Journal for Missing Memories

FINAL ENTRY

“KISS” 

A few weeks ago, I wandered into a field of grazing cows. I took Emily1 there yesterday and we sat on a rock and looked out at the field. The place was virtually unchanged from when I was there last. Like every blade of grass was in the same spot, every cloud in the same shape. The cows were still there, grazing away.

The only sound we could hear was the trees hissing, but if the sun could make noise, it would be screaming. 

Grandma’s still missing. I gave the police the letter she sent me but that hasn’t seemed to make a difference. It looks like she’s really done it. Grandma’s really run away and I miss her. 

As for Emily2, they never found her either. I know it’s a strange thought but sometimes I wonder if the two of them ran away together.

There was something that was really bothering me and I had to ask Emily1.

ME: Emily, it’s very important I know something. Was the house really already burned down when we got there?

EMILY1: Why are you asking me this?

ME: It’s just that I wanted to be sure, you know. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and-

She put her finger on my lips and smiled. We sat facing each other, quietly for a few moments, and then I spoke.

ME: I’ve been here once before, you know. I called you from this very rock after we stole that octopus.

EMILY1: I guess that makes sense. It’s really quiet here.

I put my arm around her shoulder.

ME: Can I take a picture of you?

EMILY1: Nope, no pictures. I hate it when people take pictures of me. Why do you even want one?

ME: For my journal. Sometimes I put pictures in it.

EMILY1: I have a journal too. What’s yours called?

ME: It’s called: The Journal for Missing Memories.

She grinned.

EMILY1: The Journal for Missing Memories?

ME: Yeah. But I don’t think I’m going to write in it anymore. I’ve written all about the last three months of my life.

EMILY1: Am I in it?

At that point our noses were almost touching, so we kissed.

JOURNAL ENTRY #12

“LETTER FROM GRANDMA”

My Grandmother’s been missing for over two days. The police haven’t been able to track her down. They think she’s left town. I don’t even know how she got so far without the car. 

In any case, I got a letter from her this morning:

“Dear, dear Carl,

I am writing to you from my new home. I love it here. I’m sure you’ll be able to take care of yourself. Just make sure you do the dusting regularly. I won’t be around to nag you to do it.

I had a dream the other night that I died and you turned my ashes into gunpowder for fireworks. You set them off and I soared high and above our town. It was the most beautiful feeling. I could see everything, our house, the library, even the little greenhouse you love to go to. And it was like I was lighting up the whole town with my bright purple glow. Everything was bathed with purple and it made me feel like I was everywhere. Waking up from that dream was the saddest moment of my life.

I ran away because I want to feel like that again. I don’t know what it is about our house, but the air feels stagnant, the water tastes weird. I need something new. I have this rush of energy in me now and I want to use it. I’m sure you understand. 

Right now I’m far, far away. Tell the police to stop wasting their time trying to find me because they never will.

I’ve left you a little present under the kitchen sink. I wanted to give it to you because in the dream you used one just like that to send me off into space. I think it captures our relationship perfectly. I bought it from this nice couple I met at the bar. The girl was so nice, she made me think of you. I hope you find someone like her.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the present. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to lose it. It’ll always have a way of finding you. Because I love you.

Take care of yourself, 

Grandma”

I ran downstairs to the kitchen and there was a red box under the sink, just like she said. It was small, smaller than my palm. I undid the lace bow and opened the box. It was an ornate, silver lighter.

JOURNAL ENTRY #11

“INDOOR FIREWORKS” 

I did it. I ingested the Pentheus americana aloe and it did exactly what I expected it to. It caused a big gap in my memory of the day. Emily1 was with me the whole time and here’s what she says happened:

I began talking really loudly and had a sort of shouting match with the TV. I told Emily1 that there was something I really had to do and that she needed to come with me. We got into my car and sped away to Emily2’s house. I drove with my broken arm and was quite adamant (and a bit rude) that I was fine. On the way, I kept saying something about wanting to take revenge on her boyfriend for breaking my arm. I also wanted to ask him about the aloe because he obviously knew something about it.

When we got to the house it was totally burned down. Like someone had bombed the place and then incinerated it. They don’t have any neighbors for miles so I suppose no one noticed it. I got on my knees and cried for Emily2. According to Emily1, I rolled around weeping in the mud for an hour with my hands in my face while she went around examining the place. She came across the charred remains of Emily2’s boyfriend in what was apparently the kitchen. 

While Emily1 called the police, I roamed around the burnt ruins of the house picking things up and smelling them. After doing this for a couple of hours I just sat in the car and closed my eyes.

The policeman told Emily1 that it seemed like “someone had lined the place with gasoline and then set fireworks off from inside the house.” 

They had found the lighter that was probably used to set the fireworks off.

I didn’t say a word.

When they asked us why we were there, we told them we were just driving by.

The police also said that Emily2 was missing. Her car was gone. They had alerted the highway police and they were treating her as the primary suspect. People at her work had said that Emily2’s relationship with her boyfriend had become strained. They also reported that she’d been worried and angry because her boyfriend would disappear for hours on a regular basis and was really distant when he did come back. When she asked for an explanation he would always claim to not know where he had been. The policeman told us all this while drinking water out of a Sigg bottle. 

I began to regain my senses at around this time and I vaguely remember the drive home. By the time we were on the highway I had pretty much recovered from the effects of the aloe.

Emily1 took me back home, and when we got back, the front door was wide open and I sensed that something was different about the place. I ran into the kitchen, checked the bathrooms and darted into Grandma’s’s bedroom. The bed was unmade and the cupboards were all open.

Grandma was gone.

JOURNAL ENTRY #10

“Pentheus americana”

A while ago, I saw Emily2’s boyfriend clipping off a tip of a cactus in the greenhouse. When he saw me watching him, he attacked me breaking two more bones in my arm. He wanted something with this cactus so I decided to do a little detective work and find out what it was. 

The plant’s name is Pentheus americana. There was very little information online but here’s what I compiled:

Pentheus americana

Found in: Central Mexico and some parts of Northern Australia

Pentheus americana is a large, flowering aloe plant that grows in the wild. The plant only lives for about ten to twenty years depending on the climate. It has long, green leaves which can grow up to three meters in length under the right conditions. It doesn’t require watering more than once a month. Its flowers bloom only once every three years and are either pink or white.

Rumors about the psychological effects of the aloe juice (when ingested) have been circulated for years.* These effects include:

-Feelings of weightlessness, self confidence

-Extreme hunger pangs

-Temporary loss of ego/ self identity

-Delusions of immortality*

The effects depend on the maturity of the plant and the amount ingested. For legal reasons, the reports have never been formally tested or confirmed. It has been said that this plant has been used for decades in shamanic rituals to overcome both psychological and physical ailments.*

*citation needed

Have I been ingesting this aloe? I don’t remember ever doing it but that could just be because of the temporary loss of ego/ self identity.

There’s only one way to find out.

Right now, I’m sitting at my dining table with Emily1 (The Emily who’s been helping me out). She’s watching some action movie on TV, not paying much attention to me typing this. I’ve got a glass of water in front of me. In the glass of water, I’ve mixed some of the aloe from the Pentheus Americana. This time I’m going to drink it on purpose, and I want Emily1 around just in case (of course I haven’t told her what’s about to happen. She thinks I’m just drinking water). Having her around reassures me a little, and there’s no point scaring her. 

This diary entry is a record that I am about to ingest the aloe, in case I forget later. I’m going to gulp it all down. I look over at Emily1. She’s laughing hysterically at the movie.

OK, here we go.

JOURNAL ENTRY #9

“HALLUCINATIONS”

A couple days ago, I went back to the greenhouse to look at the plants. I invited Emily1 (the one from the library who’s been helping me out) but she said she was busy. I haven’t seen her since we broke into the TV station last week. I know she wasn’t busy.

The greenhouse is my favorite place to go when I can’t think straight. I took the bus because I couldn’t drive with my broken elbow. I was in one of those suspended blue casts. 

I looked at the ferns for a while and when that got boring I wandered into the cactus room. A while ago I posted a picture of this huge, windy cactus in this journal. I noticed a man staring at the same cactus stroking his chin like he was valuing a piece of art. He was wearing a pinstripe shirt and tie with sunglasses. He had closely cropped hair and a sharp nose. The sunglasses almost covered his entire face. I got this feeling that I knew him from somewhere so I crept quietly around the corner and stared at him, much like he was staring at the cactus. 

He took out a pocket knife and pulled out the blade. He looked around quickly to see if anyone was looking and then carefully sawed off a tip of the cactus. He brought a lighter to it and started burning it, studying it the whole while. I knew who he was as soon as he took out the lighter. He was Emily2’s boyfriend. The one who saw me lighting fireworks outside her house when he was over. It felt like I had seen him before in a dream. I had his lighter and decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to give it back and find out more about him (and what the heck he was doing). 

I walked over to him smiling and I opened my mouth to greet him when he launched his foot into my chest sending me toppling backwards. I was totally off balance because of my arm. I got up almost immediately and headbutted him in the stomach. He knocked me over again with his arm and I didn’t stand a chance. I stuck out my broken arm to stop my fall and I wished I hadn’t as soon as I hit the ground. I lay there trying to pretend I wasn’t in pain. Emilly2’s boyfriend (whose name I don’t know) started stamping my cast with his polished pointy black shoes. He did this till the cast split open. I thought he was done but he wasn’t. He put his foot down on my broken, exposed elbow and pressed hard.

I had never felt anything like that in my life.

The colors around the room starting flashing brightly. I didn’t know colors could look that saturated. I looked over at the cactus and it started lengthening and crawling around like a big paper octopus. The tentacles wrapped around Emily2’s boyfriend and he started vaporizing. For a minute I thought I saw my grandmother telling me to get up. I looked even closer and saw both the Emillies as one person. I was sure it was them but I couldn’t separate them in my mind. This new hybrid towered in front of me while the bright colors and patterns around “her” fought for my attention. 

“She” smiled and I tried to kiss her. But I couldn’t. She was always too far away.

The doctor told me it took three hours for me to regain consciousness. I was in a hospital bed somewhere and my cast had been redone. The lighter was gone. I tried to picture the Emily hybrid but I couldn’t do it perfectly. 

Grandma came to visit me in the hospital. She didn’t stick around for long. She just gave me a kiss on the forehead and left almost immediately.

JOURNAL ENTRY #8

“CARL’S INJURY”

We made it into the TV station. Emily1 and I went there last week at night to see if I could break in as I had been doing in the past during my blackouts. I needed to get in touch with what I was doing during my blackouts. Getting into the TV station was easy even in the rain but I couldn’t help feeling like I already had an intuitive grasp of the procedure. Like I was cheating. We scaled the fence and were at the front door in no time. We had abandoned the umbrella near the car so we were both soaked. I looked at Emily1, drenched and beautiful, and it occurred to me that she was out of my league. She undid her wet hair and it fell to her shoulders. She looked like one of those Bond girls walking out of the ocean. 

I reminded myself of why we were there and studied the lock and chain that held the front door shut. Emily1 sat on a chair next to the door. I looked around me and saw a row of potted plants being heavily rained on. I started kicking them over one by one. Like I said, it felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. One by one they hit the ground and smashed until one revealed a gleaming piece of metal. It was the key to get in. That was it. We were in. All it took was finding a key hidden under a pot. ‘These people are idiots,’ I thought to myself.

I looked at the smashed pots and then over at Emily1 with a smile. My ego was bursting at having accomplished the feat in such dramatic fashion in front of her.

Once we were in, we began to look for an explanation of why I was interested in this place during one of my earlier blackouts. Neither of us spoke for about fifteen minutes. Apart from our footsteps, there was complete silence.

“Remember that origami octopus Carl?” Emily1 asked loudly and out of nowhere, catching me totally off guard. 

I tripped over a camera and took an elaborate tumble over and around some equipment lying on the ground. I was in a heap clutching my elbow which felt broken. I knew the feeling because I had broken my ankle once. Before I knew it Emily1 was sitting next to me gently rubbing my arm. My knees were cut, too and I saw blood dripping on the floor. I tore my eyes away from the blood because it made me want to faint. I concentrated on Emily1’s touch on my arm. 

I drifted off. I thought about all my blackouts, my bizarre antics during them, wandering out silently in front of my grandma, the octopus robbery, the fireworks. I thought of my waste of time job, my house in the middle of nowhere, and finally about Emily2 and her boyfriend. I thought of how happy they must be together. How stupid I must have looked setting off fireworks in their backyard.

I looked over at Emily1.

“I love you” I blurted.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Stop being silly, you’re just hurt. Look, your head is bleeding a little, too. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She was right, so I shut up. 

It took me about half an hour to get back over the other side of the fence. Emily1 helped me in to the passenger’s seat of the car. She started driving. I put my hand on my lap and felt something rectangular in my left pocket. It was a lighter. An ornate silver lighter. I flicked it and stared at the flame.

“Put that damn thing away, Carl.” Emily1 said. 

JOURNAL ENTRY #7

“RAINY NIGHT”

I am pulled over the side of the road in my car, It’s 1 AM and it’s raining outside. I am going to type out this entry as fast as I possibly can. I am in the middle of something. Yes, I know where I am and yes, I know exactly what I am doing. And I’m going to write it down now. Let’s start from the beginning though. Always start from the beginning if you want to get to the bottom of things. And don’t ramble. Just dive.

This morning I woke up to a text from Emily2 (the girl I met at a bar but have made no progress with since. I think I might be in love with her, along with Emily1). The text from Emily2 read as follows:

“Carl, I don’t really feel comfortable with what you did last night. It’s cute that you’re into me but lighting fireworks outside my house was a little crazy. And illegal. They were really loud, and who was that girl with you? You kept my boyfriend and I up for an hour, and we had to clean the mess outside. It wasn’t fun. And could you please return the lighter? It’s actually my boyfriend’s and it’s an expensive one.”

Needless to say I don’t remember setting off fireworks outside Emily2’s house. And where the hell did I even get fireworks? I didn’t respond to the text. I had no idea where to begin.

I’ll worry about returning the lighter later. Not that I know where it is or what it looks like. 

For now, I can see Emily1 walking over, shielded by her umbrella. She told me to wait here in the car while she made sure that we are in the right place. If we are, then we are at the TV studio that Emily1 said I broke into. I’ve been breaking into places during my blackouts and apparently I’m really good at it. We’re trying to recreate the scene to see if I can do it again. Emily1 is trying to help me. I’m not blacked out, at least that’s what I think. I want to see if I can break into this place. Going inside might also help me understand what I was after when I broke in the first time. 

Right now, I find myself upset that Emily2 has a boyfriend. I keep trying to picture what he might look like. My priorities are topsy- turvy. 

I’m writing this now because I don’t know what’s about to happen. If we get caught, I might not be able to write for a while. Emily1’s at the window. It looks like we are at the TV station. I need to go.

JOURNAL ENTRY #6

“THE LIGHTER”

Emily1 told me last week that the octopus we had stolen was doing something that reminded her of me. Last night, I went to her house to find out what it was. The front door was open so I made my way up to her bedroom without knocking. 

“Look what happens when I do this” she said, quickly tossing a closed, empty marmalade jar into the tank. She put the lid of the tank back on almost immediately. 

The octopus waited for the jar to hit the bed of the tank and then leapt on it. It threw its tentacles around the lid and after a few seconds, began unscrewing the lid. The lid fell off and the octopus crawled inside. It looked really uncomfortable in the jar but it continued to stay there, breathing heavily. “See!” Emily1 pointed at the tank. “It is just like you isn’t it? That’s why I’ve decided to name it Carl. An octopus called Carl.”

“Nice trick, but how does that remind you of me?” I asked, somewhat lost.

“You are good at breaking into things. You love doing that right? You offered to help me break into the library, that’s how we got in that night.”

This was news to me. Maybe this is what I was doing during my blackouts. “Could you tell me what I told you that night? I can’t remember much of anything I said.”

“You should really get this memory thing checked out. Anyway, you said that you’ve broken in to quite a few places at night. The museum, a butcher’s shop, a TV studio and a clubhouse (I think). You know how to pick locks, disarm security systems, that kind of thing. You said that you are taking something from the places you break into so you could do something for your Grandmother.”

“What did I want to do for her?”

“You wouldn’t say. You got a little scary when I asked, Carl. You were strange that night. You kept talking about how someone was after you and you had to finish getting things ready for your Grandma before they found you. And you were fidgeting with a lighter, turning the flame on and off. Don’t you remember? You said it was something you liked to carry with you, and that it would be handy later. It made me uncomfortable. I like you better like this. The way you are right now. Stay like this OK?”

I nodded, but it wasn’t an honest assurance. It was becoming obvious that I wasn’t in control of whatever I was doing. I didn’t ask her any more questions because she was starting to look nervous. 

I felt around my pockets. There was no lighter. That was no surprise because I don’t ever carry one.

What am I doing for Grandma? And who the fuck is after me?