The Forgetting-Part 1

Serialized True Terror

Hugin
and Munin Fly

each day
over
the spacious earth.
I
fear for Hugin
that
he may not

come back.
Yet
more anxious am I for Munin.

-Old Norse runic

verse

“Since
those days, I have steadily lost
control

over my memories; of late,

however, I became convinced that with
the aid of

a certain artifice I can recall far more…”
Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of

Everyday Life.

“It
seems I can remember far

more than I would have
perhaps
wished…”
-Prince Frederick, the Winter

King, battle of Bila Hora, the hundred

years
war.

There
was a weight

that was a buildup in the space behind his eyes. His
feet were worn and tired, but the

will of the bosses would permit no
rest. The walking had been going on now for an

immeasurable time. His
memory was only of the pressure in his head, pushing him

onward.

Taking
off his rumpled stetson which had seen the sun in 48

states, and
untold more of the mind, he tried to wipe away the heaviness, but
only

perspiration came away on the back of his hand. Crystalline
droplets of sweat,

reflecting in their tear shape his eyes, and in
his eyes reflected the drops,

reflecting the eyes reflecting the
drops. They fell away and down, vanishing into the

black asphalt
tarmac of the road.

He
stared, fascinated by this

spot, by the welling blackness. In this
liquid moved a silent river. There were people

on both banks, a
constant stream passing from one shore to the other. Out of those

in
transit arose a nebulous mass, inky as the sweat on tarmac. A fast
moving object

sped by him, blaring a horn at him as it passed by,
whirling him into the ditch as if

he were paper. He lay there,
muddied.

“Now
that, that’s a

model I haven’t seen. Always changing so fast.”
he said out loud to the heavy, damp

forest air. A large shiny raven
flew from a fencepost down upon him, trying to peck

out his eyes with
its ebony beak. He waved it away with his hands as he struggled

up,
swinging at it with the old battered briefcase he carried. Odd bits
of paper

flew out from cracks in its bulging sides.

A
doorway opened in

his head. Liquid slowness, a trickling settled and
filled him, pain unbearable

breaking his neck.

“Yes
sir, can do sir, moving right ahead. Yes, I know its

my job” He
got jerkily back on the road from the ditch and began walking again.
He

passed a sign declaring the town limits of Shrewsberry. The raven
swung about his

head, herding him onward. The man shuffled forward,
his legs moved jerkily as if they

were wooden marionette pegs. His
hat on his head again, he glanced up into the crisp

autumn sky,
through a clearing in the fog, and then cast it towards the

direction
of Shrewsberry.

“Yes
sir, yes ma’am, got some things

to sell, that’s right, sir, ma’am, if
you’ve got an interest, I’ve got the time.”

Sweat continued to
pour from his head. He continued his shuffle forward. He had

always
been moving. He could never stop. But as the town and its environs
hove into

view, a single thought formed in the back of his head, in
the region of the pain.

This, he thought, seemed to be a good place
to settle. Yes, at last, a good place to

rest the pain.

CHAPTER 1

Jody pedaled

slowly, looking down at her feet as they moved up
and down, propelling her and her

favorite tricycle forward, up the
slight incline and back towards her house. This

tricycle was her
favorite because it was the best shade of red. The red reminded

her
of the color of the maple leaves when they turned bright in october
and burned

in the reflection of the low setting sun, cold in the
autumn months. She enjoyed these

leaves, had spent all day riding her
tricycle down the neighborhood roads collecting

the biggest,
brightest, least crinkled leaves which she would add to her
collection

back home. She now held four leaves that she could show
mommy. Mommy and daddy had

bought big old encyclopedias at garage
sales for her to press the leaves in. During

winter she would take
them out and look at their brightness, kept preserved sandwiched

in
between Never and Nirvana. She always gave one to mom, who always put
it on the

fridge with a magnet to make the kitchen brighter, and one
to daddy who took it with

him to work to put on his desk. The red
made her home brighter when the sky filled

with grey, unpleasant
clouds in the winter.

Stopping to rest her

legs before the final push up the little hill,
she looked up noticing a rising cloud

she knew to be smoke coming
from ahead of her. She knew smoke meant fire, because the

Ronald
Mcdonald’s fire safety house had passed thru the neighborhoods a week
ago,

and she had learned all about crawling on the ground to escape
smoke. Afterwards they

had gotten paper hats, which were very
colorful, and also a vanilla shake and a bag of

fries. Maybe, she
thought, peddling her trike again over the hill, the fire

safety
house was back. She glancedup. The house where she lived was licked
in

orange. The wood sides burned a red as red as the sky, as red as
the leaves in autumn,

as red as the lights and the shine of the
approaching fire trucks. The flames were as

red as her tricycle, and
as red as the leaves in her hand. When she looked at them

they were
fire.

Pumping
her little legs faster, the fire

trucks zoomed by her with a loud
noise. In the upstairs window two shapes moved.

Amorphous, wrapped in
something, they crashed thru the second story window in

flames.
Rolling off the roof they hit the cement with a soft thud, and did
not

rise. She dropped her leaves, her hands burning. A man in a heavy
rough coat and metal

hat swept her off her trike and covered her eyes
with his hands. There was much

shouting. Between the mans fingers
danced dead shadows. Her eyes filled with water,

than with darkness.
“Mommy!” she screamed, and a dark presence loomed

large,
spreading out over her. The horror closed in, with its fog and its
fear, and

filled her struggling head. She screamed again, trying to
escape the sound, the

constricting noose of the dark which strangled
her tighter and tighter…

Jody
awoke with a start, her heart pounding, sweaty and tangled in the
down

comforter, the scream dying raw in her throat. Shit, she thought
to herself, putting a

hand to her forehead and feeling the damp sweat
that clung there like a jungle miasma.

She rarely had bad dreams, at
least ones she could remember, but when she did, it was

hard to
recover. The autumn morning sun hazed in through the window, and over
the

brown grassed features of the yard and surrounding fields
shrouded in fog. Her mind

was momentarily blank as her eyes blinked,
struggling to recall the dream already

being replaced by the new day
dawning, already forgetting the images of the night.

Suddenly,
a thud at the window again, the sound from her dream sent

her heart
into her throat. Leaping up, she peered apprehensively out the
window.

Twitching, lying between two long stemmed rose plants, a
small bird lay, it’s neck

snapped, a mucous substance spilling from
behind its staring eye; once alive, now

dead, feeding the red of the
roses with the rubies of its body. Jody felt herself

trapped between
her desire to help, and the knowledge that she could not.

Were
you an Oscar Wilde bird? she wonderd, sacrificing your life for

some
noble, ignored deed? Why couldn’t you see the window? Her fists
clenched and

unclenched as she suddenly felt the full impact of the
dream, of the memory of her

parents wash over her. Even our most
simple constructions cause death. Like moths to a

flame she realized,
the danger seemed invisible.

An
even darker

melancholy struck her. A memory of her mother, sitting
in the kitchen at 6 am as she

always did, crying over the death of
moths in candles after learning that they

imagined the flame to be
guiding them to their mates. Mother had shed tears, knowing

that
moths died before they found love, thinking they were going to find
love.

Shaking her long brown spun hair loose, sending the memories of
her mother cascading

down the strands, Jody arose from bed. It was
time to get her day started, to let go

of old cobwebs with empty
promises of entanglement.

On
the way to

the kitchen, dreaming of coffee, she passed the white work
table in the sun room, her

glance lingering as it had every day for
months now upon her forgotten typewriter.

Pages of her unfinished
childrens book thrust haphazardly into an old box leaked their

guilt
into the back of her brain.

sliding
into the chair with a

tired sigh, she let her fingers play lightly
over the keys. Weak sunlight streamed in

through the yellow curtains.
Whispers rode in on breezes, whispers of old memories.

The typewriter
lay under her hands, dusty, unused. Lost in the past, she

walked
through her impressions. The pages she had written unfolded about
her, hazy

on the horizons. A story of a child, herself as a young
girl. A bicycle which travels

on moonbeams. A cat with many toes, an
unformed beast creature which chases them.

There should be more, but
she hadn’t written anymore. Now there were only the

scattered pages,
half finished ideas and preliminary sketches, like so many

beach
stranded logs after a storm, kittens caught in rain.

I
don’t know where to take them, I can’t figure out the next step, she
said,

silently to herself. Gazing up to the shelf above, the bright
color of her first

children’s book stood out. It looked faded now,
not as bright as she

remembered.

I’ve
done it once, I can do it again. Jody tried to solicit a

strength
from that knowledge, trying to work her creative juices, to get

them
flowing.

Her first book which had been published two years ago

had thrust
her life into a state of blissful consumption, but now, the funds
dried

up, her motivation was gone. The scattered trail of fine wines,
Pigeon?Forge pottery

and wicker chairs from Indonesia, along
with her prized collection of tin toys were no

longer enough to keep
her going. She sighed, looking out the window at the trees and

hills,
bathed in the strengthening sunlight. Memories were her inspiration,
and the

recent months had inspired nothing but bankrupt trinkets
purchased on the empty whims

of a momentary impulse, as bankrupt too
as her personal life, her lack of social

relationships on any deep
level. Already she could feel an invisible push, a

shortening of
time, a closing in of walls. She would have to finish another

book,
or else she wouldn’t have money, but more importantly, she wouldn’t
have a

purpose. If only it wasn’t so hard, so intangible. She stifled
a yawn which overtook

her, enveloping her life; the alarm buzzed it’s
annoying call, announcing to the

empty house that it was 7:30, time
to wake up.

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Peter’s eyes

jerked open, his body twitched hard against the chair.
The photostat of the Torvelson

Rock carving slipped from his hand,
scattering down onto a pile of other photos.

“Asleep
again?” out loud, frustrated at himself. Punishment for

staying
up all night working, he thought. His eyesight was blurry, his head
pounded

with the rhythm of aching drums, his mouth felt woolen and
dry. The computer stared

woodenly out at him, it’s screensaver images
of a penguin shooting down flying

toasters, sending muted colors
rippling over the cluttered desk.

Papers
loomed up at him, their features coagulating with the exhaustion in
his

eyes. Old nordic rock carvings, archeological tracts and reports
on Viking migration

from Scandinavia to the New World, the strange
mishmash of information which he had

accumulated over long years of
graduate study rose around the walls of his study like

tall ivy
creepers, threatening to condense into an impenetrable jungle. Facts
and

histories stuck to him like a sticky glue. At times it drove him
to distraction, but

he knew he would have no other. This was his
interest, this was his world.

The
weight of the knowledge was oppressive, and lately it had

grown,
trapping him under it, rendering him unable to move, to make a
decision as

to what exactly he should choose out of the flood of
facts to be his dissertation.

Stacks of digitalized photographs of
the rock carvings from Ausevik, near Sogn in

Norway, horses, men with
spears, and depictions of a one-eyed man with a stick,

hovered over
by two ravens; old all-father Odin and his constant

companions,
thought and memory, all so much headache. Or that was the lack

of
sleep?

Just
need the right insight, he told himself as the

birds outside begin to
call in the lightening day. I need Odin’s eye he gave to Mimir

for
the power of runes, of history. With that eye I could make up my
mind, I would

truly know.

”
It’s freedom of choice I got, but it’s freedom from choice

I want!”
Peter groaned, pushed himself away from his desk, swiveling hard in
his

chair. Maybe he should just be a lawyer, make more money like his
old college buddies.

A frown distorted his face. Who cares to know
what the vikings did when they landed in

America 200 years before
Columbus and his 500 years of resistance ever set foot here?

He
counted, remembering; five? No, four. Four people out of thousands.
Probably out

of millions.

He
knew his bent for history was not exactly an exciting

profession. In
conversations at parties, the stories he would most often relate,

in
between long hard sips of a whiskey sour, were tales of the past. If
some drunk

party girl talked of the latest in clothes fashion,
Peter, eyeing her leather skirted

body, would tell them all the
reason the native Indians of the Andes wore those pork

pot styled
hats was that, at one time, the King of Spain had decreed it as law.
the

look she had given him, one of a bottomless boredom, instantly
dissipated the crowd

around her, as she had stomped off huskily,
annoyed by this nerd from outer space.

Sure,
it had hurt him, but he was used to it. He didn’t care. History

in
its many forms, quixotal happenings, and as a very phenomena of
nature, was his

ideology. If one worked their way back, through the
labyrinthine networks, piecing

together moments and movements, one
could, theoretically, chance upon the very event

which set history
itself in motion.

Cracking
open a pack of new

cigarettes, Peter went out onto his back porch and
began to smoke, the addictive

nicotine clarifying his sleep deprived
brain, momentarily focusing his vision. As the

morning fog lay damp
dew upon his shoulders, Peter realized with a sigh that he

cared,
perhaps too much, about history. Someone had to in this country, and
for all

its current headaches, history is what Peter tried to live
and breath, to keep

current. History, and especially history with a
viking slant, was his bread and water,

and it was his duty to
integrate the past with the present.

The
lone cigarette was not enough to hold the weariness at bay. Peter
felt his

limbs grow heavy. Another night of studying, and no more
closer to Mr. Dissertation,

he thought to himself. If he didn’t
accomplish something worthwhile soon, such as his

doctorate, or even
something a bit more substantial like a girlfriend, then he

felt
doomed to a useless life, filled with emptiness and stuck in some
corporate

sector job. And that, for Peter, would be Ragnarok, the
final doomed battle of the

gods.

The
gods are doomed, and the end is death, he muttered darkly,

recalling
a nordic poem. Already, he could feel it coming.

On
the

old crabapple tree near the fence, a black raven settled onto a
twisted limb. Peter

paused, not wanting to return inside where the
mess stood waiting, like Fenhir, the

monster wolf, the god-eater,
waiting to pounce.

“Morning,
bird…” he

whispered softly to himself. “Are you Hugin,
Old Odins eyes on the little world of our

thoughts? Come here on a
little recon?”

The
bird did a small

hop, peering around quizzically at the sound of his
voice travelling damply in the

thick fog.

“Maybe
you’re Munin instead, picking at our memory” Peter

mumbled,
imagining the bird pecking away at human brains like it would pick at
a

worm. I hope you are Munin, and that you don’t go. You’d take my
future livelihood

with you, he thought, trying to visualize a world
without history… and historians.

No, Peter needed his memory; as
Goethe said, if you can’t draw on 3000 years of

history, what was it?
Something something something up the creek without a

paddle.

See,
he chided himself, already your memory fails. Time to

rest the old
noggin. He shook his head in a fashion similar to the raven’s

crooked
inquisitiveness. The bird took to the air, perhaps to fly back to
Asgard

and the shoulder of Odin, the all-father of the aesir gods, to
report on the young

mortal who entered a house, shaking his head
wearily. But Peter was already back in

bed, setting the alarm for
1:00 pm, the red digital lights of 7:32 burning themselves

into his
eyes as he fell fast asleep.