Memory Drain
Daniel flopped onto her bed, unsure how to feel. Part of her was concerned by how quickly her energy had been drained, another part of her felt too calm to actually get bothered. So, instead of worrying about how she should feel, she simply stared up at the ceiling quietly. Everything had slowed to a crawl around her, it was as if the world was playing in slow motion. Every breath and every blink was an ordeal, a hurdle that her empty feeling body had to struggle through.
With each moment everything felt more distant. Details and thoughts began to drain out of Daniel’s mind without warning. She was hardly even able to tell that she was forgetting anything at all. But she was indeed losing her memories. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year all of what formed Daniel into the person she was began to dissipate. Birthdays, first days of school, favorite games, best friends, worst enemies, they all were bowing out.
There were fleeting moments in which Daniel recognized what was happening. Despite the overbearing, lazy tiredness that had been inflicted upon her, she would come up to the surface of consciousness just long enough to take the reigns for a moment. Those moments were marred by murky panic. Worry about how much she had forgotten, fear for what would happen next, dread about if she would still be herself, those feelings are what made up the bulk of Daniel’s few moments of true full consciousness. However, despite how much she may have struggled, she was always pulled back under, back into her stupor.
Before long Daniel has forgotten herself. She had no name, no recollection of where she was or how she got there, no friends to remember, none of that. Every personal detail had left her without any fanfare. It had all been drained from her, not even the letter she had read only minutes ago was still known to her.
The woman once known as Daniel was not devoid of knowledge however. She had all her academic knowledge in tact, every book she had read and math formula she half memorized was still in her head. She just could not remember when she had learned it or the context behind it. In fact she even remembered the fact that she was once a man, a fact such as that was too jarring for any amount of memory erasure to smooth over, yet she had no idea for how long she had been in the body. She also remembered the strange growth of hair, and the fact that she had not always had a tail. All were strange to her, she knew that things like that didn’t just happen to people, but she was not too concerned in that moment.
She sat up for a moment only to be hit with a wave of exhaustion. The drink had drained not just her memory, but all her stamina and strength. With a soft thud she fell back onto the cot. It was a struggle to keep her eyes open as the cold hands of sleep wrapped around her. And, unaware of anything being amiss besides her fatigue, the young woman was more than willing to sleep.
Written by Kolaghan on 20 April 2018