Chapter 9: Memories
681 Words
Damson couldn’t stop thinking about the drink.
Even after he got home, even after he ate dinner and tried to do his homework, his mind kept going back to that moment in the cafeteria. The taste. The flash that came right after. The way Jackson had looked at him.
It wasn’t normal.
He sat on his bed that night, staring at his school bag like it held answers. He had been trying to ignore everything — the shadows, the scent, the strange feelings — but after what happened today, he couldn’t anymore.
He stood up and started pacing.
Why did it happen when I drank from Jackson’s cup?
Why did it feel so familiar?
He tried to remember the flash properly. He closed his eyes and focused, but the memory came in broken pieces. A hand holding a cup. A voice. The same heavy feeling in his chest. It was frustrating. Every time he tried to hold onto one part, another part would slip away.
Damson sat back down and pressed his palms against his eyes.
He was tired of feeling like this. Tired of seeing things he couldn’t explain. Tired of feeling like something was happening to him and he had no control over it.
For the first time since all of this started, he decided to try something.
He opened his drawer and pulled out an old notebook. It was one he used to draw in years ago, back before his world shifted and he locked that part of himself away. He flipped past the old sketches until he found a completely blank page.
Picking up a pen, he began to write, his hand trembling slightly as the ink scraped against the paper. He listed everything that had been happening to him, his handwriting looking tighter and more frantic than usual:
The scent that appears and disappears.
The shadows he keeps seeing.
The flashes of memories that don’t make sense.
At the bottom of the list, he hesitated. His chest tightened as he forced his pen to write the final line: The way it started getting worse after the wish. Damson stared at the word wish. He automatically glanced over at his digital clock, half-expecting the numbers to shift to 11:11 right then, as if the universe was watching him write down its secret.
He dropped the pen and leaned back. He had hoped that putting it all on paper would somehow make sense.
But it didn’t.
The more he wrote, the more confused he became. Nothing connected. Nothing explained why these things were happening to him and no one else.
Then a new thought slowly entered his mind — one that made his stomach turn.
What if it’s not random?
What if something is making this happen to me?
The thought scared him.
He had been thinking that maybe he was imagining things, or that he was losing his mind. But what if he wasn’t? What if something — or someone — was behind all of this?
Damson looked around his room slowly. It was quiet. Empty. But for the first time, he didn’t feel like he was alone in the dark.
He felt like something was with him.
And that something knew him.
Knew his past.
Knew exactly how to make him remember.
He closed the notebook with a sharp snap and shoved it deep into the back of the drawer. He lay down on his bed, pulling the blanket tight around his shoulders, his eyes fixed on the dark corners of the room. He tracked the stillness, waiting for any sign of movement, his heart hammering against his ribs until the morning light finally started to bleed through the curtains.
But sleep never came.
And in the quiet of the night, Damson was left with one question repeating in his mind:
What if it’s not just happening to me… but because of me?
- Writer
