Memories

My heat was pounding in my chest as I stared down at the hard blue cover of the worn in journal. I could feel sweat begin to prickle my forehead, and I swallowed whatever moisture was salvageable in my nearly barren mouth.
I wasn’t sure about the emotions that were flooding my insides, as they seemed so foreign in an otherwise peaceful existence. But nevertheless they latched onto the deepest corners of my mind, and refused to be denied. What had moments ago been a serene landscape of daisies and conformity was now being ambushed by nothing short of a tidal wave of what could only be described as grief.
Grief. The word caught in my throat and made my eyes burn with the painfully unfamiliar feeling of tears, welling up in my ducts and threatening to slide down my pale cheeks and tumble over the crumbling piece of papers bound on my lap.
Everything I knew, like a skyscraper hit by a plane, was coming crashing down with furious intent that not only shattered my entire existence, but gave way to the destruction of more lives as well. All of their names were in here, too.
I wanted to pick my eyes up from the disgusting old junkyard book, and rest them on the pale blue sky that gave way for a blanket on sunshine to pour over me and hug my skin with it’s warm and familiar embrace. I wanted more than anything else in this moment to screw this garbage to the sticking place, and bury it back deep within the muddy roots of the willow tree where it belonged. My bones begged for me to rip the thing to bits and romanticize over the perfect little flower that sat not three feet from where I was crumpled, my weight being supported by this old tree completely, and push the memories of this endeavor as far away as they would go. But the longer I looked at the flower, there was a part of my brain, or my heart, that was inching evidence at me that flowers, though they were the essence of beauty to admire, hid things underneath their thick colored petals no one person could ever hope to imagine; serpents that none were ever meant to see.
So I didn’t plunge the book back into the depths of the ground where it had laid for nearly five years, instead I clutched my hands tighter around the ragged leather cover of the obliterated work, and forced my fingers to find the first page, as I had made them do every other time I decided that I needed one more round of convincing. When my eyes met the first words it had already memorize, that tear that had been laying dormant in the hollows of my eye finally fell, and there was a slight tap as it hit the middle of the paper. I watched as it soak into the already helpless paper, and when I finally deemed it sunk and out of sight, I went back to doing what I had been doing since I laid my eyes on the little blue ribbon poking out of the dark earth, cool sue to the shade the willow tree gave it. I clenched my jaw so tight I was afraid my teeth would break, and I began reading.

Dear Aria,
I always knew you’d come back to the old willow. I always knew, that even without your memories, you would still be yourself enough to go back to the place where it all began, and I regret to say, the place where it all ends as well. This is weird, me referring to myself as ‘you’, although, this entire situation in itself is not exactly walking the road more travelled by.
I hope you still understand that reference, God I hope you still remember at least that.
I guess I should get to the point, I don’t have much time. For starters, hello and goodbye, this is the first and last time you will ever hear from me. I am you, but I am the you that walked the earth years ago. I’m not sure how long, depending on how long it takes you to find this, but I’m hoping it’s not too late. There is something I need to share with you.
You don’t remember writing this, I know, but that is because something in this world has gone terribly wrong, which I confirm is presumably hard to believe in whatever transparency you dwell in now. It is the year 4004, and there has been a revolution. In the years since the Plague hit, the world has gone to chaos. I was, you were born into the midst of the Cure. They found it about three years before you were born. Some say it was divine intervention, a blessing from the Gods in the sky, but I say that is bullshit. Billions are dead, and oddly enough, there are more casualties due to starvation, murder, and suicide than there are cause by the indeterminate death itself. If there was a God, he would have lent his holy hand by now.
Aria, there is a slight problem with the Cure. It may be magical in it’s works to destroy whatever malfunction of the brain causes this black death, but in what it gives the receiver in days, it robs them mercilessly in their life. The Cure latches it’s slimy dark hands onto your deepest and darkest memories of ever living in the time of the ruthless Plague, and rips away with unforgiving desire whatever bricks build the wall of your sanity. They don’t just terminate the memories of the Plague ever being an epidemic, they are greedy, and their gluttonous needs drive them head first into whatever facets that were stinging an eloquent wed of as person. Our thoughts, our passion, out love, is all taken away at the hands of the standers. Father calls them bastards when he thinks I’m not around to hear, but I do, and I agree.
It was nearly two weeks ago when they took your parents. My parents would probably be a more deserving title for them, given you have no memories of them ever existing. I know I’m trying to wrap this quickly, but you should know that they are fanatic beings. Now they will return in four weeks, just as the other patients have, freshly painted with a shiny new coat of resentment.
They tried to hide me and save me from the Cure. They started telling people I was dead, and then told me to stay in my room. I kept myself busy, writing. Because in the back of my not yet jaded head I knew that someday, somehow, I was going to be treated, and it was going to rip my apart starting with my thoughts.
When my parents were taken, my worries were confirmed, and as the Keepers burst through the doors of our little cottage in the woods while we were having dinner, and tore my father from his chair at the kitchen table and my mother from hers. They both fought, but as father used to say, ‘even the strongest of heart and mind laced with the strongest of will and vigor will never be able to conquer over the devil’s milk’. He was talking about the sedatives that the Keepers use.
One of the Keepers caught sight of me, despite my fleeing the second the doors were open, and he didn’t hesitate to pull a needle and press it to my skin. He was stopped by another, and it was made clear that he did not have a warrant to take me to treatment. My name hand’t been put on a list for the Cure or something. The Keeper spat in my face and said he’d be back before he whisked my parents away, and left me all alone.
I cried for a week. I cried and I hid in various places and I tired to run but I had no where to go. The Keepers were everywhere. I stayed in my home and prayed to a God I didn’t believe in to keep my parents safe, and me as well. Another half of a week went by and now here I am, writing to you. I know that they are coming soon. I can feel it. Their presence is like a heavy weight pressed against me, and I can feel it getting heavier as they approach. It’s heavy now, but I’m strong.
In the years since I was taught by father to write and mother to read, I have been journaling. An old friend of mine, Emma Baker, used to tell me that I spent too much time with my face in one of my writing books. She called them my writing books. I always told her that I knew someday it would be worth something. Memories, after all, are too precious to let slip away by the tales of time. My father used to say that.
Now I know the purpose of my countless letters pairing themselves into words of the language. They’re here for you, Aria. When they come and take me away to treatment they’ll wipe every reminisce of myself from me, and then send me back out into the world to live, like a blank chalk board, and they’ll watch as I fill myself up again with empty names and faces. Just when they think they’ve won, you’ll be there. In the population of the entire world, there are only a few who know the secrets now. You are one of them.
Now of course, I’ve written this in a matter of thirty minutes, and I’m sure there are things that are still unclear, but there are other journals out there. I’ve hid them in various places, but I’ve only given clues as to where they lay. Clues that only you could know about yourself, on the off chance that some lune finds this and wants to steal what is rightfully someone else's.
This must be devastating to read, but trust me, there have been worse things in this life, and there are worse things yet to come. This is heavy, but you are strong. I’ve made you strong. Take with this knowledge, and make it your slave to the answers. You can find them, and you can find the truth.
Keep Spinning, Aria Anne Lawrence
Oh yeah! A clue. Here it goes:
A place where the blue meets the green, the only place he’s ever seen.