MNEMOSYNE, Chapter 9
Table of Contents
MNEMOSYNE
Chapter 9
That nameless, homeless man—the only person to bring up the monolith on their own, the only person able to remember it, the only person who cared—is dead. That’s what she said just now on the phone, isn’t it? That the poor homeless man is dead. It’s hard to believe. It doesn’t seem real, and I really didn’t need more unreality. Maybe I shouldn’t have reactivated the telecommunication system in my home. Why had I turned it back on in the first place?
Oh, that’s right. Because of that incredibly loud banging on my front door that startled me awake one morning. That was some time ago, wasn’t it? And it turned out to be the police. They said they were performing a wellness check. I said they came to the right place, because I’m a wellness expert. They said they knew that. Said some people at the Facility had expressed concern about me because I hadn’t contacted anyone in some time. They specified how long it had been... Days? Weeks? I forgot what they said. I guess I could ask the system, but I’d rather just deactivate it again. I wish I hadn’t heard from Tiffany about the bum just now.
What was I doing before her call? Writing? I was writing in my notebook, by hand, for the privacy, and Tiffany interrupted with that news. I was writing about how she and I had said we would figure this all out together, and how I’m not sure any of that was ever the truth.
At least she did call, even if her voice was distant, distressed, but also yearning. I guess it was a sound of concern? Maybe some of our teamwork was real?
Regardless, it was good to hear from her. Maybe I should have asked if anyone knew why he killed himself, but I didn’t. Because I don’t believe he killed himself. I believe he knew something, and I believe we, he and I, could have worked together to find the truth. There was some sort of miscommunication. Or something. Something could have been handled differently. Maybe if I had been more patient, had been more willing to work with him, maybe then he’d still be alive. Maybe we would have remembered more about the monolith together.
But they wouldn’t have allowed that. That might have ended with me being dead, too. I bet the cop, Tiffany’s so-called friend, was just waiting for me to make a move. Waiting for me to call the jail and get myself recorded. Waiting for me to show up at the jail. Waiting for me to show my hand. Just waiting, eagerly, for me to slip up.
So there’s no other way it could have gone. The poor homeless man had to die.
Luckily, as things stand now, I’m onto them. I’ve been taking certain steps. Staying inside helps. The notebook helps. No technology, I think that helps. Oh, that’s right! I need to turn off the system again. That’ll help avoid surprises as well as prying eyes. I’ll do that in a minute. For now, there’s my notepad. Looking down at it, flipping through the pages, I repeatedly see those initials.
N. H.
They must stand for something, but I have no idea. No Hint? Maybe that’s it?
I need to stop scribbling. I need to get some rest.
...
It’s been a few days since I’ve talked to anyone. That awful call with Tiffany was the last time. I’m not sure what’s bothering me right now, but I feel off. I could just be hungry, I definitely don’t eat enough. I also don’t visit the Fit for Life Facility or the monolith anymore. That’s depressing, right? But I think they’ll stop me, so why bother? And what if they come to my home while I’m gone? They could plant something, not just listening to devices, that wouldn’t be the worst of it. What if they planted red herrings and distractions and obfuscations? That could ruin everything.
Maybe I should call Tiffany. We didn’t talk long that day. I simply put the phone down after she said the bum killed himself, went to my bedroom, then looked at my notepad. How long did I scribble in there? How long did I lie down? How long did I sleep?
My sense of time seems off.
Maybe it’s just this pain in my neck, distracting me. I’m not sure what it is, this burning ache coming at random times for random lengths of time. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a tiny little version of the monolith sinking into my cervical spine, right into my neck, just below my head. A clever piece of quartz digging its way into the craniocervical junction.
I need to stop scratching it.
Isn’t there a knife in the kitchen? Of course there’s a knife in the kitchen, but why did I think of a knife just now?
I’ll lie down some more. Where’s my notepad? Does it even matter? Are there even any more blank pages? Is there even anything left to write?
...
The phone wakes me up. I could have been sleeping for an hour, or for days, and I don’t care either way… but that damn phone.
I need to turn off the system. I keep forgetting. Maybe I secretly want to answer the call? Maybe… but I’m not accepting a video call, that’s for sure. Why do they expect me to answer those? Who wants to see someone like that? Over some strange airwaves and with strange glass masquerading as the person you actually want to see, smell, touch, and so on...
But maybe I should answer. For a voice call. Voice ony. That’ll be fine, that’s more natural, the sounds of voices. I haven’t heard the sound of a voice since Tiffany called a while back.
Maybe it’s Tiffany calling...
I answer the phone. It’s not Tiffany. It’s Jasper.
He says he’s sorry, but he sounds more exhausted than sorry. He says he’s working at a new job somewhere. Maybe it’s hard work for him, exhausting work. But do I really care? After what he’s done? I want to skip straight to asking him about the monolith, but that’s the problem with using devices, I can’t just do or say anything I want and expect to maintain my privacy.
I notice there’s been a long silence. He speaks just as I’m about to check the connection.
“Regina keeps calling me,” he says. “Apparently she’s calling everyone she can, says you won’t talk to her, says she needs to talk to you.”
“About what?”
He sighs and it sounds strange. Jasper isn’t the type to sigh, especially not on the phone for dramatic effect.
“It wasn’t for dramatic effect, Alex,” he says, sighing again. “Man, you’re exhausting.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. What does she want though?”
“For you to get a psych eval. For you to be declared fit or unfit.”
“Oh, she’d love unfit,” I say. “Call it, Unfit for Life. Just rename the place and take it, Regina.”
“Alex, get the evaluation, man. Get some help. Please. It’s hard to see you like this.”
The joke is too obvious. See me? I’ll move on.
“It’s hard to get help,” I say. “There’s not many people willing to take this risk that I’m taking. Not many people willing to fight against all of this. You couldn’t do it, Jasper. Look how you planted those trees for them.”
“I planted the trees because you told me to plant the trees, Alex.”
“You say that.”
“Alex.”
“So you’re siding with Regina?” I say, continuing despite his continued sighs. “Is Tiffany on board with the two of you? Do you know? I haven’t heard from—oh, yes, I did. Did you hear that the bum who attacked me killed himself, Jasper? As if anyone would believe—”
“I don’t want to talk about any of that,” his words are assertive, but his voice is strained and shaky. “I’ll just be straightforward with you and say what I have to say. You need mental help. Alex. We all love you. That Tiffany girl’s crazy about you. She would’ve done anything for you. Most of us would have. And maybe it didn’t help. Maybe she encouraged you too much. Maybe I did, too. Maybe if we hadn’t supported you and your delusions and your slacking off from work, maybe this could have been avoided. We saw the signs, but, well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
“That’s okay, Jasper,” I say, feeling hopeful. “We can work on it now. Better late than never, right? How about we meet somewhere and I show you some of these notes I’ve been—“
“I can’t, Alex,” he says, pausing, starting, pausing again, then, “I have to live my life, Alex. If and when you get help, get a hold of me. You—you were a good man. Good luck.”
“Jasper?” I ask, but he’s gone. A little voice is saying that the other party disconnected. Finally, I remember to tell the house to turn off the com system.
Were, he said. Were a good man. Inconsiderate past-tense. Or maybe that’s the joke. Ironic past-tense. Jasper did love to joke. Does. Whatever. Good luck to you, too, Jasper.
You clownish fraud.
...
I bolt upright in the bed and I’m drenched in sweat. But I’m not in the bed, am I? I’m on the floor. Why am I on the floor? I try to get up but I’m too lightheaded. Why am I drenched in sweat? What was I just dreaming about? I keep dreaming strange dreams—or are they memories? It’s hard to tell sometimes, not that that’s entirely unusual. Waking from a dream and having to remind yourself that it was the dream, that this, now, this waking moment, is the reality—that’s not so unusual.
I’ve been sleeping a lot. And sometimes in my dreams it’s like a memory of a different monolith, or of a different fitness facility, or of a different—but I just remind myself of—I remind myself of what seems accurate. Maybe I should visit one of them to refresh my memory. In reality, I mean. Not in my dreams again. I could clear things up, give myself a refresher. Remind myself of—
Maybe the house could help remind me of some things? Like how long I’ve been sleeping… Oh, that’s right, I turned the system off a few days ago, after the phone call with Jasper. Then I dreamed again. About stars. About staring at the stars, on my back, in the grass. About inexplicable beams of sunlight, like yellow lines painted on black paper, obscuring my view. But it wasn’t sunlight, was it? Because the sky was black and the stars were out. And sunlight doesn’t tickle when it touches your nose.
It was hair. Golden blonde hair, like Tiffany’s hair, but not Tiffany, because this hair lead up to gray eyes, not green ones. A different woman was there with me, in the dream, looking at me with her cold, gray eyes, sitting next to me while I lied there and stared up at the night sky.
Who was she?
Was, she was the woman who was. In ironic past-tense. She was, so she can’t possibly be here, not here in the present-tense. And, with that thought, in the dream—she disappeared. I looked around for her, but she was gone. Machines began to hum and buzz and beep and I again looked to sky—but it had disappeared too, replaced by a ceiling painted in a familiar, off-white color. Suddenly, something seemed to stab my neck, much like the feeling in my neck now, except that, in the dream, I couldn’t slap my hand against the pain or rub it or ice it as usual. No, I could barely move at all. I looked around, and I could see myself strapped down to some sort of gurney. I strained to look around more, and I could see silhouettes of people, their vague shadows spreading against the glow of the off-white walls. I tried to scream at them to stop, not sure of what I wanted them to stop. I tried to tell them that I’d changed my mind, not sure of what I’d changed it about. I tried to ask for the woman to come back, not sure of the woman’s name. The woman who was.
But no sound would come out of my mouth and, panicked and sweating, I woke up here, alone in my little house of concrete and glass. Here, on the floor, with the back of my neck hurting worse than in the dream. I’m rubbing it, and I feel something in there. I’ve felt it before, the pain and the little object. Maybe it’s a quartz crystal, as I’ve been speculating? Maybe it’s a tiny monolith, right there in my neck, prying into me.
I get up. I go to the kitchen. That’s why I’d wondered about the knife. When was that? How many days have passed? No matter. Just grab that and—
Does it hurt worse? No, that was just the initial incision. Go a bit deeper. Now then, there’s some relief. I think I got it.
But I can’t see the little monolith. My hands are all red. It dawns on me that the dead man, the one who claimed I invited him into my life, must have done the same thing. That must have been why there was blood coming out of this same spot on his neck.
But wasn’t he mad? Insane? Or was he a victim of something?
Am I?
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a window, and the sight of myself gets me laughing. Except I’m not laughing silently, not like the man I so now resemble. No, I’m laughing loudly, defiantly, laughing so hard that tears run down my face.
What is happening to me?
And what is that beeping? The front door? The house couldn’t be alerting me to the arrival of a visitor, not now, of all times. I thought I’d turned all of that technology off. I’ll turn it off now. I’m not going to deal with some visitor. Is that a knock? A manual knock? What a foreign sound.
Now there’s a voice, a real, human voice, a woman’s voice, slightly tense and loud, yet still silky and sweet.
It’s Tiffany.
I open the door and keep one hand behind it, the other behind the wall to my left. I don’t want her to see the blood. It might frighten her.
“Tiffany!” I say. I’m about to add something, but she covers her mouth with both hands. I remember seeing my reflection just now. It is that bad, isn’t it? I almost pull myself back into the darkness of my living room, but I have to keep my hands in their hiding places. I should have gotten a towel.
“Alex,” she says, noticing her hand on her mouth, then dropping it to her side. “I don’t know what to say, Alex. I had it all thought out. But you look… different.”
“You mean the stubble?” I ask. “I definitely need a shave, no doubt. I haven’t slept well either. I write a lot and I think and I worry a bit and I need a chiropractor or something, my neck has been bothering me, but I think that’s better now and—” I just noticed how I’m talking. Stop. “What have you been up to, Tiffany? How’s the Yoga Center?”
She stares at me for a minute. I stare back. Why aren’t her eyes green? Is she really Tiffany? Or some other woman? Why are her eyes so cold and dark?
“Can I come in?” she asks. “I wanted to say some things to you. About your health, and the Facility, and—”
“No,” I interrupt.
“I’m sorry, I thought maybe,” she trails off and backs up a step or two. I had thought I was onto her, but the moonlight catches her eyes and they glow emerald. I was wrong. She really is Tiffany.
“Maybe another time,” I say, softening my tone. “I’m busy, preoccupied, doing a lot of work. You know how it goes.”
“Alex, I want to respect your boundaries, but there’s so much I want to—it’s just that—”
She’s trying not to cry, but I don’t know what to say. Why is she crying? I don’t know how it’s come to this, or what this even is. Her eyes are closed now, and I realize how much I’ve missed her green eyes.
“Alex,” she says after a deep breath, stepping somewhat closer toward the door, toward me. “I want you to get help. I want you to be able to come back to your business. What can I do to convince you that I’m on your side? That we’re all on your side, all of us, even Regina. We just want you to know that we believe in you. Everyone goes through hard times, Alex. Everyone. Remember when we drove to the Facility that night? And I told you that I used to be high-strung? I had a nervous breakdown years ago. I went through this sort of thing you’re going through, in my own way.”
She pauses and delicately wipes the corners of her eyes, then wipes down the sides of her face. She’s so measured, balanced, even in a moment like this, even as she’s remembering her own trauma. And imagining mine… Well, that is, if she can even remember the monolith.
“But this isn’t about me,” she says. “I just mean to say that I can relate to you. I’ve related to your problems the whole time you’ve been struggling. And now I see that you’re stuck in your home like this and all I can do is think of how I might be able to help. And all I’ve come up with is to ask you this: what can I do to get you to see a doctor, Alex? What can I do to get you to see that I’m on your side and that a doctor could help you? Do you know? Can you work with me on this, Alex? Please?”
As always, she asks great questions. And she’s so refreshingly sincere. I don’t fully believe her, though. It’s too perfect. There’s a simple way to check, to see if she really wants to work with me on all of this. It’s risky, but I have to go for it.
“Go with me to the monolith,” I say. “We’ll face it together.”
“To the—to the what?”
“You forgot again. Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s so hard to remember. It doesn’t want you to remember.”
“Alex, I don’t—“
“I already know, Tiffany,” I say, reassuring her. “But we need to go to it. It’s harder to remember up close, but we have to go to it. You don’t have to go near it, you can stand back. Actually, it’ll be better that way because it’ll keep your memory fresher. That’ll make it easier for you to remind me what I’m doing and encourage me to finally walk the path that comes up from the ground.”
“Alex, this whole building thing, that’s how this started, right?” She almost stops herself, looking down, then she nods to herself and continues. “That thing by the bridge. We’ve looked through records and you asked nearly everyone you know about it. But there’s nothing to it. If you could just leave it alone—”
“Tiffany, it’s making you think that,” I plead with her, leaning forward, past the door frame. “The building makes everyone forget. Makes everyone averse to it. Everyone but me and—well you know what happened to him. No matter. The building is the thing. You were right on that point. And all that I have left is going up to it myself. Confronting it directly. Don’t like at me like that, it’ll be safe, for both of us. You come with me, do this one thing, and I’ll know you’re not one of them, I’ll know you’re really on my side. We’ll face it together, Tiffany, like you said. This is the perfect time, the perfect moment, and I just need you to—what is it, Tiffany? What are you looking at?”
I follow her eyes to my midsection and realize that I’ve stopped hiding my hands.
“It’s nothing, Tiffany. Don’t look like at me like that. Your eyes, they’re too big, but I’ve always thought you had—you have—big, beautiful eyes, and—Tiffany, it’s nothing, I nicked myself a bit shaving. Oh. I told you I hadn’t shaved, didn’t I? Okay. Maybe it’s not from shaving. It’s just a little paper cut—look—”
I turn around slightly to show her the exit of the little monolith. She screams. Then she starts apologizing. She’s saying it’s not that bad. It’s just some blood. But, no, she can’t, no, this is too much. She’s flustered for the first time since I’ve known her, indecisive—except for how she’s backing away.
Why won’t she stop backing away?
“You aren’t going to go with me, are you?” I ask.
“Alex!” she shouts, then calms herself and opens her car door. “Alex, I don’t think I can help you. You need a professional.”
“So you’re leaving me. To face it all by myself?”
“Alex, it’s not like that. If you’ll allow it, I’ll come back with a doctor tomorrow.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I need to face the monolith.”
“Stop calling it that!” she yells.
“But you called it that. Remember? Of course you don’t remember...”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have to go, Alex. I have to go.”
She’s getting into the car. Leaving me. I feel like I’ve been here before, like I’ve been left alone to face this monolith before. And I have, haven’t I? I’m the only one who’s been willing to face it. I have to go on my own. I’ll do it on my own. I don’t need her. But I’m right by her car door, holding it open. If I could just get her to remember. If I could just get everyone to remember. If I could just get myself to—
“Alex, you’re scaring me. I want to leave.”
“How can you leave me like this?”
“It’s not up to you, you can’t make me stay here, let me go.”
“I don’t want to let you go, Jenna,” I plead, my voice cracking. “Not again, Jenna, not again, please.”
“Jenna?” she asks, her eyes wide, her hands shoving me away. “Alex, I’m not Jenna. I don’t know who Jenna is. I have to go.”
Her shove didn’t make me back up. It didn’t make me let the door close either. That name did. Jenna. Why did I call her that? As soon as I finished saying it, I froze, I couldn’t move, as if my body and my mind were no longer cooperating. And now I’m helplessly watching Tiffany drive away, hearing her say something, something forgiving or understanding or—
Well, it’s no matter. She’s driving away now. The little red taillights blink a few times, as if in disbelief that I just did all of what I just did, and I don’t blame them.
I have no idea who Jenna is. Except that I’m certain that whoever she is, she doesn’t have emerald eyes. I need to go inside. I need to sort this out. I need to find my notes. I can’t find them. I go to the kitchen and see the blood in the sink. That’s not helpful. Where’s my journal? Where is anything I need right now? Why can’t I get oriented in my own home? Something is off, I’ve missed something, I thought it’d be in my notes, but I can’t find them.
There it is, on the floor. I open it. Where is Jenna in here? Do I have notes in here about her? I can’t make out anything—it’s upside down. Funny. It’s like my life. Upside down.
Something just fell to the floor. The invitation I sent to the bum. But I couldn’t have sent it. And it wasn’t to him alone, was it? It was sent to numerous inmates. Inmates who then didn’t want to leave. But I don’t know why I think that, and I know even less why I think that there’s some connection between the inmates and that name, Jenna. But I do, and I do, and that’s that.
I pick up the glossy piece of paper and rub it between my fingers. Then I look at the bottom, at the signature of the letters N and H. There’s something about those two letters, something about them being in my handwriting. Did I sign a lot of these this way, is that why they feel familiar? Why would I have done it, though? And why would I have sent them to inmates? Is it why they wouldn’t leave? My invitations?
No. That’s ridiculous. It was some sort of therapy, some treatment...
I wish that bum hadn’t killed himself, I wish we could have answered these questions together, I wish I hadn’t—
I did, didn’t I? I tried to shut him up. I didn’t want to hear what answers he might have had. Not because he sounded crazy, but because he sounded like he knew something, like he was onto something. And I tried to shut down Fit for Life, not because it was the problem, but because it was the only clear thing to blame. I’ve been running from the very thing I’ve been chasing, haven’t I?
And I blame the monolith, because so little about it is clear, because it gets into your brain and stops the remembering, it always does, to everyone.
But that name. Jenna. It’s like it’s given me a foothold in my own mind. The monolith can’t make me forget that name, not now, because I can tell something has changed. Maybe it’s the finality of it all? The finality of Tiffany giving up on me, of all of them giving up on me, of cutting off something. Like how I tried to cut that tiny monolith from my neck, except that I cut them—no, they cut themselves—out of my life.
Is that what happened with Jenna? Why would I even think that? How can I ever sort this out? If Tiffany were here, if she hadn’t given up on me, what would she suggest? For some reason, it feels the same as what that other woman would suggest. I can almost remember… and I called her that name...
Okay. So what would they suggest?
To meditate.
That’s it. I’ll meditate. I just need to find my center. It’s not Fit for Life. That’s over with. So what is it?
The two mysteries with no clear answers. They’re my center. The two names, one, a set of initials, the other—Jenna.
I’ll meditate on that. On N, H, and Jenna.
That’s what Tiffany would do, and, by extension, I think that’s what Jenna would do.
