In honor of The Seer of Memories, I present to you a short horror story. The Mind There is a door behind every thought. This is not a metaphor. You and I would be much better of if it were. The first appeared behind the thought of my mother. I was trying not to think about her, which is, of course, the easiest way to think about somebody. The mind is a creature of magnificent spite. Tell it not to picture a wound, and it gives you all of the traits instead. Tell it not to remember a voice, and suddenly you see every imperfection in the speaker's teeth and feel the spittle against your face. I had been sitting at my desk for perhaps twenty minutes when I had realized an alteration to my abode. The wall behind myself had suddenly grown a handle. More accurately, the accompany architecture of a door upon a second glance. There had never been a door there. I knew this because my room was rather small, and because I had spent the better part of three or so years despising its dimensions. The bedroom, the adjacent bath, the small kitchenette afforded to me. It was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable sight, to say the least. There was no possible room for a door. Nevertheless, there it was. White wood with a cold brass handle. There was nothing remarkable about it. I sat looking at it for some time, during which I attempted to reason, perhaps, bargain with myself. Was it the result of fatigue? Carbon monoxide seemed unlikely. A dream, perhaps? Maybe it was a hereditary neurological defect finally blossoming into its mature form. With each explanation, the door changed. I thought fatigue, it became yellowed. Carbon monoxide? A thin black line beneath the frame. Dream? The handle moved to an impossible situation. I stopped thinking. The door stopped changing. I tried concentrating on my breathing, but it is still a thought. In. Out. Lungs. Blood. Oxygen. The door chose a small frosted glass pane to insult me. I tried counting. One. Two. Three. The number 4 appeared in the glass. I left. There was no other reasonable response. There are sensible reactions to impossible things, of course. Distance. For several hours I wlaked through the city and refused to examine anything too closely. I bought coffee. I watched traffic. I stood inside a bookstore and ran my fingers across titles without reading them. I discovered that avoiding thought requires a remarkable quantity of thought devoted specifically to avoidance. Do not think about the door. Do not think about the door. Do not think about the door. By the time I returned home, there were seven. One behind the desk, in the bed, in the shower, in lieu of my refrigerator, two on the ceiling, and one very small door beneath the kitchen sink. Quite an upsetting ordeal to lose one's fridge to the whims of doorways. I opened the smallest door first. Curiosity is merely terror with a good education. The door beneath the sink led into a corridor considerably larger than my apartment. The walls were narrow enough that my shoulders nearly brushed them. There were no lights, yet everything was visible in the pale, sourceless way of something remembered rather than seen. Along the walls were labels. THINGS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY. THINGS YOU SAID INSTEAD. FACES YOU MISREAD. THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN VOICE AS HEARD BY OTHERS. That final one had a lock. I did not touch it. I know how I sound. To the left, MOTHER. To the right, WHY DID YOU THINK OF HER? I chose left. The passage opened into the kitchen of the house where I grew up. The ugly cream-colored cabinets. The burn mark beside the stove. The ceramic hen my mother kept above the sink despite finding it hideous because it had belonged to her mother, who had also found it hideous. This elaborate reconstruction even included my witch of a mother. She sat at the table with her back to me. I knew, without approaching her, she did not have a face. This certainty arrived fully formed. I never did think of her face. Only her presence. I also knew that if I walked around the table and looked at her, she would. One of many contradictions the mind will forge against you. “Hello?” I said. She lifted one hand. Not waving. Waiting. There was a pencil between her fingers. Usually, a cigarette took its place. On the table sat a sheet of paper. I moved closer. It was covered in my handwriting. YOU HAVE REMEMBERED THIS WRONG. Again and again. Hundreds of times. YOU HAVE REMEMBERED THIS WRONG. YOU HAVE REMEMBERED THIS WRONG. YOU HAVE REMEMBERED THIS WRONG. At the bottom was an unfinished sentence. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED WAS My mother tapped the pencil against the table. I backed away. Her chair scraped across the floor. I ran. The corridor was not where I had left it. Instead, there were three doors. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. WHAT YOU WISH HAD HAPPENED. WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID HAPPENED. Behind me, my mother stood. I did not turn around. “You have to choose,” she said. It was my voice. I opened the middle door. The maze adapted to this. After that, it stopped trying to frighten me with monsters. It offered alternatives. Junctions became accusations in the form of decisions. DID YOU MEAN IT? YES. NO. I DON'T KNOW. ARE YOU A GOOD PERSON? YES. NO. DEFINE GOOD. WHY ARE YOU HERE? BECAUSE I OPENED THE DOOR. BECAUSE I THOUGHT ABOUT THE DOOR. BECAUSE I WANTED THERE TO BE A DOOR. The passages narrowed when I lied. Though, it wasn't a consistent punishment. I began leaving marks. Arrows scratched into plaster. Threads torn from my blouse. Blood, eventually, when I ran out of both. The marks moved. I would walk for an hour, find an arrow I had carved earlier, feel the brief relief of recognition, and then notice it pointed in the opposite direction. It never immediate. Soon, I stopped trusting my recognition> I stopped trusting the lack of recognition. The maze adapted, of course it did. It was not intelligent, not in a unique way. It knew it needed to survive. It knew it needed me to do so. Intelligent enough to allow me to persist, but it could not be persuaded, deceived, or negotiated with. The maze did not understand me. It was me understanding myself, and there is very little distinction between predator and prey when both share the same skull. Eventually, I found the center. No grand chamber awaited me. No beating heart, no beast coiled around some impossible throne. It was a plain circular room with a single chair occupied by myself. She looked exactly as I did, save for the expression. She looked exhausted. “You took your time,” she said. “I was lost.” “No. You were thinking.” I asked what the place was. A door appeared beside me labeled WHAT IS THIS PLACE? I asked how to leave. Another appeared. HOW DO I LEAVE? I asked what she wanted. WHAT DO YOU WANT? Each question was a precision surgery against my ego, excising anything resembling pride and filling the void with a disgusting humility. I stopped speaking. She smiled. That was when I understood the trick. The maze was never built to keep me inside. It survived because I insisted there must be an answer hidden somewhere within it. Every memory required correction. Every fear demanded explanation. Every mistake needed excavation until I could finally discover the version of myself responsible for it and put her on trial. “I cannot solve myself,” I said. A door vanished. “I cannot remember perfectly.” Another. “I cannot know what every person thought of me. I cannot determine whether every choice was right. I cannot tear apart every memory until I find something underneath it worth calling truth.” The room shuddered. My double stood. “Stop.” I laughed. “I cannot stop thinking either.” For the first time, she looked afraid. “I know.” The maze collapsed. I awoke at my desk. My refrigerator had returned. The walls were where walls belonged. There was only one white door behind me. I left it closed. For several weeks, this was enough. Yesterday, while brushing my teeth, I wondered what would have happened if I had chosen WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED instead. There is now a brass handle in my bathroom mirror. -unreality I occasionally find myself glancing at it. But I wonder, always, if it's her.
You Have Made Me Truly Feel.