Forgetful

There is a great deal I don’t know about the world. About people. Even about myself. That got worse as time passed.

I have become forgetful. It happens to a lot of people.

It started small; misplaced objects, the day of the week, alarms that I didn’t remember setting. Then missed deadlines. Where I parked my car. Placed my wallet. If I locked the closet.

Four times to make sure. Even numbers for even locks: start locked, end locked. Four was a good number. Not too many. Not too few.

Silly things. Easy to write off, pretend it was nothing.

I started writing things down. Leaving post it notes. Labeling my alarms. That fixed things for a while. Got through a couple years thinking it was solved.

Then I forgot to go to work. Spent the whole day at home. Drank some coffee, read a book, played games, watched some television. Went to bed. Woke up the next day and realized I had no clean clothes so did the laundry. Phone fell out of the pocket before I turned the washer on. It was dead. Charged it. Bunch of missed calls from Troika Incorporated from three days before. Didn’t recognize them but the details were saved in my phone.

The voicemails were unpleasant. Aggressive. Demanded to know why I’d missed shifts without calling. Phone had been dead for days. Forgot I even had one.

Without its constant notifications and buzzing, its easy to forget.

I tried calling them back and explain but I didn’t even remember who answered the phone. Or what my job was. Managed to convince them I had head trauma that affected my memory. They put me on medical leave for a few days but I had to bring in doctor verification. Someone there caimed I did that all the time. They probably just didn’t like me. I didn’t know what the company did anyway.

It set off alarm bells. Memory was worse than I thought. Wanting to find out what was wrong, I searched the internet. Top results didn’t help. Digging deeper, I had several types of amnesia. That didn’t feel right. I knew who I was. Remembered my childhood and my parents.

Well, there were holes. I didn’t remember their names. Or the street I grew up on. If they lived nearby or far away.

I started writing things down. Leaving post it notes.

I said that already. It’s okay, repeating helps. Helps you remember.

There are a lot of ways to improve memory, I was surprised to find. Memory palace, spaced repetition, mnemonic devices, active recall. So much more. I tried them all. Practiced. Started a journal to document my progress. Reading it every day helped. Even reversed some of the previous loss.

Then I lost my job. So focused on the day to day I forgot about getting a doctors note. I was sure it hadn’t been that long. Hadn’t been journaling at the time, which gave everything a surreal quality. Easy to lost track of time though, not my fault.

I didn’t want it to get worse though, so I battled it. Started writing everything down. Filled a couple notebooks. Still, there were things I didn’t remember to do till some sign reminded me.

Didn’t bathe until I smelled. Groceries arrived every eight days. When garbage overflowed I dumped it in larger trashcans outside. Toiletries arrived as I ran out.

I forgot things needed to be paid for until I got an email warning about changes to my account. Even that I could only access because my phone automatically logged in. Gaining access to the account itself was like pulling teeth (which by the holes in my gums must have been something I’d experienced at some point) but I managed.

Charges and deposits. Didn’t recognize any of them but the charges between every deposit looked familiar. The first letter of each charge spelled PEGGLE. That was on one of my post it notes along with a nonsense phrase:

Penny Eats Gassy Grounded Lemons Everyday

I found the note. It summarized the charges: a financial company, grocery deliveries, property taxes, a car I didn’t remember owning, and daily bills. I assumed the deposits were from my job, but scrolling back I found there were two entries, one of them labled TroInc. That one stopped months ago. The other looked like income from the financial company, significantly more than what I was spending to use them. That financial company was doing its job I guess. But it bothered me more than just because I couldn’t remember for sure. So I called them.

Jumping through those hoops took the better part of a day. Finally talked to a man named Colton who sounded ancient and claimed to have handled my families money for decades. The deposits were the interest of my inheritance. I came from money and didn’t know it. The house I lived in was large but modest. Almost modern but a little off. A little bit of a lot of things, really.

Like it kept forgetting what it was too. That realization definitely made it feel like home.

Colton was annoyed with my questions. He claimed not to know much about my families history, that I knew better than him. Insisted that I had proven it on many occasions. Whatever that meant. Something about ancient money coming from the “old world”. Transporting rare and unusual goods.

He gave me a number and a name that led to another and another. I didn’t want to sleep so I slammed coffee. It felt like I was losing my memory more when I slept and woke, despite the proof that it was more a slow leak that never stopped. Eventually got a hold of a woman named Tangina. Some distant relative halfway across the world. Family historian. Claims she knew me quite well, though I didn’t even remember my own name by then.

She told a story about how are family were wealthy merchants who traded strange objects that were Thrawn. Crooked. Things that were just off a little. The descriptions were cryptic and vague and pissed me off because I couldn’t make any sense of it. Though she had a plethora of memories speaking to me as a child and loving my inquisitive nature. Insisted I’d wanted to find any manifests and items. See if any remained in our possession.

So frustrating was it to hear these things that I nearly missed it when she told me about the house. Apparently the ship we sailed here on was one such Thrawn object, with its eerie sounds and a tendency to wander its own course if someone did not watch the stars at all times. The cabin was transported in full to this spot and the house was built around it. The strangest and most dangerous objects were also held in the cabin. In the Captain’s Closet.

Tangina’s voice got low like we were telling ghost stories across a fire at night. “They say the Thrawn things kept in there were so strange they bent the world within the closet until it was no longer the same dimensions. Sometimes smaller. Sometimes bigger. But always deeper, like a tunnel. Rocco, the last to captain the ship swore to keep it locked. That it had become a throat of strangeness that was always hungry.”

What a strange thing to say. Maybe I’d liked stories like that as a kid but I couldn’t remember being that age. She said something about listening to the wisdom of my family and to always lock things four times to be sure. That was also weird because I was pretty sure it was three times. Four seemed excessive. Borderline loony really.

Before we got off the phone I asked about my parents.

“Last I heard yall lived together. We never talked much, they always found me to a be a bit odd. But I think I’d have heard if the living situation changed. That family house is important. Whey don’t you have them give me a call when they get a chance?”

I told her I’d make a note of it. And I did. Post-it, right on the old dust covered wall phone. Forgot to ask her if she knew a number I could reach them at or an old address. But I was getting pretty antsy from all the coffee. Must have forgot that I stopped drinking caffeine at night because it kept me up.

After putting all my notes together I stared at them till they made sense. Started nodding off before being blessed by any revelation.

I remember dreaming that night but not what of. When I woke I went right back to the notes, scared that if I loosed my grip it would slip through my fingers like sand. They made less sense than the day before but I’d been sleep deprived, overcaffeinated and confused. It wasn’t that big a deal, really. The internet made things seem worse than they were. With a little digging I found some sites that said progressive memory loss happened sometimes because of a number of factors. They all said it would get better with time.

Almost forgot about the closet. There were six locks on it but I only needed two. Two was a good number. Even. Plenty. One for safety, one as a backup.

The den had a huge writing desk. It looked older than the rest of the house like it had been carried over from some faraway place. Sitting in the chair felt natural. It held me. The ass groove fit perfectly, though the cushion was starting to fade. The left arm was more worn than the right. Leaning on it felt good. Made my shoulder ache after a while. Right one never did. Left felt good though, so I stuck with it. One less thing to focus on.

Within the many drawers of the ancient desk I found papers, yellowed and ragged edged. Old script. The language wasn’t english but I could read it, so the name didn’t matter. A collection of manifests. On the shelves was a notebook. Within it were the same items with a price next to them and a date. Items being sold off. The name on the front was: Luca Vespucci. It looked familiar. Sounded familiar. Same last name so must be related. Probably a distant cousin or something. Something scratched at the back of my skull. A recent memory but fading like mist. I’d seen it somewhere recently…

I was being silly. My memory was full of holes and I’d read it at the beginning of this book. That’s all. I returned my attention to the listed items. The prices went down regardless of the items. The dates closer together. Like this Luca person started out wanting to sell them off in a reasonable amount of time and money then just wanted them gone.

Well that solved the mystery of the money anyway. Or some of it. Whatever I was looking into finances for, it was resolved now. One less thing to worry about.

I spent the next few days playing games. Eating when I was hungry. When I got ripe I wiped myself down with a rag in the sink. Peed in bottles till I needed to shit. Wandered the house looking for a bucket and found a bathroom. A whole one, shower and all. Seemed strange to have a house without one I guess, but never knew about it. Damn strange secret to keep from whoever I got the house from.

On the way back I passed the closet. Realized I hadn’t locked in a few days. The door was ajar. I pushed it closed and locked it. Just once. Weird holes and indents in the door like there used to be five more but someone must have realized it was silly to lock a door more than once. It was just a closet. But lock it I did.

There were some papers in the trash by the couch I’d been sleeping on. Some old. Some new. Tumbling free to the floor. I dragged it around till I found a kitchen and dumped it in. A notebook was stuck to the bottom of the smaller wastebin. Old soda or something. Most of the pages were soaked with filth. It smelled like sour milk. I peeled it open, pages ripping. The name it in I think was my name. Couldn’t be sure. It was legible but how often do you think of your own name? Not unreasonable to forget. Like forgetting your own phone number. Whatever that was.

The last few pages read like ramblings of a lunatic. About the house changing. Things that weren’t there before. Every time it happened they were shoved in the closet. Another mnemonic at the end with a drawing of a door. Plane looking. Old. Ragged. The closet door. With six locks.

Don’t Pretend Kinetic Lies Fear Coexistence Deliberately

My head was fuzzy. I tore out the page and brought it to the closet. Ran my fingers over the indents and holes. The only lock on there was a deadbolt. The others had been a padlock, key, latch, fingerprint, combination, and digital. Each would have required something inserted for the bolt. The wood was old. Thin. Thin as a porch door. Where the bolts would have gone were crusted circles, like scabs.

My hand shook. I sneered at the notebook and the greasy residue it left on my fingers. The scent of garbage was cloying. I had to get rid of it. Somewhere.

Click

The door creaked. Didn’t open but stuck out from the frame, more at the bottom than the top. Damn door was crooked.

Thrawn

I shivered. Why the hell would someone put a padlock on a closet door? “It’s just a closet.” My throat was hoarse, but the voice was a stranger’s. I pulled the door open. The air that wafted out was hot and wet. It looked like a square cutout to a dark tunnel. The walls looked rounded. Cobwebs festooned the walls and ceiling. Dangled, like pale drool. Glistened. I stepped inside.

My steps squished. The floor was spongey. Must be rotten floorboards. Pressing the walls had the same feel, though warm. Fleshy. Slick with phlegm.

“I should go,” I think I said.

But go where?

There wasn’t anywhere else. Only this place.

I was right where I should be.

Turning around the outside was…something. It hurt my eyes. Whatever was out there was too new. I didn’t need it. Didn’t have the space for it in my head. Decided it was best to find out where the tunnel went. Maybe it would trigger a memory.

I closed the door.