Author's Notes: Fuckin…the theme song for this one is…it's fuckin Shimmy Shammy Ya by Ol Dirty cuz…cuz shit's about to get fucking RAW!
Reliving the past can be painful, even looking back at the good times can hurt when you compare them to the bad times. Bernard was learning this the hard way, the very hard way, the concrete fucking solid way. In an effort to forget everything, he had been forced to remember all of it in rapid succession. Thus every painful memory had been thrusted into the forefront of his psyche, occasionally juxtaposed by the happy times they shared, only to be ruined by a reminder of the shitty things he had done to taint those pure perfect moments forever. He was forced to deal with the realization that every beautiful moment he shared with Margaret had been subsequently tainted by his jealousy or his distrust or some other toxic shit that he was now witnessing from the outside. It made him sick, it made him sad, it made him want to grab a knife and stab that illusion of his past to death. Sadly, it was not so easy, no matter how he tried to stop himself, to change things, to rewrite history, he found himself powerless.
The memory he was currently facing was an argument, which at the time seemed quite significant, was actually quite petty. It's actual prominence was increased tenfold by the extremities he was bringing it to. They were sitting two chairs across from each other, in their room in Oregon, the TV was on and Margaret had been trying to get him to watch Game of Thrones and shut the fuck up about social media.
"Sooo….Lemme get this straight…You think its totally cool to like your ex boyfriends shit? Like you don't think that's giving off some kind of signal that you're…still interested…" The memory of Bernard snarled, every word seemed deliberately chosen to hurt her.
"Dude, can you just drop this? Please? I already told you it's not a big deal…" Margaret's voice was defensive, but not because she had something to hide. It was defensive in the sense that she was defending her sanity, her dignity, her logical mind from the jealousy and bullshit her partner had been spewing.
"So ya know my friend, she hits me up a lot…Very sexual if I do say so myself? Maybe I should hit her up instead? Cuz she wanted to fuck me when you were being a bitch and ignoring me annnnddd….and it seems like you're just OK with all these guys trying to fuck you." Bernard's words were carefully chosen, but at the same time they were the most brash and ignorant statements he could possibly make. Every word to him seemed strategic and purposeful to make her feel bad, but all they did was make him look like a cunt.
"You're such a piece of shit." Margaret said it flatly, there was resentment in her tone but it was flat and simple, not sharp, angry, or biting. She got up and stormed out of the room. She was tired of the bullshit, and tired of the jealousy.
Both the phantom of Bernard's past and the real Bernard followed her. The real Bernie, he wasn't exactly sure why he followed her. He knew he couldn't speak to her, change anything, or make a difference. He just responded automatically, the same way his memory self did. No matter how angry or indignant or hurt he got he had this sort of automatic reaction to follow her, to try and stop her from being mad about the very things he himself made her mad about. It was a cycle of stupidity, he would upset her and say as much awful things as he could, but chase her down and force-feed her an apology the moment she got offended. Even though the real Bernard could see this, he still found himself helplessly following her out the door, although it definitely did not lead where it led him that same awful night.
Bernard instead found himself walking out the door to another cold Oregon night, though this one was made warm by the presence of Margaret, the woman he loved with all his stupid heart. He walked out his own front door, but found himself outside the door of a completely random house, now walking down a street on the avenue of absurdity to the house he had shared with Margaret. Unlike before, the illusion of past and present had completely dissipated, Bernard was walking drunkenly with his arm once more around the woman he loved, and she was holding a bottle of wine, drunkenly singing her heart out.
"LOOOOOVE! WILL TEAR US APART AGAIIINNN!" She sang her heart out, not a care in the world for anyone that might be watching, anyone that might be judging, even anyone who might be annoyed with there drunken signaling. You could see it in Margaret's eyes and in her smile, the only thing that she cared about at that moment was how much she loved the man next to her, and the only thing he cared about then or now, was how much he loved her.
"LOVE WILL TEAR USSS APART AGAIN!" He half unwillingly sang along with her, contrary to before it seemed he was now reliving the memory rather than experiencing it first hand. Despite this he was not reliving the intoxicating glow he felt that night, but the warmth of the past gave it's own sort of "buzz," and he felt like singing out with her now while he still could.
Before they could get into the next verse of the Joy Division song, admittedly a verse neither of them quite knew the lyrics to, a man walked up to them, he looked a bit older than both of them, but not altogether old in a sense that he couldn't quite connect with the two. Truth was up to that point they had failed to really make any friends…or hadn't they? Bernard could swear he remembered going to parties somewhere but he couldn't quite place it.
"Dude you guys sounded awesome! Are you from around here?" The man had clearly been drinking a bit too, although his questioning seemed more friendly than the result of some sort of drunken rudeness.
"Oh yeah we actually just moved in over on.." The next words, Bernard could not hear. He heard something, although it sounded as if he was listening to her from underwater. "Yeah we just moved in a couple months back" Margaret beamed, proud of their recent move in.
"Oh what!? That's awesome you guys! I live over on.." Again to Bernard the words seemed muddled and unintelligible. "We should totally kick it you guys!"
"Sounds great." Bernard had remembered exactly the words he had said that night, though now he said it with a flatness that was clearly not detected by the apparitions around him. They just went on as if everything was normal.
"Have a good night then you two!" The man smiled and kept walking on his path, and the young couple continued on theirs. For Bernard, things were starting to get hazy at this point, although he was almost positive the two never took him up on his plans, that was right before things had gotten…bad.
"Hey!" Margaret snapped him out of his contemplation, and grabbed him by the cheek so he was looking her right in the eyes. He stared into the warm, glowing, drunken eyes of the woman he loved. He saw a warmth that he had destroyed, he saw a love that she would no longer remember, he saw affection that had been wiped from her the same way this beating in his heart would soon be taken away from him. "I love you, and I always will. I'm so happy that we have a new life now." And she pulled him in for a kiss, a kiss Bernard reciprocated with all his heart, although by the time Bernard pulled away from the kiss, Margaret was gone, and the beautiful snowy night was gone too.
When the night had faded away Bernard found that he was no longer in Oregon, instead he was sitting out in front of the library by his old house, sitting alone and waiting anxiously to see if Margaret would arrive. He looked down in his hand and remembered he had been holding a fast food cup filled with whiskey and soda. He realized alcohol was prominent in most of these memories, and wondered how long he had been trying to forget. Had he subconsciously been trying to eliminate any traces of memory, any trace of sadness or familiarity or any emotion at all from his day to day life. For the past few instances he had been feeling as if this procedure, this long process of forgetting everything to make room for something knew was something unequivocally painful, something he could hardly bear in the moment. Looking back on it now, he realized that forgetting things that made him sad had been his due process for the last year of his life, and maybe it wasn't such a surprise that he had decided the go the full distance now when he had been leading up to it for quite awhile. He ran out of time to ponder this reflection, because Margaret was walking up to him now, coming from a distant shadow and not from any true location. The way she walked had always enamored Bernard, there was no jaunt in her step and she walked with the sureness and swiftness of someone who only wanted to go from one destination to the next without being noticed, like the flashing of a headlight on a car trying to pass unnoticed from a night out. Margaret sat down next to him at the bench, while she sat next to him there was a measured distance she put between the two of them. Bernard remembered she had been quite angry with him that night…another large fight over something he could no longer recall. As he tried to piece together the details of what had happened in order to speak, he funded he didn't need to and the words came from him quite automatically.
"I want you to move away with me…" He stumbled. "I wanna move to Oregon, just get away from all of this, forget everything and start over. I've already found a place and they said they'd take couples." He spilled out the facts with no tact or deliberation, only a sincere request to try and begin again.
Margaret did not immediately respond, instead she took out a cigarette and lit it with precision. As she exhaled the secondary drag, she finally broke the silence. "When?"
"Next month…I know it's soon and I know that I'm asking a lot but…but I love you. I love you with all my heart and I know that if we started over…if we were somewhere new..None of this would ever happen again. This could all just be some unpleasant memory we forget about one day when we're happy somewhere else." Bernard explained with some deliberation.
Margaret took another drag or two of her cigarette. She was killing Bernard with the anticipation, but the lack of an immediate no still filled his chest with hope like a balloon with air. "I'll think about it." She decided at last. There was something so calm and cool about her that even in the present Bernard could appreciate. Something about the calmness which she approached the storm of their relationship filled his heart with longing.
Bernard pulled Margaret close, at the time he had been drunk and stupid, but in the present he appreciated the closeness more than he had the night he was reliving. He appreciated the way it felt to hold her near, and like that night he began to sing a song…but the words wouldn't come to him. He was sure he could hear the melody, and he was sure he was saying something, but he couldn't hear any of it.
"Really? I told you to sing this to me on a good night? Fuckin idiot…" Margaret looked him in the eyes, her tone was critical but her eyes were somewhat bemused, betraying the hostility she was trying to reflect in her words.
Bernard continued to sing, although the tune now evaded him more than ever. He was sure he knew the song, but the words began to sound like static on a television, and as he tried to gaze into his lover's eyes he found that she had the appearance of static as well. This wasn't right…he knew this wasn't right…He tried to recall her….blue eyes? Green? Her…Red hair? No it was definitely brown. That wasn't right either it was….For a moment Bernard felt he was staring at a complete stranger. He didn't understand the words he was singing, and he didn't understand who he was singing them to. All knew was he was trying to hold something together, hold something together which now seemed to him foggy and incomplete, which now in this moment of static unwelcomeness seemed completely foreign. As he reached out to pull her closer, he noticed he too had the texture of an incomplete image, a buzzing static which had no form except formlessness, and as he tried to pull her closer the whole world went blank around them, and soon switched to a new channel of thought
When the world came to around him, Bernard felt himself alone at a small clearing by a lake not too far from his house. HE was crying HE had been crying then and he was crying now. At the time these tears were shed because he had not been able to speak to Margaret for weeks, although the tears came now because he felt he had not spoken to her ever. In his heart there was less and less to miss, but as time went by he knew he was missing more and more. He realized that something very dear to him was slowly disappearing, and at the time he had known what had vanished from him. In this moment though he did not understand exactly why he was crying, but he understood there were tears to be shed. He was seated by a clearing at a lake, a place he had spent many an evenings with his high school girlfriend…Why was he able to remember her and nothing else? Why was there a bottle of whiskey in his hand? Why could he remember all the times he had gotten drunk and nothing else? Why was there this intense burning in his heart? He didn't know or understand, but the tears came to him the same they had come to him that night. He cried, cried because there was nothing, nothing but misery to remember, and as time went by Bernard was sure that was all he would remember. A song was playing in his headphones, though the music seemed distorted, he recognized that it was by…Joy Division. That much was clear to him.
"If I ever…If I ever get another chance to see you…If I ever get another chance I won't fuck it up…I promise you" The words to him now seemed so hollow yet so prominent, there was nothing but conviction in his voice even if he couldn't understand the conviction now. He knew there was something missing…someone missing, and he knew that like then he would give anything to have them back. Anything but the memory of them, yet he realized that was exactly what was missing.
(Author's Notes: Yeahhh….So plot twist the song for this chapter is actually Love Will Tear Us Apart, by Joy Division. The other Shamalan twist here is the ending, because the ending is I kill myself….Wubbalubbadubdub!)