The faintest of images fleetingly passes through my mind, elusive in its very nature, slipping out of my grasp the moment it is close enough to feel, to touch. I inhale sharply, frustration simmering. Fingers paused mid-type, all thoughts from my head vanish. Gone. Chair screeching on hardwood floor, I stand to look at the dismal greys outside; I watch one raindrop of many slowly trickle to the bottom. Bringing my hand to my head, I lightly touch the coarse bandage there, and close my eyes in deliberation.
It was raining that night, harsh, angled lines that drummed impatiently on the pavement. I remember little else with full clarity. Bright headlights, squealing tyres… then nothing. Just an obsidian void of nothingness. Upon waking up in the hospital, I was told what had happened. A hit-and-run, they said, but another shock was to come – my friend Nikhil was also found that night. Dead, skull brutally crushed by a heavy blow.
Only two days ago, the police paid me a visit, asking me where I’d been that night and what could have happened. Don’t know, don’t remember, I told them. The truth then, but now? Now I’m not so sure. The last thing I can recall is Nikhil shouting at me, with a fiery rage never seen before. What had I done to bear the brunt of his wrath? And as much as I tried to suppress it, the thought was recurrent, more forceful each time: was it something deserving of the accident I withstood? It was a horribly disturbing thought, difficult to comprehend, yet a frequent invader of my thoughts.
Taking a deep breath, I turn to walk back to my desk, sitting down in my chair. Sometimes I lie to myself, distorting reality – I do have memories of that night, memories so faint they could be real or purely figments of my imagination, truths twisted to fool even myself. Sometimes I see red club lights and hear a cacophony of voices; sometimes, I see Nikhil, crumpled body wet from the pelting rain, never to get up again. The implications of this truth are too great for me to even think about. But the fact remains that the little information provided and my faint memories seldom harmonise – it’s effortless to slip into a whirlpool of confusion, of indescribable emotions, an amalgamation of guilt, grief, fear, anger… too many to list.
I think often about how strange it is to depend so heavily on something as fickle, as fragile, as human memory. My memory and I have been rendered close to useless, unlikely to recover. This haze will entrap me for as long as I live, asking the same questions over and over again, dissecting each memory and asking, ‘Real or not real?’, never to be sure. Reality has become a forgotten concept; possibilities are endless, the most obvious, the most terrifying. But, for now, and a long time coming, I am left alone with my thoughts and my nebulous memory.