I couldn’t remember anything.

Nothing.

My name.

My birthday.

Even where I was.

All I knew was the room was dark and I didn’t know who I was.

I crawled out of bed. My head hurt, and I my eyes felt they’d been sandblasted.

I staggered around the room. It was a mistake to flick on the light. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up.

I looked at the pictures on the wall. I saw the same person in several of the pictures, and between that and looking in the mirror, I figured I was in my house.

I searched what I now knew was my bedroom for clues to what happened.

The only thing I could find was a business card with a cryptic message.

Need Someone To Forget? Call Us

It listed an address so I plugged the address into my phone — luckily my phone recognized my face as I couldn’t remember a password. It wasn’t that far from my house so I headed out.

It was a brisk ten minute walk through a nice neighborhood. My neighborhood I guess.

My phone led me to a small office on the corner. The sign read Memory Swipe.

This has to be the place.

There was a chime when i walked into a white, clean, rather inviting office. I strolled up to the young woman at the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I can’t remember anything,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“One moment,” she said and picked up the phone.

I stood there in an uncomfortable silence for what felt like a second too long, but the silence was interrupted when the phone rang.

“He’ll see you now,” she said.

“Who’ll see me?”

Before she said anything, some bust through the frosted glass doors to the left.

“Hello,” he said, “welcome to The Oubliette.”

“The Oubliette?”

“It’s what our office is called. A little pretentious, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.”

“Okay?”

“Please come with me,” he said leading me towards the doors.

I took the seat in front of his desk, a sleek black monstrosity.

“So,” he began, “what brings you here to Memory Swipe?”

“Memory Swipe?”

“Great name right? Used to be called ForgetR but those kind of names seemed so cliche now.”

“Yeah don’t want to be a cliche.”

“Right? So what brings you here?”

“Well, I woke up and couldn’t remember a thing.”

“I see, and why did you come here?”

I fished the business card out of my pocket. He took it, and I noticed the concerned look on his face.

“Dear me,” he started, “they really are are supposed to be more careful.”

“They.”

“They swipers.”’

“Swipers?”

“The teams we send to erase memories.”

“The what?”

“We send teams to erase people’s memories. It’s what we do here.”

“Why on Earth would you do that?”

“The same reason anyone does anything. Because people pay us to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Understandable, given your condition. We started erasing clients memories. Everyone has things they want to forget. A bad break up. Trauma. High school. Whatever they want.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“But,” he continued, “we found it was far more lucrative to…have people pay us to make other forget.”

“You mean?”

“Someone pays us to erase the memories of another person.”

I nearly screamed, “You can’t…You can’t…That’s not…not…right.”

Then the realization hit me.

That’s what happened to me.

“Someone paid you to to erase my memories.”

“Precisely.”

“Why?”

“Your boyfriend broke up with you. He thought it would be best to have a clean break. He contacted us and we came last night.”

“So he paid you and you erased everything?”

“Well,” he said, “usually they’re more precise. But, sometimes accidents happen.”

I was so distraught I didn’t hear the doors open behind me.

“But why are you telling this?”

“Oh” he said I felt two people grab me “because you’re not going to remember for very long.”

“No!” I screamed and they forced a pair of goggles over my head.

“You can’t do this!” I screamed.

And everything went white.