TFS: Burnt Earth

Molly – 35 years ago

“Please, take me home,” I beg, scooching further back into the corner, wrapping my arms around my knees, and bringing them to my chest.

This has to be a nightmare. It can’t be real. The room I’m in is small and dark. I can barely see in front of my face. Everything feels damp like bathroom porcelain after a long, hot shower.

“You are home,” coos the voice.

It’s a kind voice, more soothing than the baritone of the angry man preceding her.

“Why am I here?” I whisper.

“To help your brother,” she claims.

“I don’t have a brother,” I confess quietly.

“You do have a brother,” she argues. “He’s here, and he needs your help.”

When the boy first stepped into the room they locked me in, he was the ghost of someone long ago forgotten. I saw him in pictures many times, but any memory I had of him is gone. He died. His body is resting in the grave next to my parents. While I don’t miss them, that doesn’t mean I didn’t love them. Of course, I loved them. It’s just my new life is enough for me. It’s more than enough. It’s perfect. It’s all I could ever want. I don’t want my brother. I want my mom and dad. I want Jack. I want to be walking down the aisle with my arm in my father’s arm toward my future. I don’t want the past being thrust on me.

Connor left the room with his shoulders hung low. The man who replaced him made my blood run cold. He’s horrible. His voice is unnecessarily loud and his tone is angry. I didn’t like him at all. Thankfully, my refusal to speak frustrated him so much he left the room as quickly as he entered it. It didn’t occur to me at the time how lucky I was he stowed his rage.

The floor is stone, and it’s cold. Everything’s cold. I want nothing more than to be back in my bed, snuggled up in the warmth of my comforter. I wrap my arms tighter around my legs to keep them from shaking.

“I can help you,” the woman offers. “All you have to do is ask.”

“I did ask,” I counter. “I asked to go home.”

“Were you happy there?”

“Yes.”

“Are your memories strong?”

“Yes.”

“I can help you by taking them away,” the woman explains.

“Why would I want you to take my memories away?” I remark, daring to look her straight in the eyes. “If you want to take a memory away, take away the one of me being here!”

“I can’t help you with that,” she informs me, “but I can help you forget what you’ve lost, so you can focus on what you need to do now.”

“What do you want from me?!”

“I want you to help ease your brother’s pain,” she petitions. “He broke several rules to be near you, resulting in you ending up here. You’ll come to see you owe him a great debt.”

“You want me to thank him for ruining my life?” Her suggestion defies all logic.

“He’s giving you a new one.”

“I liked my old one just fine.”

“What he did was selfish,” the woman agrees. “It was careless, but he did it because he loves you. He’s never stopped loving you.”

“If he loved me, he would’ve left me alone.”

“Maybe,” she hedges. “It’s too late for that now. I can’t change what happened, but I can make it easier for you.”

“By taking away my memories?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t ever want to forget,” I state resolutely. “I’m finding a way back.”

She shakes her head. “There’s no going back. There’s only forward.”

She leaves me here, so I weep. I weep until my body convulses, and I throw up all over the floor beside me. When my eyes are too swollen to open, my throat raw from the strength of my wails, I fall asleep in a puddle of my own sorrow.

I spend days in emotional turmoil, ignoring the food they continue to bring. On the third day, the pains in my stomach win out over the attempted hunger strike. I reckon they aren’t letting me go. My only option is trying to escape.

When the woman brings in my dinner tray, I run past her. She doesn’t even try to chase me. Unbeknownst to me, escape is impossible. The stone walls seem alive beside me. With every corner turn, I hear the sound of shifting rock scratching like nails on a chalkboard. The walls are moving with me. At the end, when my breath is heavy and my legs are too tired to continue, I stop—at the doorway of the room I ran away from.

The woman is sitting on the bed I was meant to sleep in. Her tone is patient. “There’s no going back. There’s only forward.”

“You’ll never let me go.”

“No,” she admits, “but I can help you want to stay.”

I hear it then, the terrible cries of pain, like my very grief has given birth to a voice. I shake at the impact the sound has on me, a chill coiling around my spine and making camp there.

“That’s your brother,” clarifies the woman. “He needs you.”

His cries echo through the stone halls, landing with a heavy thud on my heart. I don’t know if I can stop his pain, but I need to try, and I can’t do that if I’m smothering in the memories of everything I’ve been made to give up because of him. I’ll never be free again. Whether it’s a single day or a hundred days, they won’t release me. It’s better to let my past go than drag it down with me into an ever-deepening pool of despair.

“Make me forget,” I concede.

She smiles. “As you forget, so too shall you remember.”

When she takes my shaking hands in hers, I close my eyes and wish upon all the stars I can’t see. But there are no stars. There’s only candlelight and the dog-eared pages of fairytales I’m never meant to read.