Mood Piece February 20 2018

His hand read "remember". Or at least it had, back before he had stopped tracing over the words in black marker, back before his hand had become his again. He could still see it when he wasn't thinking too much. Perhaps still expected to see it was closer to the truth; now a soft surprise when he looked down and saw only bare flesh and small wrinkles above his wrist. He had redrawn the lines so many times, he thought, maybe his brain was still tracing them today. No longer needing a hand at all to write.

As much as he never seemed to get used to the sudden drop in his stomach that came whenever his blank hand met the line of his eye, the one place he could never trace a line back to was exactly what that "remember" had signified. He could still feel it; the cold weight in his stomach, the tightness in his throat, and something yawning large behind him. He still knew every inch of how it felt to remake that word along the base of his thumb, could almost believe he was doing so now. For all that, though, the thing itself was gone entirely.

When he tried to remember what had loomed so large behind that small black word he found only a long dark hallway. When had it left him? Where had it gone? However many times he asked, it was only ever silence that answered back. Soon, even the weight of its presence had become only a memory; a half-glimpsed predator at the edge of his vision. Eventually, he had stopped tracing the sigil at all and let it crumble beneath the death and birth of unconscious cells. Now it was only the memory of ghosts that haunted him. A fear of fear.

He wondered sometimes if he could find it again, if he really tried. If through a supreme act of will he might summon it back to be accounted for, might carve a face in on the darkness. It might be fitting, an act of solidarity with the man who was so determined never to forget. Still, though, he hesitated. It was a dangerous thing to begin, paying tithes to the dead, and some inheritance were better left unclaimed.