That betta fish held captive within a tank the size of a sink wiggles his tail fin and spurts bubbles rising with freedom while the Japanese woman tells me her name again like she’s a priest exorcising Satan from my heart when in fact, all she’s trying to do is reinstall the last several weeks into my mind and help the real me live a while longer. She begs, begs, begs me to birth memories about her and a father and a dog out from between the spread-eagle legs protruding from my brain that nears coma. She tells me her name is Fuji again and tells me to fight against the swelling of an infinite black throughout the deadening neurons and backfiring synapses. Fight against the pills I took—the “stupid evil pills,” she says while getting in my face, coughing before falling back, bracing herself on her walker, and with spit popping off her lips like little pellets shot from a spring-loaded gun, she demands I find something within me to undo the damage I have wrought onto myself.
“Do it for Glitch!” she screams, then bends over, grabbing her knees while her diaphragm rises and falls with each guttural cough.
I tell her I don’t know who that is and she slaps me across the face and tears come out of my eyes—not from pain but from a montage of images playing out on the screen within my mind—images of the golden retriever battered and torn apart by an owner I wanted to murder, images of the loving creature pushing his snout snug up against my jaw like the tightest winter scarf, his eyes always looking up at me with a glistening film born of deep understanding and silent communication, speaking to me not in English or dog or gibberish but through a bond—pure and sweet and without subtext.
“The dog,” I say.
“Yes!”
Yes, the dog. The orange dog floods back through me as if every white and red blood cell carries him within the safe embrace of its nucleus, swirling through my veiny interstate highway system before taking the exit ramp through my heart, warming it with a longing so expansive my chest screams with a furious combination of love and fear and love over and over until I can picture him so confidently that he’s not escaping me again.
“Where is he?”
I tell her I can’t remember.
“Yes, you do,” she says. “Hurry! He doesn’t have much time left!”
Her palm again slaps across my face, and another flash whirls through my mind, this one not of the dog but instead from just hours ago at the data center, on the freeway, at the gas station, the point where my time as a fully autonomous being ended and devolved into the now half-man, half-nothing human that drove himself back to this woman’s house after looking up the address found on the van’s registration.
“I told a father. My father?”
The woman shuffles her walker into the dark narrow of her home’s hallway, and soon I hear a crash of items tossed about a room still out of sight. She grunts and gasps for air, and more items bang around before she comes hustling back, dragging that walker with her and past a garbage bag whose aura feels as ominous as a dimly lit back alley. Inside a basket attached to the front of her walker is a black-and-white board so obvious that even my ghostly memory can identify it with no problem. The pieces rattle as she moves—the soldier-horses ever the heroes, bishops long and slender, kings and queens with crowns sharp and serrated like a great white’s jaws.
“You must think about chess,” she says.
“Who are you?”
“Fuji!” She slaps me at the temple. She recoils her hand and shakes it, her bluish fingers flopping in the air. “Goddammit!” She blows on her hand, putting out the imaginary fire burning her flesh to ash. She holds the board and pieces out to me. “Set it up!”
“I don’t know how.”
“Of course you do!”
My mind curdles with every passing second, with every thought entering and exiting it. “Who are you?”
“FUJI!”
The Japanese woman takes the board and unfolds it, spreads it over the sofa cushion like a map, running her hands across the surface. She begins the process of populating the board. The black pieces first—larger pieces in the back, shorter ones in the front. She moves to arrange the white pieces on the squares nearest me.
“Wait,” I say. I take the pieces out of her wrinkled, tremoring hands wrought with veins and protruding with the tiny, ultra-breakable bones connecting the knuckles to the wrist. I start arranging the white pieces because this feels familiar and this feels right—the knowledge of where these pieces belong becomes a tiny star in my universe refusing to join its peers in the dying dimness, in the infinite black soon to be victorious over the eternal light. But this one star refuses to yield defeat, and so one star becomes several, and soon a constellation is reborn upon this chessboard. The white pieces are perfectly placed within their proper coordinates, their appropriate squares.
“Yes!” the Japanese woman says. “Now concentrate. We’re running out of time. Think back to your apartment. What did the board look like the last time you saw it?”
“Apartment?”
“Hold on.” She shuffles back toward the salon chairs. Fetches a notebook off the counter and bumps into one of the tangerine swivel chairs, spinning it like a planet in orbit. She whips through page after page until her face blooms wide. “Here! What does this move mean to you? Dxe5.”
Dxe5.
She repeats it. Dxe5.
The move punches through my abdomen, but as it does so, I know what to do. I slide the white pawn forward. Reaching for its black counterpart, they meet in an attacking square position. I whisper it to myself. “Dxe5.”
And as my fingertips come off the black plastic foot soldier of my father’s former army, the farm floods back to me in totality, the full suite of memories from start to finish, from day one to month three. A civil war erupts inside my head, memories forgotten versus those which refuse the amnesia.
My mouth and lips—now on autopilot—mumble the moves.
“Ng4.”
“Nf3.”
“Nc6.”
My hands snatch at pieces—black and white, short and tall, slender and stout—sliding diagonally, up two over one, up and back, retreating before attacking again.
“Bf4.”
After each move, another memory comes back, all from the current moment fighting backward. A day ago. Last week. When the story on the killer was first published. The night I met Rocket. Finally, I castle the white king, tucking him safely into a corner behind loyal pawns standing at the ready. As I do, I can remember my father, standing in the workstation as the man in the suit was approaching down the hall, and hear my dad’s voice repeat the address back to me.
“Glitch is at 182 Fati Way.”
The old woman screams in elation. Then coughs. She’s exhausted—now leaning over the edges of her walker. Her labored breathing normalizes. She looks up at me and smirks because we’ve been through some shit.
I wipe my lips of saliva and stand.
“Fuji. Your name is Fuji.”
* * *
Fuji tells me about two similar voyages. The researchers in Antarctica. The climbers on Everest. About how when the conditions become so fierce with frosted winds and thickened flurries, visibility diminishes to a foot or two, maybe less, and anything beyond that are the ghosts found within the grasps of whipping snow. There is only one thing tethering a group of people to one another—a thin rope fastened from one person to the next. The pack leader clips it to their beltline, and it runs taut until the next person in the group—maybe five feet behind the leader—clips it to theirs. This daisy chain continues until the last person. And the slight tugs between two people are all they have in knowing the person ahead of them is still alive.
“Are you the rope, and I’m the snowstorm?”
“Neither, young man. You are the person in front, towing your memories up the mountain.”
She tells me that I’m nearing the summit. And as I do, the air gets thinner. My lungs burn, and my will to live betrays me. My connection to that in which I tow dwindles until I’ve lost it altogether.
“What’s at the summit?”
“You already decided the summit is about forgetting your past.”
“Then why tow the memories?”
“Because you still have more searching to do.”
Glitch.
“What’s the point of your metaphor?”
“That we’ve only clipped you to your memories. Rescued them temporarily. The air and atmosphere are dire. The summit awaits. Your memories will probably fade again. I’m worried we only bought you another hour or so.”
The room is quiet but for the occasional swoosh of air from the top of the oxygen tank, a pressure release as it drops in supply. The sunlight penetrating the window shades weakens and slowly morphs because the sun is setting.
“Why do you think he disappeared at the gas station?”
“Your father can only exist just as long as you remember him.”
“But I remember again. Why isn’t he back?”
“Dash—”
“Amir, evidently.”
“Amir, did you think he was really back?”
I replay seeing him again at my apartment all these years later. Juxtapose that against the experiences at the farm. The knowledge that cancer, at that late stage, is one-way traffic. And as I do, I know that deep down, I only wanted him to be back. To be real. “No. I realize that now.”
I ask Fuji why anyone would do this to themselves. Why my broken-down brain would reinvent my father in the way I did—with a gun in the middle of the night, behind the wheel, running me off a freeway.
“Trauma does certain things to the mind. What you went through when he was dying—that did something to you.”
“What’s your hypothesis, doc?”
Fuji fetches a book I saw her reading previously. The Haunted Self. “This book helped explain a lot after Richard died.”
“How long did he fight his cancer?”
“Well, Amir, you’re not the only one who has told a lie or two.”
“He didn’t have cancer?”
“It would have been easier in some ways if he did.” She holds her hand to her mouth. Nibbles on her knuckle and stares at the wall. “He was an addict. Hid it well, though. That much I can say.”
“From you?”
Fuji shakes her head. “We didn’t hide anything from each other. He hid it from the rest of the world.”
“What was the real cause of death?”
“Technically, liver failure, but we know what caused that. Have you ever seen or heard what happens when someone dies of liver failure?”
I shake my head.
“There’s nothing else in the body keeping the toxins from the brain. Their thoughts become delusional. Their skin turns a shade of green, and death takes too long to arrive. Brutal. Just brutal.”
“You’ve kept his stuff here all this time?”
“As much as those rooms could fit.”
“Are you afraid of what might happen if you emptied it all out?”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions.” She giggles, but I’m guessing only to suppress her pain. “Before I could understand why I was hoarding, I searched for answers. I came across dissociative states. Do you know what those are?” She tells me about dissociative identity disorder. A person projecting an identity from within their mind into the outside world.
“This happens subconsciously?”
“People do it for all kinds of reasons. But if I had to guess—based on that book—your mind split your father off because it was fighting for his memory. And as it was doing that, he went from fighting you to fighting for you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Why do you think you have these weird flashes and don’t know what happened while they’re occurring?”
“The glitches?”
“It’s very confusing the dog’s name is also Glitch—you understand that?”
I laugh but the relief it delivers is fleeting. I check the time. Do the simple math of how much Glitch has left. A little more than ninety minutes. It will take thirty to drive out to 182 Fati Way.
“Let’s try something.” Soon, Fuji is fastening a small device to my index finger—short, cold, and pulsating. “We’re going to do an exercise. Sometimes it’s used for post-traumatic stress disorder. It buzzes your finger randomly while you recall events from your life. It’s supposed to unearth details while also removing the event’s power over you.”
“Do we have time for this?”
Fuji nods. “It doesn’t take long. Close your eyes for me. I want you to think hard.”
I let my lids fall over my weary, burning eyes like velvet linens.
“Think of your father for a moment. You now know the truth. He’s gone.”
“My father is dead, yes.”
“The man from the dealership never truly attacked you, correct?”
“I was never attacked by the man at the dealership.”
“And the father that came back to your apartment yesterday was only a projection from your mind.”
“Seems that is the case.”
“Now, what happened during the glitches? Try to see behind the void in your memory.”
My cheeks bite into the center of my face, souring its expression. I think of the glitches and the kaleidoscope of images. The rush of sensations. Search behind the crunches of static and through the waves of electricity, the roaring synaptic thunderstorms deafening all parts of my brain—parts holding the most painful experiences, the sweetest moments taken in, the mundane and maddening in between—and relive that first glitch at the farm, right as I held that pillow above my father’s tortured face, and feel the glitch wash over me in its loving way, keeping me from accessing whatever happened that night. And then the reliving continues. Each electric glitch in these last couple of months—in my apartment, while driving, at the warehouse, on and on—and through the black-and-white crunch of pulsating static, I begin to see a figure, godlike in his form, glowing on the edges of his being until the static foreground speckled in grains of salt and pepper dissipates, and the figure becomes clearer. There, behind the glitches—every single one—the king of night reigns. And now, as Fuji guides me through this journey, this excavation of my insecurities, I see my father every time I glitched, standing at the chessboard kept safely in the furthest recesses of my mind, in the places I could never find when trying to destroy everything about myself because he—the version of him that I could never kill or watch die lives on, protecting me from me, from the self-destruction button I relentlessly pressed over and over and over again, pill after pill after pill, each glitch his way of taking control of my brain and securing just enough memory about who I am and what I’ve done—good and bad—because he believes in me more than I believe in myself. With each glitch I experienced, behind each wall of magnetic electricity churned by the guardian angel, he fought on, keeping bits of the past—the good past that reminds me that I wasn’t always this way, and the bad past that explains how I became this way—weaving together as many memories as possible with specific chess moves—your superpower, I can hear him say, his Pakistani accent rolling the syllables—all in the hopes that I, too, would fight for myself and wouldn’t give in and wouldn’t throw away everything that makes me, me.
With eyes still shut, the device continuing its throb into my fingertip, I tell Fuji what I now understand until I can talk no more.
“Shh, young man. Big breath in. Let it out slowly.” Fuji wipes my cheek dry with a Kleenex. “Pain is but the echo of joy.”
“The night this all started—in the middle of my street—was the first time I could feel my memory fading from the prescription drugs. And I was starting to forget pieces of him. But because of that, something within me had to intervene.”
“And then he appeared.”
“I’m such a fool. He wasn’t trying to do me harm.”
“Don’t stop, Amir. Keep talking this through.”
“He wasn’t going to let me do this to myself.”
“Keep going.”
“He was watching over me. Like he always did—it never changes.”
“Don’t stop.”
“But he’s gone now. I need him. I need him to get Glitch—I can’t do this alone. Where is he?” I unclench my eyes. Find Fuji sitting opposite me. But as I scan the room—hoping to see him standing in the corner or coming down the hall, his lips parting underneath his mustache and into that smirk of his that sparked a thousand explosions of happiness inside my heart—the shadow of realization encroaches closer, until finally, its blackness has enveloped the meager hope I had manufactured.
“I’m alone, aren’t I?” My voice raises. Words arrive by the vessels of scream and fright. “Am I alone?”
“Hush, hush. He’s here. He’s right here.” She pokes her finger into my chest.
“No. I really mean it. I need him. This isn’t a joke.”
“He’s been there all along.”
“PLEASE!”
“Shh, poor child.” Fuji brushes the side of my head with her palm.
I fall into Fuji’s arms, snot dragging across her shoulder.
“It’s okay. Just let it out.”
Little explosions pour out of me with each diaphragmatic heave. Colors burst out from my soul as if it had held the designs of a painting for eternity, finally able to put brushstrokes to canvas. I cry and cry and the colors swerve over each other, streaks of navy and emerald, drippings of blood orange and deep purple. The canvas no longer blank, the pain finally unleashed.
“Good.” She rubs my back in circular motions until the canvas is no more. The explosions are but tiny coughs from the soul freed from oppression, now wearily beginning its healing journey.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” I whisper. “He’s the only person that knows. How am I supposed to know what to do if I don’t know who I am?”
“You are your father, Amir. And he is you. And because of that—he lives on within you. Forever.”
There we sit, arms tangled over shoulders and wrapped around each other’s backs. Chins into necks. The smell of Fuji’s old-lady perfume taken in with each breath. I gather enough strength to stand out of my seat. I tug at the bottom of my black hoodie and kiss Fuji atop her head.
“Thank you, Fuji.”
“And thank you, Amir.”
I grab the van’s keys off a salon chair.
“You’re going now?”
“There’s not much time left.”
Fuji’s expression is serious but understanding—a general watching their soldier march into battle. “Come here. One more hug.” She pulls my chest into her head. “Please return in one piece.”
“I will do what needs to be done.”
She lets go of my waist. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?”
I walk over to the garbage bag. Open it up and look inside, making sure it’s still there. I carry it over my shoulder. “I’m sure.”
I close the door gently behind me, shutting it to the image of Fuji looking longingly at me as the sliver of space between the door and frame shut, all the while saying to myself, I’m sure.
Repeating it as I open the driver’s-side door.
I’m sure.
As I start the engine.
I’m sure.
As I scrawl a few reminders across a hot-pink sticky note.
I head away into the early night—the oldest friend I’ve known—down Fuji’s street and out of her neighborhood, gripping the wheel tighter for I know the darkness that awaits, doing so because I am sure and because it’s the only thing I know how to do right here and right now.
I’m sure, I say to myself, getting on the freeway, heading toward the most inland parts of Monterey County, miles from shoreline and ocean air, from suburban neighborhoods. I drive toward the valley, already feeling my memory depleting rapidly again, mental lucidity becoming endangered, but before me waits but one objective, one last judgment. Into the night I proceed. On I go further. And I do so because of one certain reminder. An echo from behind the glitches. And I am sure what it is saying.
This is who you are, he keeps telling me.
Yes, this is who I am.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .