Forget Boy

"Do you remember me? I sat behind you in the 6th grade, my name was Daniel Embers. I had brown hair and always wore those red shoes. I, uh, I was the quiet one...and easily forgettable, but I used to borrow pencils from you quite often! I was always grateful, but you know, I always wondered something. Why did you never asked for them back?"

"I don't know you," she says in a frightened tone. She walks away quickly. Forgetting to retrieve a small note she dropped on the floor. I pick it up, but before I read it. My mind shifts and the conversation disappears from it. Now, I am walking in my home. This hallway is familiar, even the sounds of the floor boards are soothing in their expected creaks. The pictures of my family line the walls and lead me to the kitchen.

I see my mother. She is cooking pancakes in the morning like she always does. She sings her favorite hymn. It happens to be the one I hate the most, but coming from her lips. I was always okay with it.

"Mom, I am home!" I yell, naturally and habitually.

She is strangely startled. Something seems wrong. She turns around and lets out a horrid scream.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my house!?"

I am terrified by her voice. She grabs a knife from the drawer and holds it at me.

"I'm Danny, mom!"

"Get OUT! OR I AM CALLING THE COPS!"

"Mom!"

She swings the butcher knife violently in front of her. She isn't trying to hit me. She is trying to keep me away.

Disturbed, I walk away--I run away. I don't know for sure, but I think I am crying. This is the first time I've cried since I was six. And I am not sure I recognize this feeling anymore.

It is fifteen minutes later...
I am now sitting on the stairs of the subway. A old man is playing his broken guitar with an open case collecting money for his songs. He's missing a string, but he plays it rather skillfully accommodating for his lack of proper equipment with carefully picked songs. I am finally settling down. An indefinite amount of time passes and people shift and disappear and new ones appear to take their place in mere seconds.

It begins to quiet down and I am still stuck in my head about today's events. My stomach is twisting and churning. I'm hurting.

I finally stand up and step over to his guitar case. I throw in a ten dollar bill. I request my mother's hymn and he looks at me curiously before he nods and obligingly plays and sings.

I don't know what is happening, honestly, but the sound of the song comforts me somehow. I remember waking to the most enormous headache I've ever had. It was splitting, as if someone had cleaved my skull in half, squeezed a balloon in and inflated it to capacity. And then the strangest events began to occur...

Nobody I knew remembered me. Nobody.

I sit back down by the stairs and listened to the old man finish the hymn. The wrenching empty feeling begins to fill my stomach again. I burped. This time, I feel as though my stomach acid crashes against the side of my stomach like waves on beaches washing away my stomach lining like wet sand. The discomfort compels me to I stand back up and go to the man. I need to rid this feeling.

Another ten dollar bill.

"Can you please sing that hymn again?" I ask politely.

He looks at me dumbfounded.

"What hymn? I've never seen you before."

Shocked by his words I fall to my knees. I don't have any strength to summon at this point. My past had been lost to me and now it seems my future was too. I had become a ghost.

I am dazed and disheartened. I put my hands into my pockets and somehow I come across a piece of paper folded in it. I recall it from my brief conversation earlier with a childhood classmate I had randomly run across earlier in the day. It had managed to absent-mindedly make it into my pocket.

I open it and read it.


CAN ANYONE REMEMBER YOU, DANNY?
FIND THEM.


My name was Daniel Embers, a fleeting memory of stranger you might have met yesterday or today or even just a second ago. We spoke. We shook hands. We made an impression. I disappeared but, you stayed. I know I am in your mind--if only you could find me. I'll keep searching for you. If only until, you forget me not.