fiction by angelica terso

Again

They say it takes seven-point-five seconds to reach your bloodstream, and another two-point-five to fully activate. 

I breathe in deeply as I come to, standing up from the bench on the blue line. I walk out of the metro station, discarding my unused transit card. 

This isn’t my first counter-trip, but I’ve always wondered what I look like during those ten seconds that my mind is suspended. Are my eyes staring blankly? Are they twitching uncontrollably? Are they even open at all?

I wish I could pop one of these pills at home, but Dok said I need to be around people for safety purposes. I don’t have friends here, yet, except for maybe Jackie from work, but I don’t want to be that weird, new girl asking people to hang out after only knowing them for two weeks. And Dok doesn’t want me to take it in his office either because, for one, he’s not a real doctor, and because his office is in his mom’s basement. 

They’re called iterum pills, not yet FDA approved, and not even remotely close to being fully tested.

One pill targets a specific experience, one your brain focuses on at the time of intake, and then deletes it. Poof—in ten seconds, the memory of that experience is gone. Of course, there aren’t enough trials and research on it, so no one knows what the long-term effects are.

Do you want to forget your ex? 

Normally, I don’t click on ads, but curiosity and plain boredom in a new city got the best of me. And when no requests for my social security number popped up, I scheduled an online consultation with Dok. I’ll probably regret ghosting my therapist, but Dok has kept me semi-sane these days, I think.

I’m not sure what the pills are erasing. But I know that I take them once a month, and I know that I have an appetite of a teenage boy after.

“Is anyone else joining you?” the waitress asks, placing five dishes on the table. 

“No, just me,” I say. The old me would have been embarrassed and would have sat here over-explaining that, these days, I have to force myself to have at least one full meal, and it’s a miracle that I’m eating at all. “I’m still missing the jokbal.”

The woman opens her mouth, seemingly wanting to say something else, but decides against it. “I’ll check on that.”

I look around the packed restaurant and feel sort of bad for taking over a table for four when there’s clearly only one of me. There are big groups at long tables, but most are couples, sharing heaping servings of budae jjigae and kimchi pancakes.  

Friday nights used to be Nikki and I’s date nights, too.

We did typical couple things when we first met—bowling, mini-golfing, axe-throwing—

anything to prove to each other and the world that we weren’t boring. Over the years, when we decided we were exciting enough and didn’t need the pictures to prove it, date nights consisted of watching movies at home, driving around our dream neighborhoods, and going on Costco runs. Nikki didn’t eat beef, but always made an exception for their $1.50 hotdog combo. 

It's such a steal—I can’t not get it, she used to say. She was always thriftier than me.

If she were here, she would have hated that I ordered for a family of five, but she would have loved that there would be leftovers. 

Leftovers taste better because the fridge has some kind of microbes that add to the flavor, she once said, to which I rolled my eyes. 

*

The apartment is a mess when I get home. Mom keeps nagging me about hiring a cleaner on Craigslist. I told her no one uses Craigslist anymore, and it’s embarrassing to hire someone to clean a studio apartment smaller than some people’s walk-in closets. 

Nikki was always the neater one. She used to write every single chore we had to do in a planner, highlighting hers in yellow once she was done, and highlighting mine in pink. 

I sink into the couch and skim over her beloved, black book that only has pink highlights nowadays. 

Open the box in the closet, written on today’s date, smudged by pink tint. Same for the last two months. I flip the pages forward and find ones not highlighted yet on the same exact day every month. 

I have no recollection of what it entails. This must be what the pill erased. 

Part of me wants to wait until next month to find out, but I just drank a whole bottle of soju by myself, and drunk-me is hard to convince to do sensible things. 

Besides, the only closet in the apartment across the room is already open, and barely buried under a pile of dirty clothes is a red shoe box, bright and inviting. I sit cross legged on the floor, hand hovering over it, but the contemplation is brief; I practically tear through the cardboard. There’s an old-fashioned, portable DVD player in it, one like Mom gifted me to use for long road trips as a kid. 

I press play, and the first thing I see is Nikki in a white dress, walking down the aisle to “Unchained Melody.” Her hair was long and dark. This was before she got sick. Before our lives were forever changed. She was smiling and almost laughing, like she couldn’t believe we were about to do something crazy. When she reached me in my navy suit, I kissed her on the lips, and she kissed me back, fiercely, teary. The officiant, someone I don’t recognize—someone we probably found on the internet—laughed, and said, “you’re not supposed to do that yet.” But it didn’t look like we cared, because we kissed again before he even started the ceremony, and again when he said, “I now pronounce you, wife and wife.”

We danced and sang and danced some more. It looked ridiculous how in love we were. It looked boundless.

I clutch my chest, a strangled whimper escaping from my mouth as the screen turns black. My heart is full and shattered and happy and devastated. I wish I could go back to that day. I wish I could relive it again. 

I find a small, tin container inside the box and immediately know the contents of it by the muted clanging sound they make when shaken. Take me, the label reads. 

I pocket a pill and shrug on a jacket. 

The metro station is only ten minutes from here.