Something was gnawing at me, a persistent itch at the back of my mind that I couldn't quite scratch. Or rather, it was that subconscious part of me that specialised in making a lot of noise without providing any clear explanation as to why. It felt like a relentless drumbeat, warning of some unseen peril. The part of me was swinging a fucking enormous red flag, but I didn't have the faintest idea what had it so rowdy.
Jeeves, the interface with my subconscious, was equally baffled. He knew something was bothering me, but he was having no more luck pinning down what it was than I was. It was as if we were both looking at a puzzle with too many missing pieces to see the full picture, and the box was missing. Each attempt to delve deeper was met with the same frustrating dead end. It wasn't like Jeeves to be stumped; he was usually the one with the keen insights and the succinct analyses. This wasn't making any sense.
We went through the usual protocols, scanning recent memories and current events, but everything seemed in order on the surface. My encounters, my tasks, my thoughts--they all seemed mundane, routine even. Well, as routine as things could get in my life. It was organised chaos at best, but there were no glaring holes in it. Yet, the uneasy feeling persisted, the issue lurking just out of sight, tauntingly close but perpetually out of reach. The dissonance was infuriating. If we didn't figure it out soon, it was going to drive me out of my goddamned mind.
I was forgetting something.
It was hard to put into words. It was like catching a fleeting movement out of the corner of your eye, something just at the edge of your vision that disappeared the moment you focused on it. Or like walking into a room with a purpose only to have the reason slip through your fingers like smoke. It was akin to driving to work with a persistent nagging feeling that you had forgotten something crucial yet not being able to recall what it was. Or suspecting that someone was lying to you but having no concrete evidence to back up your instincts.
There was something there, something just out of reach, whispering at the edges of my consciousness. I knew something was amiss; I could feel the void where a piece of vital information should be. But because I didn't know what it was, I had no idea what to look for, much less where to start searching. It was maddeningly elusive, a quiet gnaw at the back of my mind that refused to subside.
This lingering unease carried with it an irritating sense of urgency, a constant itch that I couldn't scratch. Every attempt to focus on it only seemed to make it slip further away. Each moment, it grew more insistent, like a faint, incessant noise you can't quite locate. The feeling that something was hidden from me, something important, gnawed at my sanity. Without context, without direction, it was like trying to navigate a maze blindfolded.
There was no way to undersell how disorienting and confusing this was. My entire sense of reality felt skewed, as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted imperceptibly yet irrevocably. The only other time I could remember feeling this profoundly lost was immediately after the crash, waking up with no memory of the accident or anything that had transpired during the eight weeks I had been unconscious. Those eight weeks were a black void in my memory, my new reality - my new life - had been born that night, everything I had become had started the night I got into that cab with Moe, and it was gone forever.
In fact, throughout my entire life, those eight weeks remained the only span of time that I could not recall: from the point of leaving the pub to the moment I regained consciousness in the hospital. It was as if that segment of my life had been surgically excised from my mind. The same unsettling clarity applied here. Whatever it was that I was missing now wasn't something so trivial as forgetting to lock a door or to call someone--a simple oversight easily rectified. This was different. This was a significant piece of my reality that had simply vanished, leaving my mind to grapple with its absence, its whole existence acknowledged only by the haunting awareness of it not being there..
My thoughts spiraled as I tried to latch on to some thread of understanding, but it was like grasping at smoke or catching a glimpse of a shadow of something that wasn't there to cast it. The loss felt like both a physical ache and an existential dread. It was as if my mind was continually trying to calibrate itself, continuously blinking errors flashing on an internal system I had no control over.
Would this missing piece ever return? Or was it gone forever, an irretrievable fragment of my past that would always leave a jagged scar on my psyche? The fear of lost potential, of forgotten dangers or missed opportunities, was almost paralyzing. Every neuron in my brain seemed to be on high alert, perpetually scanning itself for clues that might lead me back to whatever it was I had lost.
This was a different kind of horror, one that didn't come from external threats but from within. It was the fear of the unknown, the terror of a blank slate where there should be memories, where there should be certainty. The more I tried to push against the boundaries of this void, the more resilient it seemed. The empty space where that crucial memory should have resided was both a puzzle and a taunt, daring me to uncover its secrets while simultaneously hiding in the shadows of my mind.
The problem was that I had an almost photographic memory. There was practically nothing I couldn't remember. Details, faces, conversations--everything stayed imprinted in my mind with unfailing clarity. Forgetting to turn off the stove or losing track of why I had walked into a room were experiences foreign to me now. Such lapses simply didn't happen anymore. My memory was a fortress, impenetrable and ever-reliable.
Nor did I find myself second-guessing whether I was being lied to. My power-enhanced intuition, coupled with my ability to literally read human minds, made deception nearly impossible to slip past me.
And yet, despite this formidable mental acuity, there was that nagging, gnawing voice in my head that wouldn't shut the fuck up. It was relentless, persisting in the face of my otherwise impeccable recall and perception. No matter how much assurance my memory offered or how logically I dissected the situation, this disquieting sensation refused to leave me alone.
Something had slipped through the gaps of my memory that simply shouldn't exist.
I was missing something.
I was missing something important. Something my subconscious mind was trying to tell me, and for reasons I couldn't quite explain, it had something to do with Evie.
It wasn't a suspicion; Charlotte and I had run our tests on her, and she had passed with flying colors. Hell, that had been done a few days after New Year's in the cottage. Since then, I had trusted her implicitly, and she had given me no reason at all to change my mind. It wasn't Evie herself, but...
Something she reminded me of?
Something she had done that sparked something?
Something she had said?
When had this feeling started? The truth was, I had been so consumed with my self-pity and my relentless hunt for revenge that I hadn't even noticed its insidious onset until the last few weeks. My mind had been a battlefield, overrun with thoughts of retribution and wallowing in my own grievances, leaving little room for introspection.
The feeling wasn't intensifying, yet it refused to dissipate, clinging stubbornly to the corners of my mind. It was like an unwelcome guest that overstayed its visit, lingering long after its presence should have been forgotten. This persistence only served to irritate me further. Every time I tried to focus or lose myself in my goals, there it was, an ever-present thorn in my thoughts, demanding acknowledgment.
Its refusal to fuck the fuck off was driving me to the brink of madness. It was a low, constant hum, an unending drone of unease that undermined my every recent action and thought. No matter how fiercely I pursued my objectives, seeking solace in the rush of vindication or the depths of my self-justified war, the feeling persisted, gnawing at the edges of my resolve.
I began to wonder if it had always been there, a shadow lurking just out of sight, only now making its presence known as a cruel reminder of some unseen flaw or forgotten failure. Its constant irritation was like an itch I couldn't scratch, an unresolved tension that seemed determined to undermine my sanity.
Reflecting on it now, I realized that its stubborn permanence was becoming less about the feeling itself and more about what it represented--an unspoken question mark hanging over my every move, a riddle with no clear answer. As much as I yearned to shake it off and dismiss it as a mere annoyance, I couldn't ignore its potential significance. And so, with growing irritation and a begrudging sense of curiosity, I knew I had to uncover the cause of this insistent unease before this little problem turned into something serious.
But what the hell was I missing? How had I even missed it? How was it even possible for me to miss something?
I was sat on one end of the sofa in my bunker, and Jeeves was sitting on the other, both of us staring into space and devoting as much pure processing power as we could to get this niggling little mystery solved before it drove me fucking nuts! But nothing was working, nothing was coming loose, and there were no giant pieces of this vague puzzle dropping into my lap from the generous heavens. I had nothing. Just that stupid, infuriating little voice telling me that in my fury, in my anger, in my suspicion and confusion and grief, I had missed something important.
Eventually, after what felt like hours of thinking about it, I did what most people would have done.
I gave up and went to sleep.
The bed in the bunker was neither as large nor luxurious as the one in the apartment's bedroom, but it was mine, and I liked sleeping on it. So I did. The mystery would doubtlessly still be there the next day.
********
The morning unfurled itself in a wondrous symphony of bright light and melodious bird song, each tune harmonizing with the nascent glow of the dawn. For as long as I could remember, mornings and I had been bitter enemies; they seemed to be cleverly devised to assault my inherently sleep-weary senses with their intrusive brightness and the need to get up and do something. To call myself sleep-weary was, in truth, an optimistically bland assessment. I would struggle to remember a single morning prior to the advent of my powers when I could ever say I was well-rested, so they were more like sleep-deprived senses. Each and every dawn had been an adversary, with my body and mind begging for just a morsel more of the elusive slumber that had been so hard to attain the night before. Yet despite the craving, reality beckoned with more pressing calls - to get up for classes or just to take a leak - compelling those sleepy desires to be shelved in favor of necessity.
And it had sucked.
Since the acquisition of my powers, the nature of my rest had been revolutionized. Tucked within the confines of my bunker's bed, I discovered the ability to sink into the depths of restorative slumber at will, surrendering to peaceful darkness within moments - a marvel that was nothing less than transformative. Each awakening became a rejuvenation; I emerged not as the lethargic creature of bleary-eyed misery but as one brimming with vigor and energy and prepared to seize the day.
Nevertheless, every morning that I had roused to since claiming my powers had been colored by the backdrop of winter. My transformation had taken place in the cool embrace of a wet late August, and it was now the cusp of May. The British winter, unyielding in its dreariness, had been succeeded by a spring equally laden with misery and wetness, fashioning each awakening into an experience heavy with dampness, darkness, and a certain desolation that permeated the air. I mean, it was Britain, the home of the stiff upper lip and enough rain to solve the world's water shortages in an afternoon if you put enough buckets around.
