Ginny Lives

The words fell like stones into the well of Harrison's reality: "rapid-onset amnesia."

The sterile quiet of his doctor's office allowed the phrase to echo. He became a numb spectator to his life as the doctor told him about timelines and treatments. Everything blurred into a meaningless hum until he found himself in his apartment again.

He had no particular love for his home. It was a place cluttered with the artifacts of the lives he tried to live. There was only one point of pride - a photo of his black labrador Ginny on the mantle. She smiled at him while wearing her blue bandana from the hardware store.

Her ashes sat on his desk in the same cedar box thousands of pets found themselves poured into. Harrison often imagined what magic spell could turn the swirl of black and bone into Ginny again.

"Fuck cancer," he said to himself as an intense heat advanced up his neck and cradled the base of his skull. Unadulterated rage, horror, and the fear of everything about him and Ginny becoming forgotten threatened to swallow what remained.

"Fuck me," Harrison declared as he tossed the ghostwriting pages from the last few years into the air. They fluttered and flicked in protest until they settled in piles around him.

He sat with force into his desk chair and flipped his laptop open with gusto. It seemed like an anachronism. It was a tool too cold and impersonal for the story he had to tell. Regardless, it was the only option available.

"Fuck me and fuck them," Harrison said again as he stared at an empty document. "Ginny lives."

Each word he typed thereon was in defiance of getting lost in the swirl of humanity. Souls come and go with only a whisper, but not his little girl. Her purity of spirit would live on.

Even a mass of people lost in their traumas and hustle and bustle may find her after he forgot her. He owed it to her to allow her to shine onto quavering souls.

The tapping of the keys slowed. Harrison paused with a faint smile playing across his face as he wrote about Ginney's puppyhood. It faded as his leaden apartment gave him nothing in return. The echoes of her barks and the clatter of her paws faded into the cursed void.

He needed more. He rose, pacing his living room restlessly, each step a battle against the forces erasing his memories.

Harrison grasped at the walls. She was in there somewhere. He would tear into the drywall if necessary to find her again.

There was a box from Staples. It was important.

It was under the cheap futon that strained to hold itself together. He scattered the pictures inside until synapses fired in the proper direction.

Jinney stared at him with her face down and the whites of her brown eyes looking up pitifully. She was terrified, frustrated, and overburdened with learning how to navigate stairs with four limbs.

Stares.

Harrison returned to his desk with the photograph of Jennei beside his laptop. There was now a box of everything he had left of her sitting on what remained of his old ghost stories. Her collar, more photos (most he didn't recognize), and the deer antler she should have enjoyed on Christmas morning.

Family.

His family knew more, but the conversations tasted like spoiled vintage wine. He said nothing about his condition, whatever that was. His consciousness only had room for reminders.

The depths of the task started to feel like the tendrils of a H.L. Lovetrap story about singing angels from the moon. Its grip was weak at first. But as each day passed, it squeezed him tighter, and mementos of his dog's life swept into the ether alone.

Either. Ether. Eulabelle?

The chasms grew. The gaps yawned. A crushing weight pinched his brain into mush. He would pick up her collar, barely frayed from the few months she wore it, and struggle to recall its sound as it jingled.

She bounded through the house with happy pants and woofs. Then, she flickered at the edge of his consciousness and called for Daddy again.

The heat intensified, and the frustration piled underneath him like the bones of forgotten soldiers. He glared at a screen where words used to flow and screamed at it until they slogged through the pages like the Big Muddy River.

He grasped her favorite ball while the memories flickered like embers of a summer campfire on the beach. 

Like, like, like…

Terry spent most evenings with her in the park after work. She never stopped playing games willingly. She bathed him, whether he wanted it or not. She nipped at the back of his legs to get him to give chase again.

"Fuck!"

The conversations with friends and family were more desperate. He begged and pleaded with them to fill his vicious blanks. 

They recounted tales of wholesome antics, a gentle nature, and joy. They did not belong to him. They belonged to Jennee. His life, whoever he had been, had become hers. Nobody understood this simple fact, but they would after he was gone.

The simplest tasks were now an exercise in labyrinthian logic. Larry's family threatened to put him in a home before he finished his manuscript. He told them to go duck themselves, but he knew the time grew thin and whispery.

Fat tears soiled the keyboard and spread into the crevices. His labor of love sat in front of him. He could barely understand the words, but the feeling in his gut was satisfying and proper.

Riley stepped outside his apartment with a coffee cup full of tea that smelled like her fur. 

They sat on the landing and stared at the unobscured blood moon. Its ruby colors washed their surroundings with horrors from the old gods and the new. Indifferent shadows danced under the trees they once claimed as their own.

"We've got all the time in the world, girl."