A Town of Lost Memories
When Beatrice was a child, she was confident and self possessed beyond her years. Her assurance hadn't wavered through the turbulence of adolescence or the experimentation of the college years. When her life long friend Ellen reflected upon this, she thought it was a cruel twist of fate that Beatrice was the first with amnesia. Leaning down to tie her shoe, Beatrice was fully aware of who she was. She was so confident of her own importance, that she often appeared arrogant. Even in the midst of mundane actions such as shoe tying, a certain swaggering air exuded from Beatrice. Many people found this aspect of Beatrice irritating but Ellen found it oddly reassuring. Wanda, who hadn't befriended the two until middle school, rarely saw the bad in anyone. She never seemed to notice Beatrice's arrogance.
Ellen immediately detected that something was different when Beatrice stood up from tying her shoe. The confidence had vanished from her stance. The smug undertones that constantly played across her face were replaced with a vague unawareness. Beatrice looked confused and distracted. Ellen couldn't recall ever seeing a look of confusion cross Beatrice's face, not even in college physics.
Wanda didn't seem to notice a thing until Beatrice spoke.
"Who am I?" she queried in a modest and genuine tone. Somewhere between tying her shoe and standing up, her identity had slipped away. It wasn't as frightening as you might imagine. Mostly, Beatrice felt lonely.
"You're Beatrice." Wide eyed Wanda exclaimed. She placed her hand on Beatrice's shoulder and shook her a bit. Wanda was one of those people who thought shaking could fix anything from broken appliances to disobedient children. Surely a little jostle would straighten out her friend's confusion.
Beatrice glared at Wanda. She wasn't fond of this woman and her ostentatious presumptions that led her to grab and invade a strangers personal space. The sweat on Wanda's palm seeped though Beatrice's thin blouse. Beatrice wiggled her shoulder and freed her self from Wanda's rapturous clutch.
"No, Beatrice just doesn't sound quite right." She said, and stared at the sky as if somewhere floating on a cloud were the letters spelling her true name. Ellen, who had been raised by hypochondriacs, insisted on a doctor's visit.
"I hate doctors." Beatrice protested.
This wasn't true. Beatrice was one of those unusual people who didn't actually mind doctors visits. She said that waiting rooms were calming. She said that she appreciated the rare sort of confidence doctors displayed.
The doctor was stumped. He had never heard of amnesia with out head injury.
"In fact, " He said in an almost comically nasal voice, "Amnesia is extremely rare. And 28 years of age is far to young for Alzheimers." He sighed and examined Beatrice's blank face through thick lensed glasses.
To the dismay of both Wanda and Ellen, Beatrice left the doctor without a prescription and without pearls of doctoral wisdom. She was sent on her way and told that perhaps her memory would return tomorrow. If Beatrice had been her self, she would not have been pleased with this doctor. He displayed no rare sense of confidence.
Neither of her doting friends stayed with Beatrice overnight. She was escorted back to her apartment where she insisted on solitude. Luckily for Beatrice's neighbors and the many cats that lived with the old woman on the fourth floor, the building was not burnt down in a state of amnesic confusion.
The morning brought on an invigorating sense of refreshment and possibility for Beatrice. She woke up still not remembering her life as Beatrice, but she decided she was partial to the name Sheryl.
Ellen woke up as Ellen in her checkered pajamas. Outside the window of her fourth floored apartment, thick fog cloaked her usual view. The whole scene looked foreboding. Day was dimly lit, and in the distant haze, outlined buildings jutted between the fog covering. It was as if the weather was intertwined with her own anxiety rattled conscious.
Routine was always a sufficient distraction when Ellen became too immersed in worry. She left the window and hurried to the ritual of breakfast and coffee before calling Wanda.
Wanda woke up confused among disheveled blue blankets. The ringing phone did nothing to stave off her confusion.
"Hello?" Wanda said into the phone.
"Hey, have you talked to Beatrice yet?"
"Who is this?"
"Wanda? What's your problem?" Even if Ellen and Wanda hadn't been friends since childhood, Ellen was well aware that her unusually squeaky voice immediately gave her identity away during phone conversations with the most casual of acquaintances.
"My problem?" Wanda faltered, "I can't quite explain. Sorry Wanda"
"You're Wanda, I'm Ellen." And this is when Ellen realized Beatrice was not the only one with amnesia.
It most be contagious, Ellen thought. Next, it would be her in a daze, having no idea what her name was. She tried to recall every time she had spent with her two friends within the last couple of weeks. They had shared french fries at Hanks Diner. Beatrice was a notorious double dipper. Ellen uneasily imagined Beatrice's bitten french fry, laden wit amnesic germs dipping into the shared ketchup.
It wasn't just the french fries that made Ellen uneasy about that day at Hanks. There had been something else. Beatrice had brought the friends to Hanks specifically because she had something to tell them. She had seen Beatrice hesitate, on the brink of spilling her news, and then harness back the words. It was memorable because it was so unlike Beatrice. Normally, Beatrice's words detached themselves from somewhere inside her and came pouring out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to comprehend their meaning. Maybe the amnesia had already started on her. Maybe what she had to say to them had something to do with the amnesia. In the weeks prior to the amnesia, Wanda had acted like her normal, high-spirited self. There was no way Wanda had any idea about the amnesia. It was always so simple to spot when something was bothering Wanda. Ellen thought about the time Wanda had shrunk Beatrice's sweater in the wash after borrowing it without asking. Wanda had formed a haphazard plan to buy a new one without telling Beatrice what had happened. But as soon as Wanda was in Beatrice's presence, she had burst with her confession.
Dealing with Wanda's amnesia was a little easier since Ellen had already experienced it with Beatrice. Wanda had a tendency toward forgetting anyway, so her memory loss didn't seem as tragic and completely out of character. Ellen imagined her self as a modern day Florence Nightingale, easing her friends out of their amnesia back into a cognizant state of being. She took Wanda to a different doctor, hoping for a solution, but the new doctor seemed just as baffled.
Ellen's craving for a caffeine boost led her to overhear an uncomfortable conversation in her favorite coffee shop. Before she heard their words, she saw a woman place her hand on a man's arm. He took two quick steps back, away from her reach.
"No, I just don't remember. I really don't know you." The man said.
"But Martin, We've been friends for three years." The young woman replied.
The man looked at the woman and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm not Martin." The man said, and walked out of the shop.
The expression on the girl's face altered between panic and confusion.
Ellen felt unease swell inside her. She wished she had never heard the conversation.
The news woman smiled at the camera. bleached teeth glistening and dyed hair shimmering under the studio lights.
"There is an epidemic of amnesia sweeping the town." The news woman said in the usual news caster tone. "The first case was reported a little over two weeks ago. Now over forty percent of the town's population has lost their memories. The strangest detail to this already bizarre ordeal is that the amnesiacs adopt new identities after their memory loss."
The news flashed to a previously recorded interview with a woman holding an infant in front of a run down house.
"Our neighbor, Lucy, use to be a sweet old lady. She would even bake the kids cookies. Now she goes by Martha and she yells at my kids to stay away."
The shining news anchor filled the screen. "Doctors are mystified. They still have no idea what could be causing this epidemic. Officials speculate that the town will be quarantined within the week."
It was like dying, Ellen thought. Maybe their bodies keep living, but it was a death. Beatrice had completely assimilated to her new identity as Sheryl. In the beginning, Ellen tried to spend time with her, with the motive of coaxing Beatrice back from where she had disappeared too. Sheryl mildly endured Ellen's company, but Sheryl always seemed eager for her visitor to leave. Ellen didn't dislike Sheryl, but she was a bland replacement for Beatrice.
Wanda had a new name too. Nora. Ellen reminded her that their fourth grade arch nemesis was named Nora.
"She put gum in your hair. She stole your pencil box." Ellen protested.
The new Nora didn't care about fourth grade Nora. She didn't remember crying in the bathroom after Nora called her ugly. She didn't remember being in fourth grade at all. She just knew she was Nora.
Ellen mourned the loss of her two friends. Even though they forgot, she didn't want them to be forgotten. She wrote a list of all the memories they had together.
Among the non-amnesics was the hushed chatter of what could be causing the epidemic. Ellen saw the talk before she heard it. The furtive eyes glancing around before two people leaned in to talk in a barely audible murmur. At first the talk was everywhere. Restaurants, buses, or just walking the streets. But as less non-amnesics remained, the talk became less public and less loud. Ellen became an expert at guessing which non-amnesic stranger held which theory. When in public, she would people watch and guess which theory a person held.
A teenager shuffled down the street, a skate board under his arm. His greasy hair hung in dark coils over his eyes. He believed the government was using their town as an experimentation. She could see the young man's disdain for authority weigh down his shoulder like an animate object. In his mind, an epidemic of this magnitude could be caused by no other than the meddling and apathetic authority of government.
A pear shaped woman with a pear shaped dog sat at a park bench. The woman had a face endowed with a perpetual frown. Here eyes were murky with remorse induced daydreams. Ellen knew by the expression that she was thinking of somebody she had lost to amnesia. The woman was slumped slightly on that bench. Ellen could see her grief mingled with both fear and hope. This woman believed that all the chemicals and pollutants of the modern world had contaminated the air. We breathed in our memories doom. At first the woman had spent all her time in doors to avoid the toxic amnesia laden oxygen. The lonely void grew too immense for day time talk shows and her sweet little dog to fill or distract from. She wondered if her loved one who had become someone else would love her again if she too became someone different. So she now spent all her time outside, hoping and fearing for the inevitable hand of oblivion and reemergence.
The young man on the bus who wore torn jeans and a leather jacket was trying to cultivate an image of cool discontent even thought he had no friends left to impress. He stared at a book on his lap but Ellen could tell his mind was somewhere other than the words. Despite his aura of cool, Ellen could see under the exterior to a past of nerd induced solitude. The complete illusion of hipness was dampered by his past of science fiction. He reared his teenage mind on Heinlein and X-Files and no matter how much he grew and changed, he couldn't escape from the basic logic of this fiction. This is what led him to believe that the amnesia was caused by aliens. Aliens so microscopic that they were undetectable to our visual capabilities had taken over the town. Lodged inside the human brains, the Aliens took control.
It didn't take superior abilities of deduction to know what the old woman wearing the face mask thought. She believed a virus had infected the town. Ellen had watched a television special where a scientist speculated that this was the cause of the amnesia. The old woman wearing the face mask probably saw the same special. In the beginning, over half the town wore similar masks. But few of those early mask wearers had been spared.
On the last day before becoming completely reclusive within the safety of her apartment, Ellen had sat at the park to people watch. She saw two nuns talking gently to a teary eyed little girl. She wondered if the child was one of the amnesia orphans. Most of the parents who transformed into new personalities would accept the child who was their's biologically. Often times the parental duties were accepted begrudgingly, but even the unwilling realized how heartless it was to send away a helpless child from the form that had always been a parent. But some of the new personalities refused their bodies child. The lonely little girl had probably been cast out by the person who had once been a mother or father.
As Ellen watched the scene, it was the nuns who provoked the greatest interest. One of the nuns actively engaged with the child. The other nun had a hard expression on her face and Ellen realized it was a look of betrayal.
It wasn't just Ellen, but all the non-amnesiac towns people who braved the town apprehensively। Most of the town had fallen into amnesia and emerged with a new personality। When the non-amnesiacs saw friends or acquaintances in town they would tentatively say "Hi Jill, " or "Hello Frank."Jill or Frank would scowl and say "I'm Bertha," or "The names Lou."
So the non-amnesiacs stayed in doors. The non-amnesiacs thought they were all alone. Ellen no longer thought of the town as hers, the town she had spent her life in. Now it was a town of strangers, a town of lost memories.
Ellen's empty fridge and cupboard had been the final provocation convincing her to leave the comfort of her apartment. She had lived the life of a hermit for two weeks. Walking through the town, she felt anxiety seize her. The familiar streets of her life were inhabited by strangers. As Ellen walked, she saw one of the more familiar strangers walk toward her: Nora. The appearance of her formal friend made her wish she had stayed in. She averted her eyes and tried to decide what to do. She could feign that she didn't see her, even though the two would be walking right past each other. Even better, she could pretend she was an amnesiac too and that she had no idea who the woman walking toward her was. But when the body that use to belong to her old friend was almost to her, she couldn't help herself.
"Hello Nora."
"Why hello!" Nora chirped as she halted walking. "It's still Ellen, right?"
"Yes," Ellen said. "Its Ellen." She couldn't believe how lame and tongue tied she felt in front of this formal Wanda. Nora gave her a look that Ellen, with much annoyance, interpreted as sympathetic.
"Well, isn't that nice." Nora said.
"What have you been doing since we last spoke?" The question seemed innocuous enough, but Ellen had other motives। She was curious to what these amnesiacs did with themselves after emerging from the fog of lost memories.
"Oh, I am living in the same apartment and at first I took over Wanda's position at the laundry mat, but I quickly became bored. The redundancy practically gave me a migraine. I am going to night school to become a paralegal. I work the days as a receptionist. Bing a receptionist isn't the most exciting job, but at least it is more interesting than the constant folding of the laundry mat. I'm certain I developed carpel tunnel just from those couple of weeks of working there." Nora finished with a laugh.
"Wanda loved the smell of clean laundry. She said it reminded her of summer afternoons. And Wanda had too active of an imagination to ever get bored." Ellen said, justifying her friends job choice. She took a deep breath in order to conceal how furious she was with Nora's implications that working at a laundry mat was only for dullards.
"Oh, I'm sure dear. It's just not for me is all!"
Ellen glared. Maybe Nora didn't know, but Ellen was born eight months prior to this person who had become Nora. Who was Nora to use diminutives such as 'dear?'
"I've got to go." Nora said, "It was just wonderful running into you. Toodle loo!"
Ellen found the 'toodle loo' particularly strange. Had Nora spent all her free time watching reruns of 'Leave it to Beaver' or had this wholesome vernacular come prepackaged with her superior personality?
Ellen watched Nora's receding figure shuffle toward the distance. She realized that part of her had believed that even though the memories had vanished, peoples basic personalities remained and would resurface after enough time. This interaction with Nora proved how wrong she was. Sweet and sincere Wanda was nothing like this Nora. Ellen felt an urge to go to the laundry mat where Wanda once worked. She wanted to smell the laundry in the air and think of summer days past.
Ellen realized she now despised this town she had lived in her whole life. She didn't know a single person. Everyone she knew was someone else. If the town hadn't been quarantined, she would have moved. If she could move, at least she could willingly become a new person. Many people knew she hadn't changed and they distrusted her. She wasn't really one of them. Nobody liked that Ellen knew them before they had changed. It made the change less authentic. They couldn't fully become Nancy or Bob or Sandra until nobody remembered Susan or Miles or Mindy.
The last night before Ellen finally changed, she thought she figured out what had caused the Amnesia. She was lying in bed during those moment right before sleep coaxes the conscious into dreams when it all became so clear.
I'll fix it tomorrow, she thought. Yes, it will all be okay tomorrow. A surge of relief filled her last moments as Ellen. When she woke up, she forgot about her theory. She was no longer Ellen.
The person who once was Ellen had a head ache and felt confused. She rummaged through the kitchen and ate a bowl full of Ellen's fruity puffs. By mid-afternoon she decided she was Molly. Molly explored Ellen's apartment. Ellen's drab home did not suit Molly. With a trash bag in hand, Molly began to sort through the apartment. Molly shoved much into the trash bag: an ugly ceramic elephant, a bunch of books that looked boring, a couple of sweaters that were quite unflattering.
On Ellen's desk Molly found the list spanning several pages of Ellen's memories. She read about Beatrice and Wanda. She read about Ellen's fifth birthday, her trip to Texas to visit her rich uncle, her first boyfriend with the goatee. She read about the summers the three friends had spent at camp in the mountains. She read about how the three friends tired to start a book club but they had argued over which books to read. Molly read about how when they were kids they discovered they all had moles on their right arms so they named their moles Curly, Moe and Larry. The memories the three friends shared spanned from childhood sleepovers to their post graduation trip to Europe.
The list was almost meaningless to Molly. She couldn't quite claim indifference to the events listed because the further she read, the more uncomfortable she felt. She didn't want this list near her. The trash bag was already bloated with unwanted items. Molly stared out her window and let her mind wander over the list. She tried to attach importance to what she read, but she only felt an unease that was slowly morphing to dread. She walked to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed into the warm apartment. Molly stuck her head out the window and looked at the blanket of glistening snow below. Light flakes slowly swerved through the air like drunken moths. She held the list out the window and released her fingers from its grip. The papers slowly fluttered toward the ground, mimicking the motion of the smaller flakes. Molly felt comforted knowing that the papers would land on the wet ground. The blue ink would seep into the snow and the falling flakes would slowly bury it. Molly hoped that after this day she would never again think of the three women she had read about.
Ellen immediately detected that something was different when Beatrice stood up from tying her shoe. The confidence had vanished from her stance. The smug undertones that constantly played across her face were replaced with a vague unawareness. Beatrice looked confused and distracted. Ellen couldn't recall ever seeing a look of confusion cross Beatrice's face, not even in college physics.
Wanda didn't seem to notice a thing until Beatrice spoke.
"Who am I?" she queried in a modest and genuine tone. Somewhere between tying her shoe and standing up, her identity had slipped away. It wasn't as frightening as you might imagine. Mostly, Beatrice felt lonely.
"You're Beatrice." Wide eyed Wanda exclaimed. She placed her hand on Beatrice's shoulder and shook her a bit. Wanda was one of those people who thought shaking could fix anything from broken appliances to disobedient children. Surely a little jostle would straighten out her friend's confusion.
Beatrice glared at Wanda. She wasn't fond of this woman and her ostentatious presumptions that led her to grab and invade a strangers personal space. The sweat on Wanda's palm seeped though Beatrice's thin blouse. Beatrice wiggled her shoulder and freed her self from Wanda's rapturous clutch.
"No, Beatrice just doesn't sound quite right." She said, and stared at the sky as if somewhere floating on a cloud were the letters spelling her true name. Ellen, who had been raised by hypochondriacs, insisted on a doctor's visit.
"I hate doctors." Beatrice protested.
This wasn't true. Beatrice was one of those unusual people who didn't actually mind doctors visits. She said that waiting rooms were calming. She said that she appreciated the rare sort of confidence doctors displayed.
The doctor was stumped. He had never heard of amnesia with out head injury.
"In fact, " He said in an almost comically nasal voice, "Amnesia is extremely rare. And 28 years of age is far to young for Alzheimers." He sighed and examined Beatrice's blank face through thick lensed glasses.
To the dismay of both Wanda and Ellen, Beatrice left the doctor without a prescription and without pearls of doctoral wisdom. She was sent on her way and told that perhaps her memory would return tomorrow. If Beatrice had been her self, she would not have been pleased with this doctor. He displayed no rare sense of confidence.
Neither of her doting friends stayed with Beatrice overnight. She was escorted back to her apartment where she insisted on solitude. Luckily for Beatrice's neighbors and the many cats that lived with the old woman on the fourth floor, the building was not burnt down in a state of amnesic confusion.
The morning brought on an invigorating sense of refreshment and possibility for Beatrice. She woke up still not remembering her life as Beatrice, but she decided she was partial to the name Sheryl.
Ellen woke up as Ellen in her checkered pajamas. Outside the window of her fourth floored apartment, thick fog cloaked her usual view. The whole scene looked foreboding. Day was dimly lit, and in the distant haze, outlined buildings jutted between the fog covering. It was as if the weather was intertwined with her own anxiety rattled conscious.
Routine was always a sufficient distraction when Ellen became too immersed in worry. She left the window and hurried to the ritual of breakfast and coffee before calling Wanda.
Wanda woke up confused among disheveled blue blankets. The ringing phone did nothing to stave off her confusion.
"Hello?" Wanda said into the phone.
"Hey, have you talked to Beatrice yet?"
"Who is this?"
"Wanda? What's your problem?" Even if Ellen and Wanda hadn't been friends since childhood, Ellen was well aware that her unusually squeaky voice immediately gave her identity away during phone conversations with the most casual of acquaintances.
"My problem?" Wanda faltered, "I can't quite explain. Sorry Wanda"
"You're Wanda, I'm Ellen." And this is when Ellen realized Beatrice was not the only one with amnesia.
It most be contagious, Ellen thought. Next, it would be her in a daze, having no idea what her name was. She tried to recall every time she had spent with her two friends within the last couple of weeks. They had shared french fries at Hanks Diner. Beatrice was a notorious double dipper. Ellen uneasily imagined Beatrice's bitten french fry, laden wit amnesic germs dipping into the shared ketchup.
It wasn't just the french fries that made Ellen uneasy about that day at Hanks. There had been something else. Beatrice had brought the friends to Hanks specifically because she had something to tell them. She had seen Beatrice hesitate, on the brink of spilling her news, and then harness back the words. It was memorable because it was so unlike Beatrice. Normally, Beatrice's words detached themselves from somewhere inside her and came pouring out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to comprehend their meaning. Maybe the amnesia had already started on her. Maybe what she had to say to them had something to do with the amnesia. In the weeks prior to the amnesia, Wanda had acted like her normal, high-spirited self. There was no way Wanda had any idea about the amnesia. It was always so simple to spot when something was bothering Wanda. Ellen thought about the time Wanda had shrunk Beatrice's sweater in the wash after borrowing it without asking. Wanda had formed a haphazard plan to buy a new one without telling Beatrice what had happened. But as soon as Wanda was in Beatrice's presence, she had burst with her confession.
Dealing with Wanda's amnesia was a little easier since Ellen had already experienced it with Beatrice. Wanda had a tendency toward forgetting anyway, so her memory loss didn't seem as tragic and completely out of character. Ellen imagined her self as a modern day Florence Nightingale, easing her friends out of their amnesia back into a cognizant state of being. She took Wanda to a different doctor, hoping for a solution, but the new doctor seemed just as baffled.
Ellen's craving for a caffeine boost led her to overhear an uncomfortable conversation in her favorite coffee shop. Before she heard their words, she saw a woman place her hand on a man's arm. He took two quick steps back, away from her reach.
"No, I just don't remember. I really don't know you." The man said.
"But Martin, We've been friends for three years." The young woman replied.
The man looked at the woman and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm not Martin." The man said, and walked out of the shop.
The expression on the girl's face altered between panic and confusion.
Ellen felt unease swell inside her. She wished she had never heard the conversation.
The news woman smiled at the camera. bleached teeth glistening and dyed hair shimmering under the studio lights.
"There is an epidemic of amnesia sweeping the town." The news woman said in the usual news caster tone. "The first case was reported a little over two weeks ago. Now over forty percent of the town's population has lost their memories. The strangest detail to this already bizarre ordeal is that the amnesiacs adopt new identities after their memory loss."
The news flashed to a previously recorded interview with a woman holding an infant in front of a run down house.
"Our neighbor, Lucy, use to be a sweet old lady. She would even bake the kids cookies. Now she goes by Martha and she yells at my kids to stay away."
The shining news anchor filled the screen. "Doctors are mystified. They still have no idea what could be causing this epidemic. Officials speculate that the town will be quarantined within the week."
It was like dying, Ellen thought. Maybe their bodies keep living, but it was a death. Beatrice had completely assimilated to her new identity as Sheryl. In the beginning, Ellen tried to spend time with her, with the motive of coaxing Beatrice back from where she had disappeared too. Sheryl mildly endured Ellen's company, but Sheryl always seemed eager for her visitor to leave. Ellen didn't dislike Sheryl, but she was a bland replacement for Beatrice.
Wanda had a new name too. Nora. Ellen reminded her that their fourth grade arch nemesis was named Nora.
"She put gum in your hair. She stole your pencil box." Ellen protested.
The new Nora didn't care about fourth grade Nora. She didn't remember crying in the bathroom after Nora called her ugly. She didn't remember being in fourth grade at all. She just knew she was Nora.
Ellen mourned the loss of her two friends. Even though they forgot, she didn't want them to be forgotten. She wrote a list of all the memories they had together.
Among the non-amnesics was the hushed chatter of what could be causing the epidemic. Ellen saw the talk before she heard it. The furtive eyes glancing around before two people leaned in to talk in a barely audible murmur. At first the talk was everywhere. Restaurants, buses, or just walking the streets. But as less non-amnesics remained, the talk became less public and less loud. Ellen became an expert at guessing which non-amnesic stranger held which theory. When in public, she would people watch and guess which theory a person held.
A teenager shuffled down the street, a skate board under his arm. His greasy hair hung in dark coils over his eyes. He believed the government was using their town as an experimentation. She could see the young man's disdain for authority weigh down his shoulder like an animate object. In his mind, an epidemic of this magnitude could be caused by no other than the meddling and apathetic authority of government.
A pear shaped woman with a pear shaped dog sat at a park bench. The woman had a face endowed with a perpetual frown. Here eyes were murky with remorse induced daydreams. Ellen knew by the expression that she was thinking of somebody she had lost to amnesia. The woman was slumped slightly on that bench. Ellen could see her grief mingled with both fear and hope. This woman believed that all the chemicals and pollutants of the modern world had contaminated the air. We breathed in our memories doom. At first the woman had spent all her time in doors to avoid the toxic amnesia laden oxygen. The lonely void grew too immense for day time talk shows and her sweet little dog to fill or distract from. She wondered if her loved one who had become someone else would love her again if she too became someone different. So she now spent all her time outside, hoping and fearing for the inevitable hand of oblivion and reemergence.
The young man on the bus who wore torn jeans and a leather jacket was trying to cultivate an image of cool discontent even thought he had no friends left to impress. He stared at a book on his lap but Ellen could tell his mind was somewhere other than the words. Despite his aura of cool, Ellen could see under the exterior to a past of nerd induced solitude. The complete illusion of hipness was dampered by his past of science fiction. He reared his teenage mind on Heinlein and X-Files and no matter how much he grew and changed, he couldn't escape from the basic logic of this fiction. This is what led him to believe that the amnesia was caused by aliens. Aliens so microscopic that they were undetectable to our visual capabilities had taken over the town. Lodged inside the human brains, the Aliens took control.
It didn't take superior abilities of deduction to know what the old woman wearing the face mask thought. She believed a virus had infected the town. Ellen had watched a television special where a scientist speculated that this was the cause of the amnesia. The old woman wearing the face mask probably saw the same special. In the beginning, over half the town wore similar masks. But few of those early mask wearers had been spared.
On the last day before becoming completely reclusive within the safety of her apartment, Ellen had sat at the park to people watch. She saw two nuns talking gently to a teary eyed little girl. She wondered if the child was one of the amnesia orphans. Most of the parents who transformed into new personalities would accept the child who was their's biologically. Often times the parental duties were accepted begrudgingly, but even the unwilling realized how heartless it was to send away a helpless child from the form that had always been a parent. But some of the new personalities refused their bodies child. The lonely little girl had probably been cast out by the person who had once been a mother or father.
As Ellen watched the scene, it was the nuns who provoked the greatest interest. One of the nuns actively engaged with the child. The other nun had a hard expression on her face and Ellen realized it was a look of betrayal.
It wasn't just Ellen, but all the non-amnesiac towns people who braved the town apprehensively। Most of the town had fallen into amnesia and emerged with a new personality। When the non-amnesiacs saw friends or acquaintances in town they would tentatively say "Hi Jill, " or "Hello Frank."Jill or Frank would scowl and say "I'm Bertha," or "The names Lou."
So the non-amnesiacs stayed in doors. The non-amnesiacs thought they were all alone. Ellen no longer thought of the town as hers, the town she had spent her life in. Now it was a town of strangers, a town of lost memories.
Ellen's empty fridge and cupboard had been the final provocation convincing her to leave the comfort of her apartment. She had lived the life of a hermit for two weeks. Walking through the town, she felt anxiety seize her. The familiar streets of her life were inhabited by strangers. As Ellen walked, she saw one of the more familiar strangers walk toward her: Nora. The appearance of her formal friend made her wish she had stayed in. She averted her eyes and tried to decide what to do. She could feign that she didn't see her, even though the two would be walking right past each other. Even better, she could pretend she was an amnesiac too and that she had no idea who the woman walking toward her was. But when the body that use to belong to her old friend was almost to her, she couldn't help herself.
"Hello Nora."
"Why hello!" Nora chirped as she halted walking. "It's still Ellen, right?"
"Yes," Ellen said. "Its Ellen." She couldn't believe how lame and tongue tied she felt in front of this formal Wanda. Nora gave her a look that Ellen, with much annoyance, interpreted as sympathetic.
"Well, isn't that nice." Nora said.
"What have you been doing since we last spoke?" The question seemed innocuous enough, but Ellen had other motives। She was curious to what these amnesiacs did with themselves after emerging from the fog of lost memories.
"Oh, I am living in the same apartment and at first I took over Wanda's position at the laundry mat, but I quickly became bored. The redundancy practically gave me a migraine. I am going to night school to become a paralegal. I work the days as a receptionist. Bing a receptionist isn't the most exciting job, but at least it is more interesting than the constant folding of the laundry mat. I'm certain I developed carpel tunnel just from those couple of weeks of working there." Nora finished with a laugh.
"Wanda loved the smell of clean laundry. She said it reminded her of summer afternoons. And Wanda had too active of an imagination to ever get bored." Ellen said, justifying her friends job choice. She took a deep breath in order to conceal how furious she was with Nora's implications that working at a laundry mat was only for dullards.
"Oh, I'm sure dear. It's just not for me is all!"
Ellen glared. Maybe Nora didn't know, but Ellen was born eight months prior to this person who had become Nora. Who was Nora to use diminutives such as 'dear?'
"I've got to go." Nora said, "It was just wonderful running into you. Toodle loo!"
Ellen found the 'toodle loo' particularly strange. Had Nora spent all her free time watching reruns of 'Leave it to Beaver' or had this wholesome vernacular come prepackaged with her superior personality?
Ellen watched Nora's receding figure shuffle toward the distance. She realized that part of her had believed that even though the memories had vanished, peoples basic personalities remained and would resurface after enough time. This interaction with Nora proved how wrong she was. Sweet and sincere Wanda was nothing like this Nora. Ellen felt an urge to go to the laundry mat where Wanda once worked. She wanted to smell the laundry in the air and think of summer days past.
Ellen realized she now despised this town she had lived in her whole life. She didn't know a single person. Everyone she knew was someone else. If the town hadn't been quarantined, she would have moved. If she could move, at least she could willingly become a new person. Many people knew she hadn't changed and they distrusted her. She wasn't really one of them. Nobody liked that Ellen knew them before they had changed. It made the change less authentic. They couldn't fully become Nancy or Bob or Sandra until nobody remembered Susan or Miles or Mindy.
The last night before Ellen finally changed, she thought she figured out what had caused the Amnesia. She was lying in bed during those moment right before sleep coaxes the conscious into dreams when it all became so clear.
I'll fix it tomorrow, she thought. Yes, it will all be okay tomorrow. A surge of relief filled her last moments as Ellen. When she woke up, she forgot about her theory. She was no longer Ellen.
The person who once was Ellen had a head ache and felt confused. She rummaged through the kitchen and ate a bowl full of Ellen's fruity puffs. By mid-afternoon she decided she was Molly. Molly explored Ellen's apartment. Ellen's drab home did not suit Molly. With a trash bag in hand, Molly began to sort through the apartment. Molly shoved much into the trash bag: an ugly ceramic elephant, a bunch of books that looked boring, a couple of sweaters that were quite unflattering.
On Ellen's desk Molly found the list spanning several pages of Ellen's memories. She read about Beatrice and Wanda. She read about Ellen's fifth birthday, her trip to Texas to visit her rich uncle, her first boyfriend with the goatee. She read about the summers the three friends had spent at camp in the mountains. She read about how the three friends tired to start a book club but they had argued over which books to read. Molly read about how when they were kids they discovered they all had moles on their right arms so they named their moles Curly, Moe and Larry. The memories the three friends shared spanned from childhood sleepovers to their post graduation trip to Europe.
The list was almost meaningless to Molly. She couldn't quite claim indifference to the events listed because the further she read, the more uncomfortable she felt. She didn't want this list near her. The trash bag was already bloated with unwanted items. Molly stared out her window and let her mind wander over the list. She tried to attach importance to what she read, but she only felt an unease that was slowly morphing to dread. She walked to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed into the warm apartment. Molly stuck her head out the window and looked at the blanket of glistening snow below. Light flakes slowly swerved through the air like drunken moths. She held the list out the window and released her fingers from its grip. The papers slowly fluttered toward the ground, mimicking the motion of the smaller flakes. Molly felt comforted knowing that the papers would land on the wet ground. The blue ink would seep into the snow and the falling flakes would slowly bury it. Molly hoped that after this day she would never again think of the three women she had read about.