“What the fuck did you do, Eli?!”

Eli couldn’t identify who said it. “I didn’t do anything. Someone is pulling a prank.”

More static was heard over the intercom before it cut to what sounded like a phone call. “You’ll do what I want, Kara, or you’ll end up like Mackenzie.”

Eli stood up from his desks, and his hands formed into fists. Was this Julia’s plan? Fake conversations between himself and Kara and play them over the school intercom? Surely she couldn’t be that foolish.

“Mackenzie? But she… Oh god, Eli. You didn’t kill her, did you? Please tell me that you didn’t kill her.” Kara’s voice was shaking as she spoke.

“That’s why I need you to do what I ask. Pick me up after school. Don’t bring anyone. We’ll talk more then.”

How foolish did Julia think he was? Eli rested his hand on his desk and closed his eyes. There already wasn’t a Kara. Mackenzie had been pushed aside already. All he needed to do was to ensure that neither existed anymore.

The students around him began to speak up. “Who are Kara and Mackenzie?”

“I don’t know. You’d think they’d use real names or something. Making stuff up just proves that it’s a prank, right?”

A smile broke out across Eli’s lips.

Another phone call started to play. “I can’t do this anymore, Eli.” Kara was talking again, sounding more frightened than before. “Austin found out that you’ve been harassing me.”

“It isn’t harassment if you just do what I ask.”

“That’s not the point. He’s… He said he was going to tell Tyler unless I started to sleep with him, and I can’t do this anymore.”

“Then you can keep being his slut,” growled Eli. “That’s what you deserve.”

“I don’t deserve any of this!”

“Mackenzie is dead because of what we did,” he let out a laugh as she started to deny him. “No. It’s our fault, Kara. You can pretend that you didn’t have anything to do with it, but you helped to start this. You put her down this path. You helped murder her.”

The students began to speak up again. “Austin? Wasn’t that the guy who freaked out and said a ghost tore off half his face?”

“What? There wasn’t anyone like that at our school.”

“That’s a story the woodshop teacher made up so that kids don’t do stupid shit around the machines. No one actually believes someone got their face cut off like that.”

Eli didn’t care if people forgot about Austin as well. He wasn’t ever going to come back to the school. No one needed to remember him. There were also multiple Tylers at the school. Nothing to worry about. What was next, Julia?

“Hello, Doctor Lowry? It’s Eli. Eli Strumm, yes.” The voice over the intercom let out a long sigh. “No, it’s not going well. The voices are getting louder, and the visions are coming back… Yes, I know they’re not real… Dad said that our insurance wouldn’t cover the right medicine, this is the only kind they’ll let me take… No, I don’t want to go in and talk about it. I just want them to go away… I need them to go away because I can’t live like this anymore.”

A silence hung over the classroom. Eli could make out the sounds of chairs and people were scooting away from him. “It’s not true! Someone is making all of this up!”

“I don’t know… I’m going to end up hurting more people if this keeps going on,” said the voice over the intercom. “But they deserve it. I know I wouldn’t hurt people if they didn’t do something to deserve it.”

The only sound in the classroom was the door slamming open as Eli rushed out to the hallway. He was going to find the intercom room and punish Julia. Even though the hallway was dark, he could make out a light at the end of it. All he needed to do was make it there, and he could figure out where the office was after that.

He ran down the hall and suddenly music and voices overtook the area. Eli looked around in a bewildered manner. This was a house. There was some party going on, but he only recognized some of the people. Several were from AP Club, others were also from school, but… There was a girl looking at him. Dark skinned, natural hair, glasses. Something about her was familiar, but…

“... Julia…” He blinked a few times. “Yeah… Yeah, you’re what Julia looks like.”

“You have trouble remembering already?”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It should. It doesn’t bother you that you don’t remember your own past?”

A shadow crossed over the room at that moment, and Julia vanished within it. Eli looked around for any signs of her. There was she was, talking to Mackenzie. The two of them were in the corner of the room together and giggling, but… He couldn’t quite remember Mackenzie’s name or why she was important anymore.

“This isn’t the past. This is some weird vision that you conjured up to make me paranoid!”

“Is it?” Julia appeared in a mirror hanging on the wall. “I’ve been told that this is something that happened, but I don’t have any way of knowing. These are memories that you robbed from me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“These are memories that you robbed from yourself.”

Eli looked away from her and saw himself sitting on a couch. He was talking with friends of his and laughing. Though he didn’t remember being friends with those people… What were their names again? He was certain he had seen them around the school or even had a class with them, but he had trouble placing exactly where or when that was.

“I don’t need a past. I have a future to look forward to. It doesn’t matter how much of me or you or anyone else that is lost along the way, I still have my future!”

Without bothering to look around at the party, Eli stepped through the door and found himself walking down a dark hallway. There was another light at the end, coming from an open door. The shadows next to him shifted about until Julia was walking side by side next to him.

“Our past is what shapes our futures. Without it, we are nothing,” she said while moving her arms about.

He kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. The last thing he needed was for her to jump on him again. “Goals are what move people forward. The necessity to evolve. We see for ourselves what we need in our lives, and we fight to make it ours.”

“Can you tell me where you were born?” She stopped walking, but he kept going. “What about the name of your first crush? Or the person you were friends with?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Eli ignored her and stepped through the door. It looked to be his house, but… Who were these people at the dining table? Wait, no, those were his parents. And the others were his younger siblings… But didn’t he only have one? Were there more?

“Our neighbor’s hens laid to many eggs again, so they gave me some of the older ones under the condition that I use them right away.” His mother set down a large cast iron pan in the middle of the table. It was filled with a tomato lentil stew with fried eggs on top.

“Is it spicy?” The youngest boy crinkled up his nose at the smell.

“Only a little bit,” said her mother. The boy’s nose crinkled all the more. “I said a little bit! Try it! You’ll like it!”

The sound of a door being opened and closed could be heard, and Eli walked through the room. He had his backpack over one shoulder and dark circles under his eyes. Rather than say hi to anyone, he walked past them and up the stairs to his room.

“Dinner!” Called his mother.

The past Eli peeked his head down the stairs. “I’m meeting up with a friend.”

“Didn’t you just come back from seeing a friend?” His dad replied sarcastically.

“It’s a different friend!” Called out Eli from upstairs. “I have more than one friend!”

His mother raised her voice. “Alright! Whoever it is, I hope you have fun!” She waved to him as he rushed past the dining room again. “I love you.”

He peeked back into the room. “Love you, too.”

The present Eli stood around in a confused manner. “What’s the point in showing me this? I know what my family looks like.”

Julia spoke up from behind. She was leaning against a wall. “People aren’t puzzle pieces, Eli. You can’t make them disappear and expect others to be okay with it. We’re shaped by the connections we’ve made with others. When people we know disappear, we lose everything that they’ve done to help shape us.

You’ve been doing nothing but tearing apart your friends, and that’s done nothing to hurt you. Do you really remember your family, Eli? Or do you not understand what you tearing yourself apart has done to them?”

He turned away from her, only to see past Eli staring at the dining room table. It was like there were too many plates set up. His little sister had been messing that up a lot recently, but he couldn’t fathom why. The spare bowls were put away, leaving only two at the table.

“How’s dinner going?” He leaned back to look in the kitchen. His sister was staring at the back of a tomato soup can.

“You sure I’m just supposed to boil the potatoes in this?” She looked back at him suspiciously.

Eli shrugged. It was all they could afford at the moment, but he wasn’t going to make his sister panic by mentioning it. “I think you’re supposed to blend half of it when the potatoes are done and that thickens it up.” She cringed at the thought. “It’ll be fine.”

The present Eli looked back at Julia and then over to the scene playing out. This was last night. His sister didn’t know to be careful when blending hot liquid and a part of it ended up on the ceiling. They ended up laughing about it when Eli tried to mop it up. That was a memory, and he still knew it. There wasn’t anything wrong about it.

“Where are your parents?”

Eli turned back to Julia. She was still leaning against the wall with her arms folded across his chest. His parents were… They were still around. They had to be. Why else would… Why did he think there were too many bowls? Why could he only remember him and his sister having dinner when his parents should’ve been home at that time?

“Where are your parent’s, Eli?”

Eli looked back at the room. It was empty now, and the lights had dimmed. “They were busy at work,” he whispered.

“What about your other siblings?” Julia took a step away from the wall. “Do you remember what they looked like? How old they are? Their names?”

“You’re trying to mess with me. You’re making up events that never existed, and trying to get me to admit that I was wrong in using my powers. I never would have erased my own family.”

Julia took another step towards him. “You tried to erase me.”

“I did erase you.”

“I still exist,” spat back Julia.

“Then that means my family still exists.” Eli gestured to where the image of his sister had been standing mere moments before. “They’re lost at the moment, but it’s fine. I’ll get them back.”

“What’s your sister’s name?” Julia stepped around Eli so he would be looking at her. “Do you remember her name?”

“That’s not the point,” he whispered. He honestly couldn’t remember her name, but there would always be a chance to figure that out later. “What are you doing? Why are you asking me these questions?”

“I’m making a point. Unlike you, I want you to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.” Julia reached into her pocket and pulled out a handgun. “I need you to know that I have a good reason for doing this.”

Eli was still confused, but looking at that gun nearly made him paralyzed with fear. That was his father’s gun. He didn’t know how she had gotten it, but he knew what she was going to do with it. Taking a few steps backward, he began to look around for something to block her line of sight.

“There are other ways we can handle this,” he attempted to grab onto the back of a chair, but his fingers slipped through it. This truly was some sort of illusion. “We can summon the demon together. We’ll summon him as many times as necessary until everything is fixed!”

Julia shook her head. She looked down at the gun and attempted to figure out where the safety was. “It doesn’t work like that. Trill only gives you one gift, then you never see him again.” At least, normally he doesn’t appear again. “The only way to get rid of this curse is by killing you.”

“That’s not right!” He held up his hands defensively. “I’ll find a way to fix this!”

“You can’t… You haven’t been fixing anything!” Julia switched the safety off, and her free hand went to her chest. “We used to be friends! I don’t know if that’s true or not, because you took that away from me, but we used to be good friends! Do you remember that?

I have videos on my computer of us, and all of our other friends hanging out and having fun. I have Mackenzie’s pictures of us as kids, and you spending dinner at my house! Do you remember any of that? I don’t!”

Eli shook his head slowly. “I-I don’t…”

“So… S-so was it all an accident? Did you fuck up and not mean for either Mackenzie or Kara to die?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered.

“You don’t know that! For all I know, you did kill them, but because you erased them from people’s memories, you don’t remember doing it!”

“I can’t pick and choose what people remember. All I can do is make their influence in the world smaller, but I wouldn’t have killed my friends. They were my friends. They were our friends. We are still friends, so let’s fix this together.”

Julia scoffed. “You don’t… You don’t remember anything.” She held the gun firmly in both hands and pointed it at him.

“I know that you don’t want to do this,” he replied. Eli continued to back away from her until his back was against the wall.

“Of course I don’t want to do this, but you’re the one who gets out easy. You don’t ever have to remember the pain you caused other people.” Julia took a moment to chew on her lower lip if only to keep herself from crying. “But I have to live with this. I have to live with knowing that I couldn’t stop my friend from destroying himself, and I was the one that had to kill him.”

This bitch was really going to shoot him. A part of Eli wanted to understand why, but he also felt like… If they were friends, he would remember. He would never erase his friends. How dare she make all of these assumptions as if she knew him. It made him furious to know that she was blaming all of this on him.

He lunged at her, aiming to wrestle the gun free from her hands. Julia yelled at him to stop and removed her finger from the trigger. She didn’t want to accidentally set it off. That didn’t matter to Eli. This was his father’s gun, and he was going to use it to take down this monster.

His father… What did he look like again? No, no this was some trick that Julia was doing. She was the one that was making him forget, and she was telling him lies as though he were the one behind it all. That was far from the truth. Eli was justified in defending himself.

What he wasn’t expecting was for Julia to be swallowed up by shadows. She appeared next to him, with the gun pressed against his temple. There wasn’t any time to react. All he could do was widen his eyes slightly before the bullet was let loose. His mind went white as his body went slack, crumpling to the ground in a broken heap.

Julia remained tense as the illusion dropped. They were still located within a school hallway, but Eli was still dead in front of her. His brains splattered against the lockers, and the most surprised look on his face. She quickly put the gun in his hand and darkness overtook her. Suddenly she was in her room again, with Trill sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Were you successful?”

She wasn’t able to come up with a reply. Julia fell to her knees, and blood began to pour from her mouth as she vomited it up. It was the side effect of teleporting herself to get out of the way of Eli’s attack. That combined with all of the memories rushing back to her was making her nauseous, and the sensation of vomiting was somewhat satisfying as a result.

“Come on,” said Trill as he grabbed her by the elbow.

“I-I’m fine,” she said in a choked voice. She couldn’t stop herself from crying anymore, no matter how hard she tried.

“We’re leaving here,” he whispered. The two of them were swallowed up in shadow as he tried in vain to take her away from her troubles.