I could still taste the river in my mouth when I woke up.
I was in my bed, my sheets and clothes clean and dry, but I had that feeling of soggy exhaustion you get after a long swim or being underwater for awhile. The sunlight coming in through the window was too bright, and my head seemed to sway unanchored for a moment as I sat up and tried to wake up enough to understand what had happened to make me feel this way. What could explain the rich, bitterly sour taste of river muck at the back of my throat that made me retch a little as I slid out of bed and went to the bathroom.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I saw nothing out of place. An average-looking girl in average pajamas that looked a bit pale in the harsh light above the sink. No signs of having recently gone for a swim or narrowly avoided a drowning.
No memory of it either.
In fact, I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d been in the water, be it a river, a pool, or the ocean. At least a couple of years I’d guess, and aside from the river running through the city and the pool at the gym, I wasn’t sure of what bodies of water I’d easily have access to outside of my bathtub.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened to me the night before. What would it have been though? I remembered coming home from the office. Taking a shower, watching t.v., and then heading to bed. I didn’t talk to anyone, I never went back out, and nothing out of the ordinary stood out from my memory.
Maybe I was remembering part of a dream. I’d had dreams before where I still felt like I was falling for a second after waking, so maybe this was the same kind of thing. Some scrap of a nightmare where I was lost at sea or…no, it was a river. But still, maybe a nightmare about a river then. Either way, I needed to get to work. By lunchtime, I’d likely have forgotten about it.
Except I didn’t. If anything, my feeling of something being wrong had grown stronger. I’d intended on working through lunch, but by twelve-thirty I realized I needed to get out and get some fresh air.
Eating the last of my sandwich wrap on the way out, I changed my initial plan of riding around for a bit with the windows down and headed up the block to the nearby park. It wasn’t anything grandiose—just a small fountain dividing a dog park and an old playground, but it was well-maintained and conveniently located. It was also mostly empty today, aside from a woman walking a golden retriever around on a leash and a man playing with a toddler in the playground’s sandbox.
I considered walking around more myself, but I still felt so tired, and after a moment of internal debate I went to the closest park bench and sat down. The woman and the dog were passing closer by now, and I gave them a smiling nod. Maybe I should get a dog. It would be good company, and…
There was a man walking toward me.
I hadn’t noticed him before, which seemed odd given that he was already in the middle of the dog park area when I first saw him. He was dressed in black medical scrubs and wore a mask, and I had the random thought that he was on the way to surgery and had made a wrong turn. A small laugh died in my throat as I realized he wasn’t just walking in my general direction, but was headed for me, his light-grey eyes fixed on mine above the dark-red mask that obscured the lower half of his face.
I couldn’t tell his expression or intent, and the strangeness of it all frightened me a little. He was only twenty feet away now, and I wanted to get up and out of his path, maybe even run from the park entirely and head back to the safety of my office. Still, that was stupid. Whatever his deal was, he was probably just away from work like me, and there was no reason for me to be freaked out just because he was walking toward me.
That was when I saw the scalpel in his hand.
He slashed me across the face before I could react, my nose going cold even as my lips went hot from the blood pouring over them. It was all too quick for me to dodge away, let alone scream, as my first reaction was to reach for my face and feel the enormous wet cleft in the middle of my nose—a diagonal valley that began to widen as I lightly probed its depth. I needed to stop or the end of my nose might just fa…
He slashed again, this time across the backs of my raised hands, sending icy lines of agony across them while shoving my palms deeper into my wounded face with the force of his blow. Some of my fingers on both hands felt numb and mindless now, drooping and curling even as I pulled them down to my stomach and tried to stand up and get away.
I made it to my feet and started to run—even in the growing haze of pain and fear and shock, I had enough wherewithal to know better than to look around for help. There was no help for this other than escape. No stopping him before he cut me to bits if I let him.
I was to the edge of the playground when he caught me, snatching a fistful of my hair and yanking me back even as he brought an arm around my shoulders as though to give me an awkward hug. Instead, he raked the scalpel across my throat, killing my terrified scream before it became more than a whimpering squeal in the back of my throat.
My legs were going now. Everything was going now. I could feel something, I think my body, falling, but it didn’t seem to really matter, because it didn’t seem like it was happening to me. It was like I was watching someone else’s dream, and soon enough I would realize I was
…waking up in my own bed, my throat sore and my skin tingling. It must be allergies, though usually I didn’t have much of a problem until the summer months. Drinking some water helped my throat, but I still found myself checking my hands and face for any kind of mark or swelling. The skin there looked normal, but it all felt warm and tender to me.
Shrugging, I picked up my phone and saw I had a text message from Brian at work.
Didn’t see you come back yesterday afternoon. Everything okay?
I frowned at my phone. What was he talking about? Nothing happened the day before. I went to work, I…didn’t I go to the park at lunch? I thought so, but the details were fuzzy. So was the rest of the afternoon and evening, if I was being honest, but that was probably just because it had been boring and I was still sleepy. Besides, Brian was making it increasingly clear he had a bit of a thing for me, and this was probably just him being super-attentive or something. Guys got so weird when they had a crush, and I still hadn’t decided if I was feeling…
…the weight of the metal bedframe pressing into me in a hundred places as the man stacked more weight on top. He’d been waiting when I left my apartment that morning, carrying me to an empty office building where he’d already prepared a room. He secured me facedown in the middle of the floor before lowering the legless steel bedframe down from where it had been propped against the wall. The weight of it was uncomfortable, digging into my skull and pressing lines into my shoulder blades and butt. My head was turned to the side, so at first I didn’t see what he was bringing in from an adjoining room. He was considerate though, walking around to the far side so I could see the weight plates he had in hand. Forty-five pounds each, he laid the first two on top of the bed.
As he added more, I tried to get free or shake the weights off, but he had done more to the bedframe than just remove the legs. He was sliding the weights onto rods that kept them securely in place despite my feeble thrashing, and it wasn’t long before I could barely breathe, let alone move. I managed to catch his eyes for a moment, unreadable above the red mask he wore.
“w…why…?”
His eyebrows furrowed angrily at me. “You should know why.”
I went to say more when I felt something pop in my chest, maybe the first of my ribs breaking as my spine began to give way. It suddenly felt like I was underwater again, my lungs unable to expand as everything began to fill up with liquid and I’m drowning again but when did I drown before and none of this makes any…
“…sense of how long you’ve felt this way?”
I furrowed my brow at the therapist’s question. “Felt what way, exactly?”
She clicked her pen and gave me a small smile. “That something was wrong. That you were maybe forgetting things or that someone was trying to…what do the kids call it now? Gaslight you?”
Shrugging uncomfortably, I sat back in the chair. “I don’t know. When you say it like that, it sounds like I’m crazy. I…I mean, I don’t think I’m crazy. Like a paranoid schizo or whatever.”
She laughed. “No, I didn’t mean to imply that. But isn’t it fair to say that you’ve been troubled for the past few weeks with the idea that…well, that you’re being targeted or victimized in some way, either in your dreams or in some portion of your life you can’t fully recall?”
“Yeah, I mean, I think that’s it. Yeah.”
“All right. And how long has that been going on do you think?”
I thought for a moment, but looking backward, all I could see were the dim outlines of past events surrounded by a dense grey fog. Heart beating faster, I met her eyes. “I…I don’t know. I can’t fucking remem…sorry, I can’t remember.”
The woman shook her head as she waved my apology away. “Perfectly all right. No sacred cows here. You say what you need to say. And I can understand why not remembering can be distressing.” She clicked her pen again as she jotted down a note. “But what makes you think it’s more than just a series of disturbing dreams?”
Swallowing, I nodded. “Well, I think…
My words were cut off as hands closed around my throat from behind. I reached for them, but a moment later I was drug backward, flipping over the chair as my attacker began dragging me from the room. It was a man in black scrubs, wearing a red medical mask and a furious expression as he pulled me through the office door and into the waiting room.
I managed to catch hold of the doorframe and halt our progress for a moment—I just needed to give the therapist long enough to call 911 or get building security. Something to get this lunatic off of me. But looking back into the woman’s office, I saw her still sitting there, staring at where I’d been, as though she was patiently waiting for an answer I was no longer there to give.
What is going…
Another forceful yank and I lost my grip on the frame. There was a man and a little girl in the waiting room, but neither seemed to notice as I was drug through, hoarsely screaming and kicking, out into the hall. Once there, the man rolled me onto my stomach and bound my hands with something before lifting me up enough to painfully walk me out of the building and into his waiting van. I still tried to fight, of course, but he would just wrench my arms up harshly when I resisted, ignoring my pleading screams as much as the half dozen people we passed on the way outside.
He drove us for what felt like an hour, and when the van stopped, I saw we were out of the city at some kind of old warehouse or factory. Checking his watch, he shoved me forward, telling me to hurry up. That we didn’t want to be late.
When I asked him for what, he gave a harsh laugh.
“For your birthday. Your new birthday, that is.”
I could smell the stench of the building before he opened the door. It was a rotten smell, but not just that. It was a potent mixture of decay and blood and sweat, all overlaid with the hot, spiky scent of animal pain and fear. I had the thought that he had taken me to a slaughter house, and when he opened the door, I saw I wasn’t wrong.
“Oh my God. I…I don’t understand how…”
“…you can sit there so fucking calmly. Don’t you even care that Zack is dead?”
Will stared at me, the naked anger and fear in his face just making me madder. Making me hate him more. Looking down, I saw his hands clenching and unclenching on the knees of his black scrubs. “What, are you going to hit me? Big fucking man going to hit me? Go ahead, pussy.”
He looked away from me, rubbing his face. “Jesus, Carol. I know this isn’t you talking, it’s the shock and all, but please stop it.”
I shoved him in the shoulder. “No, it’s me. I’ve sat here for two years while this fucking disease killed our son, holding my tongue, waiting for you to actually do something and…”
Eyes flaring, he looked back in my direction. “And what would you have me do? I’m not God.”
Snorting, I shook my head. “No, but you’re a fucking doctor and…”
His voice was raised when he cut me off. “I’m a fucking anesthesiologist and he had a bad heart. We knew he probably wasn’t going to live a long life once he got diagnosed and...”
I stabbed a finger in his direction as my vision began to blur. “Yeah, and the cadiologist said it was genetic. I know my family doesn’t have a history of heart problems, and your dad died at…”
Gritting his teeth, he forced his voice back to a lower volume. “It has a genetic component. I didn’t cause this. Neither did you. It’s one of those things that just happens.”
I wanted to say more, but I was too angry. If we kept going, I was going to attack him, not because I couldn’t see what he was saying, but because I didn’t care. I’d spent the last ten years loving my baby boy and now he was dead. Dead and gone and the person I needed the most couldn’t drop his fucking detached calmness for ten fucking…
“You should have gone in to see him. I told you he was awake for an hour this morning before he slipped away.” I snapped my head toward him, surprised when I saw he was holding out a small white rock. “He wanted us to have this.” Tears began to trickle down Will’s face. “He said it’s a wishing rock. We get three wishes each. So we can be happy again.”
Seeing him crying didn’t help at all. It somehow made it worse, in fact. A grown man, holding a rock out of our yard, crying because he couldn’t do anything. Trying to make me feel bad because I didn’t want to see my baby wither away. Didn’t want to remember him that way. Smiling at him, I snatched the rock from his palm.
“You want me to wish? You want me to be happy? Okay, here we go.” He went to open his mouth, but I held up my hand. “No, no. This is what you wanted right? This is what I missed out on not watching our son die.”
“I wish that I go on forever. That I never have to worry about stupid fucking heart problems or getting old and fat and dying of a stroke. That no matter what life throws at me, I’ll keep fucking coming back for more.”
“Second, I wish I didn’t know you at all. You or anything connected to you. You’ve done nothing but drag me down, give me pain and make me less that I fucking was before I met you. I wish I didn’t even remember your fucking stupid face.”
“Carol, please just don’t say something that you…”
“I’m not done. You said three, right? This is kind of an extension of two, but I just thought of it, and it’s worth the last wish to make sure it sticks. I wish you to be forgotten by everyone. All your precious family, all the dumb shit you’ve done as a doctor, if you can even call yourself that, I want you to be reminded on a daily basis that nothing you do is noticed or cared about by anybody.” I tossed the rock in his direction with a snarl. “That’s what I fucking wish.”
Will caught the rock and stared at it for several moments as a poisonous silence stretched out between us. When he spoke, his voice was cold. “My first wish was that you get what you wanted, whatever that was. So good luck with all that.” When he looked up at me, his eyes were hard. “My second was that you find a way to accept everything that’s happened. You live in denial so much of the time, and I didn’t want you to suffer more, but I do feel like you’d be a happier, better person if you could just be honest with yourself and face the world as it is, even just…like once a year. Remember and take an inventory of everything. That…um, that was my second wish.”
His head snapped to the side as I slapped him, the sound ringing off the walls of the small waiting room we were in. “How dare you. You don’t know me. You don’t understand what I’ve been through. Why would I want to remember any of this?”
Will’s jaw flexed as he stared at me. “I lost him too, you bitch. But that’s the problem. No matter what is happening to others, all…”
…I could see was myself, repeated over and over in mounds of ruined flesh. Some bodies were clothed, while others were naked. Many were dismembered or burned, but others seemed perfectly whole, buried under the crushing weight of meat and bone that surrounded them, but all of them were me. I heard a beeping noise and looked over to see the man hit a button on his watch.
“2:11. Right on time.” He turned to me and lowered his mask. “Remember me now?”
I blinked. “Will? What…oh God…oh no…”
He grinned. “Yes, that’s it. Let it all soak in.”
Crumpling to the ground, I felt the weight of missing memory bearing down on me, crushing me. Gasping, I looked around again. I’d been here before. Several times before. My body shuddered as I began to vomit and then retch, muscles growing tight and sore as the spasms racked my body past the point of anything being left. When it finally eased, I looked up to see Will still watching me.
“What…what’s happened to me?”
He nodded. “It started a few days after Zach died. You forgot who I was. At first, I thought you were just being petty, but no, you really didn’t know me any more. I would have been more upset about that, but I’d already started moving out, and honestly I was having my own shit going wrong.”
His expression hardened. “They started forgetting me at work. It was subtle at first, but by the end of the month…they really didn’t know who I was. I could bring in IDs and paperwork, and they could read it and understand it, but as soon as they stopped looking at it, they forgot it again. The only upside of all that was they also can’t remember to take me out of the system, so I still get my paycheck direct deposited every two weeks. I have to do everything electronically now, from buying things to renting an apartment.” Will gestured at the warehouse. “Got this place online too.”
Wiping my mouth, I shook my head. “Congratulations. Sounds like you got the good end of this…”
He cut me off. “Good end? Fuck you. My family doesn’t know me. No one does. I’ve been totally alone for four years.” Will snorted. “Well, except for you, and even that only really counts on your new birthday.”
I blinked. More was coming back as he talked. “You…you’ve been…you’ve been hurting me, over and over. For years, haven’t you?”
He grinned. “Hurting you? No, I’ve been fucking killing you. The first time was an accident. Back near the start, after I’d lost everything, I found you and confronted you. Demanded you fix it or take it back. You didn’t know who I was, of course, and things got…physical. You almost killed me that time, actually. After it was done, I buried you. And then a week later, I saw you drive by.” Will laughed. “You can die, just like anyone else, but it doesn’t stop you. You just come back.” He pointed to the mounds of bodies. “You get a new body every time, and I just keep killing them. Well, kind of. They don’t rot much and will still move around a little from time to time…which is part of why I store them in here. Don’t want them flopping out of an unmarked grave like a fish somewhere. This curse you put on me extends to anything I’m actively touching or interacting with, but if I leave a brainless zombie body out somewhere, eventually someone will find it and notice.”
As he spoke, I saw one of the mounds shift. A small hand...my hand…was twitching restlessly from beneath a pair of dismembered legs. I remembered now. He’d been doing this for nearly four years. Almost every day for four years. I didn’t remember it all…and this last year was far clearer than what had come before…but there had to be…
“How many…”
“1192.” He grinned. “You’ll make 1193. After you celebrate your birthday, of course.”
Standing shakily, I frowned at him. “I don’t understand. My birthday is in October.”
Moving behind me, he cut off the zip-tie at my wrists. “It is. But this isn’t your regular birthday. It’s the anniversary of when Zach died. When we made our wishes. I made mine about 2:11 that afternoon. I remember because it was right before they called time of death at 2:14.” Stepping back around, his face was dark. “Your wishes were a bit later, but they’re always active, so it doesn’t matter. I don’t remember the exact wording I used, but apparently my wish that you see things as they really are only kicks in once a year.” His expression brightened as he let out a laugh. “Man, the first time that happened…whoo. You almost got away. I think I was more scared than you were.” Shaking his head, he looked around. “That’s the other reason for this place. It’s a good spot to keep you confined on your new birthday. See what I’ve accomplished. And have you write down what you’ve been through while you remember it clearly.”
I stared at him, unable to keep the fear and loathing out of my voice. “You’re insane.”
Will giggled. “Oh yes! I’m very much insane. I know that.” He squinted at me. “What did you think would happen when you made the world forget me and left me all alone?”
Shaking my head, I started to back away. I needed to find a way out of here before it was too late. “I didn’t know any of this would happen, you idiot. It was a stupid rock. Neither of us knew it would actually grant wishes.”
He spread his hands as he smiled at me. “And yet it did. And here we are.” Lunging forward, he grabbed my arms, bringing his face down to mine. “All the doors are time-locked. All the windows are barred. You’re stuck in here with me for the next twelve hours. So you can either write your account and get a quick end to your birthday or…”
Trembling, I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Or what?”
He nuzzled my face lightly. “Or I can spend the next twelve hours torturing you to death.” He chuckled nastily. “I hate to admit it, but I’ve gotten very good at it. And nowadays I do like to take advantage of the rare chance to feel a sense of accomplishment.” Leaning back, he tapped me on the nose. “So your choice.”
Shuddering, I nodded. “I’ll write it down. I’ll write it all down.”
Will smiled. “Good.”
He carried me over to a corner of the enormous room where he had set up a small table and a laptop. No internet, he warned me, but the word processor was up-to-date. My mind was racing for a way out, but I was remembering enough to know there probably wasn’t any. None other than time.
Because Will wasn’t wrong about me. I didn’t mind forgetting the painful things. Glossing over the harsher details of life. And a lot of the time, at least a portion of every day, I got to live my life as I wanted. Zach dying? The bad shit Will was doing to me? I only had to remember it all once a year. The pain and fear and dread I felt would be mostly gone when I woke up tomorrow, and eventually, Will would either get bored or get dead, and then I’d just be immortal, with no more time stolen and no memory of the bad shit this nutjob did to me for a few years.
“What’re you smiling at?” His voice was sharp as he looked down at me.
“Oh, nothing. This is all…I’m just freaked out and scared.”
Will nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Fair enough. Okay, time to get cracking.” He snickered. “Or I will.”
I started to type when he put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you one more thing. You never ask me and I always forget to tell you until it’s too late. I promised myself I wouldn’t make that mistake this year.”
My stomach lurched as I glanced up at him. “What’s that?”
“My third wish.”
“Huh?”
He smiled. “Well, as you may recall, I told you at the hospital what my first two wishes were, but we never got around to my last one.” Leaning down, he put his lips next to my ear. “I’m a bit embarrassed, I admit. The wish sounds sappy now, but at the time I didn’t know how much you hated me.”
“Look, I don’t…” I winced as his fingers dug into my shoulder.
“Don’t lie. It won’t work.” His voice was coarse as granite one moment, and then back to the soft, almost playful tone he’d had before. I tried not to show how my skin was crawling at feeling his breath on my face. “Want to know my third wish, Carol?”
“Um…yeah. Sure.”
He gave my ear a small kiss before whispering the words to me.
“I wished that no matter what happens, I’ll always, always be here for you.”
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