My 20 short sprints in 20 Days is a way to stimulate your creative juice,

to come down #afterNaNoWriMo #CampNaNoPrep crunch.

and just have some fun with writing.

Write 500 or 5K words using the above prompt image.

OR Set Timer for XX minutes... and Sprint!

Have a good time.

"My Brain is like the Bermuda Triangle. Information goes in and then it's never found again."

Time : 5:20 - 5:50 

Genre: horror

Name and Date of consent

Nonnie Green 12-6-2018

The pleasant girl behind the desk read over her forms and smile. "Thank you, Ms. Green. You have read the list of possible side effects?"

"Yeah, I read them." 

This was my fourteenth drug trial. It was how I made my rent after college graduation. Jobs were scarce and anything that wasn't minimum wage and part-time was impossible to find. I was actually in another drug trial for an anxiety blocking drug that was supposed to help a person not focus on their worries or any negative thing, and that one actually seemed to work. Since I had taken the weekly injections, I was less stressed. But I tended to forget things that caused me stress, like how I didn't get the last eleven jobs I applied for, how my boyfriend left me, or how I would make rent. So, now I was double dipping. It was ridiculous that a girl with a Master's Degree was reduced to being a lab rat to keep the roof of roach and rat infested studio over her head, but I was.  

I was led back to white room. A middle aged man in a gray lab coat asked me questions about the things that mattered, about my mental state, about my memories. An hour later, he asked me an odd question.

"Ms. Green, since there are traumatic things that you forget or don't want to remember about, wouldn't it be easier on your mental state for them to just be gone, because you seem to have a very stressed reaction to remembering painful things?" 

"Uhhh, you mean I would never remember them again?" I hesitated, I hadn't had the best childhood but I did have a few memories of my alcoholic mother that were decent. "But what about the not-so-bad things?" 

"Well, we aren't sure... that is why we are doing this trial. We want to help people live a happier life. Our procedure gradually removes the negative by altering the chemistry of the existing memories. Traumatic memories aren't erased but the emotional tone of them are decreased. Muted... For example, you would remember that your mother abused you but the pain associated with those memories would just disappear,  like planes in the Bermuda Triangle." He laughed at my odd look. "Sorry, I just got back from a working vacation. It's where I found the botanical this drug is based on. It is why the island people are so happy. I'm calling it Memorosa."

"Cool, I'm in." 

Three weeks later, I felt amazing. I hadn't thought about anything bad, nothing had triggered any negative memories. Nothing stressed me, nothing came up that stressed me. Oddly, even my mother wasn't bothering me. The only exciting thing that happened was my landlord disappeared, one moment he was beating on my door demanding my rent then he was gone. The new owner never came an asked me for my rent, I guess it was like when my dormmate, who was in my psych class, killed herself, we all go A's that semester. Not that I didn't have the rent, the two trials were paying enough to cover my bills and put a little back.  And I hadn't seen Harry coming out of his building across...

  TIME 30 minutes, Word Count: 584  

 ...the street since starting on Memorosa. Someone said he must have moved. I didn't even care, I could barely remember all the horrible things he said and did. 

I went over to my mom's to drop off her Christmas present but she wasn't home. It looked like she hadn't been home in a long time. Strangely, I couldn't remember why I didn't like to come home. I picked up the paperweight I had made for her when I was five, I remembered how much fun I had making it in Mrs. McDunna's class. There was a crack in the glazed surface. Then there was a stab of pain in my head as I remembered how my mother had once thrown it at me. I gasped against the pain then too my horror, I could feel myself forgetting the bad memory as the clay paperweight dissolved into nothing in my hand. It was gone. 

I searched all around me and I couldn't find the paperweight again. Terrified, I began to examine my mother's home. The closet where she would lock me was a blank wall. My grandfather's cane that she had used to hit me wasn't by the door in the umbrella stand. Her liquor... her wine rack... Gone. By her favorite chair, on the side table,there was a wine glass with the film of evaporated wine in it. I remembered all the times she had thrown on at me and to my disbelieving eyes the glass vanished, then the chair. I couldn't stop the flood of negative memories as I looked from object to vanishing object. Suddenly, I was standing on the dirt where my mother's house had once stood. 

Horrifyingly remembered, the doctor's jovial comment about his vacation and the drug's affects on my memories came back to me.  They would disappear "like planes in the Bermuda Triangle."