Memory is a Slippery Thing.

Cutting, marring memories that slice up your tongue and leave you with a mouthful of blood, unable to speak, sputtering. Slippery, whether with spatter or gush. Those memories, the ones that slide in and out of your mind without your control, hard to get a grip on. Flecks, droplets, splashes. You take notes on them all, constructing the crime scene.

This one from a dream, cold sweat, skin flush with fear. This one from when you caught wind of his cologne on another human’s skin while walking by them in public; made you stop with a jerk, headlights shining in your eyes. That one from a line in a book, the villain’s cavalier cruelty too eerily familiar. This one, a flash, seemingly out of nowhere: “You fucking cunt,” malice like a slime, coating every word.

The timeline remains disjointed, despite your notes.

“Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m making this all up, or fusing it with nightmares or plots from horror movies or novels about sadistic killers.”

Or maybe your memories come in bits and pieces because you can’t yet cope, can’t yet accept, can’t yet deal with the fact that this happened, and you know it, because it happened to you.