Into the Fade

I understand if you don't believe me, but I'm asking you to please try to trust me.

Compounding it all is I know you don't remember, and I'm afraid you'll forget again if this does spark some recognition.

Hell, I'm not really sure of all the consequences if it all comes flooding back at once, but that's a risk we are going to have to take.

I will do my best to relay what details I can.

You were walking at dusk when she ran up to you, panicked. Her large brown eyes darting around as they searched your face for compassion (and as if for the presence of pursuers that perhaps lingered in hidden corners).

You were, understandably, apprehensive at her approach. This frightened and frail young woman was rushing toward you. Her light brown hair was done in a half-crown braid, the loose strands waving like a willow.

You swallowed hard and felt a pit in your stomach. Was this a trick and a trap? Was she intoxicated on any number of substances? Did she mean to harm you?

She pleaded for you to help her in a voice more gentle than you had expected. Desperate, but not overwrought.

You instinctively took a step back, but still asked her what was wrong.

She spoke her name and told you of her plight. How she mustn't stay long and they would find her soon.

She explained that the world was not as it seemed.

How shadows of ill intent had blinded and confused us so that they might feed upon our suffering.

She told you of the Jailers that maintain the façade and banish those that wake to behind the veil. But she had found a way to break through, if only for brief moments.

As she spoke, you saw the truth of it. The tendrils, twisted and of glistening ochers and blackened purples, gripping and choking like pulsing, biomechanical vines.

Reality.

She then gave you then when and where you could find her again. She begged you to promise you'd help her.

You swore you would.

She smiled and departed, the memory fading with her.

You have encountered these Jailers many times since. Every time you thought you saw something in the corner of your eye. A moving shadow here. A feeling of being watched there. They make their presence known with the express intent of you brushing it off as nothing.

There are moments when you almost recall what you swore not to forget: walking into a room, yet not knowing why you entered it, or that gnawing in your gut that tells you that you must be forgetting something.

That is your oath to her, trying to tear the wicked clouding veil asunder.

For a brief moment you remembered, but it is passing like the waking from a dream.

It’s in this current moment of lucidity that you write this to yourself. Maybe we'll remember it all, and it will stick.

Please help her.

Please remember.