《The Place You Recall》
The Crossing
"Fuck!!"
A monochrome sky above, obscured by the cold towers of a greyed out concrete jungle. Sprawled pathetically on the ground among the filth and litter typically anticipated of a large city, lay a young man.
The streets were void, roads empty. The young man, blood caked across the side of his face, had no reason or motivation to get his ass off the middle of an intersection of a major crossing. If he had done this in the real world, Gacrux would have been the victim of a merciless series of hit and runs by now.
But what would dying again matter? Been there, done that.
"Fuck," A whisper this time. As if it was really, finally, sinking in.
He hoped his sister didn''t see his body.
He hoped his death hadn''t made the news. He thinks the tourist in front of him had been doing a livestream before he died. He thinks the moment his head blew open like a chunky fleshy egg might well have been caught live on camera.
If that were the case, his last words to his sister would''ve been a waste.
"Hahh, I can''t believe this. The runner was waiting on me- I left the kids to deal with the cop on their own- fuck! Imai..."
All the people he''d left behind, left waiting for a check-in that was never going to come. The list was endless.
A glimpse at the last year of his life: Dropping out of school. Ageing out of the system. A shady job that kept him fed for a few days at a time. Street rats turned friends turned trusted crew. His half-sister, applying for a scholarship at a prestigious school. Cleaning up his shit so he didn''t risk her chances at a better future. Ghosted ex-allies and desperate old enemies.
"For once in your life, you better stay off the internet until I get back, you hear me." His voice was all watery. Aggravating. "I went to all the trouble to make sure you weren''t looking, you know? Could''ve called my crush and confessed with my dying breath but nooo."
A snapshot of the last minutes of his life: A busy pedestrian crossing. An unexpected warning text. A panicked phone call. A gunshot.
Gacrux rubbed at his face, inevitably smearing the blood worse, and clapped his cheeks. Smacks the soft sentimental feelings far away into the metaphorical stratosphere. That baggage might crash land one day but at least he can put off the re-entry for later. He had places to be, hell to climb out off.
Slowly he sat up and got to his feet.
Here''s Gacrux''s easy three-step guide to clawing your way back to the land of the living. Step one: Get up and walk.
As he picked a direction that would lead him to a train station, he inspected the stores and signs along the intersection. They seemed exactly as detailed as they should be. Stopping by a news stand, he could read the contents of one of the magazines perfectly fine. When he sliced his finger along the edge of the paper, the pain was just as stinging as it should be. Not a dream.
It had to be hell that Gacrux found himself in. Or his own personal brand of it. What other kind of afterlife could possibly be expected of scum of his standing? Plus, there was no other way to explain the awful stillness of this mirror-like reality where the streets were exactly as he remembered in life, but vacant like a practice sketch. Colourless and utterly devoid of life, but technically correct.
The intersection wasn''t far from the station but arriving at the central plaza that lead to the underground metro system gave him pause. What had once been a bustling area crammed with crowds of warm bodies was now abandoned. At once, the silence rang loudly in his mind, as if to recreate the ambient noise he should have been hearing from a place like this.
No buskers, no street promoters, no sales staff, no patrolling cops, no loitering randos, not even the occasional influencer doing interviews.
"There''s no one here." His voice echoed. If this was hell, then it was preposterously empty.
"Not quite," A stranger''s voice from behind. Enter Virgil, he thinks.
A woman climbs up an escalator leading down to the underground metro. A weirdly familiar woman, actually. Cropped pepper streaked hair, lazy slouch, sweeping winter coat and a burnt out cigarette in her fingers that for a startling moment looked like talons as she flicks them over an ashcan. If it weren''t for that and the deep gouging scar across one eye, he guesses he might have seen her at any number of shelters over the years. But no, he wouldn''t forget a face like that.
"Are you aware that your face looks like particularly unappetising bolognese?" The woman declares as if hearing his thoughts. Her head tilts curiously down at him, taller by just a finger''s width.
He startles, suddenly remembering the dried blood and assorted gore that came with being shot in the head. He was lucky that he woke up seemingly fine despite the blood because the shooter had pretty shoddy aim even at such close range, the bullet entering through the side of his cheek instead of straight through the brain dome like the bastard probably intended. It would''ve been infinitely worse if he woke up with his jaw hanging off his face and bone fragments in his eyeballs. Huh. Maybe this wasn''t hell.
Wiping at his face, he can''t help but snap back like a gag reflex, "Still prettier than yours."
Damnit. Great idea, antagonising the first person he''s met since dying. God, angels, satan, if this was some kind of denizen of the afterlife, a judge of the dead or some such, he would definitely be in hot water right now.
The woman, for the most part, seemed to find him a little amusing at least. She snorts and shakes her head but doesn''t reply, choosing instead to observe silently as he tried in vain to rub the tacky mess with his fingers.
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He glares at the judgement in her eyes and gives up. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
He thinks he imagined the disappointed slump of her shoulders as she shrugs and turns on her heel. "Ah, drats. Can''t blame you for forgetting. Typical pretty boy behaviour." Before he could even think about what that meant, she starts towards the intersection where he came from.
"Hey! Wh-" Who are you? Where am I? How do I leave? A wheel of questions spins in his mind. Only one lucky winner gets an all expense paid trip to reality. One way only, naturally.
"How did you end up back here again, anyway? It was really hard letting you go the first time, you know. It messed me up real bad, I cried all day," the woman drawls. Something told him she wasn''t being entirely dishonest though. She glances over her shoulder, lingering over the blood and locking eyes for just long enough to say, "Died again did you?" Before turning back and walking on.
"Oh..." This vague bitch.
Here were two facts of life, unsolicited, irrefutable: Young children were one of the most vulnerable members of society, easily taken advantage of, or worse. Orphaned bastard children without a single adult invested in their well-being even more so.
Unrelated, here were two words commonly used to described Gacrux, from the circumstances of his birth all the way up to the moment he got kicked out of school for suspected gang activities: ''less fortunate''.
"Welcome back to the Mneme," Amice calls like an afterthought a distance away, in the tone of a woman who once brought him back from the brink of death when he could still count his age on two hands and was going to do so again.
That''s right. This wasn''t his first rodeo.
He hung his head angled up at the sky and sighed deep and exasperated. Yeah, he hadn''t known the weirdo for very long the first time round but it was ridiculous, the things the human mind forgets in the face of the more pressing day-to-day.
Here''s an easy riddle: What did Gacrux''s tenth and eighteenth birthday have in common?
"I could''ve sworn you got out of here when I was ten," he calls out, trailing after his once-companion reluctantly.
That finally gets the woman to stop in her tracks. Spins a full one eighty.
"I got out? There''s a version of me outside? I did it?" He backs up a little as she marches right up to his face, her singular blue eye wide like the moon.
"Version of you?" Is what he gets stuck on. The woman pouts at him. Okay, who knew puppy dog eyes apparently worked even with just the one eye. "I--Yes. Someone said you paid my hospital bills and all the physical therapy too. Saved me twice with that."
She frowns. "But you didn''t recognise me. Have we never met outside of here?"
He shook his head no. He would''ve remembered her easier if he ever saw that big fuck off scar. Whatever happened there must have occured after he last saw her eight years ago. Her frown deepens.
Gacrux examines the pieces of the puzzle he knows: When he''d first died at ten (his heart had stopped for a full three minutes, the paramedic had said), he fell into an empty world and met a stranger. Whatever happened, happened and whether it had been a figment of his imagination at the height of delirium or not, he had never been sure. Until the woman had done something to push them out of the Mneme and back to the land of the living.
There was a blank in his memory from the trauma, he knew. It couldn''t possibly have been as easy or cut and dry as he remembers. He''d eventually taken the whole thing as a fantasy.
Other people dreamed of light at the end of the tunnel, he just happened to dream of empty cities and a stranger with sharp talons and way too many eyes and- What was important at the time was that he''d lived to see another day. So he''d put it at the back of his mind and moved on like a sane member of society.
And now he was back. Because he was dead again.
He studies the woman again, dusting off old theories about his childhood experience. Memories of this place were so spotty, he couldn''t tell fact from fiction. He couldn''t tell if she had aged or not. Maybe this was another fantasy? A logical continuation of his childhood method of coping with death.
The woman took a moment to collect herself, closing her eye and putting away the wild energy she charged at him with. When she looks at him again, she is once again the distant, airy stranger that had walked out of the metro.
"I doubt you remember much but you seem to know who I am at least," she says like a question.
He must have made a face because she sighed and turned around again. "Not even that, huh."
"Sorry. We met the first time I ended up here, right? I was only ever assured you were real because of the hospital. I wanted to find you in real life, even if it''s only to thank you for the money. Not just anyone can pay off a complete stranger''s bills. Let alone a child''s."
"But how would a newly orphaned kid go about tracking me down? Nah, don''t worry about it. You had a lot going on I''m sure. You can call me Amice, in case you forgot that too."
He hadn''t. Amice Pacia, the woman who once simply introduced herself as a traveller. Who hadn''t looked nearly as human as she did now, when she''d met him for the very first time.
"Who are you really, lady?" They walk towards the intersection like this, Gacrux trailing a step behind spinning his wheel of questions and spitting them out just to see the answers she''d give. At the very least, he could figure out how well she lied.
"What do you think?" She asks with seemingly genuine curiosity.
"If this is the afterlife, I figure you''d be god. Or the boatman. Maybe a demon." Can''t possibly be an angel. Do angels smoke? He was rewarded with a bark of laughter for his efforts.
"Sad to say, I can''t answer the really important questions when your memory is this spotty. We''re in the Mneme. A labyrinthine realm that reflects all memories. Everything you see here is a reproduction of yours, mine and the collective memory bank of humanity. I myself am a figment of memory left behind by the real Amice, a hundred years into her captivity."
"Captivity?" The explanation about the Mneme was familiar but there was a lot to unpack in that last bit.
"This realm was uniquely created to ensnare and imprison travellers such as myself. Though I have unfortunately been the sole occupant until you came along," her deadpan tone was betrayed by an enthusiastic wave of her fingers. He tracked them closely, half expecting to see bird-like claws instead of blunt nails.
"Uhuh. Did you figure that before or after I left?" If her words held any weight, then what a sad realisation to have. The idea that this woman had been left wandering this lonely place by herself for so long while he''d gone about the rest of his life none the wiser was daunting.
"Well, I had to try and make contact like I promised after you left. How else would I have-" She shuts her mouth so fast he hears her teeth click. Sees her tense up to the ears as they walked.
Suspicious. He''d start feeling like a parrot if he kept regurgitating her words back at her and he also had better things to ask but he weakly tried to lighten the mood with, "Did you find the fountain of youth too while you were in here?"
He couldn''t see her face but he got the feeling she was raising a judgemental eyebrow. Fine, so it wasn''t as reassuring as he thought. Who was she to judge?
"Let''s just say any attempts to end my life hadn''t succeeded even before all of this."
"Alright, oh all knowing one, do you happen to know why I''m back here again?"
A flippant shrug. Great. Translation: even if she did, she wasn''t sharing jack all. Which was fair, since he was doing the same. But since this world was influenced by memory, "Are you trying to avoid manipulating my memory of things by sticking to objective facts?"
"As precocious as ever, I see."
That explained the vagueness and deflection. He would have to recall what happened eight years ago for himself somehow. Didn''t make it less annoying though. He was curious about the ''hundred years'' bit too but he learned his lesson on insensitivity. After all, this was a woman who had seemed shocked at the idea that a version of herself had escaped her prison at all. Could a memory feel jealous of its real self, he wonders. A question for another time.
For now, he followed the woman cautiously.
The Festival
Here''s how Gacrux dies: painfully and not suddenly enough. It''s enough of one thing and not enough of the other that he can''t quite bring himself to remember it at all.
Amice seemed to know exactly where it was that he''d been killed. Not that it was difficult to find, with all the bloodstains splattered on the road. He stood awkwardly to the side as Amice squatted to get a better look at the gore.
Gacrux clearly hadn''t had the chance to look at the physical consequences of his death before this. The site must have been recreated from someone else''s memory. A cop, or more likely a reporter''s, considering the high level of detail but pointed lack of police tape. "How does this place pick whose memory to project?" He wonders aloud.
"The Mneme reflects the stronger memory, be it determined by observational detail or emotional weight, and fills in the blanks from people with similar memories. Mandela effect is a real bitch here," Amice pokes at the edge of the stain with her bare fingers. She glares up at him incredulously. "Is this doing nothing for you?"
How was he to know the mechanisms in which the exploded remains of his brains worked? If he had any brain matter left at all, it would be an unwanted miracle if it could even produce the chemical cocktail needed for the emotional response Amice seemed to be expecting. He makes a face. Awfully manipulative of her to rely on the trauma of his death to induce a response from the Mneme.
"Maybe there''s a lag. I literally just died. You could just ask me about it, you know."
"Maybe I''ve been on my own for so long that it just didn''t occur to me. After all, the Mneme has always done as it will, regardless of whether I want to see it." She drawls a little too insincerely.
If Amice held so much weight in how this world worked, then she probably wanted something from his raw untampered memory. Well, too bad for her. He wasn''t in the mood to relive his last moments.
If he wanted to test the truth of Amice''s words about this world, there were still plenty of other moments he wouldn''t mind reliving. And how convenient, they were already in the right area.
The thought barely arises before the scene lightens up, monochrome winter skies opening up into a cheerful summer evening. A memory from just a few months ago. Summer break, the only period his sister had too much free time on her hands. And he would know better than most that a bored teenager made for a reckless one.
The road darkens and glistens, reflecting peach pink from the setting sun, wet from a sudden shower that had briefly passed. The sound of traffic and chatter blanketed the empty roads. The calls of street promoters were drowned out by energetic music, drums and chants, the road having been closed to make way for performers and pedestrians. Festive lanterns swung between the street lamps in the light breeze, decorated stalls draped in heavy canvas canopies lined the sidewalk, the street filled with throngs of people. At a closer look, all the faces he caught a glance of seemed a little familiar, the same way dreams tended to involve faces of people you''ve seen before. Yet another point to the ''this is a hallucination'' theory.
Letting the crowd of festival goers flow around him, Gacrux easily remembers being uncharacteristically late that day because he''d felt uncomfortable in his initial outfit and had gone back to change. He looked down at himself to see if his current outfit had changed and did a double take. Amice, still squatting in the middle of the road with a satisfied tilt of her chin, was smiling like a cheshire up at him.
"Do you believe in fate, boy?"
With that ominously cryptic question, the sky finally melts from pastel pinks to the dark indigo of the evening. Between the settling darkness and the swelling crowd, in the space between bodies he loses sight of his Virgil.
Perhaps he should have questioned her motives immediately instead of playing conversational mine sweeper. But the woman had always enjoyed being an evasive shit. He was never going to get a straight answer out of her from the beginning.
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Frustrated, he scans the crowd for his wayward companion.
A bony hand reaches from the crowd and grabs his arm.
"Shit, what are you standing around like an idiot for! Get me out of this damn crowd before I suffocate."
Jumping out of his skin, he whips around to see his smart ass sister in all her youthful crassness, just as sweaty and irritated as he remembered that day. Heart-shaped pimple patches, tape-wrapped glasses and a scowl like he was scum of the earth for making her navigate this swamped summer festival. His heart melts and soars simultaneously, fondness and pride manifesting outwardly as exasperation.
"Ah right. Sorry to make you go through this again Imai," he swallows down the thickness in his voice. His sister hated crowds as much as he did but in his memories, all he''d done was snap back with equal impatience.
"Shut up. Let''s just go before the place closes." She sulks, following along the script of his memories like he hadn''t already deviated from it.
Maybe it was the notion that none of this could be real. The fact that in reality, he''d left this still snot-nosed kid all alone to navigate the same shark-infested waters of life that had plagued him at the same age. Maybe it was courage from the fact that the person in question wasn''t around to hear it. Maybe it was just a fleeting moment of loneliness. But he surprises himself when he blurts out, "Missed you too, dipshit."
His sister clicks her tongue and quickly turns to walk down the street at a brisk pace. "I said shut up, man. Mind your own."
Dread rose like a tidal wave and he was stuck neck deep in the shoreline. The Mneme was a realm that projected memories into the world like an elaborate VR simulation. It begged the question of what exactly were the limits he himself could change in his surroundings.
There was a difference between recall and one''s imagination.
He recalls the beats of this conversation the first time around. She was taking her anger out on him for something that happened while she''d been waiting. The original lines of his script were as such: ''Did your foster find out about the scholarship?'' He shuffled around for ways to bait her into a different response as he catches up with her pace.
"That superhero manga you made me read- the blonde you liked dies in next week''s chapter," he says, bracing for the unfiltered rage of a mildly inconvenienced pre-teen.
It doesn''t come. At least, not in any way that matters.
"As a responsible and emotionally discerning adult," the dork winds up for a melodramatic rant. Her use of fancy big girl words were a sure sign of hiding something. Except he already knew what she was hiding. He''s heard this conversation before. "I''d appreciate if you respect my choice to ignore this topic indefinitely. Please try again when I''m not fuck off pissed at you for being late!"
It takes him off guard. The memory continued like half a song playing from only one side of an ear bud. It didn''t seem to matter if he replied, said anything different, or stayed quiet. He waved a hand over her face, flicked her glasses, messed her hair, all to no effect. Everything reset as soon as he stopped touching it.
The rhythm of half a conversation drones over him, forced to listen numbly as his sister responded like a recording.
He follows her robotically, mostly out of lack of other places to go. It occurs to him that the city was a potential minefield of distressing memories that he didn''t want to re-experience and his sister was associated with a lot less violence in his mind. The incident of his death notwithstanding.
Here''s how Gacrux dies: painfully and not suddenly enough. It''s enough of one thing and not enough of the other that he can''t quite bring himself to remember it at all.
Here''s how this day was supposed to go, a memory secreted within his brain and cherished like a lucky charm:
Gacrux would have needled and goaded Imai into taking out most of her aggression on him before they reached their destination. They would have arrived at a popular desserts cafe, one of those on the fancier side that were on trend as soon as they opened. The kind of hipster spot where drinks tended to cost just as much as the food. Imai would have met his struggling friends in person for the first time, would have introduced herself as her internet handle and immediately gotten embarrassed about it. Would have blushed like a pepper as soon as his friends brought out the desert set they''d ordered to celebrate her successful scholarship. They would''ve all ended up cheerfully sharing the whole thing anyway, because Imai was a stubborn brat and awfully convincing when she had to be. As expected of a kid who had the guts to dream about being a lawyer even if she hadn''t anyone who could support her.
Imai enters the cafe and Gacrux pauses at the entrance. Sees his hopeless trio of friends look up at them and gets stuck.
He might have been wrong. Reliving his death might have been easier. He didn''t want to relive this memory like a play. Not when he had no way of knowing if they were safe in reality. His friends usually hung out near the area he''d been shot. They could have been targeted. Gacrux just wouldn''t be able to know now that he was dead.
The door closes in his face.
Through the window, he sees the people he cared for act out the play of his memories without him. His head is empty when he turns away.
Outside, the festival continues along the street, unheeding of his turmoil.
It seemed even his memories didn''t require his active participation to go on.
He can''t decide if that was upsetting or comforting.
The Alley
As Gacrux turns to go, a vicious fist grabs his hair at the very roots and slams him face first into the alley wall.
He''s caught off guard again as he sulks past the alley right outside the cafe.
"I''m going to kill you myself again so help me god," an arm snakes around his neck unbidden.
Before he can think, he has the arm in his hands and the pressure of an adult body swivelling over his back and onto the ground with a hard thud.
The flip takes less than a second, and it takes him by surprise when he tries to look his attacker in the eye. There was nobody on the ground. His assailant had disappeared in a blink.
"What the hell," he gasps, half hoping that was the end of this weirdness.
Searching the area brings no results. Unexpectedly, there was suddenly nobody in sight all the way down the street. Even the cafe seemed to lose a few of its patrons inside. In fact, the whole world seemed to take on a blurry quality, as if he was seeing it through a smudged lens.
"Did you leave your self preservation at home or were you always this suicidal?" A voice drawls from the side.
Spinning on his heel, he is met with a completely unfamiliar figure for the first time since waking up in the Mneme.
"Silly me, what am I saying. You''ve always been like this," the stranger scoffs before he can respond.
Tall, dark, and handsome, is the first thought that floats his traitorous mind. The second was that the stranger in front of him was practically glowing. The alley was a narrow, poorly lit crevice, made worse by the blurry quality of the world. If the state of the alley was like looking at an oil painting, where the details got a little smudged in places with less focus, then this stranger was unquestionably the subject of the composition. A person who was vivid with detail. And irritatingly unruffled from his physical retaliation as if it hadn''t happened at all.
He takes in wispy dyed hair, dark skin hidden behind a devastatingly well fitted leather jacket, badly scuffed platform boots that could (and likely did, multiple times) kick someone''s teeth in. Takes in tense shoulders, a neutral expression that he couldn''t trust considering the unwelcome greeting earlier, fingers clenched in two tight fists at the side, and decides to err on the side of caution for the first time that day.
"Excuse me?" Is just about the most polite reaction he had on the dialogue wheel.
"Don''t play games Mimi, you''re supposed to be recovering. At the hospital. Which, last I checked, is at least an hour''s walk away!" The stranger snapped.
It clicks. This had to be Amice''s memory.
Despite his rising annoyance, he feels a tiny spark of envy for his old companion. Mortifying. Refusing to resign himself to a nagging intended for someone else, he tries to dissuade the stranger from a further tirade.
"Save your breath, I don''t even know you. I''ll send Amice your way if I see her, though," he tries.
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The stranger frowns. "What did you say?"
He takes a step away, putting distance between himself and the stranger. "Look I know you''re a memory and you can''t help it but god can you at least pick the right target? I''ve had a long day."
As Gacrux turns to go, a vicious fist grabs his hair at the very roots and slams him face first into the alley wall.
"Th''fuck!" He spits into the concrete.
"Who are you and how did you find us?"
"Fuck y-" The stranger acted quickly. Pressure on his shoulder turned into blinding pain before he could complete a breath. Pop. His mind scatters.
"How do you know Amice?" The stranger demands over the white noise in his head.
There was no way this was part of the memory. He couldn''t think. The side of his face was molten hot where it chafes against the wall. He smelled metal in the air like smoke. His ears rang and rang and there were too many people screaming-
-Someone stumbles over his sprawled legs. A foot comes down hard over his arm. He is bleeding on the road and there is bone and blood and a slugger in his mouth and he cannot breathe. He is dying and he can''t breathe-Wait. He grasps for the frayed strings of consciousness. This cannot be right.
Reality re-asserts itself. Tilts itself in his favour.
The pain above his neck lessens, barely clearing his head enough to notice the distortions around him. What had once been a smooth concrete wall was now rough asphalt running perpendicular to the alley''s floor and stretching endlessly upwards.
The very concept of gravity itself seemed confused. If he wasn''t already lightheaded from the attack, he would have been fraught with vertigo, unable to make heads or tails of up and down. Street lights and buildings sat along the ''wall'' at ninety degrees. Blood pooled under his head, stagnant when it should be dripping down to his feet. He should be upright against a wall but he is simultaneously horizontal, flat against the ground. The stranger presses him into the asphalt, holding his arm at an angle he can''t think too hard about, seemingly unfazed by the change in environment.
"Let''s try again," the stranger glowers, "I''ll even make it easy. Just breathe if the psychic sent you."
Eyes wide and eating dirt, Gacrux had a sinking suspicion that he might just die all over again if he kept quiet.
"No! Shit, you came up to me first. I don''t even know you," he spat.
"Wrong answer," the stranger shifts, puts more pressure on his already dislocated shoulder. Here''s a fun internet rumour that once went viral at his school: it takes the same amount of force to bite through a human finger as it takes to bite a raw carrot.
If only carrots could scream.
His voice is hoarse by the time the stranger speaks again, body hot and cold and disoriented all at once.
"What do you want with my Amice?"
He''s so sick of that name it makes him physically ill. Or maybe it''s the nausea from the literal violent interrogation. Something stubborn and aggressively petty makes itself known in the space between agony. Fuck this guy. He''d rather be choking on the bullet.
As soon as he thinks that, the alley floor vanishes under his feet. Gravity pushes horizontally. His body goes slack against the asphalt.
"What-" the stranger grunts.
Gacrux looks over his uninjured shoulder.
The alley was physically drifting away from the asphalt ''wall'', taking the stranger with it. Unexpectedly, the stranger makes no move to chase after him, instead choosing to glare at his surroundings in bewilderment.
Mindful of his injury, he turns just enough to flash a finger at the stranger as the distance grows.
And with that, the stranger fades away and Gacrux is once again right where he started, left lying in a pool of blood in the middle of a major road crossing.
He cusses.