Cataplexy

“So tell me again why you need me for this?”

Detective Maddington’s eyes flick over to me, and his face creases in a cloud of grey and yellow worry.

“The girl is uncommunicative. She could be the only lead to what happened to the victim, and, well, you’re good with these kinds of difficult interviews.”

The detective turns his attention back to the road while I leaf through the file, leaning back in my seat as the wheat fields fly past us. Maddy’s a good man, and a solid detective, but even he can run up against a wall sometimes.

“So the woman – the victim – is completely comatose?”

“She’s a total vegetable. Fine one minute, then poof! She drops her phone and collapses in front of everyone in the subway carriage. Practically caused a stampede.”

My gaze turns back to Maddington. The man is now sitting in a slow-moving haze, the grey and yellow pushing down on smaller shards of red. As the thoughts drift closer, I can feel his memories filtering into my mind. The “walling” technique I’d been practicing doesn’t do a damn thing.

The woman in the hospital bed looked the same as any other comatose patient. Unmoving, body clenched up like an old elastic band. But that look of horror on her face…

I feel the memories settle in my mind, another glimpse into the mind of Detective Rupert Maddington. At this point I might remember more about his life than he does.

It’s hard to tell when it first happened. I think I was always vaguely aware of it. Hippies and New-Agers used to talk about emotions and auras, but if any of them even came close they were still only half right. It’s memories. We are made up of them, every conscious thought cobbled together from a slow storm of recollections. Even when we think we create an idea, there’s a hundred, a thousand, tiny little scraps of memory lying beneath. Some of it is just pure sense impressions, colored jolts of emotions, the grey cloud of memory checking everything – everything – it comes across against the endless internal ledgers to make sure nothing is wrong.

That’s why bad memories always stick out. Right now I can feel Maddy’s slow horror as he stood in the hospital and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. I’m full of these recollections. Drowning in them, really. I try and pretend I have a normal life while the traumas of a hundred personalities swirl through me. Somewhere, deep, deep down, my original memories might still exist, lost in the crushing darkness. Far beyond my reach.

I don’t think about my own past much anymore. I can’t. It’s no wonder Maddy has to drive out to the sticks to drag me back to the city. There’s only so many of these cases I can take before I spill over entirely – will I find myself washed up in some distant mental shore? Or is there just nothing left to salvage?

“The medic who attended the scene checked everyone out,” continued Maddington, oblivious. “Quarantined the whole subway car. No one was injured, but just about everyone who was in the carriage reported headaches and dizziness. One of the medics was found wandering through the hospital a few hours later – said she was lost. Lost. In her own hospital!”

“So whatever this is, it’s spreading fast. This girl you want me to talk to – she might have seen something?”

“Like I said, completely uncommunicative. We’re worried the same thing might be happening to her, but she won’t open up enough for us to help her before it’s too late.”

My mind swims through the memories, looking down at the faces of the men and women in the file, coming back again and again to the cold, blank stare of the girl. A hundred different memories poke at me, remnants from interviews with drug addicts, murderers, the abandoned or abused. Not of it seems to fit. But something very wrong happened here, I just need to… I don’t know.

An uncomfortable feeling is still gnawing at the back of my mind when Maddington leads me into the station. Even though he doesn’t understand my affliction, he’s enough of a detective to figure I don’t like the usual round of “Hi! How are you?” from his colleagues. Strong emotions stand out, and the police station is a thick fog of stress, fear and anger. It’s a wonder people can even breathe in here.

I try and dive down, find some strong memory I can cling onto as I feel the foreign memories sink into me. It never works. Like that golden memory of Saturday mornings, waking up to the smell of grandma’s porridge. Is it real? Do I like porridge?

Do I even have a grandma?

Sign in, sign out, get my temporary security card. Yes, I know my signature looks different from the last time. Yes, Detective Maddington can vouch for me. No, I most definitely don’t remember any of the security questions on my digital profile.

I’m already tired and irritated by the time I step into the room. My mind is uncomfortably full – memory indigestion. It takes me a moment to catch up, to realize what’s in front of me.

The girl is about ten, twelve years old, sitting in sullen slumped heap between the table and chair. Her hair is a stained, tangled mess, and her dirty clothes have the rank, salty smell of someone who hasn’t seen a laundromat – or shower – for weeks. But that’s not what’s wrong.

What’s wrong is hovering above her head.

Where most people wander through life in an unseen haze of multicolored thoughts and memories, this child is crystal clear – I can see the edges of her face, every scratch and dimple perfectly.

Above her is a black hole, a circle cut into a void so complete that I can’t see the wall behind it. There are memories – tiny smudges of grey smoke, fleeting sparks of color, but they hover at the edge of the abyss, twisting around into a fitful halo before sinking in to disappear entirely.

I’ve looked into the minds of rapists and murderers. This is still the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. I almost reach out before I remember myself and take a seat.

“Ok, sorry to keep you waiting, uh, Miss…?”

The child’s face comes up, and two cold grey eyes narrow in suspicion.

“You’re not like the other ones,” she states. “You’re different.”

My heart gives a jolt, but I shuffle the notes and do my best to look calm. Above her, the black void hovers in silence, the thin tendrils of memory snaking out towards it twisting to give the impression that it is rotating.

“You’re correct,” I reply carefully. “I’m a specialist working with the police. I work with-”

“Another child care worker. You don’t care. You’re just here to tick a few boxes then forget about me.”

The child shrugs and lays her face back down on her arms, the frayed and stained hoodie flopping back across her filthy hair to give the impression I’m interviewing a pile of dirty laundry.

“I’m here to help, I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

“No.”

A moment’s pause, and a slow suspicion begins to form.

“No, as in you won’t tell me? Or no as in you don’t remember?”

“Either. Both. Whatever. Just leave me alone.”

“Look, kid, do you understand what happened in that subway car? I need to know if the same thing is happening to you.”

The unkempt pile gives a snort, the shoulders shaking as she stifles the laugh.

“Oh, you’re  going to protect me, is that it? You’re going to stop the bad things from hurting the poor, innocent little girl?”

The contempt drips from every word. I’ve dealt with this type before. Classic early childhood trauma. When there are no positive memories to check your environment against, the mind simply assumes the worst of every situation. Makes it hard to build relationships. Makes it impossible to trust others.

Problem is, at this point in a usual interview I’m already two steps ahead. As soon as I sit down I can tell at a glace the kind of personality I’m dealing with, and within the first minute of conversation I’m already sifting through their memories, trying to make sense of how they view the world.

Not this time. The girl’s mind is a black void. I’m off the map now.

The girl lifts her head to glare at me and the dark shape above her head begins to spin a little faster.

Here be dragons.

“You’re different,” she repeats, cocking her head slightly.

“Yes, like I said, I’m not a police officer. I’m-”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

My mouth opens but the words stutter and die away. As I look up, I can see my fear, cold flickers of pale blue, floating through the grey cloud of memories to orbit the abyss, stretching into this wisps as they finally fall in.

For a moment, all I can think of is the woman from the subway carriage, curled up on a hospital bed with a face frozen in horror.

“Y-you’re the one who – ”

The girl grins. In other circumstances it could look very sweet.

“Yep. Do you get it now?”

My eyes start to prickle. My temples hurt. I should be running. I should throw away these stupid damn notes and run before this black void swallow me whole. But my legs won’t move.

“But why?”

Her eyes flick to the corners of the room and her hoodie scrunches up in a shrug. When her eyes return to mine, they trail over every part of my face.

“What about you? You’re, like… full. Fuller than most people. How can you even fit through the doorway?”

“You mean you can see it too?”

“See it?” the child’s eyes widen in surprise. “You can see memories? Cool! What do mine look like?”

My firsts clench, but it can’t stop my hands from shaking. My voice is a strangled, dry rasp.

“It’s like looking into a bottomless pit.”

“Well screw you too, old man.”

The girl folds her arms and sticks out her chin, glaring up at the roof. Above her, the void is beginning to stir, the memories starting to spiral faster as those dropped into darkness. It feels like… like my whole body is starting to bleed.

I shake my head and try to focus. There has to be an explanation for all of this.

“What do see when you look at me? At my memories, I mean?”

A snort and another shrug.

“I don’t see anything. I…  feel it. Like a weight. Your mind is like, like really heavy.”

The grey eyes flick over to me.

“Do you make people forget too?”

My body won’t stop trembling. If it wasn’t  for the chair I’m not sure I’d be able to stand.

“I, uh…  no, it doesn’t  work like that for me. I suppose I get a copy of the people that connect with me.”

The girl nods slowly, but her cheeks pinch up at the words.

“So you’re saying you can’t connect with me? You really are just like the other social workers. Arsehole.”

“No, it’s not like that, I-”

“Oh don’t pretend like you care!” the girl snaps, leaning forward to slam her palms on the table. Despite myself, I flinch and edge back. “You’re just like all the others. You know what? It doesn’t matter anyway. Soon enough you’ll forget all about me and I’ll just, I’ll just walk out of here.”

“Look, miss.. whatever your name is, that woman in the subway. She’s a vegetable. She might never recover!”

The girls lip curls, and moisture beads at the corner of her eyes.

“Why should I care? Why should I care about any of them? Screw them all.”

“Can you give her back her memories? Please?”

The girl pauses, the grey eyes hard.

“No.”

“No as in you can’t, or no as in you won’t?”

“No as in get the hell off my case! You have no idea what it’s like for someone like me! Leave me alone!”

“I can’t! I need to know why you’re  doing this!”

Dirty hands close over the girls face and she starts to scream.

“I said leave me alone!”

The void above the girl’s head bulges, and my chair falls away as I stumble back toward the door. The darkness is churning, twisting and expanding into a vortex that covers the entire roof. Looking up in horror, I see my memories dragged from me, my whole body twitching in pain as the abyss reaches out, hungry, wrapping around me.

Devouring me whole.

“Stop this!”

My scream is lost in the pulsing dark, and the room is now the barest outline in the shadows. The girl, though. She’s still there. No longer sitting, but standing in the middle of the storm.

She looks sad. Angry, hurt – but sad.

“It’s too late,” she calls. Her voice throbs, like it’s coming from deep underwater. “But like I said, I’ll walk out of here afterwards. I’ll disappear. Promise.”

I try and thrash my way theugh the most, but all it achieves is leaving great colored tapers of memory drifting through the darkness before fading away. The walls are almost completely lost, and some tiny part of my mind that it still capable of rational thought recognizes screams coming from the other interview rooms.

The entire police station is going to be obliterated. The collective memories wiped smooth until nothing remains. I pull the air into my lungs – it’s so cold it burns.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You don’t understand! Nobody understands!”

Acting on instinct, my mind reaches out to the girl, trying to feel for a scrap of memory – a touch, a conversation, a smell, anything that might help. But her mind is all around me, an inky pit dragging me under. Turning inwards, I desperately try and remember the half-heard lessons from the various training and accreditation seminars I’d been put through. There had to be something I could use.

“Why did you go after the woman in the subway?” I yell. “Did she hurt you – did, did she remind you of someone who hurt you?”

Through the shadows, the girls stained face is a patchwork of mottled dark colors. Grey eyes blink in astonishment, then screw up in rage.

“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“No! If you’re going to wipe out everyone in this station, you’re going to bloody well tell me why.”

“You don’t care! Nobody cares!”

The words sink into me, drifting into the seething cauldron of memories being poured out into the void. Dozens, hundreds of conversations swarm over me; whispering, screaming, weeping. Through all of them, through every broken life the words strike a single, shared plea.

Why does nobody care about me?

A street kid. A girl, alone. It connects to a hundred similar memories, daughters, girlfriends, wives and mothers. Struggling, faltering, getting back up to face a hollow and uncaring world.

She doesn’t remember her name. No parents. I grasp at the memories as they slip through my fingers, snatches and fragments of street kids. Most never knew their parents, spending their days shunted through the child welfare system. Some knew their parents all too well. But always there was a yearning. The knowledge that something precious had been denied, or taken, or lost.

A woman on a subway carriage. Talking on her phone. A common memory, but they are fragmenting, the recollections dissipating out into the darkness. There are a few small sights and sounds, phantoms that flicker in the shadows before disappearing. A woman in a subway carriage, on her way home. It’s the end of a long day but she still needs to check something. She pull out her phone, and, and…

“She was talking to her child, wasn’t she?” I manage, feeling the words bubble out into the void. “She was talking to, to – her daughter?”

Through the storm, the girl falters, stumbling back at the words. A hand rises to the tears rolling down her cheeks, but she overrules herself, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut.

“You don’t understand,” she cries. “She was – and I just got so… I didn’t mean for…”

The darkness is thundering through me now, no longer drinking my memories but tearing and clawing at my mind. The girl becomes a blur, and my body throbs with pain as I take a fumbling step forward.

“It’s alright,” I call. “I understand. I see now.”

“No! No you don’t,” the girl responds, but her voice is weakening, the tears threatening to break through at any moment. “Nobody understands. They’ll just forget. There’s, there’s nobody…”

Everything crumbles as I cross the final step. I can’t see anything through the storm, and all I can feel is pain – her pain, devouring everything it comes across. My mind, all the hundreds, thousands of recollections I’d absorbed over the years, finally recede, emptying out into the darkness. There’s almost nothing left as I feel my arms wrap around her.

“It’s alright,” I murmur. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Her tiny body feel warm against my chest. Grimy, unwashed hair shakes, struggles. Then finally collapses as she shakes with weeping.

For a moment we’re held there, a tiny pair in the eternal void, then, slowly, the darkness dissipates, fading away until the interview room surfaces back into my vision. I risk a look down at the girl. The black hole is now a tiny spot, a strange little period floating above her head. And my mind…  

My mind.

My mind.

The memories are faded, like old photographs left out in the sun. But I can feel them again. An old house out down near the beach. Mum. Dad. They passed away, years ago, taken in a car crash – but they were good parents. Loving. Afternoons swimming in the ocean and sunning ourselves on the beach. Then going back to the house when night fell.  

The girl finally stops weeping, then gives a lost, sad sniff.

“So, what happens now?” she whispers.

There’s a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as I look down into the tear-streaked face.

“I think you need a pace to stay – and I think I need your help. Have you ever been out to the country?”  

There’s a smile. Even a snort of laughter as I lead her from the room.

“Well, I’m not going to milk any cows, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nothing like that. I need to know what to call you though.”

“I don’t know – I don’t know my name.”

“Well… what would you like it to be?”