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 I can’t not remember her 

By Kandace  



I can’t not remember her; every woman I see is her, every voice I hear is hers, every hand I hold is her hand. When he told me that I would always remember the first, I assumed that he meant in the same way you remember your first kiss. The way I remember her is haunting. When I think of her, the room is suddenly far too cold but I am far too hot and there’s no space in my head for anything but her.

Even below zero my hands were sweating and I quickly figured out what the leather gloves were for. Three words raced through my head - leave no trace. I felt like a hurricane, an unstoppable force with little care for the destruction I caused. He told me the first was always anyone, never someone. That was the very first rule.

I watched her as she walked by. She was ordinary and that made her perfect. As I began to walk alongside her, hidden by the shrubbery, I noticed that her dull brown hair turned chestnut in the moonlight. The longer we walked, the more I noticed. Her nose was long and thin and her jaw line far too strong. The curve of her back was very pronounced, and she had beautiful, long fingers. Something was holding me back. A shred of humanity remained in me.

Follow the rules. That’s the last rule: follow the rules.

I can remember how it sounded as though I was wearing earmuffs. The piercing shrieks and cries muffled by some new, unfeeling characteristic I had adopted. She was so cold, even before I was done. I had expected glassy eyes and half-parted lips but I never saw eyes so full of emotion and pure unbounded fear, one moment in time captured forever. I could hardly stand it.

The others are nothing. The terror in their eyes, it never quite amounts to hers. I don’t hear their cries, or take notice of their pleas. I know nothing about them and everything about her. I could never escape her. The act that brought her to me was the same that stole her away.

I was shaking. I couldn’t stop. The adrenaline filled my throat so that I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat filled my ears. I wanted to get away from myself, I wanted to rip myself free from this skin and run. I writhed, all but yelled out in pain, and then it stopped. I couldn’t feel anything. Not the wind against my face, not the ache in my chest. I was numb.

“You’ll always remember the first,” he told me, “she will be your ghost, an invisible presence with you wherever you go. The exact shade of her eyes, the structure of her jaw, the flushed colour of her cheeks, you will never forget.”

Kandace was inspired by the book jacket for Stolen by Lucy Christopher.