by Alex Miles
For a short period I was reluctant to use the device; when I came home from work its memory did not pain me. However, the future thought of work caused distress and only by promising myself that I would erase those memories could I get rid of my anguish for the future. I used the Lotus Device with a view to making a happier future, rather than removing an offensive history.
The days with the device were the best since work began. Now I was in an early retirement. The weekdays were mostly sleep, but dotted with pubs and newspapers, after which came a weekend, only noticeable by the lesser proportion of slumber. The device had completely amputated the gangrenous part of me. I was still being tortured, but could not feel it.
I used the device to bypass other unfortunate things. If I was ill, the time would flash by in less than a moment. If my wife prepared the leftover stew, I only had to deal with the aftertaste and I never had to sit through commercials. Although it had taken chunks out of my life, it was the poisonous chunks, allowing me to lose all those little tumours that blotted my existence.
I viewed those past selves as someone different from myself. My life, as I knew it, was a continuous series of memories, of which they had no part. I imagined those people as a string of twin brothers, similar, but distinctly separate. They had to face the malicious slice of life.
I was careful to keep a record of details I might erase. Occasionally, I found in my pocket disorganised notes of things to remember. I must admit, it was frustrating when I would lose a few extra hours and the notes gave no clue as to why. The strangest thing I found was a gun in my drawer with a note from myself, “Keep me safe!”. I confess I sometimes found those past selves creepy. This and the eternal sticky oil were the only downsides to my new life. The oil was not of common sort, it sank deep into the skin and no amount of washing would purify the blotchy hands. However, its greasy odour covered up the stink of the old blood, removing the last reminder to the lost gruesome labour.
For a while I kept a sharp lookout for whatever this costly thing was worth. Predictably, no money came out of my account and for an extra five pounds a tarot reader confirmed I still had a soul. I decided, whatever the price, it was non-existent as far as I was concerned, much like work. That goblin trader knew what he was talking about.
I told no one about the device, save my wife, who was not so keen on it. I put this down to jealousy; experimentation proved it useless to anyone but me. A few months after I received the machine, she interrupted my meal to give me her charming standpoint on the philosophy of mind.
“You’re killing yourself, you know?”
“No, I’m killing the miserable bastard. I’m the happy, unemployed layabout.”
“What do you think you do between those hours?” I considered, if someone caused me the most hideous pain in that time, it may be morally neutral.
“Be miserable.”
She snorted. “You could be a rent boy for all you know.”
“Would I care?”
“I am so fed up of having to repeat myself over and over!”
I opened my mouth, but realised for any witty put-down there was a well prepared counter. She began to rant on about the preciousness of time and I concluded I could do without this. Memory wiping the wife’s self-satisfying speeches was a guilty pleasure. Under the table I held the device, to miss a few extra pointless moments.
This break in time was painful and when I looked down, I saw an elderly hand holding the device, almost black with the everlasting oil stains. Ashen hairs covered the claw’s quivering slack fingers that were crowned with rotten nails. I felt my body wither within an instant, while the skin tightened and dried across the wasting muscles. I felt every joint within me become rigid and my vision turned cloudy. A substantial permanent fatigue weighed heavy over every limb. My wife and my house were replaced by a house I did not know.
Fear hit me as if I had swallowed poison. I shambled painfully to a mirror and I saw in the image the cavernous wrinkles of many years’ experience unknown. The eyes were bereft of all energy; fallen deep and sad within their sockets. The head was ugly with baldness and warped proportions; its skin was diseased and flaking. This man was maybe fifty years my senior. Disbelief forced me to seek any delusional hope. I looked down with panic at the device, as if it could give me some comfort. The realisation slowly trickled into me of the full extent of this moment's loss, like fifty years was a mere penny falling between the floorboards.
“Why would I do this?”
I looked in my pocket for some precious notes or guidance. I found money, the gun and a piece of notepaper. With horrid expectation I unfolded it, wishing it would give me a hope that this process could be reversed, or provide some pittance of consolation. I opened it with painful, clumsy, wooden fingers and it gave its message clearly and without pity, in a warped version of my own writing: “DON’T LOOK FOR WHY!”.
For a while I stared at the merciless order and then I began to cry in self-pity at my incurable illness. I had infected myself with death and infirmity out of foolishness. I spent hours coming to terms with my loss before I could think of anything practical.
Through my tears, I looked about the unknown house I found myself in. It was lifeless, abandoned and decayed. The hollow, old silence left me with little doubt the house was unoccupied. No light shone, except a weak glow from beyond the curtains, which illuminated the photographs of smiling strangers on the walls. Newspapers and cardboard boxes took the majority of the space and dust blanketed everything.
I wondered if I owned this dead, vacant house. Was this was my life’s achievement? Perhaps what drove me to erase my memory was not far away and I began a search for some clue. Within the boxes I discovered peculiar gadgets of the future and recognised myself as a cursed time traveller. The frailty of my body made every task painful and time hungry. I had to sit down to rest after the work proved fruitless and I was incapacitated for a few minutes.
When I regained strength, I went to the door and stepped into a busy town street of half a century away. The sun proved powerful and the air parched so that I wondered if this was my native country, but familiarity with the newspapers left me assured. The atmosphere had an artificial smell of some foreign chemical and I suspect this was what occasionally warped the light when looking into the distance. In front of whitewashed sterile houses miserable people walked past in the latest fashions, made from the most popular, cheap synthetics.
I decided to make the journey to my home town. Perhaps my wife still lived there, or I had kept a diary to gain something back. But the resolution did not last long. My misery sucked away all my vigour, and coupled with my age, the vindictive sun and lack of a plan, I was crippled within a few moments. I knew I may have a few hours' journey ahead. With every step my frail body took, my willpower crumbled. Giving way to weariness, I made my way to an unsightly skyscraper which displayed the glowing words “hotel” with obnoxious pride.
I entered the hotel’s shiny, plastic world of inexpensive functionality and as I checked in at the lobby the new technologies of currency and etiquette caused some embarrassment. I realised how my ragged clothes portrayed me as one of those lost, mindless elderly who wander the streets. The camp receptionist shot me a patronising grin as he handed me the “key card”.
I bought a map and made my way to my room. I discovered it at least had some homeliness and allowed me the privacy to collapse and think out my situation. On the map my town had swollen across the page into a city, the abattoir had vanished into suburbia, but my home street remained, and so I planned my journey. I spent the rest of the night watching the news, but I needed a maid’s help to get the gadget to work. I tried to piece together the last few decades from the quick slice format of the information, but I found it impossible. It confirmed the time I had been away: fifty-five years. Without undressing I fell asleep in my chair, pondering that missed existence.
Waking was unpleasant and made clear that the previous day’s shock had given me a boost of vi
tality, now exhausted. It was five in the morning, but the desire for answers trumped that of sleep. I saw only the day’s trek ahead of me.
Out of habit, I took the device out of my pocket. I turned the life-devouring device over in my polluted hands. I felt the temptation to break it, but it seemed futile to vent my fury on the knife I used to put out my eyes. Perhaps the machine had saved me from a worse fate; after all, the past self’s instruction was to not look for truth, he did not blame the machine.
My mind and body withered with exhaustion from the thought of the trek, but I could cheat it all just by touching the device. Did I trust myself enough? How would I know another precious year would not pass? I reflected on what I could lose now; suppose I discovered myself on my deathbed, in many ways I would count it as a blessing.
I held the device again and I was outside my house. I looked at my apparently new watch and some days had passed. Whereas this street had once been empty of motor vehicles, now obnoxious traffic choked the road, fettered only by the numerous glossy signs and lights. The terrace houses seemed well preserved under their coats of timid paint and skyscrapers had eaten up the stout industrial chimneys that once monopolised the horizon. The unnatural sun remained intense, even through the outlandish smog. The residence of well-built working men had been overrun by feeble insects in suits, walking hunchbacked to and from their occupations. Illuminated, animated billboards exhibited grinning perfection while the people displayed miserable drudgery.
I hobbled up to the door and rang the bell. A cartoon-like woman with hair curlers opened the door and gave me a glance of recognition.
“Is—?”
She stopped me, for her well-recited speech. “Yes! This was your old house. No! I don’t know anything about you. No! I don’t know where your wife has gone. Yes! You do come here over and over talking the same claptrap for the past decade. No! You can’t come in. I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know! See you in a few months’ time, you senile moron!”
She slammed the door. The men of the future shambled past me, while I stood wrestling with the inevitable. I saw in my destiny only repeats of the past. I must either give up or go on forever. Although I longed to know what had made me erase my memory over and over, perhaps I should just abandon the cause.
Maybe I had finally murdered the bitch, perhaps the price was finally realised or maybe it was just the awareness I had been wasting my existence with this grotesque device, which had ground my life into dust. I held up the device, ready to smash it, but it was folly. I had never done so before and I knew I could not now. I had chosen this damned, eternal hell above knowing the secret. Whatever this hellish loop was, why would I do anything but what had been done before?
I travelled down the street in a dazed wonder until I saw a phone booth with its insides painted with florescent graffiti and its glass spattered across the floor. To my surprise it worked and I asked directory enquires for my wife, but no one of that name was any longer listed in the town. I was about to hang up but then I asked for Thomas Pace.
“Yes, there is one listed. Shall I put you through?”
“Please.”
“… Retirement Village. Peg speaking. How can I help?”
“I want to speak to Mr Pace, please.”
“I afraid he’s asleep at the moment, sir.”
“Then wake him.”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Family.”
“May I have your name?”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Well, I guess you must be distant family, sir. Mr Pace has been unable to speak for the last eighteen months.” I hung up, called the directory again and got the address.
I hailed a taxi out of the creep of traffic. The old town gave way to glass and metal as we made our way through the skyscrapers. On arrival at Retirement Village I made more convincing excuses so that the nurse gave me access to the spartan bedroom. There was a repulsively dilapidated man lying in the bed. I turned to seek assurance from the nurse that this was indeed Tom, as there was no way to recognise him. She confirmed – and smiled as she shut the door. On approaching I think I awakened him because he jolted and an awful smile spread across his countenance, but his eyes remained closed, as if he was forcing them shut with determination. Fleshy scabs hung from his face. His hair descended from the sides of his head, but in stringy, tangled curtains.
I sat close to him. “You’re looking well, Tom.”
He made some feeble hand gestures at his throat, I guess to indicate he could not speak. I realised the smile was involuntary; in age, his skin had tightened, to give way to the grinning skull. I paused at the thought that this blind mute was only ten years my senior.
“You owe me, Tom. You owe me fifty years. Where is my wife?”
He flailed his hands until he hit on the cabinet of drawers next to him. I opened the first drawer. “What am I looking for, Tom?” He wheezed and tapped the chest with all his feeble force until I found the note addressed to me.
“I am sorry, but I am a victim too. We are both to blame. I sold you to him, and you sold yourself to him. I gave you to him to fulfil part of what I owed, but I don’t know what he took from you.
Every time you go on this journey, to find out why you deleted your memory over and over, you find the secret. And knowing that secret is what drives you to erase your memory. And you will run this circle till you die and I will help you.
Go visit him where you first met. That’s what you always do, do it again. Leave this note here. You will burn it if you take it.
Do not blame me. All I have done to you, you have also done to yourself.”
Underneath the note was my own writing. “He wrote this years ago. Now he is insane.”
“What is this, Tom? It doesn’t make any sense. You had fifty years to write this. Couldn’t you have managed something a little less cryptic? Where’s my wife, Tom?” He answered with heavy gasping.
“Where is she?” I gave him a pen. “Write it down. Write!”
He scrawled something, but it was not even words. “I can’t read this. Is she alive? Grunt once for yes, twice for no.” The wicked, sightless grimace was silent. I could get nothing from him.
The nurse returned. “Time’s up. It’s best not to tire him out.”
“He knows something important. How do I talk to him?”
“He’s not all there, sir. It won’t do any good. Time’s up.”
I got up and walked out. “I’m taking this letter, Tom. You may not be here next time.”
The nurse whispered to me. “You may want to say goodbye, sir. Never leave without saying goodbye properly.”
“Ok. But I don’t think the sentiment will do either of us much good.” I turned and shouted into the room, “You still smell of old people’s shit, Tom!” and laughed loudly.
As the nurse began her retributions, I held the device and I was at the doorway of the “warehouse” of that wretched occultist. It was in a grubby, neon-lit backstreet now, and the sun had given way to darkness and thick rain. Some days had passed according to my watch. I heard laughing and saw a collection of tramps eyeing me in the darkness. I could not help but feel that the knowledge of their superiority to me fuelled their humour.
The door was unlocked and I descended the staircase to that basement darkness. I needed some comfort, so feeling in my pocket I found a prepared torch which lit the way with a sharp beam. In my other pocket was the gun and a note, “KILL HIM”, but in honesty, I believed the chance was slim that the esoteric trader was still alive.
The damp, cold and dark of the place made it clear I would find no-one here. Cockroaches infested the floor and mould dressed the walls. I climbed deep down the throat of that dead giant until my bones complained and all sounds from the outside were blocked. I came to the door where I had sold my life.
Upon entering, my torch slashed through the darkness, revealing that all his magical paraphernalia had been removed and the naked stone floor’s to
mb-like feel. I saw no wall, for it was covered in thousands of notes, maps and pictures, all messages from me to me. Varieties of paper and media were jumbled in no order. Spray painted across it all in three-foot high letters were the words, “TURN BACK”.
I approached the insane, babbling wall. Each was an entreaty from the past selves. All had tried desperate and different tactics to get me to give up my quest. Some tried simple scare tactics; others attempted large, cryptic essays on the horror of what I was pursuing and logged my continued voluntary tour of hell. If these notes were, indeed, written by the various past selves, they had not worked prior to this; so only the newest note could be of value, but there was no system to find it.
My torch darted over the madness of these leads, to find out why I had cannibalised my life and why I was in the same position again. Many of them gave advice on how to avoid leaving a trail for the next cycle: “You left your receipts in the bin last time. Burn them”. “Don’t use the device here”. “You have given yourself false trails; do not even try to follow them”. “The secret didn’t eat up your family, knowing the secret did”.
Photos showed conflicting and impossible information about the demonic trader, some showed nonsense about my wife, some testified to the mad things I had done. This jumbled, self-deceptive nightmare was my rancid, lost memory, now found.
I fell painfully to my knees, in front of the testament to a wasted and unhappy life. I could see many pointless leads all heading to dead ends. I wept, twice over, for myself.
I crossed the threshold. Maybe this time my back was stiffer, Tom’s decay too deep, the notes were one too many, or the sun was just too hot. I had always managed to find out the secret and had repeatedly erased it. But this time I would destroy the device, before I found the truth, and thus force myself to keep that knowledge.
With my pathetic strength I threw the device against the wall and smashed its oily, black organs over the hateful gibberish. Like a burst damn, all the memories the device had horded gushed into me uninvited. The terror I had tried to repeatedly forget filled up every space in my consciousness and the pain and self-hatred returned, blotting out everything else from my mind.
