The Eraser

All houses have ghosts, all houses have memories. Christmas mornings, birthday parties, newborns home from the hospital. Graduation parties, girls coming down the stairs in prom dresses and boys in tuxedos for the first time. Young couples just moving in, repainting their rooms or husbands and wives celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. Our homes hold onto all of our cherished memories, even when we forget them and even when we move away.

But they also hold onto all the bad things. Death, loss, heartbreak, anger, depression. Everything that eats away at our mind, the things we push down until the workday ends and we close those doors behind us, isolating ourselves off from the outside world. Then we let loose, that’s when we open ourselves. Parents home from a bad day at a bad job, kids bullied for being themselves, the ever pressing weight of responsibilities and duties that we accept as we grow into adults. These things stay with us, even when we leave these houses. However a human can move past these things, they can grow strong and healthy in the love and support of their friends and family. They understand their imperfections. Houses cannot. Houses hold onto the good and the bad a lot longer then people. Even when one was torn down the memories lingered in that spot.

Whether that spot became a new house, or an office park or a mall or a parking lot, the ghosts of that fight, of those divorce papers, of burying the family cat and watching a grandmother wither away remained. That spot remained stuck in time so the ghosts of those memories always repeated. Death, loss and heartbreak all played themselves on repeat as if it were some evil play, some twisted opera playing itself out in strangers living rooms, conference rooms or the far corners of empty parking lots.

Luckily for those new people, the ones that have yet to burden these places with their memories, there were specialists to call. You just had to know where to look, what numbers to call. Sam was one of these specialists, though his business card said Creative Director. This was just a way to pass the time. It had been once, memorizing the correct forms and signs to make within the house, walking through all those old memories. He erased a house in Boston once; a big, beautiful, old colonial house. He saw three generations of owners. A woman pulled down a British flag and put an American flag up. He saw a beautiful young couple helping escaped slaves north towards Canada. A young man returned from World War 2 to his mother who broke down in tears at seeing her son come alive.

Of course for every walk through history, there were dozens of fights. Every house, no matter how pretty its outward appearance was, had fights. Money was the big one, though there were plenty involving extramarital affairs. Most were just arguments but there were some where one actually struck another one. Those disturbed Sam the most. He didn’t sleep well the night after those houses. Once, while erasing a pleasant, mid-century ranch home he saw a boy hanging himself from a ceiling fan. Once he had performed the requisite spells and signs to clear the gutwrenchingly heartbreaking imprint from the room he saw the ceiling was still there, exactly as it had been thirty years before when the past inhabitant had ended his life. After completing his sweep of the house he returned to the realtor and the new buyers, a sweet couple with a cute little daughter that just oozed drama school.

“You might want to change the ceiling fan in the second bedroom.”

What truly hurt was not the heartbreak or even watching other people’s lives already lived, but carrying these things around. After Sam was done in a house the imprints were gone, the house was clean and ready for the memories the new owners would imprint. Someday another eraser would clear the house and the tired cycle would continue. What hurt was having to carry all of these memories with him. The curse of an eraser was that he or she took the burden of bearing these memories on. They were gone from the house but not the mind of the eraser.

Sam would drink, often, to rid his thoughts of other peoples’ misery if only for the night and look around his apartment and wonder what future erasers, the ones that would clear his apartment long after he’d left would see. He had no real attachments, few friends and had never been able to hold down a good relationship for very long. Once, during one of these drinking sessions, he thought he saw the imprints he’d just cleared that day. Then more.

Fights, wedding receptions, baby’s taking their first steps, marriages ending, birthday parties, an old couple struggling to remember their first date. All of them flooded his apartment in that blurry, intoxicated moment. For a split second he thought he saw them all turn and recognize him. Join us Sam they called out to him. We are your memories. A thousand voices from a thousand lives called out to him. You have nothing but dead memories.