Excerpt from the Fragments of Humanity: Outsourcing Human Functions Short Story Collection
Remnants of You/Yesterday (draft which will be part of the Yesterday's Memories Short Story) (original script written March/April 2024 & short story draft written Aug 2025)
Remnants of Yesterday
A wispy wind brought reminders of the day ahead as I took a step out of the cold, lonely shell that was home with walls that the many years had decorated with an abundance of regrets. Deep down in my soul I knew where I would be that day because I’d been to visit the same place every year on the same day. The guilt that had kept me company over the years had never left and I’d never been able to give it away to anyone as it become my most consistent companion beside my memories which were echoes of yesterday with traces of joy but that were mainly a cocktail of sadness full of opportunities never taken, things I should have done differently and things that should have been said or done that were never said or done at all. Approximately, one month ago, my life had changed in a split second and that second had split into five thousand strands of thought, and so today I had to say a final farewell to someone that I had promised myself I would never ever leave or ever disappoint.
When the afternoon came, I found the graveyard was silent and still, like time had never paid a visit to it because it lived outside the moment and was like a frozen entity that had taken a step out of the world that had just taken a decision to live alone regardless of how the years went by. Despite the graveyard’s indifference, I knew as I lay the orchids on the grave I’d come to visit, emotions and care did not lack in the heart’s that came and went. Seconds later, the lilt of laughter came that I knew every note off, a melody of laughter full of life and care that would never abandon me and there was Melissa, radiant, smiling and ready to give me the companionship of hope that my heart sought.
“You came Kian.” Melissa says as she smiles.
“You couldn’t keep me away.” I reply with a grin.
“You come every year.” Melissa teases as she sits down on a nearby bench. “They might name this bench after us both soon.” She pauses before she continues. “But today, Kian, something feels different. You look very serious.”
“Yes, I have some very bad news.” I mention. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to come to see you anymore Melissa. I went to see the doctor this month and I’m not very well.”
“Let’s walk Kian.” Melissa insists as she stands up. “We can go down by the river and skim stones like we used to.”
Usually, the riverbank held warm memories, and the river was full of the happy residue from moments that I could capture then keep in my heart like treasures unseen but today, the watery depths held nothing but sluggish unforgiving ripples of emptiness which is what my life would become after this point. Seconds later I throw a stone across the watery depths as I give our childhood past times another chance to amuse us, but strangely as I glance at the stone that is leaving my hands and it starts to cut through the water, it takes me to another place and another time.
Suddenly, I find myself walking out of my home, but I’m twelve years old and the schoolbag on my shoulder reminds me of that and my childhood duty to my family on my way to school as it bristles against my clothes. Outside my gate as I prepare to do my duty to my family, I find Melissa’s friendly face waiting for me with a smile to carry along the road. We converse as we walk to decorate our steps and as I listen to our conversation, I remember the innocence of our childhood years that clothes every word. The dreams of her mother that would never bear any fruit, seen through a lens of wishful thinking and mingling with an audience of thoughts made from unrealistic expectations, those dreams had little chance of survival in reality, and the regrets of my own mother asking my father and I to do things for her that would cost her more time and require more work from her than our efforts could ever possibly save.
The stone skips back into the water and the image disappears, but seconds later it reappears and another day from my childhood is sitting on the stone’s shiny surface as it takes me back to another place and another time.
Unlike my first visit to the past this time is different, this time I’m in the schoolyard and a group of kids are surrounding Melissa and taunting her with scornful expressions after which they proceed to push her around, yet I stand in a corner of the schoolyard, witnessing their aggressive hostilities with not even a flicker of courage to be seen. Just a few seconds later one of the bullies grabs Melissa’s bag and yanks it from her shoulder then proceeds to tip it upside down and spread the contents of it all over the ground. The school bell rings, and the bullies run off as they head towards the school entrance and as they depart, Melissa kneels down then crawls across the ground as she tries to save whatever she can from the rain that is just about to start falling and once she salvages her belongings, she walks past me sobbing as she makes her way towards the school entrance.
Since Melissa had been born with a condition known as muscular dystrophy, which affects the limbs and mobility, she had walked with a limp and like an invader that refuses to leave your home that condition had stayed with her body and kept her being in perpetual submission to pain and discomfort although she never gave negativity or her suffering much time in her day as she wore a brave face and heart for everyone around her. Due to that physical imperfection, however, she had been the target of many pranks and had fallen victim to some of the nastiest bullies at our high school. Yet that day, unfortunately for Melissa, I had left my bravery on the shelf back inside my bedroom at home and had instead gone for a wallow in cowardice which now coated my every breath, my every thought and my every movement. Sometimes, the things that you don’t do in life when you should, can often haunt you for the remainder of it and my reaction to those bullies that day, had been one of my major childhood failures which had haunted me every day of my life, ever since.
Fortunately, my stone skips back into the water and the image disappears, but unfortunately, just seconds later, it reappears with another day from my childhood which is sitting on the stone’s shiny surface as it takes me back to another place and another time. Although when I was young, I would often wish that my skimming stones went in and out of the water as many times as possible, on this particular day, that successful achievement didn’t bring any pleasant satisfaction and rather my mind and heart began to delve into dismay and then skim across sadness. No matter how fast I would try to run from my regrets in life, it wasn’t a race that I was winning because so often, they would outrun me and then run through my mind and my days faster than life itself. Dread fills my heart as I find myself back inside the school hallway and see Melissa standing by her locker as the same bullies mock her and play catch with her textbooks.
“If you want your textbooks back Melimpa, then you’ll have to catch them.” He sneers as he tosses the book in his hands to another member of his gang.
“Yep, dam right.” The second bully taunts as he throws the textbook towards the third. “Here try again.”
Upon Melissa’s face there is a look of defeat as she stretches out her hands and tries to catch the book in midair, but it flies past her, and I can hear the zing of the pages as the book grazes her cheek.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do for you Melimpa, every time you miss it, we’ll tear some pages out of a book and that should motivate you to try harder, then you might actually catch one.” A third bully mocks as she catches the book then rips several pages out of it and tears them to shreds.
The school bell rings and echoes through the hallway as it seems to suddenly pluck up the courage to assist as my feet remain stuck to the ground and unable to move. Rather luckily, the bullies are already on detention for lateness and so they decide to abandon their taunts for the day as they head to class leaving Melissa with tears in her eyes while I remain frozen in fear that wraps itself around me with icy tentacles that squeeze my lungs and heart. Seconds later however, I see Melissa’s tears and they thaw my fear away as I finally step forward and then help her to pick the textbooks of the ground.
For the third time my stone skips back into the water and the image disappears, but seconds later like the torment of a tap that drips into silence to interrupt the quench of fatigue, it reappears and another memory that lives in my failure is sitting on the stone’s shiny surface waiting to take me back to another place and another time.
This time I find myself in the school cafeteria and as the rain falls outside, hungry children flock to its confines to devour their lunch as they rapidly abandon the schoolyard in favor of warmth as the innocent juveniles and persecutors in training sit side by side. Not long after Melissa steps inside the cafeteria, the bullies pounce on her again as she walks towards a table with her lunch tray in her hands, but this time, they knock the tray out of her hands, and it goes flying across the floor along with her dignity and peace. Due to Melissa’s peaceful disposition and lack of interest in conflict, she ignores their laughing, mocking and jeering as she tries to retrieve whatever she can and salvage some scraps of food from the floor from the debris of her lunch.
Some more insults fly towards Melissa as one of the bullies kicks a now loose sandwich from Melissa’s lunchbox across the floor and as it whizzes past Melissa’s head, she casts a desperate, pleading glance towards me and in a whisper, begs me to help her.
“Please help me Kian.” Melissa begs as she reaches out to me and tries to touch my hand. “Please.”
A second or two later I yank my arm away as I refuse.
“I can’t help you, Melissa.” I insist loudly. “I just can’t.”
Silence seems to conquer the cafeteria in a gale of fear as everyone around me immediately falls silent then stares at me with an icy coldness that cannot breath any breaths before the chanting starts.
“He can’t help you Melimpa because he can’t.” One of the bullies mocks as he bangs a cup on the table like a drum.
“He can’t help you Melimpa because he can’t.” The other bullies repeat as they too join the chant and then start to bang cups on the table with him.
At that precise moment in my life, I had come to stark realization as a young man that I was a failure, I was a failure as an ally in life to Melissa, I was a failure when it came to being a supportive lifeline to a friend in need and I was a failure to Melissa in her toughest hours but deep down inside myself I also knew, that if I did stick up for Melissa, then I’d be made into mincemeat and put on skewers.
However, the stone I had thrown was not ready to depart and to sink to the bottom of the riverbank as for a fourth time, it rose up out of the watery drops with another image and I was taken to another place and another time.
Not more than a few weeks later, Melissa didn’t turn up for school all week and since she was in my class, her absence had been hard to ignore, being that we usually did walk to and from school every day together. Despite the hurdle of fear and my cowardice, on the Friday afternoon as my class left to go home, I finally gave my courage a chance to exist as my guilt gave me a shove out of complacency and I spoke to our teacher about Melissa and her situation for the very first time. My bravery hadn’t been pure at the time, but it had been a hopeful first step into a brighter future on my part because my intentions definitely sought long term sanctification.
“Have you seen Melissa today, Miss Iverson?” I ask on my way out of class as I pause by her desk and fidget with a textbook.
“No Kian.” Miss Iverson replies as she shakes her head. “Melissa didn’t come to school today and I haven’t had a call or a note either, so I’m not sure what’s going on. You live quite close to her, don’t you? Perhaps you could check on her on your way home to see if she’s okay.”
At that point, my bravery had taken over and had somehow given my usual cowardly urges a vacation as the truth had shot out of my mouth along with the confession that I could not provide the name of the bullies due to fear of reprisals.
Despite my deep swim into cowardice, our teacher Miss Iverson had encouraged me as she had said, “Thank you for being so honest Kian that was very brave of you, so maybe, you won’t be scared off those bullies forever.”
In some ways my teacher’s words had given my heart a glimmer of hope that perhaps one day, I could be the kind of person that I wanted to be and as I left school and began the walk home, which was far lonelier now that Melissa wasn’t there, I began to think about things I could do with Melissa that weekend to apologize for my shortcomings.
My moment of triumph however, was short-lived as the stone reappeared for the fifth time and held me captive to my failures as another image began to surface and took my mind to another place and another time.
The bridge that I would cross on my way home from school sat before me and as I began to walk across it, I shiver and wrap my coat around me as the cold winds whisk around my frame. Halfway across the bridge, I stop abruptly when I hear a noise and see something swing to and fro below it. Every part of my heart had sunk into that river as I found Melissa hanging from the bridge and any triumphant jubilation I had felt seconds before flew swiftly away as joy began to abandon my heart, leaving me to sink with my own failures.
Seconds later I sit down on the ground and place my feet against the stone as I grab the rope and try to keep it still as tears burn my cheeks. Suddenly, a woman in her late seventies passes by and offers to help and I nod as I tell her that Melissa is my friend. An emergency call is made as I hold on to the rope as tightly as I can and the rain starts to fall from the sky and drenches my skin, hair and clothes but it doesn’t matter a single bit as I cling on to the last hope I have that Melissa will survive. Fear creeps all over my body as the rain mingles with my shame. The rope now has straw bitten edges that start to cut into my hands which are now red raw, and my arms feel like they are going to pop out of their sockets as the emergency services arrive.
Finally, the five emergency responders step onto the bridge carrying all kinds of rescue equipment, one of whom reassuringly sits down beside me but as we glance at each other’s faces we know, there will be no actual rescue that day, just a retrieval of Melissa’s lifeless body.
“Don’t worry, you can let go now.” She insists.
“I can’t.” I reply, my words drowning in my tears. “I can’t let go.” I pause for a moment as the sobs overwhelm my vocal functions. “She’s, my friend.” I shake my head. “And I can’t let go because this is not how her life should end.”
“Okay, okay.” She replies as she places a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll hold the rope steady together.”
I nod.
Just minutes later the emergency responders begin to climb over the side of the bridge and Melissa’s body is cut down from the bridge as I lose her forever.
The stone disappears as it dips below the surface of the water for the final time and as it sinks to the watery riverbed, it releases me from its grip, but there is no way to purge that disgraceful history of misery that lives in my self-disgust from my mind as I glance at Melissa’s face and cry on the riverbank. Sometimes, over the years I’d seen who Melissa could have been in the faces of strangers after her premature departure from life, because my regrets are stronger and live longer than my courage ever could. Sometimes, when the rain falls on my face, I still taste Melissa’s tears of pain in the raindrops when they lash against my face.
“Life is so temporal, isn’t it Kian, it can be gone in seconds?” Melissa says, as she holds my hand.
“I’m so sorry Melissa, I don’t want to let you down.” I reassure her. “My heart will still be here every year, but my body really is failing, so that part of me won’t be.”
“I understand Kian.” Melissa replies as she leads me back to the graveyard.
Shortly after, we arrive back in the graveyard, and we sit down on the bench together.
“I hope you can forgive me for everything that I did or didn’t do Melissa.” I say as I glance into her eyes.
“Kian, I forgave you long time ago, it really wasn’t your fault.” Melissa replies as she holds my hand.
“But I thought that you hadn’t forgiven me.” I mention as confusion sets in.
“No Kian, I just come to see you every year to comfort you, until you forgive yourself.” Melissa says as she smiles. “You were and you will always be my best friend. We can’t change what happened, we can’t change what we lost in life, but we can always hold onto to our friendship which you came to honor every year with your mind, body and soul. How could I not forgive your dedication and care? How could I not feel your footprints of love in my heart.”
Melissa stands up.
I stand beside her.
“It’s time Kian, it’s time for you to release the pain, release the self-blame and it’s time for you to forgive yourself.” Melissa says.
I nod.
Seconds later Melissa disintegrates into golden sparks of light, and I am left sitting on the bench beside Melissa’s gravestone alone.
Later that day, I admit myself into an end-of-life care unit that specializes in sepsis and I’m quickly given a bed which offers my weary bones a rest but as I lie in the hospital room and the guilty pangs inside of me rub against my bones as they socialize and mingle with my aches and pains without even a glimmer of empathetic resistance, I wonder as I try to let go of the guilty remnants that live inside of me, if Melissa was ever really there at all.