The air smells of tar. It’s time to go. I rolled out of the bed of roses I once called my home but now was simply the place I lived and took four steps to leave town and return to Eight Months Ago.
Eight Months Ago smelled of paper and ink. The clouds, meat-like, wept for hours in chains of days. The corpses of revolutionaries polluted the sky, their gravestones descending as trees towards the ground. They were almost, but not quite, touching the very same flimsy, papery ground on which I stood.
I was visiting Eight Months Ago to collect essential memories I had left behind. Nobody greeted me Eight Months Ago. Nobody knew what I needed to hear Four Months Ago. Nobody was too early. Nobody, just like me, was also too late.
Nobody’s brows furrowed as Nobody studied my tired face.
“You’re missing something,” said Nobody.
“I’m here to find what I am missing. You do not need to help,” I replied.
“Take your time,” Nobody said. “You need it.”
“You need it,” I repeated. I sunk into the earth to search for my memories.

***

The first place I looked while searching for my memories was a nearby hotel. I walked the 3,000 miles needed to get there, periodically interrupted by tempters bearing the forms and voices of those I loved. They offered words of support and care but pointed me where I was sure the ground would open and swallow me whole, digesting me and spitting my bones back out. They insisted that they were the people about whom I cared that they appeared so like. I ignored the tempters until they left me to walk alone.
I finally approached the hotel despite the tempters’ best efforts. Outside of it, the forest of gravestones reaching from the sky to the earth had thickened, now a clump of the things almost blocking my view of the purple horizon. On each gravestone in the group was etched an epitaph honoring a world I never knew, a world I would never know. I looked up to see what revolutionaries were tied to each headstone and saw that the tops of all of the gravestones connected to one inverted headstone, ascending upwards towards the clouds—here less meaty than plant-adjacent—and blinding darkness of the sky. The clump of gravestones were tied to no bodies. They were a mass grave to an illusion. I knelt to pray before the mass grave, but I found no words, so I stood back up and went into the hotel.
There was a receptionist in the hotel. She greeted me. I ignored her as I already knew what I was looking for. I descended to the 10th floor and found a locked door. I knew this was the room I was seeking, so I entered through the locked door.
The floors of the hotel room were made of bone, and the walls of ink. I sat on the overgrown carpet and, from there, looked for my missing memories.
I did not find my memories in the 10th-floor hotel room. I could tell there were memories, at one point, but they were not mine and they had recently been evacuated. I knew this was not where I would find what I was looking for. The supplies that the other memories had left told a story irrevocably connected to my own. The story I gathered was very upsetting. My tears began to leak through the ceiling before remembering their place and backing away.

***

After calming myself down, I stood and walked through the outlet on the wall, as my next assumption as to where I had left my memories was behind it.
I drifted through the hotel’s veins before being transferred into the veins of the sky and floating above the mass grave and the forest and the clouds and to somewhere disconnected from Eight Months Ago, or Four Months Ago, or Now. Entering stage-right, I saw communications between people across time. I thought for sure my memories would be here, adrift among conversations with the deceased.
I failed to find my memories. However, I did see messages from Nobody, and the revolutionaries, and the tempters, and the receptionist, and myself, stretched out across time. In the hardest of times, they had all offered me what they could to help. I had tried to offer them what I could, but it was meager.
Were the tempters ever real, or were they all simply the people I had thought they were pretending to be? I was no longer certain.
I looked as hard as I could for my memories, but they were nowhere to be found. I spent hours upon hours staring at the communications. I was not reading them.
I eventually forced myself to go back to Eight Months Ago to meet Nobody. I had not found my memories, so I needed Nobody’s help. I departed stage-left through the veins of the sky and dragged myself to Nobody’s house.

***

The gravestones were slightly taller now than they were before, touching the cold ground but not yet breaching it. I navigated through the forest, offering my best wishes to the revolutionaries at the tops of the gravestones.
“You are still missing something,” Nobody said.
“Yes,” I replied. “I cannot find my memories. They were not in the hotel and they were not beyond the air’s veins”
Nobody shook Nobody’s head. “You should not have expected to find your memories where you were looking. You were never in the hotel. You would never have left anything on the stage. It was a foolish endeavor.”
“Where, then, do you think I will find them?” I asked.
“Here,” Nobody responded.
“You have them?” I asked. “You have them and you did not tell me?”
“I do not know where your memories are,” Nobody interrupted. “I may have them, I may not. If you are looking for memories, though, you would best find them with you. You left yourself behind in search of your memories because a part of you was not looking for your memories, but Someone Else’s. You did not succeed in finding Someone Else’s, either.”
I attempted to read Nobody’s countenance, but was met with silence.
“How could my memories be with me if I was looking for them and could not find them?” I asked after a pause.
“You are not listening. You need to find the memories you have lost, but you were trying to find Someone Else’s memories,” Nobody said matter-of-factly.
“I think I understand now,” I half-truthed.
Nobody helped me search for my missing memories. I found them under Nobody’s windowsill, scheming amongst themselves. Nobody did not know that my lost memories were in Nobody’s home.
As I escaped to return to my bed, I noticed the revolutionaries’ gravestones had grown taller, their bottoms extending beneath the brittle paper upon which I stood. The sight unsettled me deeply.
I left Eight Months Ago and took ten steps to return to Now. Though Somebody did not realize it, they had helped me more than I could ever ascribe words to. I went to greet Somebody, this time Now. They were as welcoming as ever. I did not return Somebody’s kindness.
I looked down at the stars. It was time for bed. I returned to the bed of thorns in which I live. The memories I had retrieved took my sleep from me that day.
The air smells of burning hair. It’s time to go.