The first campaigner challenge calls for a 200 word short story/flash fiction, beginning with the phrase, “The door swung open…” Below is my entry for the challenge. Enjoy!  If you are so inclined after reading, you can vote for it (#183) here.

Memory Loss

The door swung open – a door that was locked for years, guarding feelings of pain and loss, banished in the black cellar of my brain.  With it, my past attacked me, bent on revenge.  Debilitating anxiety replaced the solid thoughts that once roamed my mind.  Even when I try to look hard at the memories of my twenty-two year old self, face them down, give them their moment in the spotlight, I can’t locate them.  Instead, there is sorrow, confusion.  I rack my brain for details that will bring her back to life, if only on the pages.  Her death made it impossible for me to come to terms with our life.  I convinced myself it was something much smaller than it was – because she left me early – because I called it a relationship that wouldn’t have lasted anyway.  I minimized it in every possible way, no idea how much I was minimizing her, minimizing me.  I fumble through the few things I have left of her – a few letters, a prescription bottle – anti-nausea pills, a handful of photographs.  They don’t tell enough.  They don’t fill in the gaps that I so desperately need to fill in.