Flick

Chapter 1: A Strange Memory And An Empty Mind

And odd sort of calm is created when one stares at a vast expanse of water from the edge of a cliff, just as the sun sets on a spring evening.

A feeling of loneliness, of safety- all wrapped up into one overwhelming sensation that you want to last forever. The feeling of being so small when, in your own private world, you are the center that is so large and important. And suddenly you become smaller than a single atom of the entire universe, and your conscience reaches a new level as it wonders about the meaning of life, of everything; questions race through your mind and you realize that there is much more outside your secluded world than you thought, and your life is like a bubble in the sea of time. It flickers into being and just as quickly out of it, just as the bubbles before it, and more bubbles follow and meet the same fate. At times like this, when physically and mentally standing before something so breathtaking, you are forced into silence. Feeling like this would be horrible to get used to, when one day you would look upon an ocean or a sea that seems to expand to the edge of the earth and feel no loneliness or humbleness, or at times, have no feeling of safety.

--

I am breathing deeply, staring out at the distant horizon where the water seems to blend in with the evening sky, my legs dangling over the edge of a craggy cliff, the soles of my shoes hundreds of feet off the ground. I flick a rock over the edge and it disappears from my sight long before it hits the crashing waves below and meets the sand, the specks almost as small as I, myself, feel right now. I can close my eyes and feel the wind, hear the distant seagulls and the waves, taste the salty air, but see nothing, and it helps to detour my mind from searching the empty depths of my memory for some hint of my past.

“Dascha!” A male voice cuts the air, deep, but young. My concentration slips-

Flick.

A swirl of memory enters my mind, the blackness of my vision is suddenly filled with color. A young boy of six waves to me from the steps of his rural house, calling my name. His voice has changed as he got older, but, as the memory fades, I know who it is, I remember, and another small piece of my memory, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, is put into place. I open my eyes, relieved that the memory was not a traumatizing one. A dark shadow had hung over my head ever since that dark, forgotten memory had been briefly mentioned yesterday. Now I am uncomfortably tempted to search further into that memory that I know needs to be recalled, but am not ready for.

I hear footsteps behind me and turn my head slightly so, in my peripheral vision, I can see a tall dark form. It stands just to my left, gazing out at the ocean, where the sun is almost fully dipped into the other side of the world.

“Great view, isn’t it?” His voice breathes, a hint of sadness lingering about it. I see his shoes first as he swings his legs over the cliff to sit beside me. Symji has a certain style that I admire-dark but bright enough to light up an entire room. His black hair is swept away from his angular face, a lock tucked behind his small ears, but his stare is riveted forward, and the coming darkness casts a dark blue hue across his features and clothes, making his light blue eyes stand out over everything else.

The last rays of sunlight vanish as we both sit there, entranced by this particular sunset. I have lost all sense of time, unable to determine how long we had been sitting there. The moonlight dims suddenly as the clouds continue to crawl across the night sky, and the spell is broken.

Symji sighs deeply, and glances at me, taking in my empty gaze. He opens his mouth to say something. I sense this and cut him off, fearful of what he might mention.

“I just had a little flick of memory,” I say, and he closes his mouth into a small smile, his eyes glowing as the dim light catches them. “It was you,” I continue. “You must have been…maybe, six? You were waving to me outside your house.” I take a quick glance behind me down the pebbled trail to where a few rural houses stand. The earth was slightly hilly, and the cliff extended to the sides as far as I could see. Symji raises an eyebrow in that cool style he always has. “Not a very important flick,” he mutters.

I shrug, glancing at him. “Perhaps. How long have we lived here?”

“Uh, I lived her since as long as I-er-can remember,” he bites his lip, but I smile lightly to show I’m not offended, and he continues. “You moved here when we were four.”

“And it was the same house? What’s changed?”

“Well,” he chuckles. “It can’t be the same. Of course there’s been changes. I think both our families had to redo our roofs. My family put a fence up when we got our dog. The Ferndoves bought a new horse ‘cuz their old one died. Um, yeah, lots of stuff has changed.”

“Anything major, though? Cranky, old Mr. Ferndove getting a new horse, or home improvement doesn’t fall into that category.”

“Let’s see, I think we’ll bring back a flick from this one- remember that fare thing a couple years back, with the entertainers, and the traders, and even some guys from the Imperial District?” Symji points across the ocean. “Well, they’re coming back this year!”

“Government officials and entertainers coming to visit a little, dinky town like Cliff’s Edge?” I taunt in disbelief, but that moment-

Flick.

A man in a colorful, tight suit does flips in mid air. People are clapping. I am standing with a crowd in the meadow just east of our town, where the fare is set up. Symji, shorter and skinnier, whistles next to me. A firecracker goes off in the night sky, the light blinding me, and as it fades, so does the memory.

“I- yeah, I remember. We were 13, right?” “Yeah,” Symji grins, sensing from my tensed body position that I had just had another flick of memory. “A night to remember.” I jam my elbow into his side as he laughs.

A moment of silence, then-

Flick.

I am heading home, the music and lights from the fare receedes behind me; moonlight guides my path and my tired eyes droop and my feet drag. I hear a noise to my right and take a surprised look. A tree carves the moonlight into tiny fractures. A bit of it hits a man’s face, who is leaning against the trunk in my direction. He has an odd tattoo or marking on his left cheek right by his ear, shaped like a check mark with an extra end next to the first, and dot next to that. His dark eyes catch the light, and they sparkle. I feel his gaze, and it roots me to the ground. The stranger suddenly turns and seems to vanish, for I blink, and no one is there, nor does anything move for several moments. Even the wind has seemed to stop, and I feel the breath catch in my throat as my mind hints at an unknown fear- I blink again, but then the memory pulls back as quickly as it came, and Symji is looking at me knowingly. I stay silent, and he understands and turns away.

“It should be fun,” he shrugs. “My dad mentioned they’re coming the first day of June.”

“That’s…18 days away,” I nod. “Can’t wait. Really.”

Symji jumps up. “I guess I should get back ‘fore my mom wonders where the heck I am.”

He gazes down the road to where the few streetlights are just coming on. “I’ll see you tomorrow, soon as I can.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I grin and turn to watch him sprint down the trail. He is illuminated in a streetlight for a second as he zooms by, and then he’s at his front door, the same front door from which he waved to me when we were six years old. A dog barks and more clouds move across the moon, making the earth darker and sounds more pronounced. My mind wanders to my incomplete memory, straining for some other hint of my friendship with Symji when I was younger. The past few days, the flicks of memory were becoming more frequent, and I am regaining important parts of my memory, like face recognition. My parents and friends fill in gaps at necessary times. It has only been two weeks from the point when my past was hidden to me, but so far, enough has been revealed to make me feel normal, almost the same as I did before I suffered from the amnesia.

But one thing I have yet to figure out: Why and how I lost my memory in the first place.

No one has even mentioned it, afraid that I’m still sensitive. But I’d gotten past the fear long before, and now my greatest desire is to know what possibly could have happened.

The waves continue to crash along the surf in an endless cycle, and I sit still and silent until thousands of stars twinkle above me and the moon evades the clouds, casting my shadow long and eerily upon the ground. My shadow stretches before me and over the cliff, but it ends there- a half of a shadow, not strong or dark enough to be cast upon the water or the rocks below. I think it’s similar to my memory in a way: not whole, but with yawning gaps. Even before the memory loss, there still seemed to be a hole in my heart, empty and throbbing, but having nothing to do with a loss of memory. Rather, it feels like a loss of self, a large part of me that is unanswered. Because technically, your parents are where you came from, a part of why you are who you are. And in moments similar to breathtaking ones, where you are with your parents or your family, your private worlds are entwined with shared memories and experiences. You may feel more important then, like a large piece of the puzzle of life. That’s when you realize who your parents are, and really appreciate everything you’ve been able to share with them.

Although my memory can’t back it up, I do remember now that my biological parents died when I was very young, possibly at a year of age. Even if my memory was complete, I still wouldn’t be able to remember either their faces or the exact event of their passing, only the knowledge of others telling me about them. But I have no one to tell me about their lives, only that they died in a car crash. Before the amnesia, that dark fact had failed to greatly affect me, I having lived with it for a long enough time. I accepted that although I might never know my true origins, I still had a mother who loved me, and a family. A small one, since my adopted mother had a divorce years before I came into her life, but still the closest thing to my original family as I had hoped to be.

But after I lost my memory, that dark fact seemed different- more traumatic. Once my mom needed to tell me, I instantly had a flick of recall of when she had told me a long time ago, but at that moment I suddenly realized that I was more unaware of who I was than I had ever thought. It is something I am afraid of Symji mentioning, since he basically knows the same amount of my past as I do, even more so now. I am afraid that any memory connected to my biological parents might be traumatizing or that there may be none at all. Which leaves me at another dilemma. I desperately want information or memories of my biological parents, but I am afraid of just that because what if there isn’t any memory or information at all that I can access? I may not be able to rely on my own memories as that of an infant, but will I ever find anyone whose memory of them is stronger than mine? I feel guilty because I need to accept that they are probably gone, but unless I reach a sense of closure, I will never be whole.

Although my childhood memory is complete enough to give me a profound sense of satisfaction, there are two things, and maybe even more, that I will need to find out if I am to ever feel like myself again. Until then I will have to deal with a detached feeling, but I will only make me more determined to find out who my parents were, and investigate the event of my amnesia- the event that deeply changed my life.