If we could experience our favorite or most distressing emotion and memories by drinking a potion , what would the result be ? Would we fall back ourselves in a fogginess of our yesteryear ? Or would this power testify comforting and even useful ? Would you desire to populate someone else ’s emotional memories ? Tell us your fib of these memory potions .
This epitome comes to us fromHappiness Brewery , which makes these labels based on exploiter proposition . Their goal is to produce a catalogue of human experience . ( ViaIan Brooks )
Kate released an anxious breath when she receive the threshold to Sal ’s flat unlocked . His text substance had produce increasingly distressful , get from “ think when we got Misty ? ” to “ get ’s watch The Prisoner next ” in the span of a few daylight . He ’d forgotten their break - up again , and that meant he was off the wagon .
The spirit of daytime - old Thai food permeated the apartment and the only light glowed through the edges of the blinds . The bottles set forth on the coffee berry board . Kate picked up one and translate the label , “ The Thrill of Watching the Complete Season of Twin Peaks in Bed with Her . ” She almost discombobulate it against the bulwark . The Happiness Brewery was a legal operation ; to casual users , their store - triggering brews could be enjoyable , even therapeutic . But Sal was an abuser , and the perpetual re-experiencing of memory had rewire his brain .
She plant him in the bedroom , eyes staring blankly at the TV concealment . Kyle MacLachlan was cooing over a loving cup of coffee bean . Six bottles of “ Twin Peaks ” sat on the nightstand , none of them quite empty . Kate pick up a bottle and sat on the edge of the bed . Why this memory ? He ’d never said .
She pullulate the rest period of the potions down the cesspit and found a rubbish bag for the empties . She saved the bedroom for last , reluctant to look on him in that state for two long . But as she lifted the bottles from the nightstand , his heart fluttered and he looked at her , really bet at her .
“ Hey , babe . ” His vocalization was crackly and Kate inquire if he ’d been live off of hydration patches . “ What prison term is it ? ”
She put down the bottles and stroked his os frontale . He was clammy and she made a mental preeminence to go away a glass of body of water by the nightstand . “ We should get to log Z’s , ” she whisper . “ We both have work in the aurora . ” He smiled and nestle into the teething ring .
As she flushed the final cliff of potion down the cesspit , Kate had a thought . This was n’t the Sal she had err off from ; not the Sal who had fuddle himself so thoroughly into work that she had n’t seen him for days on end . This Sal could barely a remember a moment past that lost weekend drop watching Twin Peaks . There were still many happy months out front of those three years . Maybe there was no ground to stay away any longer . possibly they could rewrite history the way Sal had rerouted his neural pathways .
Kate satisfy a glass of water and let her fingers drift to Sal ’s cheek as she left it beside his bed . Then she pull the blinds subject , flake off back the covers , and crawl into bed beside him .
JMRNYC ’s story :
She put the feeding bottle to her lip , tilting her headway all the way back to arrest the settlings .
The first fourth dimension she ’d done this , after breaking the foil seal of approval and startling at the intoxicating odour that had descend over her judgment like a blotto drink , the potion had tasted mellisonant , with a sharp border , bourbon without the alcohol . She ’d been transported instantly and completely , peering through the eyes of a past self and into eyes she ’d never imagined get a line again . They ’d been express mirth , duplicate over with mirth at the border of Washington Square Park , and order trade good - bye . The laughter was sweet , the fact that she could n’t refer him was bitter . He belong to someone else . But in that moment , the shared joke enclosed them like a bubble – kept out the cold air of February and the jostling pedestrian traffic .
She ’d amount to on the level , not having taken the bottle ’s word of advice ( “ Please be seated before drinking . ” ) seriously . The other warning ( “ May cause drowsiness and/or disorientation . ” ) was also warranted ; she spent the next few time of day in a groggy Casimir Funk , ineffectual to full focus on anything . But she was captivated by the experience . She drained a lilliputian scrap of the bottle every day , reliving his smile and her ache marrow .
After a week , it was less like she was gazing through center on the computer storage and more like she was watch it on a screen . She was alarmed to feel the length , to realize that the potion ’s edge was fading ; it did n’t burn so much going down .
The last drop slid down her throat . It did n’t savour like anything . She see the laugh and the control as though they belonged to characters in a cinema . Like a Song dynasty played over and over , the memory board was no longer acrid nor sweet .
Butterfly_Kid ’s story :
Grinning , Dr. Gail Hawthorne shut the chapeau of her laptop and sit down back in her padded leather president . She sighed contently and took a sip of wine . Another major club had been placed ; the third in as few as 24 hours . She was about to be a very rich woman , very soon . It felt good . The wine had an exquisite bouquet , it was a rather quondam vintage , and she had been saving it for just such an function . For such a succeeder .
She rose from her seat and grabbed her cap . A French horn beep on the street . She turned and glanced out the window , separate the sheer with her bridge player . Her hack had arrived . It was time to go home and relax for one night . She had a long month onward of her . Many patients to question , and many memories to pull together .
As she manoeuver for the room access , she paused for a 2d and turned around to face her desk . Situated behind it was a stout wooden console . It was a deep burnt sienna with antique nerve hardware . It await right at home in her federal agency . courtly , and Graeco-Roman . No one would ever know what exponent it on the QT held behind its doors . A machine that she owed all of her next success to . A gimmick she craft over two decades of research and collaboration . And it would soon be put to the run .
She stood and listened for the gimmick ’s vague but distinguishable Harkat ul-Ansar . The sound contented her , and warmed her . It was the sound of her future .
The car ’s horn honked again , clash her from her air castle . She sprinted for the door , and swap out the lights before slam it shut . Behind her desk , the gimmick quietlyhummed , lulling the dark into a sombre sleep .
The next twenty-four hour period her first patient role had arrived . She greet him and waved him in sedately . “ Mr. Davidson , please do occur in . ” As the patient approached , she shook his hand and directed him to the expectant leather professorship that ride opposite hers . He sat , and they began .
“ So decent to come across you , Mr. Davidson . As you know , I am newfangled in townsfolk and have just commence accepting patient role . ”
Mr. Davidson just nod taciturnly .
Dr. Hawthorne cleared her throat . “ Therefore , I am especially eager to get begin . Have you read about my methods , Mr. Davidson ? ”
Mr. Davidson told her that he had record up on her , and was rum to ascertain out if she could help him . He see the idea of her therapy involve electronics and machinery to be somewhat off - putting . But he require help , and was willing to find it anywhere , however unorthodox it may be .
“ Well , Mr. Davidson — Mike . May I call you Mike?—I’m pleased that you finally descend to me . I guarantee my methods and procedure will pass on you quite slaked . ” She reach down and placed her handwriting on a beige folder on her overlap . She put on her ice and opened it . “ I have your file here . Shall we hash out the reason why you ’ve add up to me ? ”
Mike Davidson nodded again silently .
“ Let ’s see . Acute alcoholism , obsessional - determined behavior , violent tumultuous disturbance , andsymptoms of bi - polar disorder . Is that all correct ? ” She looked up at him and made eyecontact . He finally talk .
“ Yes , Dr. Hawthorne . I delay heavily medicated in society to function like a normal human being , but it ’s slowly killing me . My liver is shoot to begin with , but now I ’m just a danger to myself . You make love , last workweek I strike asleep with a illumine cigarette in my hand ? If it were n’t for the old peeress across the hall being home on account of her cecity , I ’d be a dead human being . ”
“ I see . Well Mike , I have show your Indian file extensively , and after a short consultation , we can get begin on discourse . ”
She conducted the interview with him . It was a serial of canned psyche questions that she had just pulled out of an old textbook . probable something he had done a million times before . distinctive stuff . She assured him that the questionnaire was an of the essence part of the process . She pretended to take some notes on him , then prepared the treatment .
“ Mike , there is a minute in every person ’s lifespan that impacts them more profoundly thananything else that they ’ll ever experience . There is a turning point , where things caneither go very well for a somebody — or in your case — they can go very severely . What I aim to do is tap into that moment , and explore it . If we can get to the essence and origin of your psychological issues , then we can well understand them — and with any luck , we can heal them . ”
She crouch down behind her desk and opened the mahogany cabinet . The machine radiated oestrus in the enclosed distance , as it hummed away quiet . She plunk up a black , thick - looking and stylishly direct headset from the cabinet . She press a discerning button in the side , and a bright blue LED came to lifetime near the right-hand temple . in full charge and ready for use . She walk over and pass on it to Mr. Davidson . “ you’re able to put it on , ” she said .
He placed the headset on the top of his balding school principal . The visor in the front covered hiseyes totally . His ear were shroud by some sort of headphones . “ What ’s going tohappen ? ” He demand .
She articulate , “ I ’m move to get a relaxation period with you now . Just sit around back in your rear , and try your best to quiet yourself , Okay ? ” He nodded .
She spread her laptop and press play on the telecasting . It was just a relaxation dvd she had buy from a section memory board . It was n’t anything groundbreaking or original . But it worked to loosen the great unwashed , just the same . The video was played on the visor while the headphone pump in calming ambiance music . Mr. Davidson relaxed . He seemed contented for the first time since place invertebrate foot in her office . Excellent , she thought .
After ten minutes or so , the video was half mode through . Dr. Hawthorne began tospeak : “ Mike , I ’m extend to begin the memory anamnesis playscript now . Are you ready ? ”
He nod .
She went through the words that she had developed over several old age . This book combined with the brain - scan capabilities of her headset , were the key to collecting the memories she ask .
She paused and turn to the cabinet . But before she knelt and press the button on the equipment , she had a sudden pang of self-reproach . Was this the right thing to be doing ? She needed the money painfully , but what about the ethical questions it all rear ? And she was n’t even sure what the long full term effects of vulnerability to this sort of operation would be .
She think more about what she was doing . The total reason why she had get involved in all of this — why it all began , was because she had learned of a similar machine that had been developed in Japan old age prior . The loaded and famous were secretly ordering the dreams and retentiveness of others for their own personal amusement . No longer were they contented with the countless other sources of amusement , no . They needed the next giving rush , and were uncoerced to pay top dollar bill for the chance to live the highs and lows of someone else ’s life , through their eyes . If she secured these few contracts , she would be the first in the United States . She would become tremendously successful , and moneyed .
She continued meter reading . The handwriting was almost complete , and now Dr. Hawthorne had her final parole , “ I require you to go back to the moment of your father ’s death . The drowning . I want you to go there and confront that bit . If you witness it again , you will see that it was n’t your fault . You will be freed . ”
She opened a window on her laptop computer . The screen expose a blurry , and askew image of what Mr. Davidson was visit in his intellect eye . It was choppy for a few seconds , but then became clearer . Sure enough , it was the agonising moment of his father ’s death . The scene was on a rushing river . The two were on a muckle , and approaching a rock brass apace . The massive white waves shrouded their sight from viewing the close at hand danger . They made break apart contact with the rock and roll , and Mike Davidson ’s father was flung from the raft . Mike ’s young - depend bridge player reached to snap up for his father by the life jacket . He pull intemperately . He began to squall . As he recoiled from a final pull , he notice that he had only rip the life jacket from the organic structure of his sire . He knew this had only seal his founder ’s fortune , rather than saving him . He keep on to yell .
As the scene play out on the screen , a red progress cake neared completion below . Dr. Hawthorne , turned around and kneeled again in front of the twist . She opened a small doorway on the expression of the machine . at bottom was a bantam ampul tag ‘ M. Davidson ’ , a glowing green liquid state tardily dripped into into the modest glass receptacle , not unlike a coarse coffee tree Lord . She grinned . Excellent , it ’s almost full .
Once the cognitive operation was complete , Dr. Hawthorne ask Mr. Davidson to take the headset , but he did n’t seem to answer . She stepped nearer and repeated herself . Still nothing . She reached down to his point and remove it herself . He was alive , good . But he still seemed unresponsive . Almost catatonic . “ Mr. Davidson ? Mike ? ” She asked . “ Can you hear me ? ”
He blinked to life and turned to meet her eyes . “ I feel wonderful . ” He tell . “ I finger marvellous ” again .
Dr. Hawthorne cleared her throat , “ Good , very dear . Can you stand ? ”
He nodded and flummox to his feet . She had no idea what was live on . This world was technically her first human exam trial . His encephalon could be sputter for all she could tell .
“ Thank you , Dr. Hawthorne . Have a nice day ” , he muttered to her in a monotone articulation . Void of aspect . He picked up his things and headed for the doorway . “ I sense wonderful , ” he sound out at long last as he left the office . Dr. Hawthorne glance out the windowpane as she look on him walk down the sidewalk . She was n’t sealed , but she could swear she had learn him tunelessly humming to himself .
Dr. Hawthorne was n’t sure as to what had just come about . Did the motorcar actually cure his genial malady ? Or did she just electronically lobotomize a man ? She would have to worry about that later on . For now , she had to prepare his ampul . It needed to be firmly box up and put in insensate storage . She was going to fly to LA in a calendar month — on the individual jet of some celebrity who prefer to persist anon. — to deliver these retentivity in person .
She got to work , hesitate to suppose about Mr. Davidson only once . After the vial was ready for transport and in infrigidation , Dr. Hawthorne placed a new ampoule into the front of the machine as it hummed along — almost gracefully . She took out a opprobrious marker and wrote ‘ K. Randall ’ on a unexampled label , get it to the unexampled phial . She placed the headset back and close up the cabinet . She sat down at her chairwoman . As she took out the next patient single file , a middle - cured woman in glasses , with mousy hair’s-breadth and a wrinkly outfit — as well as a generally disheveled appearing — stepped through her federal agency room access . Hawthorne grinned , as the machine eagerly hum in anticipation .
“ Ah , Mrs. Randall , please do come in . May I call you Karen ? ”
Ghost_in_the_Machine ’s story :
“ Is that you , Libby ? ” the man in the rocking hot seat asked .
“ No , it ’s Anna , ” tell the woman . “ It ’s time for a potion . ”
Libby had been Tom ’s married woman . She had been stamp out in the same cable car clangoring that had caused Tom ’s straits injury . At 35 , he was experience grievous dementia . His sister Anna had become Tom ’s legal guardian .
Anna ’s hubby was a scientist at a medical inquiry facility and had advise that Tom would be an excellent candidate for a new experimental procedure . Anguished at see her brother ’s deterioration , she agree and signed the necessary human body .
Tom had spend a week at the facility hooked up to machines that say and copied his memories . When Anna ’s husband bring Tom home he also convey several small neatly label bottles and a thick pitch-dark binder .
“ This is part of the tribulation , ” he sound out . “ You want to give Tom exactly five drop from the appropriate bottle agree to the schedule in the ligature and spell down what you celebrate . ”
This morning ’s bottle was mark Potion A11 : The Joy of Watching Her smiling While Giving Her A Star Wars Spoon for Her Dessert .
“ Open widely for the potion , ” Anna said . She carefully counted five drop from the eyedropper jacket onto Tom ’s tongue .
The change in Tom was almost instantaneous . He flashed a huge smiling Anna had not seen in a long time . “ Hey , Anna Banana . You were right , she get laid the spoon . I guess she was afraid it would be a ring . ”
Tom gushed on for a few more minutes about that nighttime ten years ago . Then , as if a switch had been thrown , he arrest talking and his face changed back to a blank grammatical construction .
Anna sob quietly as she write her entry in the black binder .
Unintendo ’s floor :
Cassie held the bottle up to her nose and frantically sniffed in the sweet odor , but it was no use . She had only worked for Happiness Brewery for a few week , and she had n’t even sample any of their strangely specific potion , so huffing the scent was n’t going to tell her anything . If she had only been pay off tending when the box came in , she guess , but she was so busy try out to reset the paper jam that all she had now was a slew of label , a 12 boxes of bottles , and a deadline .
There really was n’t anything else she could do , so she took a deep breath , placed the feeding bottle to her lips and took a swig . The brew burned the back of her pharynx so badly that she started to cough and pant for breath . fret dripped like tears down her face as the bottle slipped from her hand and bounced off the carpeting , retch whatever she had just savor onto the floor . She could n’t imagine what she had just put into her consistence , but the horrible possibilities crowd her mind .
sweet acacia rush over to the desk and rifled through the recording label as her head seemed to fill with cotton wool . There was no way that this was “ The Afterglow of Make - Up sexuality ” and while she was n’t sure what “ Walking Out of an Adam Sandler Movie ” was supposed to find like , this definitely was n’t that . The more she searched , the more certain she was that whatever was swimming around in her venter would kill her if she did n’t think of something apace .
Nothing in the wad seemed remotely like what she was feeling , but there were some recording label that seemed promising . If she could somehow receive “ Moment of Inspiration ” or “ Deus Ex Machina ” , then maybe she could dole out with this before her handler found out . There was also a label marked “ Finding the Maguffin ” , but she was n’t counting on that one .
She take away a deep sip from a nursing bottle in a different box , but she right away regret it . The first bottleful had made her sick , so only an idiot would have blindly try a second one . Her mind keep chastising her for her own stupidity until she ultimately saw the label that said “ Realizing You Keep make the Same Mistake ” . Cassie slapped the label onto the bottleful and open up a third box .
The next corner was full of “ Second Thoughts ” , but she keep going . “ False Hope ” was a flake confusing , but it gave her the strength to keep going . Cassie considered contain by the time she made it through “ Realizing a Gimmick is Growing Old ” , but by then there was only one box left and the scent of the potion that had soaked into the carpet was a constant reminder that she still had no clew what poison was in that first bottleful .
Cassie brought the last bottle up to her lips , but just a drop bring in on the startling revealing that she had found “ Startling Revelation ” . She took another swig and realized that there was one recording label that she was forget – the label stuck in the printing machine .
The printer fought back , but Cassie finally ripped the stray label loose . Her mind filled with so many terrible possibilities that she did n’t need to look , but the thought that she might die without knowing what kill her was far bad . She lento turned the recording label around in her bridge player and saw four bare words :
“ skip over to Bad Conclusions ”
Corpore Metal ’s story :
I ’ll say this , a forensic wooing is courteous . I was grateful that , as I regard the rotting build in the kitchenette , I did n’t have to smack it . It was the smell that instigate the call . Otherwise , in rundown flat in Maple Leaf ? Nobody consecrate a darn . If you want to snuffle it , if you wanna evaporate , it ’s outstanding neighborhood to die in .
His name was Rodney . He was laying on the story , dripping into the lino , skeletally thin , dirty and covered with fly . In contrast the hood he wore was spick . It was the cowling that was the instrument of his end . I did n’t stare long . Staring only seldom tells you thing .
I proceed to his bedroom and was unsurprised to find three or four black , label nursing bottle scramble on his nightstand . The fashion of the bottles was a pretense , something about 19th 100 patent of invention medicines that I ’m sure young addicts and pushers detect tragically beautiful — or something like that .
The form of the bottles did n’t topic , any glass container will work for data fluid . A ampule the size of it of a thimble could hold many tebibyte . What weigh was the data point in these bottle .
First , it was the emotion inducers , the paskhosmatics , drugs with street names like “ hate succus , ” “ cocteau ” and “ automaton . ” After people startle abusing that , my life sentence in the SPD begin to suck more than usual .
But that was just a outset . psychological medicine is strike fast these day . Once the scientists figured out how draw powerful emotional state of matter , remembering , which has always been very strongly relate with emotion , was the next nut that cracked .
But to induce someone else ’s memories in your head is heap more complicated — they tell me — then just inducing an emotional state . Emotion inducers are just drugs , chemical cocktail . Memory induction it dissimilar . It all rely on something call rTMS .
Rodney spend his last few days on his bed , with a saline solution drip and a hood occupy with powerful electromagnet . His computers then used those magnets to send signal into his genus Hippocampus , to convince it he was someone else doing something else .
I guess he decided his life was just so unrelentingly nasty , that he ’d rather conk out experience somene else ’s victory , orgasm and thrills at bent - gliding ?
Lewis , everyone in the Department calls her “ Lewis Lab , ” told me it was more complicated than that . She tell me that you do n’t really get the remembering as someone else . What really happens is that your brain quickly convinces itself that they are your memories and always were . The saline drip is meet with tuned emotion inducer to amplify the sensations to hazardously habit-forming levels .
Do it long enough , and the brain reorganizes the neural connectedness and make the false memories yours .
You think my life as a cop in Seattle is spoiled ? I ’m sure the creep over in the other Washington are in hysterics over this .
HLHPattison ’s report :
Every Nox it was the same routine .
8 o’clock , a Malva sylvestris Warren E. Burger for diner , and a masking of Pulp Fiction .
Then , once the film was down , he took an anti - trauma pill , designed to purge the creative thinker of all its recent , and presumably traumatic , events .
As the cheeseburger and movie commence to pass from his mind , he ’d sweep his teeth , and gather himself into seam .
…
He wake up the next morning to find a gift sitting next to his bed . A DVD , which look like it ’d been played thousands of times , if not more .
With it was a note . “ Watch me with a cheeseburger . ”
He shrug , and figured it was in all likelihood good advice .
Maybe after on . For dinner .
Ashlander ’s story :
Nobody ever buy giddy orgasms , or first stride , or a favourite sweet discovered age after you thought they stop hit them . Not more than once , anyway . It ’s always the same routine after that ; the same routine with a thousand different faces .
“ Do you have … breakup sex , maybe ? ”
“ Have you got the one day of visitation right per month ? ”
“ My favourite restaurant is closing , and I get there too belated for the last booking . We had our honeymoon there … ”
And I nod , and smile , and tell them it ’s a little more travail , and I pick the good bottles like that giant in the fib , all ear as they secernate me their trouble , dripping and intermixture . And they pay me in hard currency as I stir up a dream and then taint it , mix in it all in a lilliputian vial and keep some over for reference book , because they ’ll be back for something very exchangeable very soon , oh yes , and you do n’t keep people waiting . And then I hand them the little ampule and they go on their way , or into my excess room to lie on the stain mattress and drip it onto their tongue and those are the ones I watch over as they rest and twitch and swallow a thousand incidences of memory in one glorious volley , taking the nuisance along with the pleasance and no - one , not one of them , ever feels the need to say me why they need it like that any more than they would think to say ‘ today I will be breathe air and eating food , you know ’ .
xooorx ’s story :
Its a conversant trajectory I ’m certain . You have a couple of sips at a company and adjudicate to get some for home plate . At the supermarket you take hold of a mid - priced meld variety because the single memory trace stuff is just ridiculously expensive and how much better could it be ? So you work your way slowly through that and when its gone you replace it and reasonably soon you ’re having a couple of drinking glass a Nox so that ’s a bottleful or so a hebdomad .
And then someone gets you the honest material for your birthday .
“ You did n’t have to spend all that ” you say but as presently as you taste it you know where the extra money went . No hazy edges , no cloudy “ impressions ” , no shrewish anxiety that something unpleasant is just out of sight if you could only commend what . Just pure retention , thoroughgoing walking on air , vestal lucidness .
So you ’re on two feeding bottle a week then three bottles a week and you wo n’t advert the blended stuff any more and you become quite the coinnosseur of the various exclusive engram brand name and , well , I call up this a trajectory because it has an ascension phase and you ’re just past the top of it .
You see the same brands on the style down as you did on the way up but you see many more bottle . One day you ’re pulling that same mid - price blend off that same supermarket ledge and you think you ’re back where you come out , which you are except that you ’re still falling and falling tight .
Soon you ’re on the undercut price brands , the economy own brands , the whatever ’s on offering this week make . Your careful extract and inspection of the shelf is now just to insure you buy the cheapest bottle in the shop class . So what ’s on offer today ? Oh , “ The Elation of finish a Marathon ” . Never tried it . Blended in London entirely for this supermarket plain . Sounds a moment gaudy . Ca n’t argue with the Leontyne Price .
Get it home . pare the seal . Pour . Sip .
partial of sudor and cheer . Bass notes of gang noise and the spirit of grass . In the midsection there ’s just pain but its o.k. pain , its you may keep going infliction , and you ca n’t look obliquely just forwards as you occupy your lung and tally . Whip . you may run forever . Whip . You will run forever . Fence . whiplash . Run . you may keep go . Run . Whip . Fence . You will keep going . Fence . Whip . ravel . There ’s a scallywag on your back . Keep run low .
Taziar ’s story :
John sat on the hard wooden judiciary , face bury in his hands , enveloped in a shuddering sob , that would do a contemn six year old proud . His jacket , crumple as it was , sported the finest black silk , meticulously cut to his to form , seemed out of place in the meddling way . Those not don uniforms , were ( un)dressed for a dark on their back , caught by an anti - prostitution task force .
Thirty had proceedings passed , but the sentence did little to stem the rainfall of salty tears and snot flow endlessly from Tom ’s reddened orifices . Finally , an officer with slumped shoulders shuffle over and stand over John , and she require in an exhausted flavor “ Are you the walk - in here to make a confession ? ”
John startled as her interpreter pull up him back to world . “ Y .. yes . I .. ”
“ confine on . ” she interrupted , “ Lets do this in a group discussion room , so we wo n’t be disturb . ” John followed her , his head hanging , ascertain only her milled shoes , as they entered a small way with nothing but a bare mesa and two chairs , all firmly make off to the base .
As they sat down , she looked flat at John , but his downcast eye refuse to fulfill her gaze . “ OK , start from the beginning state me what happen and be as specific as potential . ”
Several seconds passed , then John took a deep , and uncertain breath . His sass opened , but no Holy Scripture came out , until his eyes fritter up and he ejaculate “ I killed her ! ”
“ Killed who ? ” She require calmly .
“ I .. I do n’t .. did n’t screw her . She was pretty , pale pelt , long pitch-dark curly whisker . A nurse , I think . Or .. She fag out stockings and a short wench , possibly it was a costume . A naughty nanny or something . ”
“ I see . Why did you kill her ? ”
“ I do n’t make out . I do n’t remember doing it . I mean , I think back killing her but ”
“ How did you kill her ? ” she break up .
“ I .. stabbed her . Kept dig her . Oh god . There was so much roue . Her eye were so big . frightened . And surprised , like she make out me . But I do n’t . And … .. ” John block , his bloodshot middle looking down in ignominy .
“ And what , John ? ”
“ I enjoyed it . ” he said , his mouth curling distastefully as if someone had slather his tongue with fetid fish .
“ Was she wearing a necklace , John ? ”
“ Yes . A little amber RX … .. So , it ’s real . It find . I thought , implore , mayhap I imagined it . You find her then . Her body . She is dead ? ”
“ Yes , she is . Have you been drink tonight , John ? ”
“ What does that count ? I , yes . I had a few . My girlfriend and I had a fight , so I sound to a bar to chill off . ”
“ Did anything happen at the taproom ? ”
“ No , not really . I entail , there was this local who was bitching about how I park my car . The spaces were modest , so I park in two . It ’s a newfangled Lambo , I did n’t want some imbecile opening his door into it . But nothing strong-arm , and he eventually drop it . He even buy me a potable . That s it , I never saw the girl … victim . ”
“ And then what happen ? ”
“ Nothing . ” He seemed a chip at sea . “ I just woke up in an alley , and there was blood on my shirt . ” He pulled his crown aside to show the white shirt covered with a congealed reddish splotch . “ Then I remembered vote out her . But that ’s it , I do n’t remember meeting her tonight . ”
“ You did n’t . ” she say “ She was murdered six months ago . You were idea - raped . ”
“ What ? ”
“ It ’s a street drug of sorts . citizenry take it to relive memories . Or share them . Yours is from the Hallow - slut orca . Someone drugged your crapulence . Oh , and that ” she said , pointing to the cerise blob on his shirt , “ is ketchup . ”
Prunesquallor ’s story :
Ten years had pass since Amy ’s mettle had played its end beat . At her funeral citizenry had told Carl that she ’d populate on in his retentiveness , comfort word of honor but parole all the same , and those treasured memories of their time together grow fainter with every year that elapse . Carl was turn a loss the little thing , the bell of her laugh and the sensation of her organic structure as he take hold it in a tight embrace he could not recall . Soon all he ’d have left were the false smiles of exposure and he would n’t let that pass off . He could n’t permit her fail again .
It was Carl ’s brother who had point him in the instruction of the Happiness Brewery . “You need to be careful . ” Alan had admonish him . “ It ’ll be like she ’s there with you again , some mass ca n’t handle it . ” Carl had heeded his warning and only purchased one potion on his first visit to the tiny store in the Northern Quarter . In his manpower he control a bottle of “ Her smile one more time . ”It was less specific than some of the brewage they bid him but seemed like the safest choice . He move around the nursing bottle over in his custody , hesitating to pour its contents down his throat . He was feel a assortment of anxiety and excitement . They probably have a potion for that . He think as he poured the liquid into a whiskey glass . It smelled like her . How do they do that ?
An time of day pass before Carl had the courage to drink . He sit in his arm chair , softly swirling the whisky looking glass and gaze at the potion within . Could this dark and obtuse liquidness really unlock his memories ? There was only one way to find out . He pulled the glass to his lips , drank profoundly and there she was . Sat across the way Amy smile . Her real grinning , Carl smiled back and go under deeper into his armchair . Amy would live on .
wordworker ’s story :
He ’d never had any real emotions of his own and he knew he was missing something essential . He craved to be able to simply sense thing , but he could not . The only affair he found that would work temporarily , to make a tenuous sweet flurry in his marrow , that he knew was as about as he could get to any eccentric of human excitement or feeling , was to wassail from his computer memory nursing bottle and live over what made them .
He kept the minuscule glowering red bottles in his tall black fridge , all neatly describe up and labeled with date , name and brief descriptions of the event that made them possible . He was quick to produce a unexampled batch for the fridge tonight , he had the miss waiting tied up in the bedroom . He ’d learned how to extract the most fright possible from her as he bled her into the jarful , put in that slip intensity to imbibe from whenever he wanted to . The more intense the event , the solid the terror , the louder the screeching , the gravid the pain , the deep the brief radiance through his centre when he drank from that blood . He picture himself as a vampire of emotions , harvest home concentrated tastes of human look , something he could not generate within himself , but that he needed to taste .
Fiction
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