Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.
When I was around seventeen, we didn’t lose my father, but we lost the man I had grown up with. I’m sure most of you in the forum will understand. I was thinking about him when I decided to post here, because it won’t be a usual share. There is someone I need to reach, and I think my dad, any version of him, would want me to try. I don’t know if they’ll see this, scrolling through a random forum for Alzheimer’s. It’ll probably get taken down — flagged as just another shitpost. But if they, or you maybe, are anything like me, you’ll be desperate for answers, for an explanation that the doctors couldn’t give you. Maybe you’ll make a better choice if you know. Forum Mods, if you’re reading this too, please keep my post up for a little longer. I have to start from the beginning, because it was a normal day and I bet it was a normal day for you too.
It was half past eight on a Monday, and I was running late. I was known for being late as well as scatter-minded and it was an image I had been trying to combat since I was a young girl. However, that didn’t change the fact that I had already missed the 8:30 train and the 8:20 one before that. I stood on the platform with the usual suspects of businessmen and middle-aged moms and a few highschoolers, also seemingly late, with a bruise-eyed emptiness about them. I bounced on my heels and checked my watch every few minutes. I had been given two warnings so far about tardiness at my office job and while I wasn’t exactly thrilled about quality control work I was less thrilled about the prospect of being fired.
I texted my workplace friend about covering for me and I checked my watch again. The watch was a bulky thing with a round, handsome face, and a worn leather strap. My father had given it to me right before the Alzheimer set in. Most of you have probably seen the process up close. They say it creeps up on you. That might be true. But it’s also like a train going 100 mph that hits you before you hear it.
That was how I remembered the morning: thinking about Monday and work and my father’s watch, which kept ticking much slower than I would have liked. Maybe things would have been different if my work friend had texted me back faster, or if I had woken up earlier, or if I hadn’t bothered to wake up and go to work at all that morning.
I was about to look down at my watch again when someone grabbed my wrist. I swung around to have a go at them, or the very least pull away from the stranger manhandling me on a public platform.
I hesitated. It was an old woman. She was small with iron gray hair swept back into a tidy bun and a hunched back with wide, heavyset shoulders. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles, and she had clear blue eyes that struck me as somewhat attractive and open.
Her hand was cool and wrapped firmly around my wrist. She smiled mildly and I scrunched my nose as the scent of something like chlorine hit me over the head. It was a saturated sharp chemical smell.
Created by: Danny Ingrassia
The old woman excused herself in the same tidy manner as her look. Then she asked me, “May I borrow some of your time?” I frowned, as I suspected she was about to break out a bible and start a pitch for Jesus Christ or some new age church of mineral oil or incense or paying them money.
I drew back and said, “I’m sorry.” I tried explaining I had to get to work and glanced at my watch but she still held my hand in her grip. The old woman said it wouldn’t take long at all and I wavered. Her voice was friendly, high pitched, and reminded me of a cricket. The chemical smell funneled through my system, and I tried to politely hold my breath while we spoke. I checked if anyone there noticed me being accosted by the elderly, but no one even batted an eye in our direction. I tried to cover my bases: was she selling something? Was bitcoin involved? Did she have a garage full of leggings I needed to know about?
She laughed and shook her head. Not that wasn’t it, she was looking for someone, she said, and could use help.
I weighed my options: Helping the elderly versus avoiding the newest train platform-based scam, I guess. I met her syrupy blue gaze. “Just looking for someone?” I said and nodded. “Alright. Sure.”
Did you nod too? Or do they need you to say it out loud? I think about that sometimes, if it mattered. Her smile grew wide then. She released my wrist, and I swore a popping sound erupted and sent a shiver down my spine. The train whooshed onto the platform. When I turned to tell the old lady that I would have to help her after work or something, she was gone.
I sniffed and rubbed my wrist before hurrying aboard my morning train and trying not to dwell on it. It was Boston; sometimes weird people talked to you, and you just had to shake it off and keep going about your business.
At the time, I hoped to forget about her and get to work without being noticed or reprimanded again.
#
Two months into December, and I had a head cold. I hadn’t been able to breathe out of my left nostril since the day before and I was close to writing it a “Missing You” Hallmark Card covered in little hearts and crying emojis.
Cold sheets of slushy rain beat against the city, and it was just my luck that I needed to help my roommate move out. She had finally decided to take the next step with her boyfriend and move in with him, despite the old pizza crust smell and missing fire escape at his place. But he did have both a car and a Netflix account.
I was happy for her up until I helped her move a Queen-size mattress in the pouring ice-rain and woke up the next day with the feeling of a balloon inflating in my sinuses.
I went to work all the same in an effort to make management get off my back about previous absences. The world was a slow-motion mess of Dayquil and painkillers by the time I was able to head home. I produced Kleenex after Kleenex out of my purse, like a magic trick where no one was impressed by.
Created by: Danny Ingrassia
I was rocking gently back and forth on the train, Kleenex in hand, when my head pounded, and my nose cleared up for just a moment. I would have punched the air in victory if not for the sharp scent of chlorine that washed over me.
The uncomfortable, sterile smell that reminded me of charged air before a storm. My eyes darted left and right to check if anyone had noticed, but the train was filled with pencil-skirted ladies on their phones, school children with iPads, and a homeless man softly snoring in one of the seats.
I massaged the bridge of my nose and hurried the rest of the way home. I was surely too sick to be cognizant and must be becoming slightly delirious.
Slipping into my now one-person apartment, I ate canned noodle soup and tucked myself to sleep in my thickest sweatpants and sweater. It should have been over then.
I had dreams, and not any type of dreams I had ever had before. Dark shadows shifted and oozed under me, bright neon colors popped in my vision, stars exploded left and right, and nonsense voices babbled in the distance. I grasped for something in the dream I couldn’t hold and then the scent of chemicals came wafting through my head space. I unclenched somewhere deep inside of myself, and everything went blank.
There was no proper way to describe it. Maybe, like letting go of a kite and watching it sail away with the wind. I let go of thousands of jumbled images and sounds, and a pale nothingness folded in around me from every direction. I blinked once, and then I was staring at the night sky.
It was hard to process, and harder to come to grips with the cold air and the crescent moon up above. My muscles complained, but besides that, my body was limber, strong, and I could breathe again.
I inhaled through both nostrils and took my time sitting up. I was in some sort of field. I gawked at empty dirt rows and almost pinched myself when I could barely make out the city lights in the distance.
I hadn’t left Boston in months, and I didn’t remember getting off my couch that night. Or getting a ride. Or walking. Or bundling myself up in my heavy pink coat and lying down in a field.
My hands tingled and dirt covered my knees and palms. Apparently, I had been doing something. I searched myself for a moment and was relieved to find no injuries, but less excited to find no clues either. My coat pockets were empty. All I knew was that I was in a field, and I wasn’t sick anymore.
I sniffed the air for chlorine, but there was nothing but a faint winter chill.
If you’re like me, maybe you dismissed it too. Maybe you drank a little too much at a karaoke party or experimented with one of those diets that’s all fermented foods and homemade basement teas or went too hard on cold medicine like me. It’s only one night. And what was one night? I stood and walked toward the city lights. It was a long walk, and I went back and forth in my head on whether to take myself to the hospital and ask about sleepwalking disorders. On the one hand, this was concerning to say the least.
On the other hand, I remembered my father’s long struggle with inpatient care, his empty gaze as nurses talked to him in gentle tones and wheeled him around the halls. I remembered the shiny, unshed tears as he seemed to lose my face and then my mom’s face and birthdays and places and names before that, like party balloons being popped. It made me nauseous just thinking about the hospital smell. This had only been one night.
Just one blank night didn’t mean anything.
I ended up finding change in the back pocket of my jeans and taking the six-a.m. bus home from the Dedham area all the way to my apartment. I didn’t sleep well for days after that.
#
I chalked the first time up to a weird combination of flu medicine, stress at work, and maybe even losing my roommate that week. For a while it seemed like a dream that someone else had, something you might read about on the news or tell as a funny story at a party. For a while.
It was February when the feeling crept in. I couldn’t explain it, but I started checking hallways before I turned the corner and examining strangers’ faces twice if they sat next to me. I put bowls of water by my front door so I might step in them and wake myself up if I started sleepwalking again.
Or perhaps someone else would step in them on their way in. I tried not to dwell on that last thought, no matter how many times it nagged at me.
There was a sensation of sickness in my gut, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It was February, and I was sitting on my couch watching a reality TV show my mom recommended, and just like before, something unclenched.
The kite was released. There was an absolute nothingness so fine that I could have threaded my fingers through it. I grappled, fumbling within myself for a split second, and then went under.
I blinked once, twice, and I was standing in the grocery store holding an egg carton and practically gagging on the chlorine stench lodged in the roof of my mouth. I dropped the eggs to the floor, and they splattered like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
My chest heaved and I tore at my coat I didn’t remember putting on. Several shoppers stopped and looked my way as I leaned on my cart for support. The cart was completely filled with cartons of eggs.
I ran outside, only to find I was just a few blocks from my apartment building. I sprinted home. When I tripped up my stairs, wheezing and eyes streaming, there was a single spilled bowl of water on the floor.
I dropped to my knees and shook as I looked at it. Something had been in my apartment. Or else I had kicked it myself during the weird trance.
But it didn’t matter either way. I couldn’t remember.
#
I finally went to the doctor with a complaint of memory problems. My mom came with me, and we met with a neurologist with Hollywood-styled hair and a busy tie like carpet at a bowling alley. He checked my pupil dilation with a flashlight and had me track objects with my eyes. He tested my reflexes and had me answer questions and repeat colors and numbers in certain orders.
My mom glanced at me every few minutes. She didn’t say anything, but I could read the thoughts on her face: it’s got her too.
Maybe my mom thought she was cursed. After a few days, all my tests came back negative for any brain abnormalities, and she exhaled. I didn’t.
It got worse from there. I would wake up downtown holding an umbrella I didn’t own, wake up with leaves and sticks in my hair, be walking down the street one second and then be in a completely different part of town on a park swing the next.
I started putting more bowls of water around my house, adding bells and stacks of books and even a few stray mouse traps around the windows—one of which actually caught a mouse. Most nights there was nothing but gnawing silence, and I waited and waited for the smell of chlorine.
I stared fixedly up at my dark ceiling and waited. It was early April when it happened, I heard the bell: the silver chime with all my worst fears and deepest anxieties pressed to it. I turned over in bed to grasp for my phone or a baseball bat or anything at all.
But then, I unclenched. The world popped, and the nothingness took hold with a profound swallowing sensation.
I blinked. I was standing on the top of a hotel building with cars honking down below, and a fire exit open behind me. I looked down. I was holding a TV antenna in one hand and a spoon in the other. I threw them to the ground, and turned in circles like it might be there, lingering. I was ready to ring its neck. I had a life, I had a future, plans, and I hadn’t agreed to this. Breathing hard, I remembered, though, that maybe I had. That smell, the same as pools and airplanes right when you get off, and the same as the old woman on the train platform.
I went back to the same platform that night and studied commuter’s passing faces one by one like she might be there. I had nothing else to go off of, but no one else to turn to either — I was alone with the weird chemical smell and empty hours, and my life felt see-through, a dummy version of the real thing. I would do anything to make it real again.
#
A few weeks after that, I quit my job. I hated the endless spreadsheets and conference calls and management deadlines, so it wasn’t much of a loss. But everyone I knew asked, “What’s next?” with big, eager smiles, and I stopped returning their calls after a while.
I stopped sleeping. I started prowling the streets like a cramped zoo animal. It was late spring by then, and the city was stinking with hot bodies and burning trash and my own violent questions brewing under the surface.
What’s happening to me? I wanted to scream at someone, but I didn’t want to have to return to the hospital. Why me?
There were no answers, only the endless strips of pavement and my red converse slapping against them. Columbia Road: two young boys biked past with matching helmets and chewing gum that they blew into fat, pink bubbles. Washington Street: a cop pulled over a woman with enormous glasses and a hard look on her face as she got out of her vehicle.
Egleston: a crowded farmers market with people in overalls selling backyard kimchi and a man with a beard down to his waist selling gourmet chocolates in royal blue boxes. Noisy, busy, yelling, laughing people that streamed past me and barely stopped to look at my bloodshot eyes and trembling hands.
I was well past the farmers market on the tenth day of my endless trek when I heard it. A high, cricket voice that carried. She spoke in a brisk tone and held up a new-looking iPhone. Maybe she had job too, a life, probably.
Everything moved in slow motion, jerky and fast all at once. One second I was staring at an old woman with pleasing blue eyes, and the next I had her pinned up against the nearest wall with my forearm.
She shouted “police!” without even really looking at me.
I could have throttled her right there and then, but I needed answers. In the calmest voice I could, I asked her to reverse what she’d done. To take it back. I needed her to make me normal again.
Her expression turned to something ugly, an animal snarl, and she still didn’t look at me, wouldn’t, maybe. That wasn’t how it worked, she told me. That’s not how it went.
I never got to shake her like I wanted to, just enough to make the bones jangle. The smell of chlorine slithered through me, and I started to cough. I clung to the moment, I had never needed to hold on so badly, but the unclasping began. Gasping for every breath, pushing her hard enough to bruise, I might’ve started to beg.
The old woman looked blankly at me, but with something that I might have classified as pity. Or despair. “Give it to someone else,” she told me. “Pass it off.”
#
I woke up in an elementary school closet the next day with a TV playing static inches from my nose. I stayed there for a long time afterward, like it might not get me if I hid for long enough, but that wasn’t how it worked. I never did see the old woman again. There’s a chance she left the city. There’s a chance, one that’s hard to admit to myself, that I gave up after that. I still walked the streets, there was nothing else to do but walk and wake and listen, but my rent was due and my sister was calling daily and my mom—God, my poor mom.
My hair fell out in clumps. I kept wiggling one of my back teeth as it seemed to have come loose. I had no idea what I had been doing for days by then. No matter how many traps I set, it was always the same: crashing bowls and ringing bells and then nothing. Expansive, hungry nothing.
I found him the day after I woke up nearly nude in the ocean. How long had I been swimming? I couldn’t stand it. How far was it willing to go? In the end, I didn’t want to find out who, or what, it was looking for.
I stood on a train station platform and looked at my watch. I had stopped winding it and it had stopped ticking. I bounced on my heels. A man in his very early twenties stood next to me. The young man smelled strongly of aftershave, and his suit seemed to swim around him despite it being obviously tailored. He had coiffed, golden hair, and nervous eyes that darted back and forth over the platform. Maybe you’re the one reading this right now, but, selfishly, I hope not. I hope you passed it off already. Either way, I am sorry. It was truly nothing personal. You might even get lucky and find another way, but here is how it went for me.
The young man looked down at his phone and I grabbed his wrist. “Excuse me,” I said. You’ll want to be polite. “Can I ask you a question?” You’ll want to smile and look into their eyes. Then, most importantly, you ask to borrow some of their time.
