Bad Memories

• Melanie Weismantel, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2010

The month of October was nearing and Kyle was terrified. For the day he worked so hard every year to erase from his memory was almost here and he could feel it already, eating away at him from the inside out, like sharks slowly consuming his limbs.
The day it all happened was October 20th and by early October every year the memories that spoke the events of that day, like an old camp-fire horror story, would creep back into Kyle's mind. He would spend ages working to wipe his mind clear of them, and it worked so well the memories were almost non-existent, as if he had woken up from a dream and merely forgotten them the next morning.
But when October came the memories started to drill back into his brain, returning in small doses during his sleep, and briefly during the day at random periods of time.
They would slither they're way back in and he would find himself waking up in the middle of the night screaming ferociously, hot sweat dripping down his drenched brow, as if each tiny moment of that day was consisted in those beads of sweat.
Now that October was so close he could just faintly remember the events...
It should have been a good day, for his mother was finally going to tell his obnoxious, violent father she was leaving him and getting a restraining order for both herself and Kyle. He came home drunk that night though.
He stumbled through the door with a bottle in his hand, mumbling to himself like the drunk he was before slapping Kyle's mother's behind arrogantly. She flinched and told him never to that again, and didn't let her eyes leave his as she told him she was leaving him for good.
Kyle remembered everything was very still, for it seemed his father was contemplating this for a moment, before his eyes grew wide in horror.
"You're doing what?" he questioned, a rough, smokers voice erupting from his mouth. He pulled his mother uncomfortably close by the shirt before Kyle could even blink and smashed down the bottle in his hand onto the bench beside him, giving it razor-sharp edges.
"No!" Kyle cried as his father pushed his failed attempts of protecting his mother away and repeatedly stabbed her in the stomach. In that instant Kyle could see all life disappear from his mother's eyes.
His father slid to the floor absentmindedly when he had finished and looked down at the kitchen tiles. Kyle stared at the bottle on the floor next to him and grasped it in both his hands before he stabbed his father also, killing him.
Soon though, he would remember both his mother and father's dying screams, remember the smell of liquor on his father's breath, the blood, its scent so strong he could almost taste its metallic flavor. He would remember so much that he'd be rocking back and forth in fear and disgust.
He would remember everything.