08 Tar

“It’s time for bed, Tara…” The man muttered, getting up from the couch.

“That’s princess Tara, to you,” I said haughtily. Who does he think he is?

“Ain’t no princess under this roof,” he quips back, grabbing something from the cabinet.

“When are my parents going to be back?” I pester him. I want to spend as little time around him as possible.

“Look, I told you, a couple of days. Here, take this. It will help you sleep.” He hands me a pill from a bottle, then a glass of water.

I oblige, handing the empty glass back to him with force and storming off into the bedroom. At least I can get some peace and quiet from him playing video games and drinking adult soda all day.

I wake up the next morning, sore in the strangest of places. My side hurts; I somehow scratched it in my sleep. I tell Donovan at breakfast, and he furrows his brow, an angry look that he doesn’t explain.

The day was even more annoying than yesterday. I ran out of games to play on the tablet, and his friends were too loud for me to hear my cartoons. They were burning some awful incense that smelled like skunk.

That night, he offered me a sleeping pill again. I kept it in my mouth and spat it into the toilet when he wasn’t looking. A foul thing, it became bitter as it sat under my tongue.

I couldn’t sleep; my insides felt all wrong. It was like I wanted to throw up, but didn’t have anything in my stomach. Into the middle of the night, the door creaked open. I looked at the figure standing in the doorway, but it wasn’t anyone I recognized.

The man with a surgical mask noticed I was awake. He shushed me, telling me that he was a doctor. He heard from Donovan how my side hurt, and he wanted to make sure I was ok.

I wondered where Donovan was, but of course he was sleeping. The doctor wrapped a cloth around my arm, giving me a shot for the boo boo. He told me to keep the cloth tight, then wrapped one around his. I wanted to ask what he was doing, but then he gave himself the rest of the shot. When he untied the cloth from our arms…

“Stop. I don’t want to keep remembering,” Tar said, opening her eyes. Tears were falling down her cheeks.

“We need a face, a tattoo, any distinguishing features…” The police officer said urgently. They wanted to send her back into the memory.

“I can feel everything…” She was barely able to talk, her voice choking up..

“Yes, that’s how every FlashBack works…” The officer said with impatience, “We need more information to get this guy behind bars.”

“Safeword-” Tar said, her voice abruptly cutting off. Her eyes glazed over, her pained expression quickly became neutral.

The quiet attendant finally cleared their throat. They looked at their laptop that had vitals scrolling over it. The video feed from the memory had gone blank.

“She’s in full lockdown. No sight or sound,” They looked up at the fuming officer.

“Hell, we have all this technology and we still can’t get any clues. Is there any way to override that?” He raised his arms wistfully at all the cables surrounding the victim.

“No, she didn’t give us that level of permission over her device.” They sat back in the chair, looking at the officer storm around until he, too, sat down and leaned back.

“How long does this SafeMode last?” He broke the silence after a few moments of letting it sink in.

The WhiteCoat punched in a few keystrokes to the laptop, “Looks like this one is AI-assisted. So, whenever Tar’s device deems her mental state safe…” The officer’s blank look prompted a simpler explanation, “She’s at a virtual therapy appointment. If it calls for life-support, it could be forever.”

“Fuck. Can we keep her here without life-support, so it makes her wake up?” The officer scratched his 6-o’clock shadow.

“She’s not under arrest, so… No.” They navigated to the recordings, replaying the scenes with the man in the doorway.

“We have an approximate height from the doorframe, and…” A few clicks more, “a skin tone. Eye color, maybe? But memories will be unreliable for things like that. Close your eyes and tell me my eye color and you’ll see why.”

“Oh, right. She doesn’t have everything she sees uploaded to the cloud, like me,” he says with a bitter grimace.