On the outskirts of Smallville, a thirty year old man sat alone in his living room and wept for his lost wife and child. It was a year to the day since they both died, though his wife was lost before that. Perhaps long before – he'd never quite managed to pinpoint the beginning of her descent into madness.
A photo album lay across his lap, open at a collection of photos of the child. Meeting her grandparents for the first time, sitting on her mother's knee, having a bath in the sink. That was something she hadn't quite lived long enough to outgrow.
Every day since their deaths had been painful, so it seemed odd that today was particularly bad. But today was an event, a marking that couldn't be ignored. He remembered back to the millennium celebrations. Sarah had wanted to make a big deal out of it, but Joe'd thought it stupid because it was just a marking of time…
Any excuse for a celebration, eh?
There was a knocking on the door and that reminded of him of that day exactly a year ago because he'd had to let Sheriff Adams in and…
They weren't going away. The police were here again and they were going to come in and find them both again. He'd tell them he hadn't known who to call, because ambulance men couldn't save infants who'd been suffocated or women who'd slashed their throats. No, there had been no 'cure' for those things a year ago and wasn't now.
"Anybody home?" shouted the knocker. If there was, they'd have answered by now, thought Joe, turning the page of his photo album. His family's photo album, he corrected himself.
There was a noise at the window and Joe dropped the album with the fright it gave him. The knocker had become the tapper, tapping at the window and grinning at him.
"Hey Joe – let me in, would ya?" the tapper shouted. Joe could swear he recognised the face – and the tapper knew his name, after all – but couldn't quite place it. Three voices spoke up in his mind almost at once.
He's the knocker. He's the tapper. He's the shouter.
Joe tried to call out, to tell the shouter to leave him alone. No visitors today. Not today. The words got trapped in his throat the first time. He tried again.
"Go away," he called, his hands making fists and tears rolling down his cheeks. The shouter raised his hands in mock surrender then vanished from the window. Joe breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment he feared the man was just going to remain outside forever; knocking, tapping and shouting for all time.
A voice spoke up in his head - nowhere for it to get trapped up there. Maybe he's gone round the back. Maybe he'll start knocking on the back door, tapping on the kitchen window and premiering Shouter 2: The Return of The Shouter. He got out of the chair for the first time in hours to check.
There was no sign of him at the kitchen window. No sign of anyone at all. He decided he'd better check to see if the kitchen door was locked. He was always forgetting that – there were no one year markings of the last time he'd left the door unlocked. He tried the handle and found that this time it was locked after all.
"No use having a door locked if someone's already inside," someone shouted from the living room. The Shouter. But how had he gotten in? Had he left the front door unlocked? He couldn't remember ever having done that before, though one time was all it took.
Joe walked back into the living room and there indeed was The Shouter, lying up on the couch. He wore a long black trench coat and dark denims underneath that. A pair of white trainers ruined the look much like they were presently ruining Joe's couch. Shouter looked to be in his fifties and his hair was a dark shade of grey. In his large hands was the photo album. Shouter was flicking through it, a look of delight on his face.
"H-how did you get in here?" asked Joe. He almost added 'Shouter' to the question. Shouter looked up from the album and raised his eyebrows, a look of childlike innocence on his face.
"You know what my parents used to tell me about Santa Claus? Of course not, anyway, there was no chimney at our house. So I asked 'em, I asked 'em how Santa got in. 'Cause everyone knows he comes down the chimney, right? My dad tells me he has a magic key, one that lets him into any little boy or girl's house. But my mom, she tells me he just walks through the walls like a ghost, with ghost presents that somehow become solid by morning," said Shouter without shouting. From his pocket he pulled a tiny key and chuckled. "Since Santy didn't need his key, I borrowed it."
Joe felt dizzy. Shouter's voice, now that he was no longer shouting, seemed to be coming from some very far away place. He's not really here, thought Joe. I finally went crazy.
"Who are you?" he asked, wobbling on his feet. Shouter grinned, apparently amused by the question. He put the photo album down now, took his feet off the sofa and stood up, arms outstretched. For a moment, Joe thought that Shouter was going to hug him.
"I get asked that a lot, Joe Blow. The unspoken answer is just a little bit different for everybody, but the answer I give 'em is always the same: I am The Memento."
Joe was about to ask what kind of name that was when he heard crying from the kitchen. He really did almost collapse now, but The Sh… Memento was across the room with heavenly speed and caught him.
"Aren't you going to see to that?" Memento asked, nodding towards the kitchen. He brushed some invisible dust from Joe's shoulder and led him down the hall. In the kitchen was a pram. In the pram was his daughter Amy, alive and crying. Memento gave her a tiny wave and a large smile.
Joe knew this couldn't be real, but the need to throw up certainly felt real. He almost did, but he had no mouth anymore, not even lips. He could feel the vomit in his mouth, unable to get out. He began to choke on it.
The Memento picked up the child, his lovely dead daughter who was impossibly alive, and walked over to a large pot of boiling water. Joe couldn't remember putting it on, but by now he'd learned that his memory wasn't what it used to be.
"Just here to remind you, old buddy," said Memento. Joe's throat was wobbling up and down uncontrollably.
And, although taking the lid off the pot and dumping his precious child into the boiling water was nothing like the suffocation, he was reminded. Memento replaced the lid. Amy fitted perfectly.
Then Joe had a mouth again, and he threw up over the kitchen floor. A lot of it ended up on his shoes. He began coughing, struggling to breathe. Tears also struck his shoes. Memento was over beside him now, patting his shoulder comfortingly. Joe screamed and swung at him, but his fist went right through his head. Impossible – he'd felt his touch just a moment before.
"I have to go, Joe. Don't worry though – I'll be back same time next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. Just to remind you. In fact, since I know you're not big on anniversaries, I think I'd better stop by every day," said Memento, his face filled with sympathy. Joe was sobbing uncontrollably now. "I'm gonna be real busy soon, but don't worry – I'll make the time."
He grabbed Joe's face in his hands, pushing his lips up into a very forced smile. "Cause I think some things just simply should not be forgotten – they should be truly remembered."
Memento gave Joe a thumbs up, left him standing in a daze and went through to the living room. He came back with the photo album, holding it up for Joe to see.
"I'm just gonna take this with me. I don't think you're going to be needing it much anymore, good buddy. I'll leave you with something in return though, don't you worry about that," said Memento.
He left behind a single piece of rope. Joe hung himself with it before the end of the day.
Die in darkness.
Chloe was alone; she had fallen. Scraped her knees, not that it mattered. She wasn't a kid anymore and even then she'd cried more over the concern and kindness her father showed her than any real pain.
Die alone.
She was running, trying to escape a mad voice that travelled with the wind. With the darkness. With her. It was not a voice she seemed to hear with her ears; it was just there. Always there.
Die screaming.
Clark would make it stop, make it go away. Silence it. But he would not find her in time, and she could not find him in the darkness. She did not slow down, even when her heart felt like bursting. There were noises out there far worse than the voice. There were monsters out there.
Die fallen.
Except there weren't; she was dreaming. She knew that. Right now that knowledge only comforted her up to a certain point, but she knew it as fact.
Die! Die! Die!
That voice – or rather, whoever it belonged to – was crazy. There was a childlike quality to it too. She thought she heard it giggling. No, I dreamed I thought I heard it giggling, she thought.
Wake up.
She didn't, but the dream ended, replaced by another. She dreamt she had a choice. The options lay in front of her, the outcome out of her hands. There was a noose, a knife and a gun. There was smoke and there was fire. There was a climb followed by a drop. A bottle sat on a table, only a skull and crossbones on the label. Next to it lay a large heap of unidentified pills. A card in front of them read 'Try one! Try a whole batch!" A mountain of cigarettes. A Vat of booze.
Something coming through the letterbox. She groaned and opened her eyes. There was no reason to get out of bed now other than to see what it was. Actually, she also needed to pee.
She knew the message on her laptop was no joke, and was in no doubt that the sender was the 'man' she'd been investigating. No-one in the bar had seen anything, or so they claimed. Had he been there all the time, watching her? This was too dangerous for her to handle, she realised. It might even be too dangerous for Clark.
Could she just walk away? She was horrified by what was happening to her. It was in danger of destroying her completely. She needed to start attending her classes again, to regain the organisation her life had before this craziness had become an obsession. She needed an order to her day that investigating bizarre supernatural beings did not provide.
A card was lying on the floor. She picked it up, opened it, and realised how much she loved Clark Kent.
It was an open-ended invitation to dinner, to be used whenever she felt like it.