I’ve been driving myself insane working Memento into shape. After I caught myself writing what would need to be 20+ pages of exposition into the middle of a story, I realized that what I actually needed was a Part 1, so the thing that used to be just “Memento” could be “Memento: Part 2”.

           This is Memento: Part 1. The beginning of it, anyway. Probably about 1/4 through Part 1. It’s a little bit rough in spots, compared to where I’d like it to be. I’m still putting the pieces together, so some of this is subject to change.

This also comes with a work-in-progress version of the title page of Part 1. Missing some details and general polish, but this is the basic idea. Will have an illustration on the final page too. We’ll see if you get more than just the two.

        Forgive me for re-telling a couple of jokes I heard from my friends in high school. I’ve taken some help from people much funnier than me.

Thanks for taking the time to read the insane stuff that explodes out of my head at 3 AM.

 

        I’ve got a lot of memories burned into my head from my time in the Blackstone Youth Mental Health Center’s “red section”, a place reserved for teenagers too violent or emotionally unstable to be supervised by the average dumbass. It’s hard not to see some memorable shit when a third of the kids there are on suicide watch, half the rest of ‘em have tried to kill somebody, and most of the adults are barely dodging PTSD from all the bullshit they’re wrangling on a daily basis.

        Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

        It’s funny how often I think of David. Or maybe it’s depressing. I don’t know; my sense of humor got real fucked up at some point. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to tell the difference between the two.

        David was a fucking dumbass. Room temp IQ would be generous. I heard he once tried to get high by stealing a blank check from his dad’s checkbook, writing just the word “drugs” on it, and handing it to the cashier at a local pharmacy/convenience store. When that didn’t get him … just “some drugs”, I guess, he went on a rampage, screaming and knocking shelves over, then promptly went to the payphone outside and called 911, thinking he could get the cops to “make them give him the good stuff”.

        I absolutely believe that story, considering I once watched him try to escape Blackstone by simply throwing a towel over his head and walking out the front door, because “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me! It’s a perfect plan!”. For reasons that were probably my fault, he was absolutely convinced the only reason that plan failed was because the place was staffed entirely by actual wizards, since he spent a bunch of time after that trying to spy on them or begging them to teach him magic.

        Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

        I … shit, what was I thinking about? I got distracted thinking about boobs for a minute, which is cool, I guess, but that’s a whole other conversation for later. Boobs are only half of the reason I’ve been sitting in an intentionally depressing detention room for the past 28 minutes.

        David would be the other reason. Or rather, somebody like David. Problem is, David is not an isolated incident. There’s so many dumb, dense, ignorant motherfuckers out there that have either cheated their way into power, or lucked their way into it. Most people can’t go a whole week without running into one of ‘em. Some poor bastards have to put up with a David on a daily basis.

        That’s an issue for me. See, my dad was born with a hand grenade where his heart should have been, and I inherited a lot of that legendary temper. People like David, and a lot of the teachers here, will give impossible, contradictory, or nonsensical commands, just as an excuse to swing their dicks around because some arbitrary title gives them the right to discipline. And then they ask you sarcastically, in a high-pitched girly voice “What are you gonna do about it? Beat me up?”, and then the dust settles and you’re suddenly in a detention room, or a mental health facility, or prison someday, probably.

        Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

        The gym teacher, Mr. Johnson, has his scuffed-up athletic shoes propped up on the desk. He’s scooted his chair real far back, a dark blue baseball cap tilted real far down to mostly cover his face. He’s barely moved in the past 20 minutes. It looks like he must have nodded off at some point. If I sit here and wait for him to dismiss me, I could be here for hours. The other two people in here are both distracted doing shit with their notebooks.

        Fuck it. Me and my allegedly magical, mind controlling boobs are out of here. I silently slip out of my chair, glide over the door, and carefully slide it open just enough to get into the hallway. The halls are all empty by now. People can’t get out of this place fast enough. All that’s left are the signs reminding kids that it’s cool to do drugs because authority figures tell you not to, and teachers silently working on who knows what in their classrooms.  

I walk for the front door like I’m supposed to be here. You’d be surprised how effective that can be. If David had just ditched the towel and stopped trying to sneak out of Blackstone, he probably would have stood a chance at making it out the front door. Guess it’s a good thing he didn’t; that wretched motherfucker belonged there. Don’t ask; it’s a bit of a long story, and it’s not nearly as funny as the other ones.

I open the big glass door at the front of the high school with a hip check, and duck outside to the top of the stairs. There’s not really anybody left outside right now, either. Just a bunch of tall pine trees standing watch over the vacant lot across the street, a huge overgrown field in front of The King’s Carcass. That would be the boarded up, rotted out remains of a failed Burger King, rumored to be a den of candlelit Satanic worship and ritualistic animal sacrifice. Unfortunately, rather than being something totally rad like that, the ol’ King’s Carcass is really just a den for nerds to gather on weekends and play board games about wizards and dragons and shit. I know. I’m disappointed too.

        I hike my backpack higher onto my shoulder; it’s an ugly, decade-old garage sale bag, an ugly shade of “forgotten basement” green, one of the pockets held shut by a dog leash and bits of chain wrapped around the bag.

I run up to jump down the six or seven concrete steps to the sidewalk, and remember midair that I wore a skirt today, awkwardly fumbling to hold it down, landing with a heavy, stumbling thud and the clattering of backpack chains behind me.

        “What’s up, nerds?” I ask, trying my best to pick up my backpack as if I’d just done all that on purpose.

        Ada still hasn’t looked up from her book, either because she didn’t notice, or because she’s used to me doing this shit by now. Her wheelchair is tucked into the corner between the stairs and the beige brick of the school’s outside wall. She’s always finding an excuse to hide behind something; poor girl’s cursed with being both very shy, and very, very pretty. I have watched more than one fist fight break out between guys competing over the chance to be nice at her. I’ve definitely had to introduce a few creeps to the pavement for her too.

        Keith, a scruffy hippie in an oversized Grateful Dead T-shirt and ragged jeans, sits cross-legged on the grass across from her. He smiles when he sees me. I can’t quite tell if that’s supposed to be an “I’m happy to see you” smile, or a “Nice butt, jackass” smile, so I figure it’s best to be embarrassed anyway, just in case.

        Bethany sits on the second-lowest step, looking into a mirror to casually apply clown makeup. She’s wearing a pink shirt with a black graffiti heart and black jeans, her closet full of nothing but that one matching outfit, like a cartoon character. A wild tangle of pink hair spills out from underneath her black aviator’s cap. I’m not sure if she noticed me either.

        Bonnie stands by the path to the sidewalk, casually leaning against an invisible wall. She’s dressed like she doesn’t know if she belongs with the goths or the … uh … I guess “mime” isn’t really a high school clique, is it? Her bangs are swept over half her face, topped by a black beret. She’s always wearing pale makeup with black lipstick, and a black and white striped tank top, to show off that one French symbol, you know the one, tattoo’d in Sharpie on her arm.

        Elaine stares at me like I’m a wizard, apparently not exactly sure where she is or what’s happening. She almost looks like a tiny cartoon Scotsman was bitten by a vampire; a pale face framed by fiery, curly hair, dotted by countless freckles. She’s wearing an oversized black jacket and a red plaid skirt over a pair of wicked witch stockings.

        “What kept you so long?” Keith asks, still smiling a bit.

        “What else would it be?” I shrug.

        “I mean, what specifically did you do this time?”

        “Apparently, I was being “disobedient and disrespectful” in gym class.”

        “Really? That hardly ever happens,” Ada says flatly, like even sounding sarcastic is too much effort.

        “I know, right?” Keith adds, apparently having plenty of energy to be sarcastic. “So what exactly went down?”

        “I was walking laps instead of running. Mr. Johnson started yelling at me for not participating enough, but when I tried to pick up my feet a little, he just got even madder and wrote me up for “disrupting the activity”. After all, how could all these teenage boys focus on running when there’s boobs jiggling over there? Clearly, I must be doing it deliberately to ruin gym class out of spite. I asked him if he wanted me to run or not, and he just got real angry and started ranting a bunch about me being a smartass and wrote me up to “teach me a lesson”.”

        “The fuck?” Keith seems baffled beyond the ability to complete sentences.

        “You … got in trouble for “running while female”?” Bonnie asks.

        “Hey, to be fair, Lyra is fucking stacked,” Bethany says. “I know I couldn’t focus on running with such a killer rack bouncin’ across the field.”

        “Thanks for the support, Pinkie,” I grumble.

        “No problem,” She smiles. “I’d “support” you any day,” She makes a boob-grabbing motion at the air in front of her, raising an eyebrow and smirking at me suggestively.

        “I’m sorry,” Bonnie sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. “I don’t get it. What actually happened here to land you in detention?”

        “Isn’t it obvious?” I ask. “Clearly, I must always be thinking about my breasts and have perfect control over every part of my body. Obviously, the only explanation must be that I’m intentionally trying to revert all the guys into boob-obsessed chimps and incite a riot with my sinful jiggling. Otherwise, I would have just chosen to not obey gravity.”

        Elaine is staring at me and Bonnie intently. It seems all this talk of boobs and tits has captured her attention.

        “That … that can’t be what he said to you,” Bonnie says.

        “I had to paraphrase a little, but yeah, it was pretty much that.”

        “I swear to God …” Bonnie shakes her head at the ground. “Some days, I swear this school is staffed by actual demons.”

        “Demons?” Elaine snaps, apparently on high alert.

        “You feelin’ alright, girl?” Keith asks. “You’ve been acting real weird lately.”

        “What color are mirrors?” Bethany asks.

        Now, if that sounds like it has absolutely nothing to do with anything, that’s because you’re correct. Few things can be predicted for sure, but Bethany constantly saying some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard in my life for absolutely no reason is about as reliable as the sun rising.

        “Wh … what?” Keith asks.

        Elaine’s face collapses, radiating the energy of an engine struggling to start. Bethany looks up from her mirror, and smiles subtly.

        “And if nothing’s faster than light, then how does the dark always get there first?” She asks.

        Elaine’s face twists as a drive shaft snaps in her brain. I swear smoke’s about to start pouring out of her ears.

        “What the fuuuuck ...” Her voice trails off.

      “Oh yeah,” Bethany continues. “Sounds like somebody got one hell of a bite from Gram Toker’s Count Dankula.”

        “Who did?” Elaine asks, concerned.

        “You did,” I answer. “Exactly what are you on?”

        “What am I on? I’m on the fuckin’ grass, ya dumb cunt. What’s it look like I’m on?”

        “No, drugs. Elaine. What drugs are you on?” I ask.

        “Nuthin’! I swear!” Elaine snaps. “I’m so clean, germs are a-phobic of me! My body is a temple, full of beautiful women that warm the mansion of my heart, on, like, a big party boat, or somethin’. I’m sorry, I’m so fuckin’ high I forgot what we was talkin’ about. What was the question?”

        “Have you been doing drugs?” I ask again.

        “Never. Wouldn’t dream of it,” She answers, with extreme confidence.

“Are you guys really just now noticing this?” Bonnie asks. “She’s been like this since lunch.”

     “She always gets like this,” Bethany chimes in. “I bet she stole the wrong snacks from somebody’s snack cupboard without realizing it. She’s usually not dumb enough to eat this much green stuff at once, or, I assume, eat it with her lunch.”

        “I know YOU are, but what am I?” Elaine snaps, with the kind of spiciness usually reserved for that fucked up nuclear hot sauce that requires you to sign a waiver before they let you taste it.

        “Oh boy …” Bonnie says, defeated. “This could get ugly …” She points off down the road somewhere.

      Way down the street, a dark silhouette is coming into focus. A dark skinned girl with meticulously straightened hair is coasting down the sidewalk on a bike. Cloaked in a dark, smoky purple trench coat several sizes too large for her, she’s almost got a grim reaper vibe to her, especially since she’s wearing it over a black T-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark ribcage printed on it, and black gloves with white bone hands painted on the back.

She’s wearing a pair of thick-ass Velma Dinkley glasses, which does little to dampen her frightening aura. Kinda like putting a bowtie on a tiger shark. A long, narrow scar runs all the way up the length of her left cheek, something I know she got from falling out of a tree when she was a kid, though she always has a different story whenever people ask her about it. Usually involving a demon or a knife fight. Sometimes both.

        She skids to a stop, and steps off her bike. It’s a very small bike; knowing her size, it’s probably a bike made for an eleven-year-old, with a deep purple frame and a galaxy print, and a skeletal snake hand painted around the frame. From this close, it’s apparent her right cheek is swollen. She looks at me, and smiles very, very slightly.

        “Aren’t you supposed to be at the dentist?” Bonnie asks coldly.

        “Oh yeah, she was at the dentist,” I answer, digging into my jacket pocket. “She was holding her link when they were working on her,” I snarl, only half playfully, holding up a chain necklace with a little, silver teardrop shaped pendant, and shaking it in Carrie’s direction for emphasis.

    Carrie chokes back a giggle; maybe she only just now realized that she was doing that. Everybody else just seems to be lost.

        “How does that thing work again?” Keith asks. “Isn’t it just a magic walkie-talkie?”

        “Not exactly,” I answer. “It can transmit more abstract thoughts and experiences too. I thought it was weird when my mouth started to feel funny in Psychology, but then I felt some surreal pressure tugging at my tooth and I had to scramble to get this fucking thing off me.”

        Everybody seems disgusted or horrified by that, except Elaine, who seems to still be frying her brain over some dumb thing Bethany said, maybe while I wasn’t paying attention. And Carrie, who still finds this whole thing funny.

        Carrie smiles, still careful not to show her teeth. As I’m putting the psychic link back into my pocket, my hand touches the pendant, and I can feel something like a fucking bullet hole in my bottom jaw. The pain dissipates almost instantly after I get the pendant off my skin. God, I feel so sorry for her..

        Carrie slowly opens her mouth, and very gently digs a mass of deep red gauze out of her cheek. She pulls her cheek aside with a finger, and tilts her head down, showing off a mess of swollen gums criss-crossed by black stiches where a tooth used to be.

        “Damn, that sucks,” Bethany says, slipping into her “concerned mom” voice.

        Elaine suddenly shrieks a bit.

        “The hell happened to her mouth?!” She cries.

        “The dentist happened. Try to keep up,” Bonnie tells her.

        “YOU try to keep up,” Elaine grumbles and crosses her arms.

        Carrie drops the bloody gauze into her left coat pocket, and Keith grimaces.

        “Okay, that’s just disgusting,” He says.

        Carrie frowns and narrows her eyes at him, digging through her other jacket pocket for a packet of sterile gauze, tearing it open and cautiously tucking the gauze into her mouth.

        “Don’t look at me like that,” Keith whimpers, curling back away from her.

        “What are you so scared of? She doesn’t bite,” I tell him.

        “Wh- … Yes she does!” Keith snaps, baffled.

        Carrie suddenly leans in his direction, cautiously biting at the air between them. Keith flinches, nearly falling over.

        “Hey, be nice,” I warn her.

        Carrie’s face curdles, and she shakes her head and frowns at me.

     “Alright,” Bethany starts, finally standing up off the stairs. “Now that we’re all caught up, anybody wanna go shoot some hoops?”

        Silence.

        “Ada?” Bethany asks.

        Ada looks up from her book, confused. She’s not the only one.

        “Basketball,” Bethany repeats. “You in?”

        Ada curls her lip, looks down at her wheelchair, then back up at Bethany, as if she’s trying to figure out what she just said.

        “Come on, don’t look at me like that,” Bethany says. “We’ll figure something out.”

        “I don’t know …” Ada says softly, turning her head back down to stare into her book.

        “Alright, fine. We’ll play basketball with you,” Bonnie says, defeated.

        “Don’t be like that. It’ll be fun!” Bethany bubbles.

        “Right. Whatever.”

        “Hey, uh … you should probably take Elaine with you,” I cut in. “We probably shouldn’t leave her unsupervised when she’s like this.”

        “What?” Elaine snaps, insulted. “I don’t need a babysitter!”

        “No, you need a high sitter. Completely different skill set,” I tell her.

        “I’m NOT a BABY!” Elaine pouts, stomping her foot on the ground for emphasis.

        “Oh yeah?” Bethany asks. “Then where’s your name?”

        Silence again. The confused kind, this time.

       “Your NAME, honey. Where did you put it?” Bethany asks. “Like this,” She says, pulling an index card out of her pocket. The name “Bethany” is written big, bubbly pink letters, and dusted lightly with glitter.

        “Has she really just had that sitting in her pocket, ready to go?” Bonnie whispers to me, leaning in so Elaine doesn’t hear.

        Elaine pats down her pockets, then spins around looking at the ground.

        “Shit! What the fuck? How did I lose that?!” Elaine panics.

        “Don’t worry. I got you,” Bethany says calmly. “I think I might have seen it earlier down at the park by my house, by the basketball court.”

        “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Elaine hisses. “Come on! What if somebody else gets it first?” She lunges forward, suddenly running down the street.

    “Come on, we better keep up with her,” Bethany says, rushing over to Ada’s side to grab her wheelchair and rush her towards the sidewalk. Ada shrieks in surprise, and Bethany yells out into the empty street, “Don’t worry! I kidnap her all the time! I’ll bring her home by six!”

        Bonnie sighs, shaking her head at the ground. “I’ll talk to you guys later, I guess.”

        Keith watches her walk off, then turns to me.

        “So … you got any plans today?” He asks me.

        I know it’s kinda rude, but it’s hard for me not to flinch. Carrie doesn’t seem to be happy with that idea.

“I … uh … I think you better go with them. We got plans, and Carrie doesn’t like to share.”

        Carrie’s glare almost punches a hole through Keith’s head. He timidly stumbles back a bit, and Carrie smiles.

        “R-right,” Keith says. “I … I’ll talk to you later,” he says, sheepishly backing off in the same direction everybody else just went.

        “Absolutely,” I smile. “Talk to ya later.”

        Keith turns around; he doesn’t bother trying to run to catch up with the others. Carrie is still smiling.

        “You’re a real cold-blooded, heartless little reptile, you know that?” I tell her.

        Carrie’s smile gets even wider. She takes that as a compliment. Which is fine. I kind of meant it as one. But only kind of.

        She follows me to the bike rack, and waits for me to unlock my bike. We both coast across the grassy vacant lot across the street, casually slipping behind The King’s Carcass. Again, walk like we belong here. Rushing off will just make us look shady.

        Tucked away in the trees, about twenty yards behind the decrepit building, there’s a shallow, unassuming ditch. Carrie and I lay our bikes down in the tall grass, bike locks wrapped around the same tree trunk. We hop down onto the rocky, uneven ground of the ditch. It’s bone dry today, but water collects in here like a motherfucker when it rains. That’s by design. I think.

        I’m pretty sure this a storm drainage system. It’s a huge, writhing leviathan slumbering between the town’s toes, burrowing under streets in places, until it eventually joins with the river. There’s a concrete tunnel ahead of us, about chest high on me. Carrie barely has to duck to get inside. You get around one of the turns down here, and it gets pitch black.

        Our footsteps crunching on gravel sound so loud in here. It always seemed like a double edged sword to me. If anybody came in here, we should definitely hear them first. But then again, if somebody, or something was waiting for us somehow . . .

        This is one of the longest tunnels, and one of the least tall ones too. About halfway through, after two or three minutes of walking in silence, buried in the left wall, there’s a little side tunnel. It’s barely more than a foot tall, made of the kind of ribbed steel tube they use in sewers. You wouldn’t even find it if you were feeling along the wall to find your way through, since it’s right along the floor. And even if you brought a flashlight and happened to notice it, you’d have to be an insane person to try crawling through it.

        Sanity is in pretty short supply for teenagers, though. We’ve squeezed through forty feet of this pitch-black tunnel on our hands and knees when the standing water is cold enough to shock you to the bone and high enough to cradle your chin with your head touching the top of the tunnel. I guess it’s not much of a “squeeze” for Carrie, but you know what I mean.

        Finally, at the other end, there’s a little concrete room. I’m not sure what the purpose of this thing is, or if it even has one. This town once paid to have a bunch of two-foot tall miniature boulders placed in a row along a half mile of the river bank by the park on the edge of town, then paid again to have them each moved four feet to the right, then paid a third time to have them removed. Weird, shady nonsense is a pretty regular occurrence around here, and not even just from the government.

Whatever this place was supposed to be, it’s taken on a new life as Carrie’s dank, underground lair. It’s a round room, with a floor that slopes downward into a drain in the center. Just barely too short for me to stand upright in. Couple of extra drainage pipes off to the sides. A bunch of demonic-looking symbols that Carrie painted onto the walls with red nail polish. You know. For decoration.

There’s some rustling of fabric and clattering of chains as I drop my backpack on the ground, and drape my jacket over the entrance tube. Carrie settles down onto the floor in the far side of the room. For a moment, there’s an almost death-like silence and blackness. Nothing but the sound of a hand digging through a pocket, and the glow-in-the-dark bones on Carrie’s shirt.

There’s a gentle click, and a faint, soft orange light fills the space. Carrie’s holding a cigarette lighter in one hand, using the light to help her awkwardly flip through a little booklet of paper talismans. Suddenly, she’s the real Carrie.

She’s always looked so out of place walking around in broad daylight, waiting in line at a grocery store or sitting at a desk bored out of her mind. She always wears darkness like it belongs to her; something in the flickering of firelight against darkness gives Carrie her actual form.

She cautiously tears a little talisman out of her booklet, licks the back of it, and slaps it down onto the concrete. The alien-looking symbol on the paper faintly glows white, gently leaking a smokeless red flame that just barely lights the room.

Don’t ask me about whatever unspeakable power she’s tapped into, or how she does any of this shit. I have absolutely no idea. Carrie just does what she does.

She rummages through her backpack for a minute, then lays down on the floor with a black, spiral bound notebook spread out in front of her. She clutches a pencil between her teeth, and starts flipping through the pages. She stops flipping for a second, shakes her head, and keeps flipping. Finally, she stops, looks up at me for a second, and grabs the pencil from between her teeth. Then she stares back down at the page for a while.

        “You want to read something for me?” I ask.

        Carrie looks back up.

        . . . . . .

        She nods very slightly.

        “Alright. Start whenever you’re ready.”

        . . . . . .

        We could be here for a while. Even in a place this far from everybody else on Earth, it could take her a long time to find her voice.

Carrie stares at the page for a while, then flips to the next one. Reading ahead, practicing the words. Now . . . it’s hard to fully appreciate what she’s filled that notebook with without understanding Demetrius Johnson

        Demetrius had scraped together whatever change he could between shifts as a dishwasher to buy the cheapest camera and sound equipment he could find, then started making spooky short films with his buddies. Eventually, they made a real freaky, hour long movie about a demonic possession, called “The Devouring of Emily Lane”, filmed in the motel he was living in at the time. Somehow, he weaseled that thing into an underground film festival, the right guys saw it, and he miracled his way into a small theatrical release.

        The guy had an unnatural talent for making movies that felt absolutely fucking real. Writing around the fact that he couldn’t afford to fill the screen with fake monsters for two hours, he had to create real ones. And Carrie was religiously obsessed with the guy’s work, and particularly the story behind his career. He wasn’t born into money. Guy was a goddamn high school dropout with a dream, and he made it real. Well, briefly anyway. But that’s a whole other story.

        I’ve never had the heart to tell Carrie she was never gonna do the same thing. Not just that this happening once was like winning the lottery, but Demetrius lived in California. He knew a guy who knew a guy’s uncle who was a movie producer. Carrie lives in buttfuck nowhere, Minnesota, and the singular person on good terms with her is currently hanging out with her in a dank underground lair. Not to mention Demetrius could actually get a job. Carrie’s too … troubled to hold down a job, and she’s already been banned from the laundromat for trying to stealthily steal change from the pockets in unattended laundry piles. A video camera’s even more of a distant dream for her.

        Carrie takes a huge breath, and sighs deeply.

        “A smokeless pillar of white flame kisses the night sky . . . “ Her voice is faint. Out of practice. “. . . Little bits of ash tumble down like snowflakes . . .”

* * * * * * * * *