Forgotten

Suddenly, the room, the people, and everything around him melted away in one quick instant, and he found he was standing outside, in an open field. Blinking, he looked around, wondering how and why he was suddenly standing here. Just moments before, he was – well – what was he doing? For some reason, he couldn’t quite remember where he had been just been, even though he was sure it was only seconds ago that he was there.  The harder he thought about it, the less he remembered.

Almost right away, he noticed that this field was not empty. Scattered around in no particular order, were large, white, words. They stood about chest high, and looked as though someone had dumped a bag full of charades words and had neglected to pick them up.

He started to walk toward one of the nearer piles, and saw that one of the words was “Vacuum.” Right next to it were the words “Sandra Bullock,” “Cardigan,” and “Bruschetta.” Puzzled, he continued to walk around and examine the different piles. Each one had disconnected words, completely out of context, just lying about. He thought that these words seemed to be…what was the word? It was on the tip of his tongue…these words seemed to be…

He tried to think of the word that described what these words seemed like, and as he did, he looked up toward the pale sky. There, right above him, high in the sky, was a small black dot, slowly getting larger. It only took him a few seconds to realize that something was falling out of the sky – and it was falling right toward him. Just as the object became frighteningly large, he dove out of the way and landed hard on the grass just a few feet away. Right where he was standing, there fell with a loud thud, another chest-high white block word.

He stood up and brushed the grass off his pant legs and started to walk around to the front of the object. As he rounded the corner of the word, he saw that it said “Forgotten.”

“Yes!” he shouted. “These words seem to be forgotten by someone! That’s the word I was trying to remember!” It didn’t seem strange to him that the word he was trying to remember fell out of the sky right where he had been standing. For some unknown reason, it seemed like exactly what should have happened, but if anyone asked him why it seemed this way, it is unlikely that he could have said.

Like a flash, he climbed on top of the word that had just landed and tried to survey the entire field. To his left, on the edge of where he could see, he thought he saw a tree line, but it was too far to tell. To his right, he saw an object that seemed to stand out against the hazy distance. He climbed down and started running toward it.

It took a few minutes to make it across the field, but as he got closer to it, he saw that it was a large sign, the bottom of which stood about two feet above his head. He moved around to the front of it and started to read it. This is what it said:

“The thoughtful forgetful forgetting to think

The thought you forgot is beginning to sink

Like lead it will land in this land on the lawn

And remain like a stain on the brain thereupon.”

As he stood there, reading the sign, trying to put the puzzling words together, he heard a voice behind him.

“What are you doing here?!”

The suddenness of the demand made him start and quickly look around. There, standing on the grass in front of him, was a tall, thin man in a three piece suit. The tie was perfectly done, and he stood there as still as a statue, staring at our visitor with wide, unblinking eyes.

“I…I don’t know. I was somewhere…I don’t remember where…and just showed up in this field. Where am I?”

“Oh, not another one.” Was is flat and droll reply. “I can’t believe this happened again.”

With these words, he pulled out a walkie talkie and spoke quickly into the receiver.

“Ed, another one dropped down and he’s here all confused. We’ve got to start another C-2358 before this turns into a full-blown incident.”

“Excuse me, but I still don’t know where I am. How do I get out?”

“Listen pal, if I had to explain this to you, I’d be getting paid a lot more than I’m getting paid, you know what I mean? Did you read the sign? We put that up so I’d have to stop telling people. You people are exhausting.”

“Yes, I read it, but I’m not sure I understand it. It’s a little cryptic, isn’t it?”

“Cryptic?! We went through study after study to make sure we wrote it so you people would understand it. Cryptic.”

At this last mutter, the tall thin man picked up his walkie talkie again and barked into the receiver at the person on the other end. “Hey Mac, how long is this going to take? This quacklacker is staring to get chatty, and I don’t have time to debrief another one. If this goes full incident, you’re going to be doing the explaining, not me, get it?”

There was a muffled reply over the walkie talkie, which seemed inaudible, but the tall man clearly understood it, because he turned red and barked back into the receiver.

“No, I did the last three and you haven’t done any since before…”

More muffled talking over the speaker cut him off mid-sentence. He thought for a minute and then clicked it off and put it back in his pocket.

“Okay, but you better pay attention, because I’m not repeating anything. I don’t have time for this nonsense, and no offence, but you don’t seem like the cleverest one we’ve ever gotten down here, you know?”

“Down where?”

“No questions. Just listening and nodding.”

He nodded his assent.

“You know when you forget a word? You think that word just drifts around forever after you forget it? No. That would be chaos. Could you imagine words just suspended in mid-air forever. That’d be crazy. So, this place is where they all land. You remember your word? Great. You think it just comes back like magic? No way. Words don’t work like that. If they did, I’d be out of a job faster than you could say blackjack. You forget a word, it lands here. The word you might remember later is a totally different word. Not the same one as before. Sure they sound the same, but they’re not. So when you people forget your words, they come down here. They gotta go somewhere Mack, and this is it. It’s not a glamorous job, but it’s a living. My job is to manage all the words so they don’t pile up and get in the way. They gotta be stored neat and nice, see?

He leaned forward and waited for his audience of one to indicate that he was following along. 

Our visitor quickly nodded, hoping that his delay in response wouldn’t derail the story.

“Okay.” He continued. “So every once in a while, something gets crossed in the wires and we get someone like you down here. You all just pop up all confused and it falls to Ed, or more likely, me, to sit you down and explain what’s what. I’ve never figured out why we get you all sometimes, but it’s no picnic and I sure as Duffer ain’t compensated for my trouble.”

Just then, he reached into his pocket and flipped the switch back on.

“Ed, you got that C-2358 ready yet?”

More muffled sounds in response.

“Well it’s about time. Get it going before I come up there and smack you so hard you’ll see straight again.”

Before he finished speaking, everything began to go grainy and pixilated. The field, the tall thin man, the scattered words, all faded away, and he found himself back in the living room of his home, with a cup of coffee in his hand nodding along in conversation with a young woman a few feet away from him. She had just finished saying,

“…so I hope that’s not weird for you.”

Before he realized what he was saying, he found the words coming out of his mouth.

“Honestly, I am really happy for you. It seems like the best move for you, in every respect, so how selfish would it be for me to be upset about it?”

She smiled and breathed out a sigh of relief as she stepped forward to hug him.

“You’ve changed a lot, you know that?” she said as she finished the hug and stood apart again. “It’s like you’ve forgotten yourself and are putting other people first.”