Remembering is Dangerous

1. Shadows of Memory

The day Dad died still tastes like cold metal in my mouth.

I was seven years old. Too young to understand the finality of death, but old enough to feel the emptiness it left behind, like a wound in the center of my chest that wouldn't stop bleeding.

The day my father died, the sky stayed blue. That felt wrong. I remember thinking that. The clouds didn't weep. The world didn't pause. There was no thunder, no sudden darkness. Just a normal Tuesday.

I was seven years old, walking home from school with my backpack thumping against my spine, the sun hot on my neck. My shoes were too small. My shirt clung to my back with sweat. I kicked rocks. I hummed under my breath. And when I got home, the front door was wide open.

Inside, the air was wrong.

It was too quiet. Too still. The living room looked untouched—coffee mug on the table, his jacket over the back of the chair. But the silence screamed. I don't remember if I called his name. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't need to.

On the kitchen table, I found a note. Folded in half. Simple ballpoint pen.

"I'm sorry."

I didn't cry. Not at first. I sat down in the chair, feet swinging above the floor, and stared at the paper until the words stopped making sense.

After that, things moved fast. Blurred faces. Police officers. The thrum of questions. A ride in the back seat of a car with a plastic divider. A social worker whose smile didn't reach her eyes.

The orphanage smelled like boiled cabbage and bleach. The walls were painted pale yellow, like that made it better. They put me in a room with two other boys. One snored. The other cried at night and thought I didn't hear.

I kept to myself. Didn't talk much. Words felt heavy. The other kids played loud games. I sat in corners, watching. Listening. My hands fidgeted. I started sketching in the margins of worksheets — things I didn't remember learning, symbols I didn't understand.

After six months, they said I was "hard to place," but still shipped me out to the first of three foster homes.

The first was the most well-meaning. Mrs. Donahue baked cookies every Tuesday and insisted I sit in the sunniest part of the garden to "soak up some cheer." She meant well. But I wasn't cheer. I was storm.

"Smile, Ailill," she said one morning, her voice soft but firm. "Make some friends."

But her other kids avoided me. I didn't talk. I stared too long. I sometimes woke up screaming about things I didn't remember when I opened my eyes.

The second home was smaller. The man there didn't speak much. There were no other kids, just old clocks that ticked too loudly and a dog that barked whenever I came near. He kept the TV on all the time — old war films and static.

Once, I asked him why the shadows moved on their own in his hallway. He locked me in my room for two days after that. I didn't ask again.

The third home—well, let's just say it was the last straw. They didn't hit. Not in ways that left bruises. But their eyes were cruel. The woman called me "ghost-boy." Said I had "witch eyes." Her husband just ignored me. I became furniture. Unwanted. Unnamed.

I lasted three months. Then I left. Slipped out one night with a backpack half-full of crackers and an old hoodie two sizes too small. I was nine.

The streets didn't welcome me. They didn't care. But they didn't ask me to explain myself, and that was something.

The first nights, I slept in stairwells. Then under benches. I learned which trash bins still had food inside. I stole from convenience stores when I had to. I stopped thinking about what I was becoming.

And then the monsters came.

They didn't call themselves monsters, but I knew. You can tell. By the eyes. By the way they breathe too slowly, too evenly. By the way they smell, like something rotting under sugar.

They found me in alleys. Near dumpsters. On rooftops. At first, I ran. I was fast. Small. Invisible.

But running only worked for so long.

The first time I fought back, I used a rusted pipe. It screamed when I hit it—like a man, but not quite. Like something trying to sound human. I hit it again. And again. Until it stopped moving. Until it bled onto the concrete.

After that, I didn't sleep easy. But I survived.

I found an abandoned house after nearly two years. Nestled behind a crumbling church on the edge of a forgotten neighborhood. The door hung crooked, like it had been kicked in years ago. There were spiderwebs and shattered glass and mildew in the walls.

But it was shelter. It had a roof. I claimed a room upstairs with a window that overlooked the trees. I barricaded the door with furniture. I covered the floor in old blankets and garbage bags.

And I stayed.

I grew.

Not tall, not wide. I stayed thin, wiry, built like a cat used to flinching. But strong. From fighting, climbing, running. From living scared and angry.

And something else grew too.

The dreams.

Sometimes they weren't mine. I'd wake up with names I didn't know in my mouth. Or I'd smell fire, salt, smoke—and then it'd vanish. I started writing it all down, scribbling on scraps of paper with pens I stole from gas stations.

Notebooks, eventually. Stolen, too. Or found. Filled cover to cover with dreams, memories, strange phrases that made my head hurt.

I knew things I shouldn't. Snippets of old stories, lost words. I remembered the lives of strangers who hadn't spoken their names in centuries.

And somewhere deep inside, I felt... her.

My mother.

I never knew her name. Never saw her face. But I could feel her — like the low hum of electricity under my skin. Like whispers in a library long collapsed. Like a pressure behind my eyes when I remembered something no child should know.

She wasn't a human. That much I could tell. She was older. Different. Important. The kind of presence that made shadows stretch and words taste heavier in your mouth.

I didn't speak her name. I didn't know it.

But I carried her in my blood.

And even though I didn't understand why I remembered the things I did, I knew one truth:

For someone like me, forgetting was never an option.

Because forgetting was impossible.

And remembering was both a gift and a curse.

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1114 Words