Relic

Sometimes, when I’m alone and it’s just me and my thoughts, I can feel it.  Ever so slightly. I can feel these strange little pangs in my head and behind my eyes. The feeling never goes away completely, but it intensifies whenever I’m made conscious of it. Thinking of it right now just hurts, a lot.

It’s like tinnitus. When you notice it, you’ll have a hard time ignoring the whirs or clicks. Me?  I’ll feel a sharp pain, and then I’ll remember things. They’re mostly random, like the time Dad took me and my sister out for ice cream. Or when Billy tripped, throwing a birthday cake into Mom’s face. They feel more like snapshots, though. I can remember some details, like what flavor of ice cream my sister got (it was mint), or what numbers were on the cake (36).

But I can’t remember the before and after. I can’t remember why Iris wanted to wear the ice cream cone, or whose birthday it was. I can’t remember what Mom even looked like. I have the basic memory, but I just can’t get to any of the details.

And then I remember the bad memories, the things I don’t want to remember.  Like how when Dad came home one night, he couldn’t talk right and stumbled on his way inside. I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t. I just remember how Billy took his arm, and moved him to the bedroom. Iris wasn’t there, and neither was Mom. I remember how I moved towards him, and how Billy put out an arm to stop. As if that wasn’t Dad. As if it was someone else; something else.

I chose to believe that. I chose to believe that my father was still at work, and that he came back at some point later in the night. It was just something in his skin, pretending to be him. I found it easier, somehow.

I remember throwing rocks at Iris. I forget when this happened. I just remember my anger. I thought she had done something wrong. And I remember myself being forced into a yellow maw, full of metal. I remember kicking and pleading.  And how everything around me turned black, with a sharp, sudden pain.

The one thing I remember most is how I felt seeing my own body. I saw that I was sitting in a wheelchair, slumped forward. I think I was crying. The top of my head was depressed, with a streak of stitching among various parts of the exposed scalp. The man that was once Dad tilted my chin up, and wiped the drool from my lips with a handkerchief before walking across the room and handing me a knife. He told me where to cut.

And then darkness.

I don’t know who’s the real Michael. I don’t know if I care. Nowadays, I answer to Benedict more than anything else. But the phantom pains have been becoming more and more common. Maybe I should come back “home”. One of these years, maybe.