Better Half
a science fiction by Ronan O'Callaghan
While not directly relating to Memorial Day, this story does relate to memory and how fragile—and precious—it can be. Also, snails are slimy and definitely up to something. That’s important, too.
Better Half
By Ronan O’Callaghan
A scruffy man stood in front of her, smiling and hiding his hands in his pockets. Through the pitch-black darkness, she could see shimmering grease in his unkempt hair and holes in his baggy brown trench coat. He was short, thin, and pale, but she knew better than to take her chances. Turning around, she started to jog away.
"You're forgetting something, sweetie!" the scruffy man cried out coolly.
Still dashing away, she looked inside her purse. Phone, wallet, keys—pepper spray! She thanked herself for buying it, although she couldn't remember when she did that.
"Uh-uh, hon, you ain't gonna find it in there," he teased, slowly tailing her.
Without turning around, she hurried her pace. Scanning her surroundings, she saw industrial-sized garbage bins and the backs of what looked like stores. Why am I walking down a creepy alleyway in the middle of the night? she asked herself. But she couldn't remember why she was there, where “there” was, or where she could run.
"No point in running," he said, "when you can't think of where to go."
"I'm calling the cops," she replied, pulling out her phone with one hand and grabbing the pepper spray with the other.
According to her phone, it was 10:26 PM, and ten minutes ago, she had received a text from someone named Stanley Petrov. It said, "Help me."
"Call the cops, and I kill the snail," the scruffy man said.
She whipped back around. "What are you—. What the—!" she exclaimed, seeing the creature. It was a giant, purple snail with a swirling pattern on its shell glowing a tealish blue. Huge droplets of sticky clear liquid dropped onto the ground while its stringy eyes desperately wiggled in the air as the scruffy man held it by the shell.
The man smirked at her. "It's an Echolix," he explained as she cautiously stepped closer. "It can slurp the memories out of suckers like you in a second. You'll get 'em back if you touch it. But you gotta pay up first. Give me the phone."
She extended her hand, and as he leaned to grab it, she pulled up her other arm and slammed her thumb onto the pepper spray's button.
"Argh!" the man cried in agony as he was blasted in the face. Clutching his eyes, he stumbled backward and tripped into a pothole. The snail creature fell out of his hand and landed on its shell. As the scruffy man moaned, she grabbed the creature off the ground and slapped her hand onto its foot.
The cool, slimy feeling of mucus was replaced by a torrent of thoughts and feelings. She was Katherine. And she was worried. She was about to be fired, she was sure of it; she kept messing everything up. Then she'd miss rent. Then she'd be out on the streets. Then she'd starve. It's not like she deserved anything better anyway. She had always failed; she was always going to be worthless.
She struggled to escape the vortex, but it was replaced by a cacophony of voices that had screeched throughout her life, telling her she'd never amount to anything, that she was ungrateful, no one wanted her, that she was a disappointment, and would never make anything of herself.
Trying to ignore those distant memories only replaced them with new ones. Memories of long, agonizing days where she lived the life she had been told to lead. A job she hated, friends who annoyed her, hobbies she despised. Days where every morning she woke up feeling more tired than when she went to sleep. And there was—
She ripped her hand off the snail and threw it to the ground, where it landed on the scruffy man's face. He let out another groan and, as the emotions bubbled in her head, she looked at him and briefly felt a mixture of petrifying terror and profound guilt.
Quickly, she began walking away. As she did, she opened her phone and deleted every photo, text, and email.
#
Kat shuddered as she recalled that horrible night. The man had been unpleasant, but the memories terrified her. Reassuring herself, she sat up from her reclining position and looked at the warm, shining sand and gently-crashing waves surrounding her. To her left, she saw Jacques-Pierre tanning his toned body. Looking over her shoulder, she saw his grandmother's ramshackle beach shack, which had been their seaside resort for the past week. Peering across the dunes, she grinned, knowing she was alone with Jacques-Pierre.
Still smiling, she plucked her journal from the sand. Flipping through, Kat reviewed her plans. First, she was going to start working at the Peachy Muffin. Considering that Coco, the girl from the party, had offered her a job on the spot, it would be rude to say no. Of course, that was just something to do to get some cash. Soon enough, she and Jacques-Pierre, or JP, as she had taken to calling him, would transform his grandmother's forgotten beachside shack into the sleepy vacation town's premier French restaurant.
Kat chuckled as she admired JP. The night she lost her memory, she checked into the first hotel she could find and found JP sitting at the bar. He was the most handsome man she could recall. Although that wasn't saying much, she still walked right up to him and said so. He chortled and had been letting her stay with him ever since.
Her snail-induced amnesia hadn't hindered their relationship. If anything, it had helped. JP liked to live in the moment and had only thought to ask Kat where she was from yesterday. When she explained the miraculous story behind why she couldn't tell him, he just chortled and shrugged.
Flipping through the journal, Kat marveled at all the blank pages she had in front of her. So many empty canvases for her to paint.
“Woman!” she heard a hoarse voice shout from behind them.
“What is that?” JP asked in charmingly-accented English, rising off his beach towel.
Kat gasped when she saw the scruffy man stumbling toward them. Now he wasn’t just scruffy, he was completely disheveled. He wore a patchy, half-gray beard and smelt like he had tried to compensate for not showering by running into the ocean.
As the scruffy man faltered forward, JP stepped up to him. “You are not going to mess with us,” he stated.
The scruffy man shot a worried glance at the imposing figure approaching him and whipped out the Echolix. “Stop! No closer come!” he demanded, waving the snail in the air.
JP stepped back and the scruffy man turned his attention to Kat. Staring back, Kat noticed that the snail’s shell was barely glowing anymore. “You ideas gone nearly,” he haltingly threatened. “Money give now or no more you!”
“You’d have to pay me to go back to being Katherine,” Kat shouted. “Now get out before JP makes you.”
JP took a step toward the scruffy man and cracked his knuckles. The scruffy man stumbled backward.
“Wait!” the scruffy man exclaimed, turning the snail on its back. He forced his other hand out of his jacket pocket and began to rub his finger over its slimy foot gently. “You see…” he murmured, lost in concentration.
“What are you doing?” Kat asked, approaching the man. “Aren’t you gonna get your memories sucked out?”
“I immune,” he replied, refusing to break focus. “But see you memories. See you whole life. All you throw away. Everyone you lo—”
The man halted, his eyes shooting wide open. Kat wanted to ask what was wrong, but he suddenly dropped the Echolix and began to furiously run toward the dunes. As he ran, his trench coat fell off his back and Kat stared at his emaciated body, covered in cuts and bruises. He kept tripping and falling over the dunes but somehow managed to scratch and crawl his way over the horizon.
Kat studied the creature before turning back to the brochure in her hand. After carefully picking it off the beach, she poked holes in a large plastic box that Brad kept his surf stuff in, then threw it in. The shell spiral's glow was now just a dot at the center. She sighed and opened the crumpled instruction manual again.
She had found it in the scruffy man's jacket. In big, purple letters on the cover, it advertised itself as 'The Echolix: A Healing Snail.' It provided a snapshot of how the creature worked. There was an illustration of one crawling across a woman's smiling face with the caption "Your Therapist is Full of BS, Mine's Full of Mucus!" The Echolix in that photo was small enough to fit on the top of Kat's pinky, while the one in front of her was bigger than her hand.
The brochure claimed that a tiny Echolix was the cure to all of life's woes as well as an adorable pet. Put the snail on your forehead for a minute every day, and it'll suck every unhappy thought from the last twenty-four hours out of your head. Leave it on for an hour—only in a controlled environment, the pamphlet cautioned—and it could erase decades of trauma.
Once the creature digested a memory, it was turned into fat stored inside its shell. Due to how slowly they move, it takes months to burn off a couple of calories. For that reason, the brochure cautioned not to feed it too frequently. Otherwise, it could grow massive and would begin biting off more than it could chew. A bad memory is its favorite dish, but once those are gone, it devours the brain from front to back.
Big Echolixes could swallow a lifetime of memories in one gulp. After that, it starts feasting on your impulse control, language skills, and coordination. Eventually, it eats your appetite, leaving you to waste away while feeling full. Finally, it gobbles up your ability to control your limbs and organs.
The booklet warned: do not touch the Echolix if you don't feel any memories disappearing. It does not mean you are immune; it means it has moved on to eating lower brain functions.
Kat exalted and turned back to the snail. Something in Katherine's past had scared that man so much he ran away. Thinking of his emaciated body struggling across the sand, Kat felt a pang of deep pity.
If only we could get his memories back, she thought to herself. But the pamphlet had been clear; once a memory had been fully digested, it couldn't be reabsorbed.
Kat stared at the light on the Echolix's shell. The manual said that the brightness of its shell indicated how many memories it was holding. Now the final spark of light was blinking on and off, growing fainter with each second.
Help me, she remembered. Someone needed her help.
No, Kat reasoned, someone needed Katherine's help.
Still, her breath grew quicker as she watched the light decay. Cursing herself, Kat opened the plastic case. She couldn't surrender a future unblemished by the past. But she needed another taste of who Katherine was.
There must only be a few memories left, she reasoned to herself as she carefully lifted the Echolix by its shell. Holding the writhing monster at arm's length, Kat devised a plan. She would extract as many memories as she could before getting the scruffy man some help.
Hesitantly, she pressed her index finger against its foot before quickly withdrawing. She only felt a singular plop into her mind. She touched the Echolix again but only felt the same memory.
Kat put the Echolix down and collapsed into her chair. Slowly, she began to cry.
Sand whipped across the beach as the cool summer night’s wind blasted in from the ocean. Kat found the scruffy man half-buried in one of the dunes after frantically searching for an hour. He was so still she thought he might be dead. When a wave of sand hit his face, he flinched, and her heart started beating again.
“You,” she said, standing over him. The man struggled to blink and closed his eyes when he saw her. “You need to eat,” she said, taking a tin foil-wrapped sandwich out of her bag.
“Nooo,” the man insisted, turning his head into the sand.
She grabbed his buried leg and started to yank him out of the dune. “I’m not gonna let you die,” she said as she struggled to dislodge his body. “Come on, can’t you move your legs?”
“Nooo,” the man moaned.
Kat tensed up. “You need to eat this!” she desperately shouted, shoving the sandwich in the man’s face.
“No care,” he murmured, dejected.
“What do you mean?” Kat yelled. “We’re talking about your life, you have to care!”
“Nooo, you not—” he paused, struggling. “You not should care me.”
“Well,” Kat shakily began. “I do. Now eat, before you lose control of your arms.”
Hesitantly, the man grabbed the sandwich and took a tentative bite. After struggling to chew the first corner, his eyes widened. In a matter of seconds, he shoved the whole meal down into his mouth. For a long moment, they were both quiet, and Kat sat down next to the man.
“Thanks for saving me,” he finally spoke. “But what was in that? It was so slimy and squishy.”
Kat chuckled. “Escargot, Brad cooked it.”
The man stuck out his tongue. “You could have just told me it was oyster or something, I ate tons of those growing up. Wait,” he paused.
Kat chuckled. “Sharp as ever, Stanly.”
“Stanly,” he repeated. “That’s me! I’m Stanly! My word, how could I have forgotten?”
“How's it feel to be back?” Kat asked.
“Incredible—goodness!” Stanly suddenly exclaimed. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you. That thing must have gobbled up my restraint, arrgh,” he moaned, gripping his forehead. “Sorry, this is such a strange sensation. Everything is coming, but it’s all in the wrong order. How did you know it would work? The brochure didn’t say anything about this.”
“No, but it did say the digested memories were stored in its shell,” Kat explained. “I was only certain after I tried it on myself.”
“So that means you’re Katherine—” Stanly’s eyes flashed with recognition. “Katherine!” he wailed as he threw his arms around her.
“Yup,” she flatly stated, “I’m back.”
After fully digesting the Echolix, she remembered everything now, all the way back to her parents' horrible divorce. Hours and hours of her mother ranting about her negligent ex-husband. Katherine used to tell herself that she was on her own, that she had escaped it all now. But then she was trapped in eighty-hour work weeks as a lawyer, a job that she thought would finally make her parents proud. It seemed so crushingly hopeless until Stanly came along.
They met at a bar. Katherine had been dragged there by her co-workers, and so had Stanly. While their colleagues got blasted, they snuck back to Katherine’s house. Katherine was immediately fond of Stanly because of how courteous he was. Always saying pardon and excuse me, she couldn’t believe anyone would be so kind to her. After eating the Echolix, Katherine absorbed the aftertaste of some of Stanly’s memories, and she understood why.
His childhood home had been strict and cold, only receiving attention when he asked for it as politely as possible. Now Katherine could understand why he was trying to move in with her after three months of dating; she was giving him the most affection he had ever had.
Knowing that Stanly had kept so much from her saddened Katherine, but she couldn’t blame him. It’s not like she told him about her problems. After all, that’s why she got the Echolix.
She was explaining her predicament to her childhood friend Charlotte. While Stanly was eager to rush in together, Katherine felt like she would never be able to live with someone else. Charlotte wasn’t the sort of friend who was content to dole out trite life advice. Her government-affiliated job, for reasons never explained to Katherine, involved confiscating many mysterious objects. The Echolix and its accompanying brochure were one of her discoveries.
Charlotte’s plan was simple: invite Stanly to move in and just erase any memories that could stress the relationship. Katherine was skeptical, but her fear of losing Stanly outweighed her disbelief. Of course, her doubt and worry vanished when she put the slug on her forehead.
Now Katherine could remember all the memories she erased during those months. She was worried about stressing Stanly out with meaningless worries, but soon enough, she was letting it erase her family history. When Stanly found the brochure, he started using it on himself. Katherine was furious when she discovered, but forgot the moment she touched the Echolix.
Unbeknownst to them, the Echolix grew fat on their sorrows and anxieties. Its appetite grew, and soon it was devouring chunks of their lives. One afternoon, it bit off all of Stanly’s childhood summers in the beach town of Oysville. Hoping to recover his memories, Stanly took the Echolix and his car down to Oysville. A few days later, Stanly was desperately texting Katherine, telling her that he could feel his mind slipping and that he needed her help. As she drove down, she kept messaging him but could tell his personality was slipping away. Regardless, she ran into the alley he said he had been hiding in before he slapped her with the Echolix.
Katherine clutched Stanly’s shaking body tighter. She wanted to tell him everything, but she knew it would be hours until all his memories were back. Staring out at the ocean, she wasn’t sure if they had a future together or not. After the last few months, it didn’t seem likely. She sighed, resenting her tainted future.
A cauldron of horrible thoughts bubbled in her head, but she stopped herself. Instead, she remembered being a woman who was always in control of herself and who was brave enough to face a blank future every day. More than that, after seeing a memory of her and Stanly together, Kat was brave enough to shoulder a lifetime of burdens to try and save him. Katherine rested her head on Stanly’s shoulder and smiled, remembering that Kat would always be a part of her.
Meet the author:
Ronan O'Callaghan is a writer based in Chicago. He grew up in Boston and has always had an appreciation for stories at the intersection of sci-fi, fantasy, and any other vector of narrative creativity and invention. He has previously been published in Manawaker Studio's Flash Fiction Podcast series. His most recent encounter with the underside was discovering a school of dazzling, variegated fish under a city sewer grate.
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