MidReal Story
Memory Thief's Whisper
Scenario: A wordsmith finds himself unable to recall simple words from time to time. He has a suspicion that an inter-dimensional entity is leeching his vocabulary to feed off of the energy of the released memory
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Theodore "Theo" Langley
wordsmith and victim, friends with Eliza and mentored by Professor Alden, tall with sharp eyes and unkempt hair, curious and resilient.
Eliza Hart
investigative journalist and Theo's confidante, friends with Theo, petite with a determined gaze, intelligent and resourceful.
Professor Edmund Alden
mentor to Theo and expert in interdimensional beings, colleague of Eliza, elderly with a wise demeanor, cautious and knowledgeable.
I first noticed something was wrong when I was writing.
I’d been working on a new novel, a mystery set in a world where interdimensional beings fed on memories, and I was just getting to the part where the protagonist’s best friend vanished without a trace.
I had it all planned out in my head—how the friend would leave behind a cryptic note, how the protagonist would spend months searching for her, how he’d finally realize she’d been taken by one of the beings and that he had to find a way to get her back.
It was going to be the best thing I’d ever written.
But as I sat at my desk, fingers flying over the keyboard, I found myself unable to recall even the simplest words.
I knew what I wanted to say, but when I tried to type it out, my mind went blank.
It was like there was a hole in my memory where the word should have been, and no matter how hard I tried to fill it in, nothing came to me.
I tried moving on to another part of the scene, thinking that if I came back to it later, the word would come to me eventually.
It was like my brain was suddenly riddled with holes, and no matter how hard I tried to fill them in, the words just kept slipping away.
And it wasn’t just the words I was trying to use in that moment.
I realized that I was forgetting things I’d known for years, things that had no reason to be lost from my memory and that I’d taken great pains to make sure I wouldn’t forget.
It was like something—or someone—was actively erasing my memories, taking them away from me one by one, and no matter how hard I tried to hold on, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I closed my laptop, trying to ignore the rising panic in my chest, and tried to think of a word that I knew I knew, just to prove to myself that it was all in my head.
But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember it.
The worst part was, I didn’t even know what the word was.
I could picture it in my mind, could almost taste it on my tongue, but it remained frustratingly out of reach.
It was like my brain had suddenly decided that it didn’t want me to know this word, that it would rather keep it hidden away from me forever than let me have it back.
I shook my head, trying to clear away the fog that was starting to form there, and glanced over at my desk.
It was piled high with notes and outlines for my novel, pages of dialogue and character arcs all neatly organized and laid out where I could see them.
I’d spent weeks getting everything perfect, making sure that every little detail was exactly as it should be before I started writing, so that nothing would stand in the way of me finishing this book on time.
And now, for some reason, the most important word of all had vanished from my mind without a trace.
It felt like some kind of sick joke—like the beings in my story were laughing at me from the other side of the page, taunting me with their power over my words and memories—but I knew that couldn’t be possible.
As far as I knew, they weren’t real.
But then again, as far as I knew, people’s memories weren’t supposed to disappear without a trace either.
Maybe I’d been wrong about that too.
The next time it happened, I was at Eliza’s apartment watching TV.
There was an old movie on the screen, something we’d both seen a hundred times before, but when one of the characters said something about going to “the place where the wild things are,” Eliza paused the movie so we could spend ten minutes debating whether or not we should have named our band after that book instead of “The Electric Lady.”
(We ultimately decided against it—Pink Floyd had already taken the best line from the book for his album title, so we figured we’d better steer clear.)
And then, when Eliza went into the kitchen to grab a couple of beers from the fridge, the next thing I knew, she was standing in front of me holding two open cans of soda and asking if I was okay.
“I’m fine,” I said, taking one of the cans from her hands and cracking it open.
I didn’t tell her about the word because, by that point, it just seemed like one of those random brain farts you have sometimes, and besides, she would probably laugh at me for being so easily distracted by something so stupid.
I’d had enough of those lately, thanks to the stress of my impending deadline, and even though it worried me a little bit, I figured it would probably just go away on its own once the book was done.
After all, it was the first time it had ever happened, and as far as I knew, most people only got writer’s block once in a while anyway.
It wasn’t until it kept happening over the next few months—first the word, then the paragraph, then the whole scene—that I started to get concerned.
It wasn’t like anything else in my life had changed; I was still sleeping and eating and exercising, still going out with friends and watching movies and playing video games.
I’d just hit a little bit of a rough patch in my writing, one that seemed to be lasting a lot longer than usual, and no matter how hard I tried to muscle through it, nothing seemed to help.
The first thing I tried to do was ignore it, hoping that if I just went about my business like nothing was wrong, everything would eventually go back to normal.
But every time I sat down at my desk and tried to write, I found myself staring at a blank page, completely unable to remember what I’d planned on writing, no matter how simple or obvious it should have been.
It was like all of my ideas had disappeared from my mind, leaving behind only the faintest traces of what they’d once been, and no matter how hard I tried to fill in the gaps, nothing seemed to work.
I tried googling “writer’s block” and “memory loss” to see if I could find a cure, but all I ended up doing was spending hours scrolling through online forums, reading other people’s complaints about their own problems and realizing just how much worse off they all were than me.
I tried drinking more coffee, taking more breaks, exercising more regularly.
I even tried cutting out alcohol entirely, hoping that it might help reset something in my brain.
But no matter what I did, it only seemed to get worse.
The words kept slipping away, faster and faster until I was left with only the most basic vocabulary: “apple,” “bus,” “cat,” “dog.” Even then, I couldn’t always remember them when I needed them, and sometimes I found myself using completely nonsensical words in their place, words that didn’t mean anything at all but were the closest approximation I could come up with in the moment.
The worst part was, it wasn’t like they were disappearing all at once.
It was more like they were slipping away one at a time, leaving behind only the space where they’d once been, and no matter how hard I tried to fill in the holes, they just kept getting bigger and bigger until there was nothing left.
And the longer it went on, the faster it seemed to happen.
The simple words disappeared quicker than the complex ones, and the longer the word, the longer it took me to forget it.
The first time it happened, I panicked.
I’d been sitting at my desk trying to write an email, and when the words wouldn’t come, I’d gotten up and walked around the room, hoping that if I just gave myself a few minutes to think, everything would eventually fall into place.
But when I sat back down and tried again, it was like all of the key terms had been erased from my mind.
I knew what I wanted to say—I could feel the shape of the idea, the texture of the thought—but when I reached out to grab hold of it, there was nothing there.
It was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands: the harder you tried, the further away it became.
I must have spent hours trying to remember even one of those words, but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t come back.
And the more I struggled, the more frustrated and panicked I became, until eventually there was nothing left but a blank void where the idea had once been.
I ended up calling my colleague Sebastian, who was also my next-door neighbor, in a last-ditch effort for help.
He was a psychiatrist by trade, and I’d hoped that maybe he’d be able to offer some insight or advice about what I should do.
“What do you mean, you can’t remember the words?”
he asked, his tone skeptical, like he thought I was making it up.
“I mean, I can’t remember them,” I repeated.
“It’s like they’re not there.
I know what I want to say, but I can’t find the right words for it.
It’s like all of my ideas have disappeared from my mind.”
I could tell that he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t know how else I was supposed to explain it.
“It’s like trying to remember something that happened in a dream,” I continued.
“You can feel it on the tip of your tongue, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t bring it back.
And then eventually it just fades away, like it never existed at all.”
“What does your doctor say?”
he asked.
“I haven’t gone yet,” I replied.
“But if you can’t remember what he tells you to do, how are you supposed to follow his instructions?”
he pressed, his tone growing more and more condescending by the minute.
I could tell that he didn’t really believe there was anything wrong, and that he thought I was just looking for attention, but I didn’t know how else to explain it to him.
“I can remember some things,” I replied.
“It’s just that other things are getting harder and harder to remember, and I don’t know why.
It’s like they’re disappearing right out of my brain.”
“I see,” he said, and I could hear the skepticism in his voice.
“Well, I’m a psychiatrist, not a neurologist, so I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing, but my guess is that it’s probably more psychological than anything else.
The brain is a powerful thing, you know, and if you convince yourself something is wrong, you’re more likely to start seeing symptoms of it—even if it’s all in your head.”
“It’s not all in my head,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.
