Bad Memory

I'm relying on my memory less and less these days, but I think this all started about three years ago. I had gone to some guy's 25th birthday party at the James Chicago Hotel with my friend Fiona and her boyfriend Johnny. It was in the penthouse and I'd never been to a party like that before, everybody was trashed. The way that I remember it, I had a Developmental Psych final the next morning, so I wasn't drinking. Maybe that's wrong. I guess when I think about it, I can't imagine being there and not having at least one drink.

A guy named Lewis, whom I'd gone on a couple of dates with when I first moved to Chicago, saw me and we started talking, just catching up a bit. The penthouse had roof access, so we went up there to escape some of the noise from the suite revelers. The only thing that I remember from that is us talking for maybe ten minutes. Lewis had just gotten some admin job at one of the colleges and was gushing about the benefits. Oh, and he had grabbed a bottle of champagne from the party, so yeah, I might have had part of a drink with him then. But it wasn't long at all before I said goodbye and went back to the penthouse to find Johnny or Fiona so that we could leave.

I didn't see Lewis again until recently, just a couple of months ago at Tippling Hall. I was there with some girlfriends from work. Lewis approached me and pulled me aside. I was beginning to get annoyed that I was going to have to catch up with this guy every two or three years for the rest of my life, but then he asked me if I remembered seeing something on the roof at the penthouse party, some sort of UFO.

I thought he was joking, but then he seemed to think that I was joking about not seeing it. When he realized I wasn't, his tone shifted to very serious and he demanded that I tell him what I remembered from the roof. I told him, that we'd had a drink and chatted for a few minutes, and then he seemed to get unreasonably agitated. I still thought he was just being an ass, so I shrugged and went back to my friends. I didn't see Lewis again that night.

A week after that, Fiona (Johnny was out of the picture by this point) told me that Lewis had been trying to contact her, asking her why I was lying about not having seen the UFO. I found Lewis on Facebook and IM'd him to leave my friends alone. He IM'd me back almost immediately to ask me why I was lying about what happened on the roof. He begged for me to meet up with him again to discuss it further in person, but I told him that wasn't going to happen. I wasn't worried about Brandon, my boyfriend for over a year by then, finding out - and it was obvious that Lewis was getting weird and obsessive - but I used Brandon as an excuse anyway. I wish I hadn't.

I became a bit paranoid after that and thought that I saw Lewis everywhere. Commuting to work or out to dinner with Brandon, there Lewis would be - watching and waiting for me to tell him what he wanted to hear. I also started dreaming about the UFO. In these nightmares, I'd be walking alone at night and a enormous spacecraft would suddenly appear over me, blocking out the night sky. The realization of its impossible size would knock the wind out of me. Then Lewis would appear beside me, grabbing my hand and mouthing words I couldn't hear. The only noise that got through to me were the slippery, hypnotic voices coming from inside the alien ship, calling my name in both my language and theirs. Alena...

I began to get in trouble at work. I had dropped out of UIC's nursing program and switched to a business degree, which led to a decent job. However after the dreams started, I began making mistakes at my company, memory-related mistakes. Before long, these little coworker jokes about my needing a vacation turned into tense, structured conversations about my performance. My supervisor asked if I would consider counseling, but I knew it had to be a more serious medical problem, some mental dysfunction I wasn't ready to face.

The following Friday, Brandon sent me a text asking me to meet him that night at a hotel restaurant downtown. I wasn't much in the mood at first, but I found myself getting more and more excited that maybe he wanted to propose. Or at least ask me to move in together. I didn't need a ring, but I was sure that Brandon was the man I wanted to be with. A ring would be something though.

I arrived at the restaurant and scanned the dining room for Brandon. However, it was Lewis's voice that grabbed my attention, suddenly standing beside me as he had in so many dreams. Unlike the dream, I could hear him quite clearly. He said that Brandon was fine, but that I needed to come to the roof with him. My memory really had faded because it took me until that moment to realized what hotel I was standing in. Welcome back to the James Chicago, Alena.

On the elevator ride up, I asked Lewis what he'd done with Brandon. He looked confused for a second and then, embarrassed, admitted that he'd used a phone hack to send the text message. Brandon didn't even know it had happened. I could have killed him then, I was certainly ready to go back home that minute. But the look on his face when I had accused him of abducting Brandon told me he was probably harmless. Beside, I thought maybe this could be the solution to my nightmare problems, as well as the restlessness that I was starting to feel creep into my waking hours. From the top floor, a stairway took us to the roof.

Once we were up there, nothing looked familiar to me. I thought there were several structural tiers and a view of Lake Michigan, but really the hotel's roof was flat with a couple of entrances and a view of several other tall buildings. It didn't scare me completely, after all it had been ten minutes three years ago, but it was disorienting.

Then Lewis began to set the scene and almost immediately began getting a bunch of details wrong. For one, he thought that it was Johnny's birthday party, that Fiona had rented the penthouse and we had all drank until very late. I told him about my UIC final, but he said that I had dropped out of nursing school much earlier than that. I told him the details weren't important, but he stressed that they were.

He then described the arrival of the UFO. Its structure and size seemed to match my nightmares. Apparently, it had hovered above us on that night, aiming a soft, hazy light upon us as we stood mesmerized for several minutes. I had then wordlessly left Lewis there alone to return to the party.

He pleaded for me to remember. There were tears in his eyes. This whole time, I had really thought Lewis was just unhappy in his life, that maybe his job at the college hadn't worked out and this alien thing was an escape from some other void. But after seeing the look in his eyes up on the rooftop, I was afraid for him. He really believed it happened and desperately needed someone to confirm his story, even if it was with a lie. So, that's what I did. I told him that I did remember the UFO, that I'd been to afraid to admit it, but he was right. A moment passed, then he quietly thanked me and I left him there alone.

I called Fiona the next morning to tell her about the whole thing, but she stopped me soon after I got to the part on the roof. She told me that she had, in fact, rented the penthouse three years ago for Johnny's birthday. She told me that I wasn't in nursing school at the time and that I'd been drinking pretty heavily that night, especially after I had returned from the roof with a mesmerized look in my eyes. She had thought that I had kissed Lewis up there, but all I would tell her was that I wanted to forget something. That's when I got scared.

I can't say that things are much better now that Lewis has left my life again, though I'm glad he's gone. I did end up losing my job, but Brandon insisted that he'd help out until I find something else. I hope that it's soon, because I know it's a strain on our relationship. I try not to look up at the night sky anymore, although if feels like I've been subconsciously avoiding it for years now. Also, I'm trying to pay closer attention to details and write more things down, out of fear of my bad memory.

Crocodile

Once Nora had inspected each child's work space, she dismissed them to go outside for recess. It was Cindy's day to watch over the second graders' play period and Nora was glad for some time alone. She locked the door and turned off the florescent lights, letting the cloudy day's hazy light stream in past the drawings taped to the windows. Resting her head on her desk, Nora had the thought that she should turn on her phone alarm, but she was comfortable and figured it would be alright so long as she didn't fall completely asleep.

A few moments later, Nora heard a slapping sound coming from the back of the room, near the bookshelves. She partially lifted her head and squinted toward the darkened corner from where she often read stories to her students. She was worried that a child had stowed away as the others were leaving, but saw nothing. Assuming that an misplaced book must have fallen off a shelf, she lowered her head back into her folded arms and thought about Cliff.

Nora had been seeing Cliff for a few months. He was a handsome lawyer, divorced, with a daughter named Olivia who was in Cindy's class. Nora had seen him picking up his little girl one day toward the beginning of the school year and begged Cindy to introduce them as soon as possible. She did, and the rest fell into place soon after.

Cliff was a direct type of person, which Nora desperately craved after a string of aimless boyfriends, but he also had a toughness that kept her wary of his demeanor. He often said mean things about his ex-wife in front of Olivia and Nora worried how this would affect her. But she could tell that he loved his daughter and felt he was a much warmer person underneath his coarse exterior.

Another slap sounded from the back of the classroom and Nora's head jerked up. She felt groggy and didn't know how much time had passed, but it couldn't have been long. Recess was only twenty minutes long, after all, and the children were still away. Still, she felt that it would be better if she turned on the lights again and went over the science lesson she'd be teaching later.

But then a low, prehistoric growl sounded from the back of the room, accompanied by three more slaps.

A desk toppled near the back of the room. Nora instinctively slid her feet underneath herself in a crouching position on her chair. The growling continued, guttural and uneven. Shifting to the top of her desk, careful to not make noise, Nora slowly stood and saw a shadowy figure writhing on the floor. It was a crocodile, wedged between another desk and one of the bookshelves. Nora thought it must be a trick, a man in a rubber suit, something else, but it was simply there. Nora's knees buckled and she fell off of her desk, hitting the floor hard. Trying to catch her breath, she heard several more desks thrashed aside. And then the crocodile was upon her, its tail slapping wildly on the linoleum tile, its massive weight bearing down to crush her.

The slapping became a repetitive series of knocks at the door and Nora jerked awake. She inhaled air as though her lungs were unraveling. Lifting her head, she looked at the dark, empty classroom and coughed out a weak laugh. Nora tried to think of when she might have been thinking about crocodiles recently. Maybe she had seen something about them on TV, but Nora couldn't remember.

The knocking continued and Nora dragged herself up to let in whatever impatient child was so desperate to return to class. She unlocked the door and saw that it wasn't a child, but Cindy, that had been knocking. Cindy looked frightened, bordering on panic. With tears smeared across her face, she slowly managed to tell Nora that Cliff had come to the playground, ranting and covered in blood, and had taken Olivia away.