He looked back to me. “These are the questions we are working to answer. But there are many, many of these beings, you see, and we are always running out of participants in our experiment.” He frowned slightly. “And before you think us unfair, we really do try to be even-handed. We have people that we make much happier by erasing bad memories and creating better replacements. It’s just…well, there has to be a group that is pushed toward darker extremes, and unfortunately for you, that’s the lot you’ve drawn.”

I wanted to say more, but then the world went white, then red, then dark. When I woke up, I was back in my apartment. I remember several more things now. Terrible things I can’t even bring myself to write. Not that I think it will matter much longer anyway.

You see, I’ve been looking back over what I’ve written, and I already don’t remember most of it. I started writing this to create a record, but how much will it help me if I can’t recall the truth of it and no one else will believe me? I’m surprised I could even write it at all, but perhaps they know the pointlessness of it and so they don’t mind. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I feel like I’m being dissolved—boiled away in a stew of false memories I can’t discern and strange impulses I don’t understand. But what will be left when the boiling is done? What will be the shape of my soul when they are done refining it?

I only hope that if they find the monster they are looking for, there is not enough of me left to see it.

The Extra House

I’ve always known I’m bad. Mama and Papa try to be good to me, but I always make them mad. It always scares me when they get mad, and I don’t like how it hurts, but the worst part is how sad they look when it’s over. When they tell me how disappointed they are. How they wish I would stop making them do this. If I could only be smarter and better like my older brother, Thomas. Or at the least, learn to listen and stay out of the way.

I really do try, but it never works. I always mess up something.