[Original Short Story] Broken Pieces: A woman tries to erase her memories

Sarah opened her eyes, unable to move. 

Her leg was crushed under something she couldn’t see, pinning her down. Her insides were on fire, a white hot excruciating pain. She couldn’t even cry.

“What happened?” she wondered. She felt confused, faint, her vision blurred. Her blood pressure was dropping fast. Realization hit her all at once.

The lights, the truck, she was in an accident.

Panic exploded in her mind. She couldn’t speak, so she tried to twist around, her thoughts only for her family. But the sudden explosion of agony in her leg and her back immobilized her. She couldn’t turn her head, only one arm was free. She reached for her family as her consciousness slipped away.

Off in the distance, she heard shouts and grinding metal. Hands reaching for her, grabbing her.

It felt like a dream.

The last thing she saw was Jason’s broken face, gashed across his eyes. His lifeless body contorted at an impossible angle. She saw it, and then nothing at all.

Bang…Bang…Bang….

She opened her eyes. It happened again. The third time this week.

She was in the fetal position on the floor of her kitchen. It was hard to breathe and her throat felt like sandpaper.

“I must have been screaming” she whispered out loud, testing her vocal chords. Her whole body ached.

Bang…Bang…Bang…

“Sarah! Sarah! Are you okay? Let me in!” someone was shouting off in the distance. 

She slowly dragged herself on to the couch. She didn’t have the strength to get to the door, or the voice to respond.

Silent sobs wracked her weakened body.

Five years had passed. Five torturous years.

No one else had survived the crash. Sarah’s family had died on impact. And the memory was still as sharp as the day she woke up in the hospital.

The episodes washed over her mind like a time machine. She didn’t just remember, she went back, reliving every second of the worst moment of her life. A full dissociation from reality.

She couldn’t escape it.

Though she tried. Oh had she tried. The antidepressants, sleeping pills, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, she felt like a walking pharmacy when she finally left the hospital.

The meds let her live her life, but they didn’t stop the flashbacks. Over and over she relived the crash.

So she started to self-medicate. It wasn’t hard to convince her various doctors to prescribe pain meds. And it worked, at least for a while.

The OxyContin numbed her soul, offered sweet, sweet blessed relief.

But it wasn’t real. As her tolerance increased, the episodes started again, worse than before.

Her addiction raged on, carrying her pain to new heights. She was empty inside. A shell of her former self. She had attempted suicide twice.

She reached over to get the pill hidden under the small glass paperweight on her coffee table. She picked it up, pulling aside the sticker on the bottom that covered the small hole, and thought back to the strange old man who had given it to her.

“You are hurting. I can see the pain” he had said.

Sarah had stopped in her tracks. She was walking back to her car, her pockets filled with heroin. This was a bad part of town. The man wore an eye patch, his clothing little more than rags.

“Excuse me?”

“I can see the pain in you. You hide it well, but I can see. Something terrible happened to you long ago.”

Sarah slowly backed away, panic creeping in at the edges of her mind. She wanted nothing to do with this guy.

The man took a step toward her. She turned to run.

He spoke, “I can make you forget. I can make you forget about the pain. I can make you forget them.”

No one knew her here.

How could he possibly know? She turned back.

“Who are you?”

He said nothing.

The old man was watched her closely and slowly opened his fist. A single yellow pill in the palm of his wrinkled hand.

“Wha…What is it?” She stuttered. She always stuttered when she was afraid.

He motioned for her to take it.

“Take it when you are ready to forget and you will be made new.”

Sarah held the pill up. There was no number, no symbol. “This will make me forget?” 

The old had man laughed quietly, “You will feel like a new person.”

When she got back to the car she was filled with fear, anger, but also hope. She reached for the loving embrace of her needle.

When she had finished, she shuddered as the wave of pleasure had washed over her troubled mind, and headed home.

Over a week had passed.

Sarah sat back on the couch, clutching the small pill, just as she’d done the other times.

But it felt different now. Nothing else had worked. She couldn’t take it anymore. If it killed, all the better.

She dry swallowed the pill and turned on the TV. Within minutes she slept.

A loud commercial woke her up 40 minutes later.

She felt wonderful!

Something had been wrong. What was it? She couldn’t remember. She had been upset, though, that much was clear. She was hoarse and noticed the mascara running down her face in the bathroom mirror. Her kitchen was a disaster.

Oh well, whatever it was obviously didn’t matter.

But it did matter. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She felt so confused.

In a panic, she tripped on the edge of the carpet and hit her head on the wall. Rubbing her head, she looked around the apartment.

“Where am I?” she wondered.

She staggered to her feet. She didn’t recognize this place. She sensed movement out of the corner of eye.

 “WHO ARE YOU?” she screamed at the stranger staring back at her in the reflection of the window.