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Forget Me Not
You don’t remember me……

Her memory is like a fading echo lost upon the wind. I don’t know where it came from, and I’ll cease to remember to care in the seconds following its departure. The imprint of her heart upon my own is not so easily forsaken, although I could wish that it were so.

She stood in the shadow of the apartment building the first time I saw her. She was waiting for someone, although no one remembers whom, and she happened to spot my face gazing down at her from the dirty window facing the polluted river. It was not my window, for it was not my apartment, but I was stricken with the sudden urge to invite her up anyway.

“What’s wrong, Ezekiel?” one of my friends asked. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and noticed that he sat with several other teens, among them the resident of this apartment.

“Nothing,” I responded absently, having entirely forgotten that there was anyone else in the room. “Nothing at all…”

I turned back to the window, seeking the beatific face that had just recently been staring into mine. I meticulously scourged the area from the window, but I found no sight of her. It was as if she had vanished into the wind like a blissful thought that I had allowed to escape before I could enjoy it. I sighed dejectedly and returned to my friends.

Several hours later I descended the stairs of the stairwell and emerged in the crisp early spring air of the night. The streetlights shined eerily on either side of the road, as if illuminating the path to a gateway into another world. I laughed as I entertained such an absurd notion, but when I blinked and opened my eyes again, there she was.

She was smiling brightly, her immaculate teeth shaming the fluorescent lights that bathed her chestnut skin. Her hazel eyes refracted the artificial light so that it appeared natural as it reached my eyes.

“Excuse me, miss, it’s a little late for you to be out alone,” I said, approaching her casually in order to belie my infatuation.

“It’s really not all that late to me,” she shrugged, her smile not fading. “But I wouldn’t mind company tonight. It is, after all, a new moon. A lot happens when heaven shuts its eyes on us in darkness.”

It seemed like an odd thing to say, but in truth, I was too enthralled with her beauty to really contemplate anything that she said. She seemed to notice this because she wordlessly approached me and slipped her arm around my own and leaned on my shoulder. Her body exuded pleasant warmth that soothed away some of the tensions that had been building within me during the week.

I didn’t notice at first, but she was guiding me down the deserted street as if possessing her own agenda that was not in the least bit bothered by me. I didn’t really care. I figured she was taking me someplace quiet so that we could have fun. The thought enticed me, and so I allowed her to steer me deeper into the unknown. I’m quite sure I was not thinking clearly—in fact, I probably wasn’t thinking at all—but I trusted her.

“Do you remember this alley from when we were younger?” she asked after a long while. I gazed around halfheartedly and recognized nothing.

“No,” I told her. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer to me. “Now how about you tell me where we’re going.”

She stood still and stared at me curiously. “You mean you don’t remember?”

“No,” I repeated, somewhat confused. “What am I supposed to remember?”

She looked confused now, as if wondering if there had been some sort of mistake. She drew away from me so that she could scrutinize my entire body. “How could you not remember? You do remember me, don’t you?”

I blinked. She was not making any sense. I began to worry that this girl might be flirting with insanity, but I decided I did not care. Anyone looking that good could be as crazy as she wanted to be. In fact, the crazier the better. Or so I thought.

“You don’t remember me…” she said in horror, comprehension dawning in her crystalline eyes. She backed away from me as if appalled by my presence, her warm eyes becoming cold. “And to think…I thought I loved you…”

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I responded, growing mildly nervous. The fire in her eyes resembled the flames that I had watched devour an entire apartment building just a few weeks ago.

“No,” she said grimly, obviously disillusioned with me. “No, there is no mistake. It was foolish of me to believe that a human could be worth returning for.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She glared at me, the fire raging in her eyes until her irises glowed fiery hot, as if they were windows into an inferno. She stepped toward me, and I reflexively stepped back, terrified out of my mind now. She took a few more steps and was in front of me before I could react. She reached out and grabbed my face with her smooth, warm hands.

“There is nothing in this world more volatile than human affection. If I am nothing to you, Ezekiel, than perhaps I should rid myself of these feelings for you. Unfortunately for you, they have to go somewhere…”

I tried to pull away from her, but her steely grip proved stronger than my attempts. Her eyes glowed white-hot and then her hands warmed until they scorched my cheeks. I squirmed in agony, but she determinately held on. As the pain augmented, I fell to my knees and tried to cry out. However, no words escaped my lips. Rather, she released me, allowing my miserable form to crumble onto the ground.

“Now you can remember me forever, and I may forget as you had,” she said softly, though not unkindly. As I stared up into her angelic visage I noticed for the first time the shadow of malice behind her brilliant crystalline eyes. And yet, despite the inhuman aura she exuded, I felt the faint pang of recognition throbbing in my head.

“What did you do to me?” I heard myself stammer, as if I were some frightened child lost alone in a storm. She grimaced and turned away, as if my question were not worth answering. With her back to me, she put her hands on her hips.

“As I told you, Ezekiel, I’m ensuring that you remember,” she replied, her voice coolly detached. “I wish you sweet dreams.”

A mist manifested from the vapors ascending from the sewers and the gutters. The haze quickly thickened, and the girl continued walking forward until I lost sight of her. Thoroughly bewildered, I decided to walk the remainder of the way to my house so I could use the time to relax and catch my breath.

My house was quiet as I reached the door. Slipping inside under the cover of silence and darkness, I crept up into my room, changed clothes, and crawled into bed. Insomnia gripped me momentarily, accompanied by insufferable discomfort. I noticed that I was sweating and my heartbeat was quickening. I was fairly worried, but I decided to calm down and forced myself to sleep.

Horrendous dreams rent my sleep that night as I shared the somnolent world with abominable images that seemed to be etched by fire into my mind. No matter how bizarre and disturbing each image turned out to be, each phase began and ended with that girl. Although she seemed more familiar as her image haunted me, I could not recall knowing her at all. It was then that the insane desire to remember her assaulted me.

You don’t remember me…

The unrelenting pain became too great. If this is hell, then I could not possibly find a worse fate in death. As I labored in vain to recall a single memory of the girl, the fire devoured my mind, sanity, and eventually, my soul. Standing on the edge of the cliff, I stared at the waters below, willing them to extinguish this purgatorial flame scorching within me. Leaning forward with hope, I leapt off the edge; the wind was a comforting rush as I plummeted downward into the water. Just before my body collided with the rocks below, I heard a single familiar murmur resound in my soul, “Our souls are the price we pay to forget…” And then I was catapulted from one fire to the next.