The hum is the worst part. It sounds like a million bees trapped inside a lead pipe. It vibrates in my teeth and makes my eyeballs itch. That hum means the Collectors are close. They are coming for the only thing I have left: the memory of the night the cellar door clicked shut and I was left in the black.
I am running through the Lower Gut. The walls here are sweating grease. The pipes overhead are groaning like dying giants. This city is a hungry mouth. It eats our memories to keep the lights on. It takes your first birthday party. It takes the way your mom smelled like cinnamon. It turns all that love into a cold blue spark that runs the trains.
My name is Mick. I used to be an archivist. I was the guy who sorted the “trash” memories. The city didn’t want the bad stuff. They didn’t want the time you fell off your bike and broke your arm. They didn’t want the sound of your parents screaming at each other. They said that stuff was “unstable.”
I didn’t throw it away. I kept it. I shoved those jagged, sharp memories into glass jars and hid them under my coat. I got caught. They kicked me out into the Gut. Now, I am a ghost in a city made of stolen sunshine.
The hum gets louder. A shadow stretches across the wet brick in front of me. It is long and thin. It looks like a spider made of rusted scissors.
“Mick,” a voice whispers. It sounds like sandpaper on a dry bone. “Give us the dark, Mick. Give us the heavy things.”
My heart is kicking my ribs like a prisoner trying to get out. My lungs feel like they are filled with hot sand. I turn the corner and trip over a pile of scrap metal. I hit the ground hard. The taste of copper fills my mouth. I look up and see it.
The Collector is ten feet tall. It doesn’t have a face. It just has a giant glass bulb where a head should be. Inside that bulb, I can see a swirl of golden mist. That’s someone’s memory of a summer vacation. That’s someone’s wedding day. It’s being burned up like gas in a tank.
“Get back,” I hiss.
I reach into my bag. My fingers wrap around a jar that feels ice cold. This isn’t a happy memory. This is the time I was six years old and I saw something moving under my bed. I remember the way the air felt thick. I remember the way my skin crawled because I knew something with too many fingers was reaching for my ankle.
I smash the jar on the ground.
Black smoke erupts. It doesn’t rise. It crawls. It weaves together into a shivering, jagged wall. It smells like wet fur and old sweat. It’s my childhood terror. It’s the thing that kept me awake for a year.
The Collector reaches out with a metal claw. When it touches my shield of fear, the metal turns white. The machine screams. It’s a sound like a car crash slowed down. The fear doesn’t just block the Collector: it eats it.
“You want the dark?” I scream. My voice is cracking. “Take it! Take all of it!”
I break another jar. This one is the memory of being lost in the woods at night. The panic. The way the trees looked like reaching hands. The way every snap of a twig felt like a gunshot.
The shadows grow teeth. They wrap around the Collector’s legs. They start to pull. The machine is twitching. The golden mist in its head is turning gray. The happy memories are being poisoned by my rot.
The Collector falls. It hits the ground with a wet thud. The glass bulb on its shoulders cracks. The golden mist leaks out and vanishes into the sewer grate. It’s gone. Whoever owned those memories will wake up tomorrow with a hole in their soul. They won’t know why they feel empty. They just will.
I am shaking so hard I can barely stand. My skin is cold. Using the fear makes me feel like I am covered in leeches. It protects me, but it costs something. Every time I use a nightmare, I have to live it again. I can still feel those phantom fingers touching my ankle.
I hear more humming. Three more shadows appear at the end of the alley. They are faster than the first one. They are clicking their metal claws.
The city is falling apart. The lights are flickering. The pipes are bursting because the “good” memories are running out. The city is hungry for the bad stuff now. It wants the trauma. It wants the scars. It wants the things we try to forget.
I reach into my bag. I only have one jar left.
It’s the worst one. It’s the memory of the day I realized I was totally alone. No mom. No dad. Just me in a cold room with the sound of the clock ticking. *Tick. Tick. Tick.*
If I break this one, the shield will be huge. It will cover the whole street. But I might never feel warm again. I might become part of the dark.
The Collectors are ten feet away. I can see the reflection of my own terrified face in their glass heads. I look like a trapped animal.
“Mick,” they say in unison. “Share your pain.”
I look at the jar. The black smoke inside is swirling like a trapped hurricane. I think about the people upstairs in the clean part of the city. They are sitting in their bright rooms, laughing and forgetting. They don’t know that their light is made of my screams.
I don’t want to be safe. I want them to feel what I feel.
I raise the jar over my head. My hand is steady now. I’m not just scared anymore. I’m something worse.
I’m the monster under the bed.
I slam the glass down.
The world goes black. The screaming starts. And for the first time in my life, it isn’t mine.