her even after I said I wasn't interested. All of a sudden, she paused. She was looking at my face, seeming wide-eyed and scared. I took advantage of the pause and ran back inside, shutting the door and mumbling about how annoying she was. I picked up a bag of chips and sat down in front of the television. While the screen blared some random comedy scenes, I scrolled through my social media feed. A few scenes with canned laughter played back-to-back. They were mind-numbing but they did manage to distract me from the mystery of the still-shining indicator light.