Ballad of a Broken Soul

september 12, 2019

"One day a man walks up to you, looks you dead in the eye and says 'You're allowed to remember everything I told you to forget'"

It's dark, too dark, and the man before me speaks with an authority I can't ignore. He melds into the black, the black of night, and I stand open-mouthed, wondering what he meant. I stumbled back into the bustling street, but nobody seemed to notice. To care. I tried to shake off his aura, the dark energy that left it's mark on any he spoke to. What have I forgotten? And how could I possibly remember it? I looked up from my thoughts, and realized I was already four blocks from where I started. I desperately tried to remember walking, the feeling of pavement moving beneath my feet, but I was still stuck in that alley, pulled suddenly in by a cold hand. I looked up. My childhood home, though empty. Cautiously, I approached the door. What could I have forgotten? Unlocked. Turning the handle slowly, I peered in. Everything was how it always had been, the furniture and the dishes and the photos on the wall. One step, two. I was standing in the entryway, then suddenly my room. When did I walk down the stairs? Did I run down them, like I always used to? Or did I carefully walk down, counting each step? Either way, I was in my room now. The walls were the same offensive pink my mom had insisted on, a time capsule of my younger life. I wandered in, feeling the unease of the abandoned home fade as I slipped into nostalgia. My old alarm clock, though turned, so I couldn't quite see the numbers unless I tried. I always hated the red numbers, I always hated red numbers on digital clocks. I picked up a pair of jeans, strewn across my bed, and turned them over in my hands. I always slept clothed, never in pajamas. It was an odd habit, but a habit that I still often carried, a decade later. A towel hung on the back of a chair. I remembered the frantic sprints from the shower to my room, as if I was being chased. I never wanted to be undressed anywhere but my room, I still don't. More and more bits and pieces of memories and habits appeared, and I wandered to each, as if following a trail of crumbs. At some point, I realized I had gotten lost in the past, and forgotten the man's words. Sitting down, I went over them again, had I met that man before? He certainly felt familiar. Why would he have told me to forget something? What could he possibly get out of it? I jumped, my hand had touched the bare mattress. It was wrong, the feeling was wrong, and I quickly pulled down the sheet. Then the knob turned, and I started in a panic, coming up with an excuse on the fly. But the intruder wasn't an intruder at all, but a young girl, walking quietly in, closing the door with a relieved sigh. She set down her backpack, and laid in bed, seemingly too upset to stand. I greeted her, but she made no effort to respond, so I walked around to the other side of the bed to get a good look at her face. Me. The little girl was me. There was something haunted about her, the frown lines too deeply etched for a child so young. She drifted soon into sleep, and I too closed my eyes, joining in her pained calm. The man's voice interrupted my rest, and I spun around, searching. This time, though, he was talking to my younger self, in the same alley. He was holding her as she cried, softly whispering promises that she'd be okay. Through broken sentences she recalled the man who walked through her door one night, family, a trusted friend staying in the house over the summer. The red numbers of the clock that glared at her, that became the only thing she had to focus on. Her room, though the place of the tragedy, was reclaimed and became her fortress. Even after he left she always ran back there from the shower, just in case. The mattress that he once slept on, that she had inherited as if his very energy wasn't still in it, and the sheets and blankets stacked atop in an effort to get his touch off her skin. The man nodded through it all, reassuring her, saying he understood. He wiped her tears one final time and lifted her chin, "Forget, my dear child. Forget."