Nostalgia is my second novel, a magical-realism sci-fi drama about memories, family, addiction and the dangers of living in the past.
The story so far: The Locus memory experiment continues, with Paul as the test subject. Revisiting old random memories of his times with Meredith, Paul begins to understand where they went wrong.
Paul returns the canister to Roger as promised, but holds back some of the blood samples on the condition that he is allowed to continue with the experiment. Stung by Paul’s blackmail, Roger has no option but to agree.
The results from the experiment prove fruitless, due to the randomness of the memories. Paul suggests finding a way to control the memories by introducing an influencer: Music. Create a memory bump to unlock memories.
Paul’s theory works, but whilst on a double-date with house-mate Mick, Paul suffers a hallucination: He sees Meredith in the night club, which triggers a panic attack. Out on the street, consumed by emotional exhaustion, Paul sees his recently-deceased Dad walk by…
I’m four years old, and Wayne is four years old than me and brandishing a cricket bat.
He feels the weight of the bat, satisfied that it probably wouldn’t kill me if he hit me around the head with it.
I wake, acclimatising to my new surroundings. I'm stretched out in the back of an ambulance. My Mum is stroking my hair and face.
I’m five years old and desperately clinging to my Mum’s leg in the school playground, refusing to go into school for the first time.
I’m six years old, sobbing helplessly whilst gripped by a fear of heights, stuck at the top of the climbing apparatus in my infant school hall.
I’m seven, and Wayne keeps telling me he has pee’d in my bed. From my grown-up perspective, I can see through his ruse: Wayne’s just trying to scare the younger me. The problem is, the younger me is believing every word, and is now crying.
I’m nine years old, and I’m wrapped up in bed, refusing to get up and dressed for school. My Dad yanks away the duvet, and I thrash my legs as he drags me out of bed.
Then there’s the time when I was thirteen, and I didn’t go outside once during the summer holidays. Instead, I built a camp in my parent’s loft, surrounding myself with all the childhood toys that I’d had to let go of because that time had gone. That awkward point in life when everyone around you is telling you to grow up, to put away childish things, even though you don’t feel quite ready.
I’m fifteen, and I’m asking a girl out for the first time. Alison Downey. She laughs in my face, then rushes off to tell her friends, who also fall about laughing. My young face burns red, and I wish for the ground to swallow me up.
A succession of dental work involving injections and drilling.
Escorting my Mum to the care home with Dad, and saying goodbye as we left her there.
Brydie phoning me at work informing me Dad had died.
But then The Locus displays a clip-show of alienation: A random selection of seemingly bland moments in my life, but with each moment I detect a connecting thread.
I see Brydie in her twenties, in the family living room, hands on hips. ‘Why can’t you be nice to Elliot? He’s your little brother!’ she demands.
‘I don’t want him following me about all my life. I’ve got my own friends, I don’t need him hanging around,’ I retort.
‘No need to be so snippy with me. Go take it out on someone else,’ huffs Brydie, before the moment bleeds into another.
A family Christmas dinner. I’m a teenager, quietly chewing my food as my family talk excitedly over each other. I see my attempts to contribute to the conversation, but nobody hears me. I get halfway through a sentence, until Wayne roars at something, drowning me out.
Now I’m in my parents’ back garden. Dad kicks a football to a teenage Wayne, who shows off his exceptional skill at keepy-ups. I forgot how good he was. I always thought Dad couldn’t say a bad word about his number one son, but credit where it’s due, Wayne was exceptional at football. Wayne chips the ball to my Dad, who takes a shot at the goalie: Me. Naturally devoid of any sporting prowess, I make a hash of it. I really did suck at football. All sport. Wayne was blessed with a gift and I wasn’t.
‘Nice going, butterfingers,’ jeers Wayne.
I see the younger version of me look to my Dad for an emotional boost, only to receive the familiar disappointed frown.
The image snaps to black with the flick of a light switch. A gentle glow emerges from the darkness, and I find myself in my childhood bedroom. Through an open door, I can see into the opposite bedroom, where Mum and Dad tuck Elliot into bed with a hug and a kiss goodnight. I turn to see myself as a twelve-year-old, sat up in bed, waiting expectantly as he watches his kid brother board the train to sleepyville. My parents step out of Elliot’s bedroom, closing the door. They look through me, to the twelve-year-old sitting up in his bed. They bid him/me goodnight, closing the door; both of our mouths agape as we fade to black.
There’s a palpable chest pain of loneliness in me. Of rejection and being unlovable. Inside The Locus, I lose all sense of my physical self, but for the first time, I feel a bottomless sensation at my core.
And that’s when I strike misery gold. There aren’t many moments in my life defined by a before and after, but this is one of them.
Me, perched on the edge of Meredith’s sofa, face in hands. Meredith sits on the opposite sofa, curled up in a ball. All I can do is watch it play out, but I know it off by heart. I don’t need highfalutin technology to play this particular moment back at me, I think about it all the time.
‘I can’t keep having the same fight with you. We keep doing this, over and over and I don’t know what else to do.’
The version of me on the sofa snaps. ‘Don’t talk about me like there’s something wrong with me. I’m not crazy.’
Meredith defends herself. ‘I never said that.’
‘That’s exactly how it sounds from where I’m sitting. I get something wrong and you make me feel stupid for it. Maybe you should consider how you say things?’
‘Put yourself in my place. We talk about stuff and it’s in one ear and out the other. Are you just not listening? Am I that boring to you?’
‘I forgot, okay? I get distracted. Nobody’s perfect. It’s not like I’m thinking what can I do that’ll really annoy Meredith, is it?’
‘Then, I don’t know… maybe see a doctor,’ suggests Meredith, which I recall taking as flippancy.
‘Because I put a bowl back in the wrong place? You’re worried about my memory loss yet you don’t seem able to forget.’
There’s a long silence, as Meredith dredges up words which cut me to the bone. ‘I don’t think we should be together.’
‘This is because I said we should push the wedding back. You know we can’t afford it right now—’ I protest.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. If I could grab that past version of me by the neck and shake some sense into him, I would.
‘Was that the best you could do?’ I yell at myself.
‘Don’t be like that,’ says Meredith, and I’m not sure if she’s talking to me in the here and now, or the old me on the sofa.
‘Sorry if I seem a little upset,’ says the other me with a steely look.
‘I want to be your friend. Don’t let it end like this. Please,’ says Meredith, perching on the edge of the sofa.
‘Is there someone else?’ he asks. The look of disdain from Meredith as she walks out of the room provides an honest answer. I kneel in front of the old me, close enough to see the tears welling in his eyes as I deliver my best pep talk.
‘Listen, you. Stop blubbing. Get up and go fix things. Don’t just sit there!’
Before I can fix anything, I find myself in the back seat of Meredith’s car. She’s driving as the other me stares out the front passenger window in an attempt to hide the look of embarrassed dismay on his face. Honestly, if he twisted his head any further away it might pop off.
The Four Seasons’ “Opus 17” plays on the car stereo. Meredith eventually turns the music off, and nothing is said for some time. Finally, she stabs at the ice.
‘Do you want to call your parents? Are you talking to me?’
I yell at myself in the faint hope that he’ll hear me. ‘Stop sulking! Talk to her!’ It seems to work. ‘Yes,’ he says solemnly.
In yet another disconcerting time jump, I’m now outside my parents’ house. The other me steps from Meredith’s car with a travel bag, as Meredith also steps out. Teary, she smiles at the other me. I’m standing between them, an invisible gooseberry, looking back and forth at their drained expressions. Meredith then tries to remove her engagement ring.
‘Not now. I don’t want to see you do that. Keep it. Sell it. Give it away. I can’t take it back,’ says the other me. Meredith nods, almost apologetic.
‘S’pose I’ll collect my stuff this week sometime,’ I mumble.
Meredith nods. ‘I’ll call you tonight,’ she says.
‘Why?’ asks the other me, taking exception.
‘Because I care about you.’
I remember not entirely believing that when she said it, and by the look on the other Paul’s face, he doesn’t either. We both stare into the distance, as Meredith’s car blurs out into nothing. Then it happens again. The same puzzled look on his face, as when I saw in the twelve-year-old version of me. His confused eyes flick from place to place, trying to figure out the spacey sensation he’s experiencing. He’s sensing something, something unusual and troubling. In that final moment, he swiftly turns and stares me dead in the eye.
Light from Kirk’s torch flashes before my eyes, as frustrated Roger battles with a printer. ‘Why is my printer not working… Oh, there’s an orange M&M stuck in it. Brilliant.’
Roger trudges into the control room, searching high and low through metal storage cupboards.
‘And how are we feeling?’ asks Kirk, as she scrutinises my state.
‘Fine.’
I force a smile and reel off a list of lies about the time our family welcomed a new puppy at Christmas time. Except we didn’t have any pets. I had to say something to stop myself from opening the floodgates of pent-up emotion. Kirk lacks self-awareness, often wearing her thoughts on her face. But she’s astute, and right now she’s looking at me like I’m the biggest liar she ever met. Caught in her spotlight of truth, I babble helplessly. ‘I thought I saw my Dad the other day. For real, out on the street.’
‘When someone close to you dies, you often see them in other people. It’s normal,’ says Kirk.
‘Don’t tell Roger I told you that, will you? He’ll think I’m mad or something.’
Kirk nods, and I can only hope she’s as honest as she seems.
A question leaves my mouth before I have time to vet it. ‘Have you ever used it?’ I glance to The Locus. Kirk pauses to consider her response.
‘No. I can still remember what it was like to be left in the car whilst my Dad went for a drink. You never forget those journeys home.’
The Locus rejects me. My cheeks are flushed and burning, I feel tarred with humiliation. Powerless against the delights it has to offer, anger wells in me like a caned schoolboy.
Kirk runs through her checklist of questions, and this time around I’m even less willing to explain why my chest feels like it has been crushed.
For I have just taken a lingering bath in all the shit I carry around with me every single day.
All the times I was rejected in my life, called ugly, puny, and mocked for being weak, scared, and emotional. For the way I dressed. The rest of the world testing me to see if I could take a joke. A barrage of faces and voices from the past telling me I’m not good enough, that I’m no good.
All the missed opportunities that I ran away from because I didn’t deserve them, as if good things shouldn’t happen to me.
The memories are on my lips, and the words slip. ‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’
‘Your brain activity indicates unusual activity from previous sessions. Are you feeling any distress?’ Kirk is simply being polite now. She knows all is not well with me. ‘You’ve experienced a big rush, lots of serotonin has been released inside your brain. It’ll change how you think, feel. This can take a few days to replenish. Might feel like you’re on a downer. A bad acid trip, maybe. But if we’re to have a working relationship, we need to be operating in truth. Okay?’
I don’t know where to look as I search for the right words to summarise my state of mind.
Kirk continues. ‘Do you want to cry? You look like you want to.’
I huff, cheeks inflating as I compose myself. ‘I don’t know if I’m happy, sad…’ I search for a way to explain, settling on an analogy. ‘Okay, alright. Y’know when you leave the cinema, you can still feel... the emotion of the movie? Like that. Only much more intense.’
I stall at a thought; one kicked into the long grass of my mind many years ago. ‘I had a friend… The first real friend I ever had. Junior school. David Oldman. Have you ever met someone and you have a feeling you’re going to be friends? You instantly like the person. We were best friends… for a few months. Then one day he didn’t want to know me. He made a new friend, and overnight he wasn’t interested in anything I had to say. I dunno why. It was the end of the school day, I saw them both laughing on the other side of the playground. I don’t know why.… but I pulled up the hood of my coat and I ran at him. He never saw it coming. I had to shut him up, so I thumped him… He keeled over, crying straight away…’ I drift off to silence.
‘How did it make you feel?’ asks Kirk.
‘Now, or then?’ I ask.
‘Both.’
‘Then… Rejected. Humiliated. Angry. Like they were laughing at me. The thing is… after I hit him, I instantly knew I’d got it wrong. I made a mistake. I was wrong.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I got scared. I ran all the way home. The next day, nothing else was said. They didn’t know it was me. I got away with it.’
‘And what about now? Looking back…’
‘Disgusted. My emotions got the better of me. I wasn’t in control of my responses. It was out-of-character. That’s not who I am.’
Kirk adds to her notes, brow creased in thought. What I fail to mention is that I feel like it has just happened. I can feel the burden of shame, as fresh as the day it happened.
‘Why am I only seeing the bad stuff?’ I ask, exasperated. Kirk is quick to answer my frustrations.
‘No, look… this is all good. This all has value. If we can map out your thoughts, who knows… we could be a few stages from manipulating communication patterns within the brain. Close off the corridors of negative memory. No more bad memories. Wouldn’t that be nice?’
I wear my hood up on the train, in case I bump into any work colleagues. My compassionate leave has extended on my terms, and I’ve no idea how much longer I’ll get away with it.
My eyes feel heavy as I gaze out the window at the world racing past, pixelating and jarring as the image becomes corrupted. I blink hard, waking to an empty train. Someone in a rail uniform stands over me, informing me it’s the last stop.
It’s cold enough for snow as I trudge home at night. My phone rings in my pocket. The caller ID reads ‘Brydie’, and I consider not answering.
‘I spoke to Elliot. He said Dad’s bank account is empty. Is this true?’ demands Brydie.
As always, I wish I’d let it go to the answerphone. She continues, even sterner. ‘Hello? Why didn’t anyone tell me any of this? Why am I always the last to know?’
I wearily answer. ‘Because you always respond like this?’ I can practically hear the steam whistling from Brydie’s spout. ‘It seems Dad spent all of his money, yes,’ I confirm.
Brydie tries to interrupt, but I talk over her. ‘I’ve been looking into it, okay? Trying to figure out what went on. I wanted to know more before telling you for this exact reason. Because I knew you’d hit the roof.’
‘We need a family meeting ASAP. We need to talk to the bank, call the police, something. This is wrong,’ says Brydie, hanging up on me before I can say another word.
I know it won’t sit well with her if I tell her Dad spent his life savings on an experiment. She’d want to know what he was thinking. Which gives me an idea.
Kirk punches in an access code, unlocking a door to what appears to be an MRI suite. She wants a scan of my brain to compare with my Dad’s. The thought of my Dad taking part in any of this still feels alien. As Kirk sits me down, I sound like a child as I gaze up at her. ‘Did my Dad pay for all of this?’
‘Some of it.’
‘So what did you spend his money on?’ I ask.
‘Look… I’ve been told not to talk too much…’ says Kirk in a hushed voice.
‘How did Dad get involved with you two?’ I ask. ‘Give me that. Please.’
Kirk inhales, nodding reluctantly. ‘Roger put an advert in the local newspaper.’
‘Oh. Did you have many applicants?’ I ask.
‘Just your Dad,’ shrugs Kirk, apologetically.
Roger swoops in to take control of the situation. ‘I don’t think that conversation is going to accomplish anything,’ he states.
‘No, I’m curious. That’s all,’ I say.
Roger’s prickliness closes down the topic by trailing off with a mutter. ‘He was a good man. He wanted to help. How were we to know he had an underlying heart problem?’
Roger’s glib excuse is enough to force me onto my feet to confront him, but Roger isn’t scared. He wants me to do something.
‘Go on. I deserve it. I lie awake every night telling myself it was my fault, like most things in my life. If you wanna beat me up, that’s fine. Hit me and go. I’m sorry he died, I truly am. But I’m not sorry for what he did for us. We would be nowhere without him, same as you.’
I’ve met enough liars in my time to know that Roger means what he says. I back off, taking a seat on the flat bed of the MRI machine. I swing my legs up, laying down without a word.
During the MRI scan, all I can think about is Brydie’s outcry for answers, and as much as Brydie rattles me she does have a valid point. What was Dad thinking?
Back in the lab, I can feel the words on the tip of my tongue. Unable to play it cool, I just spit it out. ‘I want to go into my Dad’s memories.’
Roger and Kirk stare at me as if I’ve just told the world’s worst joke. They say nothing.
‘I’m serious. I want to do it.’
‘Oh, right, really? Not a chance,’ says Roger, folding his arms as if I’ve insulted him.
‘Just… hang on,’ says Kirk, with drawn-out uncertainty. ‘Why?’
‘My Dad is dead. I don’t want to forget him.’
‘There are photos for that,’ says Roger, refusing to budge.
‘But that’s not the same as being in a room with him,’ I explain.
‘Yeah yeah, we hear you,’ says Roger, visibly struggling to understand where I’m coming from.
Roger’s tone grates on me. ‘You hear me, but are you listening?’
‘We are not doing this,’ growls Roger.
‘Wouldn’t you want to see your old man?’ asks Kirk.
‘Now you ask, no, not really. All this time and money just to find out that Daddy never loved me?’
‘So you’re happy for anyone else but you to have their wounds prodded?’ I state.
‘You are free to go at any time, pal,’ says Roger. ‘I’m not keeping you here.’
‘Chill out, the pair of you,’ says Kirk.
‘Oh, is that your university education seeping out?’ Roger’s glare of contempt sends Kirk the necessary message. ‘Why don’t you do something useful?’
‘Huh. Look at me still talking when there's science to do—’
Kirk busies herself, as Roger clenches his bottom lip in thought. His hangdog face tightens.
‘Look, there’s a big diff between looking at a photo of your Dad and being inside his head. Nobody knows what you could see, the damage it could do. Side effects. You could remain in a state of full-blown psychosis ‘til the day you die. I can’t guarantee your safety.’
‘And you could before?’
I compile a playlist of my Dad’s favourite songs on Kirk’s laptop, as Roger removes a sample of my Dad’s DNA from the canister, slotting it into The Locus. I’m now a dab hand at locking myself into the frame, and I load myself into the machine.
Inside The Locus, the thunderous music feed cranks down a level or ten, playing Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Then comes all the incidentals which had gone beyond memory, absorbed into his character. Little Richard and Bo Diddly. Donald Sutherland’s Sgt. Oddball. The smell of his mother’s baking. Sitting cross-legged on the living room floor reading comics as a school boy. Being caned by the Headmaster.
Entering my Dad’s visionscape, the trip immediately feels different. Warped and dysfunctional. The images feel crushed and glitchy, struggling to form as they randomly jar and blur.
I see what looks like an old kitchen from the 1940s. A small boy in a tank top and shorts sits under a small table watching a woman cry. I kneel to take a closer look at the boy. My Dad.
I reach out to touch his face, as he starts to cry. The boy scuttles out from under the table, wrapping his arms around the woman. My dear old Nan, whom I’ve never seen like this. Immaculate hair. Pristine emerald green dress. She looks almost glamorous, as opposed to the round-shouldered shuffling old lady I knew.
The image locks, colours dragging sideways to form another scene: A funeral. I see my Dad as a small boy, holding his mother’s hand as they say goodbye to my Granddad.
The picture blisters and drains away to reveal a new location: A dance in a hall full of young, smiling faces. To me, it looks like the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, from Back to the Future, but in reality, it is probably the early sixties. Teenagers dance to ‘Great Balls of Fire’. Amongst the wild young bodies, I can spot my Dad from a mile off. The shape of the back of his head. His level shoulders and straight posture. He approaches a young girl with dark tumbling hair, and they dance, swirling to the beat. Who knew they could move like that?
Next on the playlist: The Kinks ‘Days’. The vision crackles into 8mm cine-like images of their wedding, the birth of their children and their rapidly passing years together as a family.
All of these images from my Dad’s life collide, before they burn out to a silent, still image.
It’s my Dad’s hallway. The room still has a sofa, rugs, some furnishings. My Dad stands there, inspecting his reflection in a long mirror. He curiously smiles, warmed as if standing in sunlight.
He broadly smiles for an elongated time, as I watch him through his own eyes. He speaks.
‘You’re watching me now, aren’t you? That’s what deja vu is. Do you know this yet? Ripples in the mind. It takes some practice, but if you pay attention you’ll feel it.’
Dad breathes a half-laugh, continuing. ‘I don’t know who you are, what year you’re from, but I know you’re here. Welcome to my life. I’m Ivor Angest. I’m married. Three sons: Wayne, Paul and Elliot. One daughter, Brydie. It’s amazing, all this, isn’t it? All those feelings of happiness I’ve had all through my life... they keep coming back. Undiluted joy. When people talk about spiritual experiences… they have no idea.’
Dad pauses, staring intently at his reflection. ‘You can feel it, can’t you… For years I felt so disconnected. From my wife... my kids... One of you could be watching me right now. I suppose I should use this moment to tell you things I couldn’t say to your faces?’
I step out of my Dad’s perspective, silently edging around him with disbelief as he continues to stare in the hallway mirror.
The image jumps track, like changing television channels. My Dad’s clothes are now different, but he’s stood in the same place, now holding a ukulele.
‘I’d visit my wife at the care home. Every week, used to be every day… I used to sing and play to my wife, June. I know, I know. Poor cow, as if she hasn’t suffered enough… I’d like to play you a little song that I like. It’s an oldie, but golden.’
Ivor strums with little grace, occasionally tripping over the right notes, but he carries the tune of I’ll See You in my Dreams.
‘June would always ask when I was going to get rid of my old Yuke. I’m a terrible hoarder, can’t get rid of anything, and this used to consistently get up her nose. But I always saw value in things. Thought I might need ‘em one day. When my wife entered the care home, I was…’
The image stutters and jumps. ‘How did I get into this——How did—— How——How did I get into thiiiiiiiis——’
‘——-Couldn’t do anything else for her. But I could still hear her voice; recall the dreams she once had. I found the-—’
The image falters again, and I will for it to settle and restore itself.
‘You’re probably wondering how I got into this. I was visiting my wife at her care home, and I got talkinnnzzzz------—A man-A man-A man——He said it could help June———
The image of my Dad in mid-speech locks up, for longer this time.
‘C’mon-c’mon-c’mon…’
Just as I think that’s it, Dad continues talking. ‘He said it could bring her back from wherever she was… Even if he was the world’s biggest liar, I had to see for myself. In case there was the slightest chance. I had to save her.’
The image jumps to a later point in Dad’s life. He looks a mess, the worst I’ve seen him. Wild hair, scraggly beard. Gaunt. His eyes don’t look right, dilated pupils and haunted. Dad speaks slowly as if he can barely get the words out of his mouth.
‘And the craziest thing was—it was all true.’
The image jars and blurs again, but the audio continues.
‘—his name——name is——mmm——mmmmaaaar——wwww——’
The image finally breaks down for good.
Copyright © Andrew Wright 2023