Chronic Bilocation Syndrome

[Publisher’s note: This story won First Place in the inaugural Speck of Fancy themed flash fiction writing contest.]

One by one, the pieces fall away, dissolving faster the more I try to hold them. A house. It’s….  remember… gone. A game? Who was playing? And a… no. Think.

And him. Of course. At least remember his name. It’s…damn.

Within moments, all that’s left is the feeling.

The pod door lifts and I squint against the light.

“How was it this time?” Dr. Ambrose takes my hand, helping me step back to wherever I am. Oh, right. This place. The Clinic for Wayward Entanglements.

“Same.” I glance around the office as this world becomes familiar. “How long do I have to keep doing this?”

“We can’t help you unless you try. You were with him?” Dr. Ambrose sits back at her desk, taking notes. I ease into a plastic chair against the wall, realizing I can’t remember anything for her to write down. Except the feeling I don’t have a word for.

“Why are we still joined?” I ask.

“It’s actually a common condition,” Dr. Ambrose says. “You must’ve become emotionally aligned somehow, on a cellular level. Enough to trigger a Cardio-Neuro Quantum Entanglement.”

“That’s what the brochure says,” I sigh. “But I don’t remember falling in love. I don’t remember meeting anyone.”

Dr. Ambrose closes her notebook and gives me that studious look. “Well, the link is permanent, unless we can cure it. Hopefully, these controlled bilocation events will help find the piece that keeps pulling you back.”

“I just … I need all my atoms in one place, you know? I’ve got shit to do.”

“We’ll get there.” Her faint smile isn’t very reassuring.

The tingling sensation ebbs. I wake from a dream that isn’t a dream.

There was a bed. Maybe? No, a…hospital? It’s depressing.

“Were you there again?” He plops down on the couch next to me and shoves a bag of Fritos in my lap.

“I guess so,” I sigh as it all floats away.

He juggles a collection of small containers into a nice display on the TV tray in front of us. “Glad you made it home for Dip Fest. I know it’s bad for me, but we’re doing this.” Cue that impish grin.

It’s becoming a tradition. A fattening one, but so good. A new way to up the decadence level while we binge hours and hours of Doctor Who. Weekend warriors.

“Dip Fest 3: The Re-Dippening,” I laugh, pulling the sides of the bag open, reveling in the smell of salty calories rushing to welcome me in. He opens the Doritos. By dawn, both will be empty. And the buffet of dips: French onion, guacamole, ranch, and for some reason bean, will be decimated. He’ll have crumbs in his beard and I’ll weigh a pound or two more. But that won’t humble our reckless desire for each other.

I scoop a chipload of ranch into my mouth and settle in.

I wake up in the pod.

Come on. Where was I? Remember… a car… road trip? Maybe? Starry. Radio playing… something. Who’s driving? Was it him? Was there someone with us? Remember this one. I love road trips… dammit.

Gone. I sit in the plastic chair.

“We’re making progress.” Dr. Ambrose pushes a pen through her tidy brunette bun and consults her clipboard. “You’ve remembered some things. Which of these has the most emotional juice?”

I’ve heard the list before, but it keeps growing.

“Music. Road Trip. TV. Art. Food. Game. Sex. Guitar. Beard. Fort. Laughing.”

I think she left out Godzilla. The problem is, I can only remember the feelings, and the more she reads the list, the further away the feelings drift. Familiar things have a way of building emotional immunity.

“I don’t know. I like it all, I think. But, who is he?”

A perfect afternoon. Enwrapped in the world we’ve made.

“Let’s put a Pink Floyd vibe on this one,” he says, strapping on his guitar. He bends down to flip a switch on his effects pedal while I sit down and turn on the synth.

“Brilliant,” I say, pushing the lyrics over to him. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” I key in some Casio drums at a tempo I can keep up with and swivel to the computer to hit record. We’ve been working on “Very Close Encounter” for a few hours. Time to start laying down some tracks. We are in the zone, plugged in. My lyrics, his guitar riffs, my melodies, his modulated bridges. Our songs.

The world interrupts.

Remember this one. Please. There was… Music. A guitar. I’m playing… keyboard? We were… damn. The details vanish like bubbles lifting and popping.

I’m in the plastic chair.

“Can you sing it?” Dr. Ambrose asks.

I hum a little, almost remembering. “Something about …” I can’t find the words now. “Dammit, it was a good one.”

She writes in her notebook.

“Who is he, though? How did we get entangled?”

“Don’t you remember?” he says. 

The world comes back. Had I been somewhere else? I snuggle against his shoulder. We’re in our Pillow Fort.

“Did I meet you at the gallery?” I ask.

He has a way of giggling that’s totally incongruous with his bear of a body. “I had to buy one of your paintings to get you to notice me.”

“Had to?” I smirk at him. “You didn’t want to?”

“Oh, I wanted to. I fell in love with you just from staring at that painting. It was like you looked inside me and explained me to the world. Like you understood exactly who I was, and the painting proved we were the same. I had to have it. I wish I could’ve gotten more.”

“I remember that night. You said you loved my art.”

“I love everything about you,” he says. “Except I wish you could stay. I wish we had more time.”

“Me, too.”

“Where do you go?”

“No idea.”

Chronic Bilocation Syndrome is a mysterious condition. The brochure from the Clinic for Wayward Entanglements explains it pretty well. Entanglements persist, even if you’re separated by vast distances. Like two best friends who just haven’t seen each other in a while, you stay linked. It’s all fine and good, as long as you’re both on the same plane of existence. But apparently, we aren’t. At least not anymore. Me and whoever he is. And that’s why I developed a gnarly case of Chronic Bilocation Syndrome.

It’s damned inconvenient.

“There’s evidence to suggest that Bilocation Syndrome can be cured,” Dr. Ambrose says, “We may be able to keep you in this world, stop you from being pulled away. We just need to disentangle the original connection that joined you. The original spark.”

“You know I thought you were human, at first.”

“No need to hurl insults,” he chuckles.

In hindsight, it seems so obvious. He’s never belonged here. No matter how many times the doctors adjust his meds, he eventually slides back into crisis, either physical or psychological. He can’t adjust to living here. Bipolar, irregular heartbeat, seizures, blood pressure, addiction, anxiety, genius. I realize now that he has struggled every day, just to be with me. To stay in our perfect world.

But when he’s with me, we operate like a singular creative force. We create masterpieces, worlds that would never exist but for our union. Music, art, stories, videos, jokes, collaborations born of a connection so special, so easy, so magic. So rare that I wind up here. Pulled back again and again, into our romantic bubble somewhere in spacetime.

The painting hangs over his couch. I created it before we met to commemorate a dream, titled it Alien Intervention. Straight from the core of me, it shows a woman rapt in ecstasy, floating, enveloped in a warm light, blasted from a ray gun aimed by someone out of frame.

He makes me feel like that.

“It’s the thing that brought us together,” he says from the kitchen. “The thing that keeps us together after that one chance meeting. That one night, at the gallery.”

 I’m on the couch beneath the painting, huddled under a blanket, with a cold. “I love the world we made here,” I sniffle.

He brings me a bowl of ginger soup he’s made from scratch. “This will make you feel better,” he says. “Ancient cure.”

“I don’t know why I’m sick.” I look at him with watery eyes. “I feel like something’s wrong.”

He sits next to me and kisses me. I don’t want him to say it, but he does anyway. “I think it’s time to take down the painting.”

One by one, the pieces fall away. No chance of keeping them now. The house… gone. It was….think.  A painting of… something … what?

And him. I will never remember his name.

Within moments, all that’s left is the feeling.

I’ll never remember why I am crying.

[End]