She Faked Amnesia I Actually Forgot

Every three months, Vickys memory would reset.

She would loop back to the day she hated me most. She would break my hand, shattering my fingers over and over again to avenge her adopted son. Then, beneath a canopy of fireflies, she would get down on one knee, ask me to marry her, and the clock would reset.

I played my part in our tragedy on repeat, endlessly waiting for the day her memory would finally stick.

Until I accidentally overheard her talking with her friends.

"Vic, how much longer are you going to keep up this act?" a woman's voice drifted through the heavy mahogany door of the VIP lounge.

"What memory reset?" Vicky scoffed, the ice in her voice unmistakable. "Only an idiot like Channing would buy that. Every time, he drops to his knees, begging us to play along, still holding onto this delusional fantasy that we're actually going to get married."

"You're due for another 'amnesia' episode in three days, right? What is this, round nine?"

"Round nine."

Vickys low, sophisticated drawl was terrifyingly clear. "Years ago, that cheap street food he brought home gave Tim food poisoning and ruined his eighteenth birthday party. This is his penance."

Through the crack in the door, I saw her reach out, her manicured fingers gently ruffling Tim's hair. "Nobody messes with my boy."

Hearing that gentle, maternal tone layered over such staggering cruelty, I felt a physical tearing in my chest.

All this time. My blind, bleeding devotion had been nothing but a punchline in her elaborate game of revenge.

I wiped the wetness from my face, steadying my breathing, and summoned The System in the quiet darkness of my mind.

The previous negotiation is void, I thought, my internal voice deadened. In three days, this progression task will fail. Please wipe every memory I have of Vicky.

...

[Host, are you entirely certain?] The Systems metaphysical voice echoed, thrumming against my temples.

Before I could answer, the conversation in the lounge picked up again.

"I heard if Channings hand gets broken one more time, the nerve damage will be permanent. Hell never hold a paintbrush again," someone murmured, their tone edged with hesitation. "Vic... don't you think he's been punished enough?"

Vicky paused. The ruby liquid in her wine glass stopped swirling. Her lips pressed into a hard, unforgiving line.

Beside her, Tim looked down, tracing the face of his custom Patek Philippe watch. "I love the watch you got me for my eighteenth, Mom," he said softly, his voice carrying that fragile, wounded cadence he had perfected. "A coming-of-age party is just a formality anyway. It doesn't matter that I didn't get one..."

Every word was designed to sound selfless; every word was soaked in calculated regret.

Vickys face darkened instantly. She kicked the woman who had spoken right in the shin, her voice cracking like a whip. "Did I ask for your opinion?"

She took Tims delicate hand in both of hers, cradling it like porcelain. "Even if Channing's hand is crippled for good, it wouldn't make up for ruining Tims milestone. A guy who slings hash in a food truck thinking he can be some great artist? Hes a stray mutt staring at the moon. Pure delusion."

Her soft, mocking scoff drove a thousand jagged splinters directly into my heart.

I remembered the time I lost the national gallery competition. I had been ready to throw my canvases in the dumpster, ready to give up on my dream. It was Vicky who had held me.

She had looked into my eyes and called me her wild thistle. She said I was resilient, that no matter how hard the concrete, I would always break through and bloom.

But it was all a lie. A beautiful, saccharine lie spun to keep the stray mutt on his leash.

A chorus of sycophantic laughter erupted inside the room.

"You have to admit though, Channings got some talent," someone chimed in. "If Vic hadn't paid off the judges before the competition, he actually would have taken first place."

A high-pitched ringing consumed my ears. My fingers began to tremble violently.

I had poured my soul into that gallery submission. I had bled onto that canvas, fueled by the most desperate, burning hope. And with a single phone call, Vicky had crushed it to dust.

Are the dreams of the poor really that cheap to them? Are we just dirt for them to wipe their designer shoes on?

I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms. My heart felt as though it were being squeezed by a massive, unseen fist. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't pull air into my lungs.

The System asked again.

[Host, are you certain you wish to erase your memories?]

[Previously, you traded ten years of your own lifespan just to extend the mission timer. Are you truly abandoning it now?]

A bitter, acidic taste flooded my mouth.

A month ago, The System had warned me my time was running out. The penalty for failing the mission was total memory erasure regarding Vicky. I hadn't wanted to forget her. I hadn't wanted to lose the ghost of the woman I loved. So, I traded a decade of my life, begging The System on my knees. I begged for days until it finally conceded.

And for what? The love I was killing myself to protect was a funhouse mirror. A grotesque prank.

It was hilariously pathetic.

I closed my eyes, letting the last scalding tears slip down my cheeks into the dark.

I'm certain.

Just then, the phone in my pocket vibrated frantically.

"Channing! It's your dad. Somethings gone wrong!"

End-stage renal disease.

The words on the medical chart burned my retinas.

I choked back a sob, looking through the glass at my fathers pale, sunken face. For the last few years, I had been so entirely consumed by Vickyby her moods, her "amnesia," her needsthat I had completely missed the shadow of death creeping over my father.

Guilt and regret hit me like a tidal wave, pulling me under.

The tears I thought I had exhausted fell in heavy, relentless drops, crinkling the sterile white paper of his diagnosis.

By the time I reached the billing department, my eyes were swollen shut. And when I checked the balance on my banking appa number I could count on one handthe floor seemed to drop out from beneath me.

The billing clerk sighed, tapping her acrylic nails against the counter, her gaze heavy with judgment.

"Is there any way..." I started, gripping my phone, my voice raw with humiliation. "Can I just..."

"Channing."

I turned. Vicky was stepping out of the elevator. She strode toward me, breathless, her tailored silk trench coat flowing behind her.

"I heard about your dad..."

Seeing my red, ruined eyes, she didn't hesitate. She pulled my freezing, trembling body into her arms.

"It's going to be okay. I'm here."

The warm embrace. The anchoring words.

It was always like this. She always appeared like a guardian angel at my most broken, desperate moments. When my food truck was rear-ended, when I couldn't make rentshe possessed this terrifying, psychic ability to drop from the sky exactly when I needed saving.

Growing up without a mother, I had possessed a hollow, aching desperation for a woman's unconditional warmth.

That was why, even after she had my hand broken, the moment she bent down and apologized, I caved. Even when she was cold, when she was cruel, she would inevitably return to nurse me back to health without a single complaint.

I chose to forgive her. I chose to fall in love with her.

A woman twelve years my senior. The intoxicating comfort of an older, sophisticated woman was like straight bourbonone sip and I was completely derailed. Drunk enough to lose my entire sense of direction.

"Mom!"

Tims voice sliced through the corridor.

Vicky instinctively shoved me away.

The physical rejection was a bucket of ice water. I snapped entirely awake. A bitter, self-deprecating smile touched my lips. I had almost let myself sink back into her counterfeit sanctuary.

Pathetic.

Tim walked up, his eyes darting to the glowing screen of my phone, catching my bank balance. He gasped, his hand flying to his mouth.

"Oh my god, Channing, is that all you have left? Is the monthly allowance Mom gives you not enough?"

His voice wasn't a shout, but it carried perfectly down the quiet hospital hall. Heads turned. Nurses and passing patients stopped to stare.

In an instant, I was reduced to the wealthy older woman's kept boy. A sugar baby. The whispers started immediately.

Vicky frowned, her brow furrowing slightly, but she made absolutely no effort to correct him. Instead, she leaned in and whispered to me.

"He doesn't mean it like that, Channing... I'll talk to him at home. You know how sensitive he is. I can't scold him in public."

Right. To protect his fragile ego, I had to wear the badge of a male escort.

But of course. How could a stray mutt ever compare to the precious son she raised?

I looked at Vicky. For the first time, there was absolutely no warmth in my eyes.

"Give me fifty thousand dollars."

Vicky froze.

In all our years together, I had never asked her for a single cent. But if I was going to be publicly branded as her kept man, I might as well get paid for it. More importantly, I needed that money to keep my father breathing.

Her eyes darkened, a flash of aristocratic annoyance crossing her features. "Excuse me? What did you just say?"

"All those designer clothes and watches you tried to give me over the years, I never took them. Combined, theyre worth a hell of a lot more than fifty grand."

Vicky ground her teeth, her anger simmering just beneath her polished surface. "That is entirely different."

She was right. It was different.

When a master tosses a bone to a dog, it's charity. When the dog demands it, it's a transgression.

Tim stepped forward, gently touching Vicky's arm. Instantly, the tension drained from her body. She softened, a lioness pacified by her cub.

Tim turned to me and smiled. The contempt in his eyes was blindingly bright.

"Channing, Mom rushed out of the house. She didn't bring her black card. But I have five thousand in cash on me. Take it. It's a start."

He pulled a thick stack of bills from his designer messenger bag and grabbed my hand.

But the moment the money hit my palm, he dug his perfectly manicured nails violently into the bruised flesh of my knuckles.

I flinched in pain, instinctively jerking my hand back.

Tim let out a theatrical, piercing shriek and threw himself backward, crashing hard onto the linoleum floor.

The cash rained down around him like green confetti.

Tears welled in his eyes as he looked up at me, the picture of victimhood. "Channing... why did you push me? I just wanted to help you. I wasn't trying to humiliate you."

Vickys gaze instantly turned to absolute frost.

"Channing. Is this how you behave when you're begging for money?"

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she threw her hand up, cutting me off. "Don't even try. I know exactly what you're going to say. You're going to say he fell on his own."

I snapped my mouth shut, letting out a dry, hollow laugh.

This wasn't the first time Tim had framed me. And it wasn't the first time Vicky had chosen to believe him over me.

I had been so hopelessly stupid. So blinded by my belief in her love that I couldn't see the twisted, deeply inappropriate intimacy brewing between the two of them.

My face entirely numb, I knelt on the floor and began picking up the life-saving cash, bill by agonizing bill.

Suddenly, Vickys designer boot stepped squarely onto the back of my hand, pinning it to the floor. She stared down at me, a god looking at an insect.

"Apologize to him."

The soft rubber sole of her shoe ground the last remaining fragments of my dignity into the linoleum.

I surrendered to the nightmare.

"I'm sorry."

But Vicky wasn't satisfied. "If you're going to apologize, do it properly."

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I pulled myself up, only to drop both of my knees heavily onto the hard hospital floor.

I said it again. "I'm sorry."

I tilted my head up, my eyes dead as I looked at her. "Is that enough?"

Her chest heaved. She let out a heavy, dramatic sigh. Feigning exhaustion, she crouched down and began helping me gather the money.

"I know the news about your dad is devastating," she murmured, playing the benevolent savior once more. "But that is no excuse to take your anger out on Tim. Don't let it happen again."

"It won't," I whispered back.

Because there is no 'again.'

Vicky used the cash to pay the immediate deposit and shoved the rest into my jacket pocket. "Take me to see him."

My dad hated Vicky.

Despite her immense wealth, my father saw right through her. To him, she was a toxic, controlling woman playing games with his son. He had never once offered her a warm smile.

But today, he broke his own rule. He held Vickys hand, speaking to her in a weak, raspy voice for a long time.

I knew exactly what he was doing. He was entrusting me to her. He was terrified that when he died, I would be left utterly alone in the world.

An endless, corrosive sorrow ate at my chest. My throat felt packed with sand.

I didn't have the courage to tell a dying man that the woman holding his hand was a wolf wearing human skin.

I didn't blow up at Vicky. I couldn't afford to. I needed her money, and I needed her elite connections to secure a kidney donor.

That very night, she pulled strings and found a viable match. If the kidney arrived by the next afternoon, my father would live.

The next day, I waited. Every nerve in my body thrummed with frantic hope.

I waited through the bright morning. I waited through the afternoon. I waited until the sky outside the window bled into a bruised, dusky orange.

Vicky never showed up. The organ never arrived.

The dying light cast long shadows over my fathers sleeping face, making him look like an illusion that could evaporate at any second. The primal, suffocating terror of losing my only family gripped me by the throat.

With violently shaking hands, I dialed her number for the hundredth time.

Finally, the call connected.

But it wasn't Vicky. It was one of her friends.

Vicky, the woman holding the literal key to my father's life, had vanished for the entire day because Tim had come down with a "sudden, severe migraine."

She was at her estate, nursing him. While the clock ran out on my fathers kidney.

I lost my mind. I sprinted out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and tore through the city toward her sprawling estate.

I burst through the front doors, ignoring the sight of the two of them curled up intimately on the master bed. I lunged for the medical cooler abandoned in the corner of the room, grabbing the handle and bolting for the door.

I had thirty minutes. Thirty minutes to get this organ to the surgeon before the tissue died.

I barely made it out the front door when two of Vickys private security guards grabbed me, hauling me forcefully up the sweeping staircase and out onto the estate's third-story terrace.

Tim was standing on the wrong side of the wrought-iron balcony railing, sobbing hysterically.

Vicky's face was a mask of thunder. She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, violently yanking me toward the ledge.

"Look what you did! You barged in, and... and he was terrified you were going to get the wrong idea! Now he's suicidal!" she screamed. "Tell him you didn't misunderstand! Fix this!"

A manic, hysterical laugh ripped from my throat.

"Misunderstand what? That you two play mother and son in public but act like degenerate lovers behind closed doors?"

Smack.

A vicious backhand whipped across my face, the force of it snapping my head to the side.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Vicky hissed, her voice trembling with absolute rage, her eyes manic. "If he doesn't step back over that railing right now, you can forget about taking that cooler anywhere. And I'll personally ensure no surgeon in this state touches your father."

I stared at her, utterly paralyzed. The sheer, immovable cruelty in her eyes was terrifying.

She had already let the organ sit for hours just to soothe a headache. I knew, with sickening certainty, that she would let my father die just to prove a point.

My dad was waiting. He was dying.

I broke. I screamed it out.

"I misunderstood! You two are completely innocent! You're a beautiful, loving family!"

A flash of absolute triumph sparked in Tims tear-filled eyes.

He didn't step down immediately. He dragged it out, whining and clinging to the railing, wasting another excruciating five minutes before finally letting Vicky pull him to safety.

I swallowed the bile and the towering, apocalyptic hatred in my throat, grabbed the cooler, and raced back to the hospital.

I ran into the surgical ward, my lungs burning, only to be met by the transplant coordinator.

He looked at the time logs and shook his head.

The organ was no longer viable.

We had missed the window. By exactly the five minutes Tim had spent crying on the balcony.

I collapsed against the sterile wall, screaming until my vocal cords tore.

I stayed there until a courier arrived, handing me an impeccably wrapped, expensive gift box.

My phone buzzed. It was Vicky.

"Channing. Tims parents were my closest friends. I have to protect him," her voice was smooth, completely detached from the devastation she had just caused. "The kidney didn't work out. We'll just find another one."

I said nothing. I just breathed into the receiver.

She sighed, pivoting the conversation seamlessly. "You got the suit, right? Put it on tomorrow night. Meet me at our usual spot. I have something incredibly important to ask you."

And then it clicked.

Tomorrow was the three-month mark. The day of her ninth "memory reset." The day of her ninth proposal.

She had killed my father's chance at survival, and she still wanted to play her sick little game of pretend.

But I was done, Vicky. I wasn't playing anymore.

I didn't want your money.

And I sure as hell didn't want you.

The next day, I didn't show up. The custom-tailored tuxedo went straight into the hospital dumpster.

I was at the front desk, arranging to take my father home for hospice care, when Vickys friends ambushed me. They physically grabbed my arms, ignoring my protests, and dragged me out to a waiting town car.

"Vic has been waiting for hours! What is wrong with you?" one of them hissed. "Shes proposed so many times, maybe this is the time her memory actually stays! You can't give up now!"

When we arrived, the meadow was exactly as it had been eight times before. A sea of glowing, floating fireflies.

The first eight times I saw this, I had wept with pure joy. I had believed, with every fiber of my being, that I was Vicky's ultimate choice.

Now I knew I was just her favorite punching bag.

The glowing lights in the dark weren't romantic anymore. They made me physically nauseous.

I stood there, totally hollowed out, as Vicky, wearing the exact same white silk gown, recited the exact same vows she had memorized.

She opened the velvet box.

I raised my hand and slapped it away. The million-dollar diamond went flying into the tall grass.

Vicky froze, her perfectly rehearsed expression shattering. "Channing... you... you don't want to marry me?"

I looked at her, my eyes dead.

"Drop the act, Vicky"

Before I could finish, one of her friends came sprinting up the hill, staring at her phone in sheer panic. She looked at the screen, then shot a terrified glance at me.

Vicky, sensing the script was being ruined, kicked the friend in the leg. "Can't you see I'm in the middle of something? Whatever it is, handle it and get out!"

A cold, reptilian dread coiled in my gut.

I lunged forward and snatched the phone from the friend's hand.

My heart stopped beating.

The screen was playing a local news livestream. The camera was zoomed in on the roof of the hospital.

My father was standing on the ledge.

I turned and ran. I scrambled down the embankment, tearing through the brush to the highway, and threw myself in front of a passing cab.

In the backseat, my hands shook so violently I dropped my phone twice. I tried calling the home-care nurse who was supposed to be with him, but it went straight to voicemail. Frantic, I started typing furiously in the livestream's chat.

Dad, please get down... Dad, it's Channing...

A second later, I realized how stupid I was. He didn't have a phone. He couldn't read the chat.

I started tagging the streamer. Please. Tell him I'm coming. Tell him Channing is coming!

The streamer, a kid looking for clout, read my comment out loud and let out a cruel laugh.

"Oh, you're the son? Hey everyone, this is the kid! The guy on the ledge is jumping because of his son! Turns out his boy is a high-end gigolo for some rich lady. No wonder the old man is ashamed to be alive!"

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

My phone vibrated. It was the nurse.

"Channing! Oh god, Channing, get here now! Half an hour ago, some kid named Tim showed up. He told your dad that you were selling your body to pay the hospital bills. Your dad... he thinks he ruined your life. He thinks he's setting you free..."

I gripped the phone until the glass cracked beneath my thumb. The hatred inside me was so immense it threatened to rip my chest open.

I sprinted the last three blocks to the hospital, shoving past the police barricades.

I looked up just in time to hear a stranger in the crowd yell.

"Just jump already! Raising a whore for a son, you're a failure anyway!"

And then.

Crack.

The sound was deafening. Right in front of me, my father hit the pavement. A grotesque halo of crimson bloomed outward.

"NO!"

I threw myself onto the concrete, pulling his shattered body into my arms.

My tears fell like rain, mixing with the hot, thick blood pooling beneath him.

I looked up at the sea of cell phones recording us. I opened my mouth to scream, to beg for a doctor, but my vocal cords snapped. Only a harsh, jagged wheeze came out.

Please. Someone. Please save my dad.

[Host. The progression timer has expired. Your mission is officially a failure.] The Systems voice chimed, cold and absolute.

[Commencing memory wipe protocol regarding the subject: Vicky...]

Vicky had fully intended to follow Channing to the hospital, but her phone rang. It was Tim.

His head hurt again.

She hesitated for a fraction of a second, watching the taillights of Channing's cab fade into the night. Then, she turned her car around and drove back to the estate.

Tim was inconsolable. He clung to her, whining until she finally gave in and laid down beside him, letting him fall asleep against her chest.

She slept until noon the next day.

When she finally woke up, she checked her phone. The group chat with her friends was active.

"Is Vic doing the whole 'memory reset' thing again today?"

Vicky frowned, her thumb hovering over the screen for a long time.

It wasn't until Tim shifted beside her, murmuring in his sleep, that she finally typed a single letter.

"Y."

She got out of bed, went through her morning skincare routine, and exactly like the eight times prior, she made the call to her security detail. The order was simple: find Channing and break his hand.

But this time, a strange, suffocating anxiety gripped her ribs. She couldn't sit still.

Two hours later, her head of security called back.

"Ms. Vic Channing is gone."