Day 293 - Erased Story

Erased Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Marsha woke with the sunrise – it was a cloudless day with plenty of sunshine and a near perfect, not too cool not too hot, temperature. She felt good. She felt free. It was a new day with seemingly limitless potential.

Then she remembered Trevor. She had been excited with anticipation and full of positive feelings about her future, but the thought of Trevor ruined all of that. Now she felt dread. She had intentionally come home late and not turned the lights on in the living room. He was supposed to be packed and gone, but she didn’t know if he had actually done it. She had come home late to avoid him and left the lights off because she really didn’t want to know quite yet. She didn’t know what delaying things would really do, but it made her feel just slightly better last night. She was sure he was gone. She hoped she was right.

Slowly she gathered herself and went to find out.

She breathed a sigh of relief. His things were gone. And hers seemed to be in place and intact. Trevor had had temper problems before and she had worried a little that he might take things out on her.

On the kitchen counter there was a note left for her to find. It was simple enough: “You wanted us to be over. You wanted to move on. I’m giving you the chance at a whole new beginning.” It seemed nice, cordial even. Yet it didn’t ease her apprehensions. Magnanimity hardly seemed to be one of Trevor’s characteristics. She couldn’t envision his wishing her well.

Still, he was out of her life. Even if she was worried and his note seemed a little out of character, it sure appeared that he was gone. She had her chance at a new life, and she was ready to take it.

No one remembered Marsha. At first it seemed like a bad bad joke. Then, when absolutely everyone she knew treated her like she was the crazy one, Marsha began to get scared. No one remembered. Her. Her life. The way her life interacted with theirs. No one. Not friends. Not relatives. Not loved ones. They seriously and matter-of-factly did not know her.

Marsha didn’t understand. It seemed impossible. It seemed insane. She knew she was not insane. She knew she was real and had lived a life, even if no one else seemed to.

After some quick cursory research, Marsha discovered it wasn’t just the people’s memories that had been affected, it was reality itself. There were no records of her anymore. Not at her job. Not on the internet. Not even in an old high school yearbook. Marsha was gone. Either she never existed at all, or something had changed all of reality.

When she went home, the locks were changed and there was no record of her having ever been a tenant there. She was left out in the cold with nowhere to go and no one to help her.

Marsha panicked a little and then she panicked a lot. Her world was over. She was over. She didn’t exist. And yet she was there. She was real. And she was stuck in a world that had no memory of her and she had no place in.

Everything closed in on her. The loneliness. The helplessness. She was trapped with no way out. It was too much pressure. It was too frightening. Everything was closing in on her fast. She was desperate. She was alone.

And then she had a thought—Trevor. She didn’t know why she thought of him, but she did. She had wanted a fresh start and a whole new life and somehow she had been given the worst possible version of that. There was no sane explanation for why this had happened, but she had gotten exactly what she asked for.

Something had bothered her when she first read his note. Something just wasn’t right. Trevor would never have been nice. He never would have wished her well. The note didn’t explain things, but in a crazy way it sort of did. She didn’t know why, but she believed that somehow Trevor had advanced knowledge of what was to come. Trevor wasn’t wishing her well, he was taunting her.

Trevor – she had to find Trevor. It was her only chance to find out what was going on and maybe find a way to reverse it. But alas, Trevor was not to be found. No one she knew remembered her, but they also didn’t remember him. Apparently he was as much of an outsider as she was.

She wondered why he would do it. She wondered how he did it.

Finally she checked the messages on her voice mail. Somehow everything could change and yet there was still her phone and a message waiting.

There was only one message. From Trevor. But this time he was different, more the Trevor she had expected. He didn’t wish her well. He wasn’t cordial or magnanimous. He told her that she asked for this and that he was more than happy to give it to her. He told her that by the time she heard this message, things would be changed and that she wouldn’t be able to find him, that he would be gone. Marsha realized it hadn’t been her wish that had changed things. It had been his. Full of rage and anger, he had done something dark and sinister and changed everything.

And now he was gone and she was trapped. Trapped in a situation she hardly understood, except to understand enough to know she was trapped. Her whole life was gone. She asked him to pack his things and go, and that was what he had done, taking all of them, the memories, the histories and realities of them all with him. Everything was now over. The only thing left to her was the chance to begin something new and totally different. Whether that had been his true intent or not, in some way, Trevor really did give her exactly what she wanted, she just didn’t realize it yet.