The Forgetting Room

The Forgetting Room smelled like antiseptic and lavender, a mix meant to calm the newly unburdened. I checked in at the desk, my name already highlighted on the clipboard. "Appointment confirmed," the receptionist said, smiling like this was a spa and not a place where pieces of people were snipped away.

Inside, the technician gestured to the reclining chair. “One memory,” he said. “Five minutes. You already signed the consent.”

I nodded, though confusion pricked at me. My hands trembled. “I… don’t remember what I came to forget.”

“That happens,” he said gently. “Strong emotions can recoil and hide.”

I closed my eyes as the machine warmed beside me. Somewhere in the haze of my mind, a door pulsed—something locked behind it, something I had wanted gone badly enough to pay for erasure.

The technician paused. “We can stop, if you’d like.”

But a strange calm washed over me. If the memory had fled even from my intention, maybe it deserved to vanish. “Go ahead,” I whispered.

The machine hummed. A bright flash. And then—
Relief.
And the faint, terrifying sense that I’d forgotten something vital.