The Underhill Journal

My landscape of memory is a place as full of shadows as a forest in moonlight. The light of recollection pierces it's gloom and highlights just a fragment of detail, often something sharp and stark. These fleeting images have often come to me at awkward moments, catching me off balance, and sometimes stabbing painfully at me with their clarity.
It happened to me again yesterday. I was standing by the sink, cleaning the cutlery, staring out across the sleepy river valley of the place that I currently call home. The setting sun slid into view through the open window and for a moment I was blinded by it. I closed my eyes and saw arcs of blood sprayed across the white walls of my parents apartment. There was nothing more to it than that one image, yet it knocked the breath out of me. My stomach lurched wildly in response to some further memory that it did not care to share with the rest of me, and I had to grab hold of the sides of the sink as it emptied itself of the lunch I had only recently consumed.
It's been ten years or so since my parents were killed, but the fragmented memories of the night they died are like open wounds inside me. I cannot recall it all, not even nearly, but my fear of what happened then has driven me every day since. There are some things it is worse to remember than to forget.
I've been sitting for hours this evening, alone in my room and trying to piece together the fragments that I do have of that night. It's an arduous task and I feel completely masochistic in attempting it, but now I can't face it any more. I note it down in the little black book I keep with me all the time, then snuff out the lamp and attempt to sleep.

If my memories form a dark forest in my mind, then my dreams are wild creatures that hunt beneath it's eaves.