Forget-Me-Not and Other Strange Stories

Forget-Me-Not

            A blue Cinderella dress, all lace and frills hung on the door, untouched since the Halloween of age nine. The window was framed with translucent gray curtains and faded floral wallpaper. An absurd amount of teddies over-populated the bed and closet and childish etchings were pinned to the walls, gradually falling to the floor. The carpet was stained with paint and discolored due to years of continuous abuse. A sticker-covered stereo buzzed quietly at the very lowest volume that was still audible. A light-peg-design toy sported a half-finished outline of either a hippo with yellow legs or a crude depiction of a car. Propped up behind it was a cardboard sign advertizing lemonade for 25 cents, a relic of a failed burst of entrepreneurship and an experiment with an old cliché that didn’t apparently work. An old game of Monopoly was set up in the corner, the playing pieces replaced with bottle caps because everyone spent so much time arguing over the car that it just saved time to decide between flavors and brands. Other odds and ends scattered the ground, begging to be tripped over by the woman perched on the dusty pink bed sheets, frowning in pure boredom and scheduling the flight back to her apartment on her phone while doing the math in her head the absolute minimum time she needs to spend with her family before she has to get back to her ‘life.’ The window looked out into the snowy winter outside, and you could just hear the snow hitting the glass. The lady in the sensible brown sweater and black skirt didn’t, nor did she recognize Persistence of Memory, which was her favorite song until it wasn’t anymore, gradually getting louder.

I have written a note to myself to remind me that I have a soul.

So nothing can extinguish the light in my life and turn their embers to coal.

When I was I child I could see the heart in the home.

Now I’m living alone.

Photographs of strangers smiling at no one,

A self that I cannot recall…

The ink here is bleeding,

Time is receding,

The one action of my whole life is repeating

Again and Again,

Again and Again,

Again and Again.

Am I living at all?

Or has it been reduced to the pictures I hung on the walls?

I have written a note myself to remind me that I still have time.

Persistence of memory is relative to the life in me.

Change to a better rhyme.

You can be better if you try.

Thaw out that heart of ice.

Before you hear the flatline.

“The ink here is bleeding, time is receding, the one action of my whole life is repeating again and again, again and again, again and again…” Sang a small off-key voice with so much enthusiasm it almost hid the fact that she was—to put it bluntly—a terrible vocalist. A gangly eight-year-old with mud-brown hair and freckles lay propped up in a corner with all the now ‘creepy’ dolls. It took a solid few seconds for the woman to realize who she was looking at. The child, which had almost been singing at her in an attempt to grab what little attention she was capable of paying to anything, stared and waited. The lady just looked at her for a long time.

“Y-you’re me!” The way she said it, you’d think it was Bloody Mary who’d made an appearance.

“The sky is blue.” The apparition stated monotonously.

The woman jumped a little. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry; I thought we were stating the obvious.” Her child self replied sarcastically. “Do you really need my say-so? We stared in a mirror long enough.”

She was harsh with herself as ever.  The adult blinked hard, as if she thought that would make her disappear. The vision stayed, but made no move to get up from her spot on the floor. “Go away.” The lady said, crossing her arms. “I don’t need a reminder of—”

“Of how much you wanted to be this?” With what looked like some effort, the kid pointed at her present self. “What do you do? Work, home, and bills. You have a week here. Away from that stuff.”

“It’s. Dull.”

Those words suddenly sounded so stupid that she was shocked the smaller she didn’t absolutely pitch a fit of unadulterated—Ignore the pun—frustration. The girl didn’t seem to have the strength. She sighed.

“So’s this, bein’ alone all the time. Feeling you forgetting. Life was supposed to be an adventure when I grew up. You just wanna exist.” The elder turned away.

“I—”

“Yeah, you walked all the way to the library last week—and back!” The younger rolled her eyes. “You want some sort of sticker?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”

“What do you want?”

The two glared at each other, momentarily set in a verbal stalemate. The younger broke the silence.

“This could easily become your whole life, you know. The thing about routine is that fifty years could go by and you wouldn’t notice until you started getting old folks home stuff in the mail.”

The older’s brow furrowed marginally, and her face twitched into a faint grimace.

“And not bein’ alone doesn’t mean ya havta go find a man that your probably gonna hate after five years’ marriage, and spend eighteen years chasing after rambunctious little punks like m—us.” The child seemed to almost sink into the wallpaper, but her lips pulled themselves into a small smile.

“How’d we used to go ‘bout it? You do what ya like, and maybe you fall into step with others, maybe they fall into step with you, and maybe soon those types get stuck on you. Even if they don’t, they were there and what they teach ya lingers. And even then, we’re one of those in this world that’ll always have a family to come back to. Well, for now. Our parents won’t be ‘round forever, we really don’t have time to treat these little things like a burden. Have we ever tried to talk to ‘em? They’re human, aren’t they? How bad can they be? They always seemed pretty cool, by grownup standards.”

The lady’s face softened and her mouth relaxed into something that could’ve been a smile. Nostalgia, regret, hope, fear of the unknown, and guilt mixed an clashed on her face like watercolors with too much water for the paper to absorb. She was still listening to her child self go on, but it was gradually beginning to sound more like her own.

“And we’ve got chances they never dreamed of, money they never had. We can go places, learn languages, do loony stuff like skydive or climb a mountain. We’ve got your whole life for the making still, don’t let it finish on auto-pilot. But I should focus on one thing at a time… Enjoy what’s happening now. I have a week with my family, the holidays are upon us, and I haven’t seen their faces since I can’t remember when… did I say hello to my father when I came in? I should…”

She looked up, realizing her child self wasn’t the one speaking anymore.

She was talking to herself.

            Downstairs, she heard her mother calling for her. More of her family had arrived, including her cousin and childhood friend. She tried to remember what he did for a living now, and decided to make a note to ask. She looked down at the phone, which had long since gone to sleep, and considered the half-finished flight plans she had been making.

“Forget it.”

She pocketed the phone and picked her way out of her room, feeling better than she had in months.

“Hey, Mom? I’m up here!”