A world without memory ceases to exist

I have this little drawing in a dented tin, something I know she drew of us in highlighter and ink, but don't know when she made it. It sits comfortably next to a heart-shaped locket she used to wear—some kitschy jewelry she got from a vending machine in the mall. The mall that I'm now sitting in the bones of, its carcass destroyed from a war we didn't see coming. Next to that is a simple blue Bic lighter, a package of too-few cigarettes, and my one half-melted candy bar.

I don't remember her name.

The blast caught me in a tailspin, flipped my car over, and left me knocked out in a parking lot. I don't think there's any radiation involved, or else I'd be dead by now, but it sure was something.

But the blast wasn't what caused the building I'm in to cave in on itself like a busted fruit. It was like that before I got here. It didn't make me forget her name—nothing natural ever could.

It didn't end the world. Our lack of memories did, as strange as that sounds.

On a day I can't recall, people started to forget things.

At first, it was simple stuff like where they'd parked their cars, or their great aunt's birthday. Then, altogether too quickly, they forgot their favorite foods, the names of their children, and soon enough, they forgot how to eat.

How to think, how to feel, how to move, how to be, how to love.

I didn't forget, because I keep this thing with me everywhere I go, but I did forget her name. I didn't—and will never—forget who she is, though.

I didn't forget where we lived, either, which was a miracle. I managed to lift another car and peel out towards the city as fast as I could. When I got back, she was already on her last legs. Small body drooping under the very weight of breathing. Bright pink hair matted in sweat against her forehead. She looked so small and so foreign in her own skin.

I guess she'd taken an aspirin for a headache—judging by the bottle—and it all went downhill from there; she didn't remember that she needed to stop taking them. She looked at me, terrified. She shrieked in feeble horror as I tried to scoop her into my arms. She didn't know who or what I was, but I was trying to help her. I told her as much.

But who could've helped her, anyways? Who could even remember what to do, even if they were trained to?

I had to watch the life slip from her. I held her against my chest and cried, my face buried in her bright hair. Bright hair that smelled like cherries, bright hazel eyes that once looked at me so lovingly. I remember every part of her except her name. I wish I knew it.

It was too much for me, so I went back to one of the places I could remember clearly—the mall. Our local haunt, with its once-lovely arcade, and quaint little thrift stores. She loved this place, I remember. Her smile was always bright when we went together, hands linked, eating sweets and talking about everything and nothing.

Planes fell from the sky as pilots forgot how to fly—I remember seeing them. Politicians forgot how to lead and every country fell apart—I assumed this. For a brief stint, there was vandalism and pillaging—saw that and remember it happening, too.

That, too, died, when people forgot what survival was all about. That it meant eating things and finding shelter. There are bodies for miles, some still alive, and yet they don't even know they need to move to live.

I don't know why I can remember to eat, why I remember who she was, or why I know how to live, when everyone else doesn't.

I don't know why I have these memories, but I'm going to thank this dented little tin for it. I'll thank the drawing, the heart-shaped locket—heck, I'll thank the cigarettes too.

As far as I know, I'm the last person who has any grasp on how to be a person anymore, but it's possible I'm not. It's possible.

All I know is that, should anybody find this piece of paper, I'm going to figure it out. If you can even hold just one thought in your skull, I need you to follow me. I've left an address—if you remember how to navigate—of where I'll be squatting next on my journey to figuring this all out. I'm charting a constellation of vague spaces that I've somehow collected in my mind.

It's all I have, but I'm hoping I'll learn something everywhere I go.

The world didn't end in fire, brimstone, with war or a meteor. It ended in something different. It ended in small starts and stops of memory, in names slipping through fingers, in being reduced to terrified creatures who don't even know how to think thoughts anymore.

I can think. I don't know her name, but I can think.

With my little tin, I think I'll find out just what happened to all of us. Then, I think I'll figure out if there are more like me, and see if we can't crawl back from this, one scattershot thought and miniscule memory at a time.

My name is Alex. She was the love of my life, but I don't know her name. And whatever took that—and therefore her—from me, is going to suffer a fate way worse than memory loss when I get at them.

Come find me if you remember a world worth never forgetting and haven't lost all motor functions. I need you by my side:

63 Bayard St, New York, NY 10013