It started out with minor things, things that I’m sure have happened to you too. A glass that I did not remember putting on a table, a date that I was sure was something else, things being different colors, they were all inconsequential in the end, but it got worse, gradually.
I’m not sure how to explain how it got worse because, well, every time I try to think about these inconsistencies I just start forgetting about them. I’ve decided to try and write down to keep track of these things as soon as they happen, hopefully.
My name is Jesse Wulf, I am a 20 year old man, I live in the USA. Texas, to be exact. I wrote this down in a notebook, I don’t know why, but I’m sure I would need it eventually. It’s written down, it cannot be changed, no matter what happens, that’s what I thought when I wrote it. I started noting down all the inconsistencies, hoping to catch a pattern.
These weird occurrences continued to happen, for example, my street changed from the 13th to the 87th, I’ve lived here all my life and always thought it was the 13th but the plate on the street proves that I was wrong, it’s a false memory I had. I looked at it intently every time I walked by it, expecting it to change back, but it was there like it had always been, 87th.
Then weird things kept happening, apparently, my entire life, there had been a room at the end of the stairs down the hallway that I’d never seen or apparently I’d just remembered there had been nothing there. The house layout in general, I guess I misremembered it, every day doors seemed to be in different places, rooms that I’d apparently imagined in my head did not exist anymore. Every time this happened there was just a weird sensation in my mind but just like that I forgot it instantly, if I hadn’t written about it I would have forgotten about it entirely.
I spent probably hours tracing my fingers along the walls of the house sometimes, as if I was chasing dreams that had vanished. It bothered me so much.
Another fun thing I discovered, my entire life I thought I had two blue eyes but apparently I had heterochromia. I was staring blankly at the mirror, I don’t remember why, for a few good hours, and I noticed my left eye is noticeably greener than my right eye, I thought perhaps it had somehow changed but in all the pictures on the walls of my house I had it, it had always been that way.
I messaged my best friend, Rose, about it, who’d been my friend since childhood. She’d always loved conspiracy theories and the such, I figured she would love trying to solve this one. Her response was “Well, of course it was, dumbass. That’s what it’s always been??”
Then things continued to get weird, with no sign of stopping. The things I remembered wrong had gotten so major that it was hard to ignore how frequent they were, but somehow, I kept forgetting about it instantly. My dad’s name was Samuel, not Robert, as he told me one morning, I had such a clear memory of writing the name “Robert” on so many documents and birthday cards yet, these memories had been fabricated by my mind apparently.
Well, the memory had been clear, at first, but when I tried thinking about it the memory got so much blurrier and unclear, like it had been some dream I was trying to recall. The memories went from inconvenient to just outright frustrating, so many memories I had of my life were just outright wrong. Not only was Vulcan Sephiroth not the first president of the US, apparently he had never existed in the first place, as my father Jonah told me. I had such a clear memory of writing that in my first grade notebook.
As I was looking at a wall for several hours, I don’t remember why, I went to look out the window and discovered that on my street, on a plot of land that had been empty, there was a house. That I could not believe I just misremembered, I’ve lived here all my life, I would have remembered it. I felt a bit of dread as this realization hit me, that there was something else here. I didn’t know what it was, but it was something deliberate doing these things to me, I had to keep thinking about it before I forgot again, the memories getting dizzy and slipping again.
I messaged Rose about it, she lived on the same street as me, she had to have known that there was something wrong here. But instead, she briefly humored me about it before asking “So, what do you want me to wear for our date tonight?”
It certainly made me scratch my head that apparently Rose was my girlfriend now, mostly due to how strange it was that I was now a lesbian.
I was a woman, I found out as much when I tried going to the bathroom sitting upright, I don’t know what I was thinking when I did that. It was like my body knew from memory and going through motions it had been through hundreds of thousands of times before, but there was no way that was true since I found no memory of that in my head.
I remember sitting with my back against the cold tiles of the bathroom, rubbing my temples, trying to figure out why exactly this all felt so wrong. I hadn’t taken my anti psychotic medication, that’s what it had to be, it was right there in the cabinet, my name on the prescription pills, Sarah Wulf. That had always been my name.
But then, when had I gotten these prescribed, I did not remember. And how did I get to the bathroom, what had happened in the time between Rose messaging me and me getting there?
Then I remembered, Rose, I had to message her, keep the train of thoughts going before it goes out of my mind again. Even though all this mess I kept thinking about her, I knew that if I somehow managed to tell it to her we’d be able to figure it out or at least another person would realize what’s happening with me.
She’d messaged me first, I saw it when I opened my phone, “Hey sarah can i copy your biology homework?? <3”. That message made me feel dread, there was no way, I’d graduated high school years ago, hadn’t I? I had the memory clear in my head… or, I thought I did, but when I tried searching for the memories all I had was abstract fragments of what was once memories, like looking through shards of broken glass.
Besides, in those “memories” I’d been a guy, which I’m not. All the pictures on the walls prove that I’ve always been a girl, memory can be faulty but the pictures can’t lie. That’s what I thought anyway but it still made me sick thinking about it for some reason. This wasn’t right, no, and I realized that I’d let the previous train of thoughts run away from me.
Next I was having dinner with my mother, just me and her, my father George had died before I was even born, in the US invasion of Yagittonlified in 1987. But those dreams I had where I was speaking with him, they had been so vivid, well, until that point anyway, because following that conversation with my mother they just became abstract ideas.
“Sarah, baby, are you alright? You seem kind of upset.” my mom told me, picking a strand of hair out of my face.
“Mom, we both know that there’s something wrong here, right?” I asked, pointing towards my body.
“In what sense?” she asked, sounding compassionate yet also very obviously confused.
“I’m not sure, but I did not wake up today… like this.” I say, also confused as to what’s happening to my life. Technically there was nothing wrong, nothing that I could see anyway, but to my mind it didn’t feel right.
Then I remembered, the piece of paper, I don’t remember what I wrote on it but it was important. I excused myself from the dinner and went to go find it, the memory was so blurry now, I had to keep the train of thought going before it disappeared again.
I went through the living room, ignoring the thing on the couch whatever it was, I went up the stairs, several times in fact. Not multiple stairs, just the same set of stairs several times. I went through the living room, again, ignoring the thing on the couch, went up the stairs, again then… no, this wasn’t right.
I must’ve forgotten where my room was, somehow. I decided to go ask my mom where my room was, I went up the stairs, through the living room, ignoring the thing on the couch, then down the stairs, which for some reason was also up the stairs and ended up back in the empty kitchen.
Well, empty except for that thing from the couch that was now sitting in my kitchen head down on the table but I ignored it. Of course my mom wasn’t home, she was at work right now, it was morning after all. But I just had dinner, didn’t I? I could still feel the faint taste of calamari on my tongue.
I slapped my forehead, “the fucking paper” I muttered to myself, I needed to stop getting sidetracked by trivialities. It was in my living room, but that was only one piece of the puzzle, where was my room?
I went through the living room, ignoring the thing on the couch which seemed to be smiling, the living room then led into the living room again which I thought was strange, I went up the stairs… “Fuck!” I muttered to myself again, irritated.
“The stairs don’t work.” is what I wrote on the wall next to the stairs with a permanent marker, before I forgot. I went back through the living room, thing on the couch, through the hallway, past the photos of my childhood which obviously didn’t have my dad in them because he had never existed.
Weirdly, the thing was in all the photos, sometimes out of focus or at the edges, but it was always there, smiling at the camera, at me. I ignored it. Finally, I reached my room, which I wanted to reach to find… something important, I think, but I didn’t remember what.
I got another message from Rose soon when I checked my phone, “Sarah did u forget bout the homework??”
“lol sorry thought it was a fake memory” I replied jokingly although I suppose it was also quite true.
I talked to Rose for the next few hours, I couldn’t help but feel I’d forgotten something important but I didn’t really care, I was more looking forward to our date. My worries just all faded away when talking to her, I don’t know why I was so concerned. Couldn’t have been important. This was only interrupted when I took a bathroom break.
In the bathroom however something weird happened, on the mirror, in blood someone had written “I AM NOT A GIRL”. I looked at my finger, there was scabbing over my index finger. Did I write this? I didn’t recall doing it.
When running my finger over the scab it seemed to trigger sparks in my memory for a few brief moments. The paper. I’d written a paper with something on it. I didn’t know what it was, but it apparently was a very important piece of this puzzle.
Puzzles, Rose always loved puzzles, it’s what we bonded over originally when we first met in primary school. That and burning ants, she loved doing that too. The idea of talking to her again was so appealing to me that somehow I didn’t realize I’d climbed up the same staircase at least 10 separate times. There was writing on the wall next to it in permanent marker.
Well, I can’t tell you what I originally wrote because I have no memory of it, but it certainly wasn’t “Give up free will.” It was my handwriting, sure, but I did not write it.
I don’t know how many times I looped around the same three rooms of my own house that day but I was hyper focused on one thing, getting that piece of paper. It became worse when I remembered that when I was 12 I got hit by a pick up truck that shattered my legs and I had to wear braces around my legs for the rest of my life, the moment I remembered I had these braces on the pain started shooting through my body like my body had forgot to feel it before this.
It was the only thing on my mind, had to keep the train of thought going, had to. I got back to my room, somehow with no distractions, the notebook was on my desk the entire time and it was time to check what I wrote when this all began.
The writing on the cover of “Sarah’s Journal” with the Sarah scratched out over and over again said, in bold letters, “Do not trust anything in this filthy fucking book filled with lies”, also in my handwriting.
I checked through the journal again, looking through the other pages. It was a mostly incoherent contradictory mess, the author claiming their supposed sanity over and over again. Floorboard plans that had been scratched over several times with marking such as “THERE WAS NO DOOR HERE” or “THIS WALL DID NOT EXIST BEFORE”.
The author then starts recounting childhood memories of the thing, how it’s always been there, watching them. It claims that this thing is behind all of this.
The most interesting detail I found was how every instance of the name “Sarah” was meticulously scratched out, over and over again, as if the author was trying to write himself into existence over her.
Then bizarrely, the same handwriting starts claiming they did not write this book and that it’s all lies, then the same handwriting claims that the previous writer was lying. This happens several times, until the last few pages that are just “DON’T TRUST ME” scribbled over and over again on the pages with no rhyme or reason.
That was certainly all very interesting but for some reason I did not really care. Besides, right after that I got a message from Rose saying she was ready for our date and I could come pick her up. I just wanted to see her. I put on a coat, spring is still quite cold up here in Canada after all.
So I went downstairs, metal braces clinging as I stepped down the stairs, through the living room, ignored the thing on the couch, outside, through the kitchen, through the living room, ignored the… actually no. What was that thing?
I stopped in my tracks and looked at it. I can’t actually describe what it looked like because it certainly did not look like something that belonged on our plane of reality. It looked like something stuck between stages of existence, like fragments of a fleeting dream passing through our reality. It was abstract yet it looked really familiar.
“So, you’re the thing behind all of this?” it asked, rhetorically I think. It didn’t speak but I could still hear it within the walls of my mind.
“How did you know I was going to ask that?” I asked, a pretty pointless question. I knew the answer before it told me, somehow.
“We’ve been through this exact same conversation several times, number is irrelevant. So are words, really. Do you think you can transcribe the beauty of the sun through series of primitive phenoms perhaps?” it asked.
“Why bother then?” I asked, pointlessly probably.
“Same reason I do any of this. It’s funny.” it explained, like that explained anything at all.
“What are though?” I asked, once again pointlessly, but this time it didn’t tell me, I instantly had the memory in my mind.
As suspected, this thing was not of this world. It wasn’t of this universe in general. It was something that had been born as an offshoot of a greater creature in another plane of reality, like how plants produce oxygen, spewed across reality and had ended up here. In my living room. It was a primitive creature in its own world yet here it could alter reality. This is how it was using these powers, tormenting me.
“Even if that is true…” I started, although I’m not sure I believed it, “That doesn’t answer my question. Why are you doing any of this to me?”
“Told you before, several times, you still don’t want to understand. It’s funny. Predator plays with pray. Good sport.” it said, and despite no audible voice its tone was very pleased with itself. “It’s much funnier to play with humans before you eat them.”
“Why bother just… doing something so cruel?” I asked, appealing to morality that it did not seem to posses.
“Cruel to you, perhaps. To me, it’s not different than when you wash your hands with soap, genociding the primitive bacteria. Or burning ants with your companion.” it said.
It took a while for me to think of something to say because quite frankly, I simply could not comprehend what was going on. So eventually I said the only thing I was thinking of.
“This isn’t happening.” I declared defiantly.
“Obviously.” it told me. “This is a fake memory I’ve put in your mind, think of it like a dream. You’ll wake up soon and forget this even happened. Then when I get bored of you, I’ll eat you.”
As I sat down on the couch next to it, the conversation already starting to slip from my memory, I had one last lingering question.
“Will I ever know which of my memories were fake and which ones were real? Have I always been Sarah?” I asked. I just needed to know. Needed to.
“Honestly,” it said, and this was the one part of the conversation I knew felt was genuine for once, “Your despair has been so funny to me that I might just let you live, so for the rest of your life you can wonder that.”
I woke up startled in biology class, banging my metallic braces against the desk loudly as I gasped for air, terrified. As I was catching my breath and the pain soared through my leg Rose looked at me funny.
“Did you have a nightmare, crybaby Sarah?” Rose asked me teasingly. I rolled my eyes at her.
“Yeah, it was like, awful.” I said, brushing strands of sweaty hair matted to my forehead.
“What was it about?” she asked, putting a pencil to her lips as she looked me in the eyes.
“I… don’t remember, actually.” I said, truthfully. “But I think like.. we were dating in my dream.” I continued. Rose made an exaggerated eye roll at me.
“That’s so gross.” she laughed but then she looked at me with a warm smile.
The class went on as usual and yet despite Rose’s warm face in front of me, I couldn’t help but feel a pit of dread in my stomach that I couldn’t explain why when I noticed that my notebook had apparently been owned my a man called Jesse Wulf before me, the name signed in my handwriting.