"I hate you! Don't ever fucking talk to me again!" The rage in her voice pierced his thoughts.
Sirens flashed red and blue in the night, lights bounced across his mind as the scenery changed, now he was at a coffee shop he couldn't quite name. He looked up, someone was taking a sip of their drink, but he couldn't make out their face. All he could make out was static, a static that consumed the entirety of the world around him, and when it was gone he found himself in a…where was he? Lights were flashing, people were dancing, music was blaring. Music he couldn't quite understand the words to, although he was sure he had heard the song somewhere before the melody remained elusive. He tried surveying the stage to try and find the name of the band, but he felt someone grab his hand.
"Come on why don't we go outside?" Again he couldn't make out their face, the voice was female, and had a comforting familiarity about it, but at the same time it sounded oddly foreign, as though it belonged to a complete stranger. He followed them to the door leading to the outside patio, noticing that among the crowds the only face that he couldn't see was the one belonging to the woman he was following.
As they walked outside, he found himself in strange new surroundings. He was in someone's house. A house he didn't recognize, but a house he was sure he had been in before. The walls were decorated with posters, a bookshelf in the corner was covered in books that had no titles, the television in in the middle of the wall was on, but whatever was playing he couldn't make out. He looked down at himself and found even the shirt had some form of indecipherable hieroglyphics on it now. The girl was sitting next to him, although as time went by she appeared less like a girl and more of a vague blur. Something about that filled him with overwhelming anxiety, something about the disappearance of her form scared him, so he tried to reach out and hold her. He felt like if he could just hold her then it would keep her form together, he felt like if he could hold her it would keep him together. When he wrapped his arms together though, he found they were empty. Any traces of the girl had disappeared, and soon the world around him followed.
With the scenery of his mind gone, there was nothing left keeping Bernard Daniels anchored in his dreams. In the moment of waking up, he was hit with an alarming sense of despair. He tried desperately to fall back asleep, to go back to those warm feelings that the dream had given him, but he knew it was no use. With a strong sense of reluctance, the young man rose out of bed, a single mattress on the floor of a room that reflected a sincere sense of apathy in its occupant. Various articles of clothing were strewn across the floor, while the closet opposite his bed was mostly filled with dirty laundry and two jackets. Near the foot of the bed was a cardboard box filled with random books, along with his phone and phone charger. A single table was set up near him, with old dishes and a mostly empty cup of ramen noodles. While the room was a mess, there was a rather depressing sense of emptiness about the room, a feeling of loneliness that Bernard couldn't quite figure out. Attempting to put it out of his mind, Bernard picked up his cellphone and a pack of cigarettes from the table and went to the balcony of his apartment.
"I think I fell in love with the girl I dreamt about last night….I hate those kinds of dreams, when I feel happy and I'm with some beautiful girl, and then I wake up." Bernard typed into the memo app on his phone. "I don't hate the dreams themselves, it's the waking up that I hate. The feeling of some warm, beautiful reality just being ripped away from me, the feeling that all that happiness was so brief and fleeting and there's no way to go back to it because it never fucking existed. Then I wake up and I'm just here…just sort of existing., and it pales in comparison to something that never truly existed. There's some kind of mysterious texture to those kinds of dreams, something that I don't think I've ever felt in the real world….Sometimes I just wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. I wish I could remember more about it, everything came in brief flashes, but it all felt so real…All I can really remember was a girl."
Bernard saved the entry, and labelled it Dream Journal No.1. He had been meaning to record his dreams for awhile now, after reading some internet article about lucid dreams and the astral plane and that kinda shit. It struck a chord with him, feeling lost in his own life was something he had become painfully used to, and any means of escaping the world around him was very appealing. Now that he had written down as much as he could, Bernard lit up a cigarette and stared off into the cityscape in front of him. Even though it was early spring, the sun was beating down like an oppressive tyrant, shining off the ugly pastel pain of the buildings around him and creating a harsh brightness that made Bernard feel quite unhappy. Walking down the streets the old buildings and unforgiving sun made him feel like he was in his own special kind of Hell, one he could never escape from no matter how hard he tried. He lived in a district of Los Angeles near the beach, while it was the place he had grown up he hated it with a passion. He had spent the last two years of his life drifting from place to place, crashing on couches and renting rooms where he could afford them, until he ran out of money and wound up renting a room with a close friend. The shame of coming back was almost enough to kill him, especially since he made sure to give a big "Fuck You!" to everyone he used to hang out with. As he finished his cigarette, a sudden realization came to him, he had forgotten the significance of the day, for some reason.
"I was supposed to register for college classes today, wasn't I?" With that realization Bernard left his apartment, something about it felt quite urgent, a feeling of unknown priority he rarely ever felt these days.
A young woman sat on a grey hound bus, alone and weary. The last of her tears had dried up awhile ago, and now all she could do was stare into the black abyss of the big empty sky. The farmlands in between Oregon and California seemed to stretch on forever and ever, and every time she thought about where she was going she wanted to turn back. There was no turning back though, there was no home to go to. She could never forgive him, not again. Not again and again and again. It was too fucking much for her to handle.
"Fucking asshole" Was the conclusive thought she came to.
She decided not to think about him anymore, nor the home she had left behind. She slipped in her earbuds, and played a song that….That should have warned her. She realized, remembering the first real fight they had gotten. Sighing in frustration she turned on the song "Waste of Paint" and did the best she could to disassociate from the wreckage of her failed relationship.
Bernard returned home drunk…Drunk wasn't the right word for it, he was completely wasted, stumbling and slurring, a complete mess of a human being in fact. He walked along the sidewalk, nearly slipping half a dozen times on the frozen sidewalk, an unwanted ice skating rink that made getting anywhere a fucking hazard, to say the least. He had been piecing together an apology in his head the whole walk home, but when he got home and stepped into his room, he found out there really wasn't any point. The room was now half empty, all traces of her were gone, completely. On the bed was a note, which simply said "Goodbye." He fell on the bed and started to cry, uncontrollably. In fact it was probably the most he had cried since he was a small child. So it was that Bernard Daniels had to return home, the home he had tried so hard to escape.
It was three weeks after this occurrence that Ken Rydell returned home from work, he had an early day that today, and he wanted to invite his buddy Bernie out to a bar, to cheer him up. Without thinking about it he casually opened the door to Bernard's room…and found him standing on a chair with a noose tied around his neck.
"Oh goddammit dude! No! Fuck no!" It was an automatic response "What the fuck are you doing man!?" Ken knew the situation probably called for delicacy, but he was in no mood to sugarcoat anything.
Bernard wanted to explain himself rationally, wanted to tell his friend that it was the end of the line for him, that he couldn't live without her. The words just didn't come to him. He had written it all down so nicely in a note that was sitting on his table, next to an empty bottle of whiskey and another bottle that was only half empty. Instead he decided to let his friend cut the noose off him, and he stepped off the chair and sat on it instead. Ken decided he needed a drink, he took the remaining whiskey and drank a bit of it. Then he picked up the suicide note Bernard had written, and without reading it crumpled it up and threw it to the side. Ken was 27, a few years older than Bernard. For this reason he treated him like a younger brother and tried to look out for him. When he needed a place to stay, Ken made it happen. It wasn't just the age difference that set them apart, Ken was much more together than Bernard. There was a sense of stability he had that his young friend clearly lacked, and as the days after his break up went by, that instability became more and more apparent in Bernard.
"So..what happened dude? I know your break up really fucked you up man but…What the fuck man? I mean haven't you two broken up before?" Ken took another sip of whiskey, for good measure and good advice.
"It's…different this time…" The words came slowly, they were hollow and hopeless "I..went to Portfolio's to try and talk to her, to try and fix things…She was there but…she didn't recognize me. At first I thought it was deliberate but there was something so real about it. I tried talking to her but it just…it wasn't right…I don't know what to do, it's like…there's nothing left." Bernard grabbed the bottle of whiskey from his friend, took another drink, and laid his head down on his lap.
"Ahh shit dude….Ok I know what happened, but you're not gonna like it…Funny enough I had a friend do this while you were up North…So there's this company right? They're not all that public, in fact I'm pretty sure the only way to find them and make appointments is through the dark web. From what I understand, they have a way of completely erasing someone from your mind. No memories, no feelings, nothing. It sounds like bullshit at first but from what I've seen it really works. Then they send out these weird emails telling all your friends and stuff not to mention so and so to whoever gets the treatment done. They say it might cause a nervous breakdown or something." Ken decided to go through his phone and check for the message he had gotten regarding his old friend, and show it to Bernard, for evidence.
"She…fucking erased me? Like everything is just gone?" Bernard choked, taking another swig of whiskey.
"I mean…that's what it seems like to me man. I tell you what though, you probably couldn't afford it on your own, buuuut since your my friend and I love you and I don't want you to friggin kill yourself I'll pay for you to do it too. No more heartbreak or depression, you can forget all about Margaret and get on with your life.' The offer was quite sincere, wanted his friend to be happy and move on, and if this was how to do it so be it. WIith a final shot of whiskey, Bernard agreed, then passed out.
Author's notes: Sooo..yeah this is the first thing I've wroted/submitted in a long ass time. I don't even really know if anyone's gonna read this because the margin of Eternal Sunshine fans who are also into fan fiction of it seems pretty fucking slim…Still, this story is mostly being wroted because it's a retelling of a relationship that has seriously fucked me up and this move has relevance…Really it has nothing to do with Joel and Clementine it just takes place in a world where the ability to erase your memories of someone is a thing, because that seems such a poignant and bittersweet construct that I had to write my own story…Enjoy?
