Slide that glass over here, man. I need it. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I think if I don’t drink something strong, I might just fly apart. You see this black smudge under my fingernails? I spent an hour in the sink with a wire brush. I scrubbed until my skin was raw and red, but it won’t come off. It’s not just ink. It’s something else. Something that remembers everything we’re trying to forget.
My name is Omar, and I have a bad job. I’m a scribe for the Ministry, but I don’t just write down the news. I rewrite it. If there’s a riot in the south, I spend all night writing poems about how peaceful the harvest was. If a thousand people starve because the King forgot to send the grain, I’m the one who makes sure every book in the city says they were all full and happy. It’s a lie. The whole city is a lie built on paper.
The scary part isn’t the lying, though. It’s the forgetting. Every time I finish a new “history,” the Ministry agents go out and touch the people. They use the ink I make. Within an hour, nobody remembers the riot. Nobody remembers the starving kids. It’s like their brains just get wiped clean, like a chalkboard in a rainstorm.
I didn’t know where the ink came from. I just thought it was some chemical junk they cooked up in a lab. But last night, my boss, Sutton, sent me down to the sub-basement. He told me the supply was running low and I had to help with the “harvest.” I should have run. I should have just walked out the door and never looked back.
The basement didn’t smell like a library. It smelled like a butcher shop. It was hot and wet, and the air tasted like pennies. Sutton led me past these big, iron doors to a room with a giant stone vat in the middle. Inside that vat wasn’t ink. Not at first.
It was a god. Or what was left of one.
It didn’t look like the statues in the park. It looked like a mountain of raw meat and golden eyes, all tangled up in silver chains. It was huge, man. It filled the whole room, pressing up against the ceiling. And it was bleeding. The Ministry had these little taps drilled right into its skin. Thick, black liquid was dripping out into buckets.
Sutton pointed at a bucket and told me to carry it. He was smiling, but his eyes were like two pieces of glass. He told me that this thing was the God of Memory. He said the only way to make people forget the truth is to use the blood of the thing that keeps the truth alive.
When I picked up that bucket, the ink splashed onto my hand.
That’s when the screaming started. But it wasn’t in the room. It was inside my head.
The second that black stuff touched my skin, I saw everything. I saw every person the Ministry ever killed. I saw the faces of the people who went missing last week. I felt their fear like a cold blade in my gut. I saw my own mother’s face, man. I realized I hadn’t thought about her in five years. I forgot she even existed because Sutton made me write a story about being an orphan. The ink told me the truth: she’s still alive, sitting in a cell three floors up, wondering why her son never comes to see her.
My heart felt like it was expanding like a panicked pufferfish. I almost dropped the bucket, but Sutton grabbed my arm. His grip was like a vice. He looked at the black stain on my hand and he knew. He knew the ink was talking to me.
“It’s a heavy burden, Omar,” he whispered. His voice was like dry leaves scraping on a grave. “That’s why we give it to the people. So we don’t have to carry it alone.”
I ran. I didn’t think, I just bolted. I knocked Sutton over and scrambled up the stairs. I could hear him calling for the guards, but I didn’t stop. I hit the street and didn’t look back until I got to this bar.
But here’s the thing. The stain is growing.
It started as a little smudge on my thumb. Now it’s up to my wrist. And every second it spreads, I see more. I can hear the heartbeat of the city, and it’s a terrified, sobbing sound. I can feel the memories of ten thousand people trying to crawl back into the world.
The worst part? I’m starting to forget my own name again. Every time I look at the stain, a little piece of me vanishes. I remember the God’s pain, but I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. I remember the massacre of ninety-two, but I can’t remember the color of my own front door.
I’m becoming a book, man. A book written in god-blood.
Listen to me. If you see the Ministry guys coming around with those little pens, run. Don’t let them touch you. Don’t let them tell you what happened yesterday. Because once they take your memories, they fill the hole with that black ink, and then you aren’t you anymore. You’re just a page in their story.
I think I hear boots outside. Are those guards? My eyes are stinging. It feels like someone is pouring salt behind my eyeballs.
Who am I talking to? I… I think I forgot who you are. Your face is getting blurry, like a drawing left out in the rain.
Stay away from the ink. Please. It’s hungry. It wants to be remembered, and it’ll eat your whole life to make it happen.
Wait. Why am I holding this glass? Why are my hands so dirty?
I need to go back to work. Sutton said I have a lot of writing to do tonight. We have to tell the people about the great feast. Everyone is so hungry, and they need to know that they are full.
Yeah. That’s it. I’m a scribe. I have a very important job.
Why are you looking at me like that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Don’t be scared. Everything is fine. The King is good, and we have always been happy.
I just wish this black stain would stop itching. It feels like it’s trying to get to my heart.