Remember Me?

The presentation began the way I remembered putting it together; but I never got the chance to finish it the way I intended. November 22. He would have been 23 that day.

I was in my favorite class, giving a presentation, on the birthday of my late cousin. The first slides went well. Then the third to last slide appeared. I had made an acrostic to summarize the five points of my presentation. I didn't remember spelling the acrostic the way it appeared on the slide.

T. O. M. M. Y. Tommy. The name of my late cousin.

I froze. I couldn't speak, my mouth dry like cotton, the wad caught in my throat. All I could remember was his death, his bloody head seeping brain fluid after the doctor pronounced he could no more to stop the concussion's swelling. It cut off his oxygen. Tommy died, shortly after such a painful birth into the world.

Suddenly these words echoed in my mind - "It should have been you. Tommy was full of promise. What promise do you have? None. You should be dead."

The last thing I remember was screaming, seeing red, then fading into black.


I woke up in a white room with padded walls. I couldn't move. My arms were bound to my body by something, but I couldn't even sit up or turn my head far enough to tell. A figure loomed into my vision.

"Wha- What?" I tried rasping. My voice was slurred and still dry. I must have been screaming for hours.

"You were proclaimed insane, D. Remember? No, probably not. You'll probably even forget this conversation." That voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place who. The face was blocked by light and my eyes started to close again. "After the trial? You couldn't even appear in court. You were practically a vegetable." What? What was he saying?

"You went berserk and killed someone, D. You wouldn't stop screaming, crying, shaking. You were tried insane and you were declared insane. Where else did you expect to end up?"

What?! No, I would never- but even as he was telling it, I remembered. I remembered seeing my dead cousin, remembered trying to claw away from him. I grabbed something, something sharp. I remember plunging it into his chest, hoping somehow that would finally destroy the terrible hold his memory had on me.

Then I had faded back into reality. One of my own classmates. I'd killed him. He'd been married, a hopeful graduate with a job lined up after getting his degree. His wife, another classmate, screamed and cried, falling to her knees. Then I screamed and cried too.

What happened to me?