In Memoriam

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. The sky burned orange and dust filled her lungs, barely kept out by the plastic wrap tapped around the window edges. The room was sparse, filled only by the warm orange glow of the sky, the old mattress on the floor she had woken up on and a rotting door presumably leading to the rest of this mystery building. Every terrible thought ran through her head, had she been kidnapped? Did she have amnesia? Oh God, what if she was dead?!

Before she could conclude this morbid train of thought, the door swung open and a disheveled looking man entered. Unshaven, clothes torn, shadowed skin danced around his eyes that pierced through her with a sense of unsettling hopelessness.

"Oh, you're awake. How're you feeling?" he asked. It seemed rehearsed.

"Where am I? What is this? Who are you?" she replied with urgency, under no illusion that these questions would be answered.

A look of disappointment fell over him, as though a spark had gone out, a familiar one at that. This man knows pain, it seeped out of his pores like toothpaste. He takes a deep sigh and places a glass of water down on the floor and collapses into a sit next to it.

"What's going on?" she said, a little softer now. It occurred to her that maybe this wasn't such a simple solution, although this hunch was based on very little.

"I can't keep doing this. I can't." he stated to the room. Another deep staggered breath later and he was back on his feet, staring out of the window at the burning clouds over the endless sand and rubble. A primal mix of fear and confusion left her staring at him like a midnight fox skulking through the street, an act that he was clearly aware of because he promptly turned on the spot and met her gaze.

"It's been 2 years, 3 months and 16 days since it started and every day I have tried and every day you don't remember." He spoke with a deep sadness, a longing.

"I don't understand."

"No one does. Well, no one did. Now there's no one left."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It's just us Christina. You and me and I keep trying, I swear, but you never remember me."

Christina. That sounded familiar at least.

"What did you do to me?" She asked, scrutinising his face for any hint of dishonesty, but was met instead with that familiar tinge of lingering pain.

"I didn't do anything. I would never do anything to you."

"Then who are you?"

He explained, "My name is Jason, I'm 34 years old, I worked in a book shop and for 12 years, before all of this, I was your husband."

No deep memories suddenly surfaced, no sense of clarity. Only this ongoing thick mental haze and the unfamiliar face staring knowingly into hers.

"That doesn't make any sense" the two said in perfect unison to her shock. He looks at her with a sad realisation and she is speechless. Any word from her mouth may well come out of his too so perhaps it's better to remain silent.

"How did you-" they both say once again.

"We've had this conversation dozens of times. Every time the same thing, the same words." Jason says to his wife as she sits in this unfamiliar room in front of an unfamiliar man.

"I'm on the edge Christina. You're all that's left but you're not really here and I keep waiting for the day that you wake up and everything's back to normal, you remember everything and we can navigate this nightmare together but I'm dying. It's killing me and I can't do this." He continues.

Christina sits in shock, what has she woken up to? A man who knows every moment that is brand new to her. A damp and crumbling empty room in what seems to be the end of time. Although it seems the end of time keeps happening for him, she couldn't help but feel pity for the man. If what he said was true then his world is a looping terror and she sees someone she loved as a complete stranger. What kind of hell is that? And if he was lying? ultimately did it even matter? No memory, no clue as to where or when they were. Maybe death is as elusive as the truth.

Jason spent the rest of the day explaining their old life together while Christine tried to assess what was true. Regardless of the past, the life that Jasons words painted was a beautiful one. He told stories of how they met in the bookstore where he worked while Christina was doing a book-reading. Turns out she was a relatively successful fiction writer and Jason fell in love with that. The worlds she created were easy enough to get lost in but Jason couldn't get her out of his head, in the world they already shared. Jason chased her across her entire book tour which for anyone else would have been creepy but Christina took it the way he intended, an admission of love at first sight. She didn't write romance but she knew it when she saw it, or rather felt it. That's always the difference, the reciprocation.

They married in a registry office but had an incredible reception in a field in the south of England with their closest friends and family. Her dad had jumped in a local lake in his rented suit and lost the deposit. His sister had gotten stupidly drunk and fell asleep in the nearby rosebushes. They lived off the food left over for 2 weeks after their honeymoon, which was in Norway. As opposed to the typical sun-soaking newlyweds, they elected to enjoy the snow and culture of Scandinavia.

When they returned to normal life, Christina wrote her best novel yet and was catapulted to the big leagues of literature. Her books made the featured shelves of local bookshops. The royalties were generous so she and Jason had decided to design a house. Christina designed a circular library with a glass dome top to look out at the stars. They built it only 2 miles from where they hosted their wedding reception. Jason opened his own bookshop in the nearby village, next to the butchers shops where he befriended the owner. A slim older gentleman who had inherited the butchers shop from his father, who in turn had inherited from his father and his father before him. It was only due to the inspiration of Jason and Christina's story that he would sell the butchers shop and pursue his dream of running a dog grooming company.

They lived like this for 10 years before everything change. The satellites stopped sending signals so TVs and WiFi went dead, then the sky seemed to tear open and everything went dark for 8 months. During which time everyone began to understand not what had happened, but what was going on now. A large proportion of the population couldn't remember anything from one moment to the next to the dismay of those that could. Jason could remember, Christina could not. The panic of the situation set into motion a series of events that would reduce 80% of populated land masses to not much more than rubble and fire. Jason had managed to keep Christina safe during all of this and, following the chaos, found a brick built bungalow that remained intact though deserted. Jason moved what little they had left into this building and after 3 weeks of living there, the light returned. The sun was gone but a passive glow of orange emanated from the sky and the brighter it got, the further between moments Christina could remember until the day cycle was restored. Every day they could live, though Christina was a blank slate, lost of all but her core nature and values.

Jason tried to explain it every day without fail, in the hopes that maybe if her memory were fully restored, the nights amnesia effects may not take hold. A long shot, but his only hope. Two years, three months and sixteen days passed like this before today with no change whatsoever. How long could he go on like this?

The story of their life had taken the entire day to tell and now the light was fading and Christina felt fogging. They both no knew what would happen next but only Jason would have to endure it.

"Do I say goodbye?" Christina asked, only now able to comprehend the scale of Jasons sacrifice and suffering.

"We never say goodbye. It's never goodbye." Jason insisted. "You'll see me and I'll see you and it'll all be okay,"

This seemed naive but given the circumstances, Christina could excuse it. She was ever the realist but this was too surreal to reason with.

"I love you."

She drifted off and Jason sat staring longingly at her. And then... nothing.

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. The sky burned orange and dust filled her lungs, barely kept out by the plastic wrap tapped around the window edges. The room was sparse, filled only by the warm orange glow of the sky, the old mattress on the floor she had woken up on, an old wooden door and in the corner, the skeletal remains of a man still in his clothes.