Double-Sided Letters

Recollection of a Memory: SIDE A

(Artwork on side not mine, as usual.) The pic on the side goes along with the story (it's the picture clipped to the letter).

We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.

-Jeremy Irons

Keep dreaming, Catherine.

She fingered the side of the letter with slow, muted circles, staring at it. She was convinced that her name would disappear from it and become, say, a Janet or Alexander, if she stared hard enough. Unfortunately this resolved nothing, and left her with the same number of questions as before she'd opened the box, perhaps more.

Paper-clipped to the top right corner was a rather good drawing of a girl. She looked intensely at Catherine, as if to question her staring. Her face was broken and chipped into pieces of a puzzle that were floating in space around her. It was like her face was coming undone by itself, too tired to go on like it should.

It was like she was falling apart.

Likewise, Catherine was falling apart herself, without a piece to preserve her. The makeup of her hands, her face, her body; they would all soon be forgotten and disconnected from anything she'd ever done. In her younger years, she'd developed a theory that she'd been assembled by a messy-fingered child, clumsily forcing pieces together and breaking off parts. The child had left lingering stains (of grape jam or jelly, or something of similar consistency) all over her memories. and abandoned the puzzle of Catherine in hope for more food.

Incomplete.

People suggested she had amnesia.

Well, there's plenty of reasons out there, they'd start, as if trying to sell her a sportscar.

Yes, lots of options.

I don't want options, she'd reply, I want memories.

But what you have seems to match up perfectly- inability to retain information, or recall past events, they'd continue as if she never spoke.

You lost your memories. Which means you have amnesia. And that can be treated.

I want memories, she would feebly reply, knowing she was fated for another treatment offer and her mother's eager agreement.

She did not have amnesia. Amnesiacs couldn't remember events or people. She couldn't remember dreams or motivations, and this was the problem.

Dreams were the essence of life- and if she had none, what did that make her, exactly? If she had nothing to aspire to, nothing to hope for, and nothing to retain in her head that carried importance, she was already a lost cause.

She was a worthless sort of vehicle, covered in rusty regret that ate away her paint job and revealed the dull brown beneath. Her engine was broken. Her driving force was all but nonexistent. Yet her mother believed others almost desperately when they assured her we can fix it.

Can't you love me this way? I'm never going to run again. I don't want to be your crowning collection piece. But no, no, Catherine darling, you're not broken- you're misguided.

Misguided, her mom would say so often to her.

But Catherine heard her on many an occasion use this word to describe the mentally ill and criminal.

So, misguided (possibly criminal) (possibly mental) it was.

And somehow, all of this emotion could be contained with an 5x5 inch paper square.