Darken The Corners Of My Mind

 Darken The Corners Of My Mind, a very short and odd story, is now available at The Arcanist!

I don't want to say much about the story because there's not much to say without spoiling it, so I will tell you about the dream that inspired it.

There was a person with no memories of their own. They had plenty of memories, just… stolen memories. Every time they touched someone, they would take away a memory and it would become their own.

Their life was a mosaic of pieced together glimpses of lives that were not their own. They didn't know who they were or where they were or even know what they were doing at any given time.

They could look at a building, but by the time their brain interpreted what they saw, the information taken in by their eyes was technically a memory from a few milliseconds ago. So instead of the building they were actually looking at, their brain supplied stolen memories of similar buildings.

Even walking down the street, their steps were not their own. They could look at their feet, but they would see sneakers one step, high heels the next. They would only know they were cold because they remembered the chilly wind of a blizzard a decade ago, or the feeling of putting a hand in the refrigerator in another country.

The dream was not dark. In fact, the big conflict involved accidentally stealing the memory of how to make a really good grilled cheese sandwich.

… that's where my story differs. My story is dark. It mentions death, nonconsensual medical tests, and being held against their will in a government facility.