Tandem

Raechel Harchey

"Bertie," Raechel whispered to herself, trying to make sense of the name. Bertie had murdered the person this memory belonged to. Arina wasn't someone who had led a fulfilled life with a peaceful end, she'd had her life taken brutally stolen from her. Not only could Raechel still remember the death of her father and brother but now she had burdened with even more memories of death. She had been burdened with the demise of a stranger and yet it haunted her so deeply, she felt she'd never be able to shake it.

No matter how hard Raechel tried to distance herself from the horrific images that plagued her mind, her thoughts always returned to Arina. Poor, defenceless Arina had been killed maliciously by Bertie. Judging by the familiarity of the name on her tongue, it appeared as though she had known him well. She could feel the warmth the girl had felt when she first set eyes on Bertie in the wood. She'd loved Bertie, she was completely in love with him. She'd trusted him with every bone in her body. It felt so invasive to know the final moments of a girl she'd never even met. People always say you never quite experience things in the same way as another person but one thing you could say for certain is that everyone feels fear and terror the same way, that feeling was unmistakable. In the very last moments of her life, Arina had been terrified.

The vision had been so horrendous, Raechel had torn at her skull in a bid to wrench out the terrible memory. It was turning her insane and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Strands of her hair were clenched tightly in each fist. For a moment she had lost control of herself. Would this ever go away? Was she destined to watch this horror replay in her mind over and over and over again? She didn't want to go back to the Gauze. They'd let her go because she'd reassured them that everything was as it should be, but it was not. She didn't want to think about what they might do if they knew what she was experiencing. It was a medical error of unimaginable proportions. Something of this magnitude would surely have to be kept quiet and Raechel dreaded to think about the severity of the lengths the Gauze would undoubtedly go to in order to ensure the situation never became public knowledge.

Raechel found her mind wandering to those who had undergone the procedure before her. She was desperate to know how other patients had fared after their transfers. She felt so alone. Previous transfer patients were hard to find as most tended to remain quiet about their treatment. Many people found it difficult to admit they had needed help to get over past trauma and as a result, their silence meant that you never knew who'd been treated by the Gauze.

She'd researched a lot about the transfer process before deciding that she wanted to go ahead with it herself and had only found positive

things written about it by anonymous contributors. She'd been reassured by their stories and had known all along that it was the right option for her. It was her last option. It only occurred to her now that the lack of negative reviews may not necessarily be down to there being no failed procedures. Maybe it was because those failed cases never got to set foot outside of the Gauze.

Raechel put her head in her hands and shut her eyes. She couldn't understand why this was happening to her. Arina's death was implanted in her brain, just waiting to replay without warning. She had no idea how to keep the visions away or even if that was possible. She took out her phone and began typing into the search engine. She started first with Arina's name. The screen in front of her was suddenly filled with hundreds of results. The top five website links were social media pages for various Arina Kostas' around the world. It was the fifth search result that caught her attention though. 'The tragedy of Arina Kostas.' She clicked on the text and was immediately redirected to an article written by a news magazine. Raechel's eyes scanned the text before her. Arina's death had been ruled a terrible accident, a tragedy of the worst kind. She'd been a young woman out in the woodland next to her cottage. One morning she'd been exploring the scenery when she'd tripped, fallen and hit her head on a rock. It was exactly as Zadicus had described. Her body had been found further down the river, firmly stuck underneath a fallen tree trunk.

Raechel scrolled to the bottom of the article. There were thousands of comments over the years, two decades in fact, most of them offering their condolences to Arina's family and discussing how awful the whole thing was. As far as Raechel could see, nobody was questioning what had happened at all. The damage to her skull had been dismissed as being caused entirely by her fall into the water. Nobody had even entertained the thought that there was any foul play involved.

The Gauze was supposed to have cured Raechel but it had only left her with more terror than before.