Memories. I am inundated with memories. I cannot take a single step without countless memories assailing me from all sides. Well that’s not entirely true. I might be exaggerating a tiny bit there. I do have the occasional flicker of a memory coming through, from time to time. Definitely they are memories – I don’t know what else they could be. They are memories and I assume that they are mine. I remember that I used to be a person, I remember that I once used to be a human being. I distinctly remembered what that felt like and it left me feeling very strange. The memory of being a person haunted me, it shook me to the very core…
“You should not have come to this place,” the voice said. “You should not have come to this place of memories…” The voice rang ominously in my head, filling me with forebodings. Why had I come to the place of memories? What had brought me here? What had I expected to find here? I remembered having a body. I remembered what it had felt like to have had a body and that memory was deeply troubling for me, although I could not say why. I had had a head once, and eyes, and a mouth with teeth in it. My teeth had been very sharp, I remembered. I used to bite things and eat them. I used to do other things too, lots of different things, but I couldn’t remember what. I remembered that I used to do lots of fiddly little things that took a lot of attention but that memory didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was a memory without any referents, a memory without any context.
“This is the Place of the Gathering,” the voice said, “This is the place where one comes to gather up lost memories…” There was a pause, and then it continued, “…but this is not a place for you. You should leave now.” Now that the voice had told me I could see dim shapes around me, the faint shapes of nebulous spirits drifting this way and that, trawling for memories. Trying no doubt in this way to become whole again. Why was I not supposed to come here, I wondered? What was it that I was not supposed to find out? It must be something bad, I thought, and then – immediately after having this thought – I grew very fearful. A terrible nameless fear gripped me and I turned to flee…
Then I remembered it. I remembered the thing I wasn’t supposed to remember. The thing I had told myself that I must NEVER remember. I remembered the bad thing – I remembered the Scrumbler…
Past, present and future are all getting jumbled up for me. I don’t know which is which anymore. I am catching the bus to school, not looking forward to the day that lay ahead of me. Not looking forward to the classes that I have to attend. I am wearing my school uniform as badly as possible to indicate my hatred of it. My school tie is screwed up into a tight knot and has been pulled viciously to one side. Depression is in the pit of my stomach. I am driving to work after oversleeping, demoralized by the thought of spending a perfectly good day doing something I hated. I am sitting in the tube train on the Victoria Line, making my way to Piccadilly Circus to score some Ritalin, hoping that I won’t have to hang around too long to make a connection. I am applying for supplementary benefit in the Battersea DHSS office, taking my ticket from the machine. It is number 873 and I know I have a long wait ahead of me…
My thoughts are getting all scrumbled up. By the Scrumbler. The Scrumbler is my friend, I tell myself. The Scrumbler is nice. But it isn’t nice. The Scrumbler isn’t anyone’s friend. The Scrumbler is evil. Why is the Scrumbler evil, I hear you ask? Because it scrumbles is the answer. It scrumbles everything – it scrumbles it all up. If you knew what it felt like to be scrumbled then you wouldn’t ask such a stupid question…
I had copied myself onto the Cosmic One Drive; I had synched myself with the Universal Mind. And yet I knew there was no self to copy, I knew that there was no one to synch…
When the tops of the trees stir in the breeze that is my heart dancing; when babies throw their toys out of their prams and start crying that is my heart dancing too. When dogs shit in the park that also is my heart dancing…
My heart never stops dancing. It is as light as the air. The rain beating down insistently on the tops of cars is my heart dancing and so too is the regular mechanical movement of their windscreen wipers. The seagulls that ride the wind currents high above the harbour are my heart dancing and so too are the trapped flies that keep buzzing so determinedly against the kitchen window, trying tirelessly to get out…
I have uploaded myself onto the Cosmic One Drive but there is no me to copy. There is no such data set, the files are all empty…
