UNSEEN

SIXTEEN

Hypnotism. All my life, I'd thought it was something they made up for fun, like time travel.

Well, I was wrong.

I've been doing it for a week now, to bring back all the lost memories and to understand my disorder better.

It's the usual setting. Dr Tressman and I are alone in the room. He sits on the chair and I, on the recliner. He brings me back from the ocean of memories to the present but tells me to keep my eyes shut. This'll be my last session. He says I'm cured.

"Miss Whitney," He starts off, for the last time. "Tell me about yourself."

If someone had asked me to talk about myself a few days back, I would've showed them the finger. Now, however, I like saying my name. I like confronting my fears. I like it.

"My name is Reece Whitney, I'm nineteen, sister of the late Olivia Whitney. I am- was suffering from repressed memory disorder. But I'm getting better now."

"Tell me more about repressed memory disorder."

"It's when a person not just represses traumatizing memories, but also creates alternative memories to replace those memories."

"When did you first start repressing your memories?"

I sigh.

"When I was six. We were at my grandparent's and I found this little room. Abel, my grandfather, warned me. But I wanted to check it out. He pulled the door open. The smell was gut-wrenching. The light was dim, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the disgust began to spread.

I didn't know what taxidermy was. To me, it was just beautiful animals cut open, stuffed with sand and raw cotton, then sewn up. It was sick. For a six year old, even for one like me, it was too much to deal with. In my alternative memory, He never opened the door."

"When did this happen next?"

I want to open my eyes now. I want to look at his face to calm me down. But he tells me not to.

"When I was eleven. It was late at night, I was thirsty, I went down and before I could enter the kitchen, I heard my mother scream. Not once, not twice, but consistently.

I turned the knob and peeped through the door.

He held my mother by the hair, she had a black eyes. He punched her again.

I didn't think. I was incapable of actually thinking. I took the expensive vase that was placed on the table next to the door and smashed it against his head.

He bled to death. I sobbed. My mother tried to calm me down, and that's it. What I remembered for most of my life was that my mother killed him and I merely witnessed it."

"What do you have to say about Megan Lancaster?"

"She killed my sister."

"Tell me what happened that night. Before you left for the woods."

This part always gets me. Not because I don't remember, but because it's hard to say. It's all in pictures and it physically hurts me to turn these images into words.

I speak with a lot of effort.

"I came home high, like I usually did. My mother screamed at me as I entered but I didn't hear a word. But as I went upstairs, I heard a glass breaking in Liv's room, followed by a muffled scream.

I opened the door without knocking. Her face was in her pillow, the pillow she threw at me as she screamed at me to leave her alone.

Eventually, she calmed down, hugged me and bawled for hours.

I was never the protective elder sister, but that was because she never needed it. Seeing her like that, I felt I had to do something.

After she told me everything, I said "We have to go meet that bitch."

So, we sneaked in after dinner. She wanted to drive, I let her. I was high, she was heartbroken. The effects were the same.

And that's how the worst night of my life, last night of her life, went down. Same shoes, no fingerprints because of the rain, no weapon found. She was clever."

He looks at me, half smiling.

"But in your 'visions', you weren't in the car, you were outside in the rain. Why was that?"

"Because deep down, I blamed myself for Liv's death. I was standing where Megan stood, because I thought we were the same. That we were equally responsible for what happened. That I was Megan."

"And do you still feel that way?"

"No. Not anymore. It was the guilt of taking her there that I, in my sickness, began to see as equivalent to shooting her dead."

He finally asks me to open my eyes.

Everything turns grey. Grey is the colour of acceptance.

"So, Reece, tell me. Was Olivia's death your fault?"

I shake my head. "No."

He smiles at me with pride.

"And that's all you and I need to know."

                                                                  o   XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  o

The park hasn't changed much. It looked the same when we were kids.

At this point, I realised, since the universe is constantly expanding, it has no centre. But everything has a centre.

Therefore, scientifically, everything within it can be taken as its centre. I am the centre of the universe, but so is everyone else. But if everybody is special, then nobody is, right?

Irrelevant thoughts that I can't control, that's what my life is about.

But Liv is special. She's far from ordinary, but she still chooses to sit next to me on the freshly painted park bench.

"Get some friends, you loser." She says. Then, with sadness in her eyes, she continues.

"You realise this is probably the last time you're seeing me? You're not sick anymore."

I press her hand. It's so real. I know what every finger, every nail on it feels like. I've always known.

"Seeing you is not sickness." I say.

We look ahead at the sunset. Behind the cold storms blowing inside of me, behind the screeching screams of my soul, behind the pointless blabbering of meaningless words, there's something I never knew existed.

A serene silence.

Sunsets are red. All I see is grey. And that won't change for a while.

Liv and I, we may be a pariah, we may be dead, we may never find out where we belong, but in this moment, this moment that I wish to live in forever, the sky is grey just for us.

Just for us.