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Black Market Memories

Nic Bernstein

It's dark in my cave when I go to sleep. I like it that way, then I don't have to look at the scrawls on the wall as I struggle to sleep. I know it's safer in the day time, but the light only reminds me of the torment logged by these pitiful markings, and of my own tormented life.

The demons of my day do not leave me when I sleep. The memories of my past taunt me with a vigour they never had before, somehow colored darker over time. The pleasant ones are gone now, like the favorite pages of a well read book. Stolen from the library of my mind by some thoughtless reader. It bothers me when they do that, it's bad enough the way they look at all that I think, or have thought. I guess I've learned to live with that. But, when they take the ones they like, and leave behind only an empty hole, that really takes the cake.

Take my marriage, for example, I know I was married. I know I was divorced. I know her last name was Dixon. And I know we fought, I know that only too well. I have grown to cherish those fights, now, in a perverted sort of way, for that is all I have anymore. There must have been some good times, we did take the trouble to get married, after all. I cannot find them now, only the pain and hurt is left, the joy and love and rapture are not even memories anymore, they are only memories of memories, awareness of a lacking, a sense that there was more to my life than what it is now.

It has changed the way I think. Of that I am sure. I can no longer afford the luxury of fond remembrances, for that would be like flaunting my remaining wealth before the thief. I must make do with memories of having good memories. It's sort of vicarious remembrance, like what one experiences when reading an autobiography. No one will ever read mine, I can't remember anything worth writing about, except for the pain and other bad things. No one would read that.

It has changed the way I dream. I remember when I was young, the feeling I would have when I awoke without having dreamt, the feeling of being gypped. I know, from logic not from memory, that there must have been days when I awoke to remember a particularly pleasant dream. I have days like that no more. I awaken in terror from a nightmare, they have no desire for those, or I rise with a sense of loss, the feeling from my childhood. But never, never, do I awaken to that warm feeling that must come from a proper night of fantasy. I have tried to train myself not to dream, then. If I cannot keep them, I'll be damned if they can.

It has changed the way I live. It has driven me from my home and life, from my friends and job. It forced me to this cave, how long ago I am not even sure. It started out innocently enough, a missing memory here or there. Sometimes it would be old, a good day from my childhood perhaps. Sometimes new, a date with an attractive woman, although I don't remember if I ever knew any. Then it escalated into wholesale robbery, entire years worth of brain space left standing empty.

I remember that I used to write. I would always tune the radio to a baseball game and let the announcers voice tug at me as I wrote. I don't remember a single good one, game or story, I don't know for sure that there weren't any, I suspect there were, I just don't know.

When I first got here, I thought I would outsmart them. I resolved to sit in my hermitage and write down all that was good and worthy in my life. I wrote what would be volumes, but it proved to be the last straw. As quickly as I wrote, I would forget. As the thoughts and recollections passed from mind to hand to page it was as though they were erased from their origin. I conspired to hide my writings, for fear that they would come for them, to deprive me of even this written record. That futile act was just salt in the wounds, for I could not remember where they were hidden.

I went quite mad. I had not yet acquired the sense of cynical calm which I now possess. I reasoned that they must have stolen my writing as they had stolen my thoughts. That is when I started to write on the walls, surely they could not steal the walls. I had no good memories by then, however, only demented anguish. It is especially painful now, now that I have learned so much, to be confronted with those ramblings.

My mind stuttered like a drunken fool in those days, I did not know how to think anymore. I swore not to think happy thoughts, ever again. I have learned since then, I have learned not to doubt that there was joy in my life, I have found my witness. For even if they can steal my memories and thoughts, they cannot steal my language, and it is the words which are my witness.

I know that there is happiness and joy, for I have words to describe it. I know there is love, for I can create stories of it. I know that there is pride and faith, for its lexicon exists. They may have taken the joys of my past, and condemned me to a joyless future, but in my present I can create a joy of my own. I know they will take it, as they always have. That's okay though, I'll just make another.

That is what I think of now, as I fall asleep, forging yet another dream to be stolen and sold on the black market, like my life has been.