Trip Down Memory Lane
Angela Lin
11th grade
Mrs. Nartker
1,989 words
There was no one around when she woke up. She was alone in the big pink room with walls so vast she could not see the corners. Dazed and confused, she tried her best to remember how she got here, wherever "here" was, but nothing came to her head. The walls were starting to make her feel claustrophobic, so she rose and started running. Running and running through the halls of nothingness. Running until she could run no more. Running until she collapsed in exhaustion and fell asleep.
*
When she stirred awake for the second time, her surroundings were different yet again. A door had suddenly appeared in front of her. She stood up and stared at the giant sign on the door. "Welcome to Memory Lane." With little hesitation, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Inside "Memory Lane" was a room even bigger than the last. The walls were wider, but they were no longer empty. Instead, the two walls were covered with doors. What seemed like millions of never-ending doors. The right wall was labeled "Good." The very first door had a time stamp on it: "March 14, 1991." Seeing as there was nothing else to do, she took a deep breath, opened it, and went in.
*
She gasped as she looked around— she was in a hospital room now. Her mind could barely process that when her eyes focused on the scene before her. A round, blond woman was sitting on the hospital bed, screaming in agony. Nurses surrounded her, monitors beeped, a bald man with a goatee held her hand. After what seemed like eternity of high-pitched screams, silence filled the air. All that was left making noise was a little cry. A nurse turned around and wrapping a squirming baby in a blanket. "Congratulations," she said. "It's a girl!" The blond lady smiled at the bald man with tears in her eyes and whispered, "Let's name her after your mom. Elise."
*
She blinked and she was back in the hallway of doors. Elise. That was her name. She was sure of it. She wasn't sure how she forgot it before, but as soon as she heard it, she knew. She remembered. The door adjacent to the one she just entered was marked "October 5, 1992." Curious, she stepped through.
*
Now she was in a park bustling with squealing children and exhausted yet upbeat moms. The sun shone brightly down on the playground, where two kids were fighting over the swings and a little boy was crying on the slide. Elise turned her head and saw the blond woman from the hospital on a rocking dinosaur. On her lap was a small girl in a little watermelon dress, laughing every time the dinosaur moved. After ten minutes of mirth, the blond woman put the toddler on the grass and looked at her watch, but when she looked back up, her child was nowhere to be seen. Shrill screams of "Elise" filled the air in every direction. Finally, she found a small watermelon slowly walking towards the slide. She ran over and picked Elise up. "Elise McKinley, don't you dare wander off like that ever again! I thought you were kidnapped, you can't just walk off like that!" Water started to fill Elise's eyes before the blond woman processed what she had just said, and she broke off into a huge smile. "Elise! You walked! You just walked! You finally took your first steps! Oh, you big girl!" Little Elise didn't understand the sudden change in mood, but she knew she was no longer in trouble, and she started to laugh as her mother was the one that started to cry, only they were tears of happiness.
*
Suddenly, Elise was no longer in the park, and she was back. A sudden epiphany struck her, that this gallery of doors contained her life story. She ran over to the opposite wall in the room, the side marked "Bad," and threw open the "January 13, 1997" door, where she was then transported into a small apartment kitchen. There stood the blond woman with the bald man. Glasses were shattered on the floor, bloodshot eyes and alcoholic breath possessed the man. "I've put up with your excuses for too long," the woman was shouting. "Where are your paychecks? Spent on your beer, no doubt. We need to pay these bills! And who is Lindsey? Is she that young intern at your office? Is that why you're never home for dinner anymore? You missed Elise's dance recital, you know that? Or were you too busy banging that secretary to remember your own daughter?"
"Enough already! Shut up!" The man angrily pulled at his goatee and stood up. "I'm so done with you, Mary, and all this constant nagging! You're always breathing down my back, but tell me, where's your job, huh?"
"Not this again! I swear to God, it was your incompetence that—"
Mary suddenly stood up and ran to the hallway stairs. There stood a little six-year-old girl with a tattered blue bunny in one hand and a star blankie in the other. She rubbed her eyes as she looked at her mom. "Why's it so loud? Is it school already?"
Mary shot Harry a dirty look and led the child back to her bedroom. "Now Elise, your father and I are just talking. Don't you worry now, you go back to sleep." The tired mother tucked the girl back into bed and headed to her own bedroom to prepare for yet another day of job hunting. Elise was almost asleep when the door creaked open. A big figure sat on Elise's bed and stroked her hair. "I'm sorry I missed your dance recital tonight sweetie. I love you very much, please don't ever forget that." He kissed her head and walked out of her room for the last time, out of her house with a suitcase, out of her life forever.
*
Elise jolted back into the hallway of doors. She looked down at her hands as chills ran through her body. She vaguely remembered her father, but that night did not ring a bell. So many questions filled her head, but she knew the best way to take her mind off that memory. She sprinted to the other wall and opened the door labeled "May 2, 2008."
*
A beautiful church decorated from the ceiling down was packed with teenagers in elegant dresses and handsome tuxedos. Elise looked around and saw a girl in a blue gown talking to a cute boy. Her junior prom with her first boyfriend. She watched as the seventeen-year-olds slow-danced and he moved closer to whisper, "I love you so much, my beautiful Elise. You look absolutely gorgeous, I love you."
"I love you too, Jake" young Elise murmured right before he bent down and gave Elise her very first kiss.
*
Elise couldn't stop smiling as she blinked and arrived back in front of the door. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies as she tasted that first, sweet kiss on her innocent lips again. In a happy daze, she walked to the other side and entered the memory of May 9, 2008.
*
She arrived in her childhood room in her mom's apartment. Everything seemed ordinary, except for a stack of ripped pictures next to a ball of sniffling cries hidden under a blanket. "He broke up with me, Jenn. He just broke up with me. Five minutes ago. Through the phone." More sobs. "But that's not even the worst part. He...he's been cheating on me this whole time." A loud eruption of hysteric cries engulfed the room. "He told me he loved me. He told me he was mine and mine only. How could I have been so stupid? How could he do this to me?"
*
The pain of that night hit Elise right in the heart as she wandered and drifted down the halls again. Why she was opening these wounds again was beyond her. Elise wasn't sure why she couldn't remember anything before, but as soon as she entered the doors, she didn't just remember the memories, she felt them- she relived them again, overwhelmed with nostalgic emotions.
*
She took the time and went into every door on the right to relish her good memories: her first pet; her mom's grand wedding with her step-dad; the birth of her little half-brother, Benjamin; her making varsity volleyball; her high school graduation; her college adventures; her first job; her first promotion; her first engagement.
And then there were the bad memories on the left, which she also took time to experience again: her half-brother's diagnosis of leukemia; her dog getting hit by a car; her breaking her foot, ending her volleyball career; her getting fired from her first job; her being forced to move out of her apartment; her broken engagement.
Everything about her life was on display. The good, the bad, the magnificent, the ugly. Even the little things that she thought didn't matter at the time made their way into a door. She thoroughly enjoyed journeying through all the doors and experiencing the life she forgot she had lived.
*
Finally, she arrived at the very last door at the very end of the hall, which said "November 15, 2014." She had the slight suspicion that this was the day before, that this is what happened right before she woke up in this place, that this door held the answer to her lingering question. Attempting to ignore that it was on the left wall, she gathered up the courage and swung open the final door—she's already made it this far. Might as well finish the journey.
*
Elise saw herself in her new apartment, the one she secured just the week before. She saw herself sitting at the round table, the one her mother gave her when she moved out. An empty box of tissues lay next to her, and opened mail was scattered around the table. Elise could see bill after bill with numbers that contained way too many zeros. As Elise got closer and looked at herself, it didn't feel like she was looking in a mirror; the twenty-three year old looked so distressed, she looked forty. The phone rang loudly, and the sitting Elise reached for it, but not before the phone announced the caller— Flemings Public Hospital. Fear crossed Elise's face as she answered the phone. "Hello?..." The fear turned into shock and despair. Her hand went limp and the phone clattered onto the floor. Her flushed face began muttering "Benny" as she slowly collapsed to the floor next to the phone. It began ringing again, this time the call from Mary McKinley. Elise looked at the flashing phone but made no attempt to pick it up. After what seemed like eternity, the ringing stopped, but the ensuing silence was louder than the phone. Elise gradually got up, tears flooding from her face. She looked at the phone, then at the bills, and she headed towards the bathroom. She opened the cabinet and pulled out a little orange container. Elise watched herself as she emptied little circles onto her palm. As she realized what she was about to do, Elise tried to run forward to stop herself but her feet would not move. She tried to yell but her mouth was glued shut. She could only helplessly watch as her depressed self downed the little tablets in one swift motion with no hesitation.
*
And then she was back. "What," Elise thought. "This can't be it! It can't end like this! This has to be a dream, none of this really happened, I'm just dreaming!" She desperately tried to wake up with a frantic longing to erase that door, to create more doors, but by now, the power was out of her hands.
***