The Room You Imagined

Dark Memoirs - Index

Now I know what you’re probably thinking, as most of our species are woefully—and comfortingly—predictable.

“Surely someone would notice a police station interview room had been gassed?”

Ordinarily, I’d congratulate you on being surprisingly sharp for a human disgrace. Ordinarily—if it weren’t for the fact that, like every other day of my pitiful existence, I had the benefit of all the information at my disposal. I understood the full picture because I sketched it.

Writing, like so many performative careers—dating and politics included—is as much about what you can’t see and hear as it is about what you can.

Why did you so readily believe it was a police station where the interview took place?

I’ll give you a few seconds to think that one through.

Penny dropped yet?

I told you.

Which is fine. But remember, I’ve been providing my unique services for decades—undetected. Deception is second nature to me.

The last chapter of these memoirs was framed as though it took place in a police station.

Unfortunately for the latest in a long line of forgettables to join my hallowed museum of trinkets and keepsakes, I was his only contact from the police force. Which meant I had full control.

Anyone still under the impression that I will surely slip up and get caught really hasn’t learned anything about me yet.

Many people forget what came before Sisyphus and the boulder—how he tricked Death, Thanatos himself, into showing him his chains, then bound him and cheated mortality. They forget, too, that he instructed his wife to dump his naked body in a public square, so that once he reached the Underworld, he could complain to Persephone that he’d been dishonoured, and should therefore be allowed to return and scold her.

Eventually, when he failed to come back, the gods dragged him down again.

Then came the boulder.

That’s the part everyone remembers.

What’s also worth remembering is this:

I am not a myth who tricks gods.

I am not Sisyphus.

Am I arrogant? What did you think?

Does it get in the way of success?

No.

I have no boulder-bollocks in my future.