From The Past, A Vicious Maw

Flames gulped with avarice at their meal of wood and kindling. Smoke trailed into the blighted, starless night. The firelight illuminated the pages of a psychology textbook Nora had recovered from the charred bones of a university library. Miraculously, the book had hidden unscathed beneath the rubble. And when she’d found it amidst the wreck, she saw herself in the browned pages. Both of them were lone survivors in a sea of ash.

The popular press has reported many instances of people suddenly remembering childhood traumas. She traced a finger beneath the text as she read, grime packed deep into a yellow nail. The link between trauma and amnesia has been observed by doctors, scientists, and psychologists for over a hundred years. But only in the past ten have they begun to unravel the connection with scientific evidence.

She’d turned the page when anguished howls tore through the blackness. Wolves. Or what used to be wolves. Radiation, as well as copulation with large, manmade breeds such as Rottweilers and Great Danes, had endowed them with limbs like tree trunks and jaws like bear traps. If there had been other humans after The Collapse, Nora was certain the dogs had snuffed them out.

She closed the book, dropped it into her rucksack, and stamped out the flames, which hissed in protest beneath her boot. She slung the rucksack over her shoulder and dashed -- as quietly as she could -- toward the emaciated belly of a bombed-out house. She ducked into the ruins and crouched, her pack pressed against a low, crumbling brick wall.

The night was silent. Always silent. She hadn’t heard even the chirr of insects since The Collapse. Only nothingness. Only dead air. Only… footsteps. Padded paws on broken asphalt. Heavy panting between jagged teeth. A growl from the back of a starving throat.

The footsteps drew closer. A deep, wet inhale as they followed her scent. She held her breath. She reached into her shirt, pulled out the locket that hung from her neck, and flipped it open. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough to see warm, familiar eyes staring back. The faded features of her parents tucked behind a thin pane of glass and framed by tarnished silver. The locket storing the photograph was heart-shaped, her father filling one half of the heart, her mother filling the other, so if she were to split the heart down the middle, their happy union would be severed.

Another heavy, bronchial intake of air -- just on the other side of the wall. She closed her eyes and clenched the locket in a fist, as if drawing energy from a sacred talisman. She remembered playing hide-and-seek with her father many years ago. She would hide in the closet, stifling her giggles with a hand clasped over her mouth. From the other side of the door, her father would ask aloud in feigned confusion, "Where in the world could she be?" Her heart would thrum harder beneath the cool metal of the heart-shaped locket, as she knew any moment he would fling open the door and shout "A-ha!" and wrap her in a smothering hug.

The fantasy consumed her, even as mere inches of brick separated her from the maw of daggers growling and snapping at the air. She was no longer hiding from ravenous predators, but from her father, and soon he would open the closet door and hold her in his arms and everything would be okay.

Everything would be okay.

The footsteps began to recede. Only when the frustrated howls cried far in the distance did she loosen her grip on the locket.

#

The blackness withered into the dreary grays of early morning. The sun hadn’t penetrated the sick smog blanketing the sky since the bombs fell. But the light beyond the toxic veil was enough to stir Nora, who awoke sitting against the brick wall. Across the ruins of the home, she spotted a can of beans in the back of a shattered cupboard. She ripped the tin open with her small pocketknife and used the blade to shovel the beans into her mouth. As she ate, she splayed the textbook across her lap and picked up where she’d left off.

Studies show that many adults who were abused as children experienced periods when they did not remember the abuse. Researchers believe these “blackout” periods are a coping mechanism, a way for a victim to shield themselves from the pain of the memory.

Her eyes alighted on a flurry of terms. False Memory Syndrome… PTSD… Stockholm Syndrome…

Sometimes, as the pages of the mind become blurred, a victim of trauma can make up stories to fill in memory gaps. Studies show that people who have false memories can strongly believe they are true.

#

Nora followed the road, bifurcating fissures unfurling along the melted asphalt before her. A familiar sign up ahead with friendly cursive letters obscured by thick black streaks:

W LC ME TO SCHUTTSV LLE, Popul tion 47,673

She took a spray can to the sign, crossing out the 47,673 and scrawling beneath it a red and dripping 1. It was her first time returning home since The Collapse.

She made her way into town. She passed the decimated elementary school she’d attended. Beyond a downed fence was a mosaic of crackling blacktop covered in tan-colored debris from the toppled building. Peaking above the detritus were two metal poles that met at a point: remnants of the swing set she would play on as a young girl. Or were those just pieces of the building? Had the swing set existed at all? Or was it a false memory? A feeble attempt from her psyche to dredge up something that resembled happiness, an erroneous escape from her bleak reality?

Further along, she passed a circular slab of concrete surrounded by mud. Her mind filled in a darling gazebo. Redwood balusters and posts that rose from the slab and held up a curving, pointed roof with lattice trim. She remembered sitting in the gazebo, holding hands with Bobby Caruso, surrounded by orchids and daisies erupting across the perfect green lawn, as she leaned in for her first kiss. Was this memory, too, merely a figment of her imagination?

At last, she came to the fractured remains of a house on the side of the road. As she walked along the soiled foundation, she mentally rebuilt her home, her childhood memories. The kitchen where her mother served her stacks of buttermilk pancakes. The living room couch she’d rested on when she was home sick from school and the sirens went off. The concrete staircase leading down into the basement she’d entered seconds before the first bomb hit, while her parents were at work and her classmates at school.

She envisioned the closet at the end of the hall, six feet wide and six feet long. A craggy chunk of wall still reached from the muck where the closet once stood, as well as splintered fragments of the door she’d hide behind, waiting for her father to throw it open and wrap her in his arms.

She sat in the space that had been the closet and recalled a passage from the textbook.

Many different experiences can trigger a repressed memory, such as watching television programs that depict events similar to the viewer’s past experience, reminiscing with a family member about a traumatic episode, or visiting the site where the trauma occurred.

She produced the silver locket and the small, heart-shaped door swung open. Unfamiliar eyes stared back. She wasn't certain why the faces of her parents suddenly looked so different. For years -- the exact number she couldn't know, but long enough for her to see a sharp, adult face reflected in murky puddles and grubby mirrors -- the photographed forms of her parents had been her sole companions. But now, they seemed alien. Strangers strung around her neck.

She closed her eyes and recalled her favorite memory of playing hide-and-seek. Tucked into the closet, in the same spot she now sat, hand clasped over her mouth, her father searching on the other side of the door. But this time, there was no joy in his voice. No kindness. It came like a growl from the back of a starving throat:

"Where is she?"

Then it hit her. She remembered the true nature of hiding from her father. It hadn't been a game of hide-and-seek. She'd been hiding in fear. She remembered the beatings. The worse-than-beatings. A distant mother who would only put pancakes in front of Nora's wet eyes. Who would ignore her daughter's bruises as she would ignore her own.

The game had been a false memory. A coping mechanism to protect her from her awful past. To keep her moving step after step through a wasted world. For the first time since The Collapse, she felt truly alone. As if her pleasant, manufactured memories had been a living, breathing thing turned to ash and cast to the wind.

She stared at the locket in her cupped hands. Black dirt filled the lines in her palms -- a roadmap to nowhere. In the center was the locket. The faces of her abusers. A bright light glinted across the thin pane of glass, swallowing them. A warmth spread on her back. A patch of yellow bathed the foundation of her childhood home. She turned toward the source. Squinted at the sky. And saw the sun. A brilliant white ball with long trails reaching across the gray. The first sun since the bombs had fallen and enveloped her world in darkness.

A tortured howl. Too close for her to hide.

The pack of irradiated wolves stood in the street. Six of them. Vascular limbs. Dripping jowls. Ribcages stuck out like cast-iron radiators.

She grabbed a long, sharp splinter of the closet door and rose to her feet. Her rucksack slid from her shoulders and hit the ground. She was done hiding anyway. Behind crumbling brick walls. Behind merry lies. From hungry wolves. From vicious truths.

The beasts stalked closer. Encircled her. She planted her feet. Raised her spear. One of the wolves growled, baring his teeth. She shouted back. A savage sound that bellowed from the primal reaches of her soul.

The wolf lowered his head, tucked his tattered tail between his legs. He walked toward her slowly. She waved the spear and yelled again, cautioning him. But something in his yellow eyes reassured her. He crept closer, pointed shoulder blades rising and falling beneath his silver coat. He was so close she could feel his hot breath on her knuckles, which had turned white gripping the spear.

The wolf licked her palm. She lowered the weapon, scratched the beast behind an ear.

She closed her eyes and savored the new sun washing over her face.

She felt unburdened. Free. She turned and stared at the road ahead. She knew not what awaited her, but she was full of hope. A real hope. Not one constructed by the false memories of a trauma-stricken mind. But a hope for the future. For memories yet to be made.

She set off down the sunlit asphalt, wolves at her side. The silver, heart-shaped locket lay in the mud. One mile. Fifty miles. A thousand miles behind her.