[Original Novel] The Background of Your Memories, Part 4

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Previous parts: 1, 2, 3}

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I cut in to clarify that I’d begun renting a storage unit. “I found something in the shed that you’ve got to see though” I gushed. She seemed skeptical that it could be anything that remarkable and frustrated that I wouldn’t simply come out and tell her.

“It’s just something sentimental. It’s important to me, I want to show someone.” She went quiet for a moment...then asked what time she should show up. When her SUV pulled in, I’d just finished rewinding the tapes from last night in preparation.

“Jesus. You’ve been sleeping in here?” She ducked into the musty, darkened shed with visible apprehension. I patted the cot next to me where I meant for her to sit down. She hesitated, but then obliged.

“What are all these tapes?” She seemed to work it out on her own a moment after those words cleared her lips, but I filled her in anyway. “Ohhh. Oh no, this isn’t...You shouldn’t be... Fuck. I see what happened. Like a black hole.”

Accurate, except that I no longer want to escape by this point. She went on about how unhealthy all this is. How it was the worst possible thing that could’ve happened to me, like a recovering gambling addict who wins the lottery.

“This isn’t what you need right now” she urged, trying in vain to pry the remote from my hand. I let her have it, but then simply reached over and turned the TV on manually. “Watch one tape” I insisted. “Just one. You’ll see what I mean.”

She gave me a mournful look, but did not protest further. I popped in the first tape and hit play. After a few seconds of seeking, the picnic in the park appeared on the screen. I glanced over her a few times as she watched, face illuminated by the television’s faint but steady glow.

The old man appeared, approaching the camera. “They’re from the background of your memories” he said. Once more I looked over and studied her face. Eyes wide, jaw hanging slightly agape. “I know, right? What the fuck. But it gets weirder.”

She stared at the screen like that for a while longer. Then at me. “Don’t look away” I said, “you’ll miss it.” So she returned her gaze to the screen and didn’t look away again until we’d gone through all of the tapes I watched last night.

“This?” she finally said. “This is what you asked me to come over for? It is, isn’t it.” I begged her not to be mad. “You wouldn’t have believed me if I told you over the phone. I knew I had to show you in person, and there’s nobody else I can trust.”

Her face slowly contorted as she gaped at me. “...Show me what? There was nothing. The tapes were all blank.” I blinked a few times, then laughed in her face. “Alright, good one Sarah. Look I’m sorry I misled you, but like I said, you were the only one-”

She rewound the tape a ways, then hit play. As I watched, she got her phone out and set it to record the screen. After about ten seconds she stopped recording and played it back for me. A blue screen, exactly as she claimed.

I turned back to the television, still playing the last minute or so of the picnic video. Then looked at Sarah’s phone again, absolutely baffled. She heaved out a sigh. “...I guess I didn’t realize how much it affected you.”

I tried to protest, but she shushed me. “There’s nothing written on the tapes, even.” I took one of the tapes in my hands. The label read “choir practice” followed by the date, in black sharpie. Tears welled up in my eyes. Why can’t she see it? What does it mean?

“Don’t worry” she continued. “I’m not angry about this. I’m relieved to find out, if anything. You need help.” I angrily accused her of fucking with me, then reached for another tape, intent on rewinding it so we could watch it again. She snatched it from my hand.

“They’re blank. There’s nothing written on them and nothing shows up on the screen.” I tearfully begged her to believe me. “I believe...you think you’re seeing something” she said. “But you need to believe me when I say that you’re losing it. That you’ve been affected more deeply than you realized. You need help. I happen to know a therapist who specializes in stuff like this, too.”

I continued to protest as she fired off an email to whatever shrink she meant to foist on me, but all of it fell on deaf ears. She gathered her things and left, calling out over her shoulder that she’d text me the shrink’s contact info “...for when you’re ready.”

I just sat there, hands shaking as I rewound the tapes. Then I played the first one, recording it with my own phone. Same result. While I did that, I noticed the light cast by the screen onto my surroundings never flickered. It was now as it always had been, a steady glow...with a blue tint.

I held one of the tapes in my hands, peering down at the writing on the label. Daring it to vanish I suppose. It didn’t. I rubbed at it with my thumb...to no effect. I covered it, then uncovered it. Looked away, then back, then repeated the process. Nothing I tried would make the writing disappear.

It had every appearance of plain, sober reality. Yet when I took a photo of it with my phone, it was only a blank label. The mania returned. I felt locked in a cognitive loop, confronted with two apparent truths I could find no way to reconcile.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me until now. I’ve never seen any chupacabras or bigfoots. Bigfeet? I’ve always defaulted to the simpler, mundane explanation in response to that sort of thing; insanity. Delusion. Casting down judgement from on high, never imagining I’d be on the receiving end one day.

Could she be right? Even as I continued to study the black markings on the tape which I now knew to be illusory, they refused to fade. What other possible explanation is there? I’ve never given much thought to how difficult it is to seriously doubt your own sanity, as I never expected to be in this position.

This must be what it feels like, surely? Insanity is imperceptible to the afflicted. They never feel insane. The more I thought about it, the more it all lined up. My phone buzzed. “Heironimus P. Travigan, PhD” followed by an address I recognized as someplace on the campus of the local university.

I was supposed to start there about a month ago. My life ground to a halt after the crash, all my plans fell to pieces as I folded up into myself. Nothing stops me from setting up a meeting with admissions and starting classes...except that I’d have to give up the shed.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way” I whispered, running my fingers over the tape’s impossible label. They were supposed to see me graduate. They would’ve looked so proud as I walked up to the stage to receive my diploma. No doubt Dad would’ve filmed it, like he filmed every other milestone in our lives.

It still seemed like the only possible future. How could it not be? Try as I might, I couldn’t picture any future at all where they remained in the ground. Some immovably stubborn fragment of my heart bitterly fought any effort to so much as imagine how my life might proceed without them.

I didn’t even realize I was still crying until I noticed the damp spots forming on the blanket where my tears fell. My every thought was consumed with the matter of the tapes, Sarah, and the psychologist she meant for me to seek out.

If she’s right, shouldn’t I? But then, I’d have to leave the shed for that. No longer than an hour or two, though. I felt shaken enough that reluctance to leave the shed won out for the time being. But as often happens, I felt differently after sleeping on it.

I owe that mainly to having the car dream again. The nightscape, the city. Honk, screech, crash, death. Waking up from it for the hundredth time provoked some reflection. Could I really bear another sixty years of this? Or even ten? Or one, for that matter.

Something still held me back. Only after protracted introspection could I nail it down. Seeing the shrink would be a step forward. Towards resuming my life, business as usual. A step into a future without them. That small, stubborn part of me violently recoiled from it.

To take even that first step would be tacitly acknowledging what’s happened. That it really occurred, that it’s permanent. That there’s no going back, and no other future I might escape to in which they’re still here with me.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}