I used to know someone

I used to know someone who lost the Game. I don’t remember their name, or what they looked like. All I know is that they were there once. I think they worked in the same library as me, Ashmoor Public Library. As I probe my memory for more information about them, I skid off the thought, my mind slips away from remembering like it’s a shiny surface.

One day she was there and the next she had never been there at all. Gone. Because she had never really existed, not if none of us could remember her.

I can just about get her name. Sam? Sam… Sam something. Alan. Arnolds. That was it. Sam Arnolds. She would have been pretty, had she ever existed in the first place.

I’ve reached the point where I’ve said all I have to say on a topic, and my mind inevitably wanders. As usual, it tries to go to the place which is most dangerous for it. Oh, brain, why are you so eager to commit suicide?

I’m doing it. I’m surviving, living out my life as best as I can, crippled as I am with the weight of not remembering. They say that if you survive the Memory Game for two decades then He will let you go free. I doubt it very much. 

The Rules

Now I’m awake again, maybe I should explain a few details. Whether anyone will read this or not is not important; I’m doing this to stave off my own memory.

To play the Memory Game, should you ever have to, there are a few rules everyone should know.

Rule number one is the most important and it is also the easiest to break: don’t think about him.

Rule number two is a continuation of the first: if you think about him, you have already lost.

Rule number three: there is no way to win the Memory Game, you may only try to not lose.

Rule number four: if this is the first time you’ve heard about him, then you are safe. But there are no second chances.

Rule number five, and this is so important: if you lose the game, you have half an hour to spread the knowledge of him to someone else. It can be anyone, even if they know of him already. Just reminding them of him will trigger them to lose.

And you don’t want to lose.

Oranges. Round, juicy, orange oranges. Just focus on them, Clarissa. Even writing down the rules was nearly too much. I almost remembered. 

Rambling of a half-hour

I must not remember. Oranges, oranges, that’s the image in my head. Oranges. Not bone, not books, not-

Oranges.

Keep thinking, Clarissa. Keep thinking of anything else.

Remembering is suicide.

Type, type as fast as you can, lose yourself in the words. As your mind goes blank you can finally relax without a single traitorous thought rising up to kill you.

There must be more I can say. All I need to do is to write for another ten minutes, to make up this half hour, and then I can stop, then I can sleep.

What can I say? My name is Clarissa Finch and I am sixteen years old. I live in London, England, and I have done for all of my life (bar a year when I stayed in Spain on an exchange trip which turned into a full blown holiday). I go to school, I take Law and English and I hope to go into journalism some day.

What else can I say? I need to keep writing before my mind drifts back. Five minutes left. Work. Work! I have a part time job in my local library, after school most days except Wednesday, and I get paid a decent amount - £7 an hour, well over the national minimum for my age. It’s an easy enough job. I work behind the front desk, stamping books and helping people to take them out, then I clean after the building closes for the day. Sometimes I even meet interesting people. Take last week for-

No. No no no no no. Too close, I can almost imagine it scraping in the back of my head, yearning to be thought about.  Something more to distract me, please!

The timer just went; my half hour is over. If I’m careful now I can sleep without fear.

Ironically enough, it’s not the sleeping world I fear.