Sometimes I catch myself staring into the mirror.
I read somewhere, maybe in a magazine, that every time you look at yourself, you rewrite the definition in your brain that’s filed under "me.” It reminded me of witness testimony. Defense lawyers sometimes argue that memories are imperfect in a similar way. They quote studies that say every time you remember something, you change it. You remember it without a particular detail, and suddenly that detail was never there to begin with. You rewrite the whole scene, without that detail, and that's how you remember it until the next time you rewrite it in your head, each time moving further and further away from the truth, and always remembering yourself as having been just a slightly better person.
Maybe that's what I'm trying to do.
Lately, I’ve thought about the mirror looking back - as if my reflection is the real me. Because there’s something that happens in the fraction of a millisecond that it takes for the brain to process what it's seeing and, in that space, I can feel completely disconnected. Wholly divorced from the movement of the arms, the head, the eyes. I feel apart from myself, so maybe it actually is someone else. Maybe there's some magic to it and the room I'm looking into is the real one. The one that matters. And that guy, the one standing in a bathroom just like mine except everything is reversed? That guy’s the real me.
Then I wonder things. Like, what if we walk out of our bathrooms, in our separate dimensions, and our lives diverge? I go left, he goes right. I drive a Ford, he drives a Chevy. I tango, he merengues. Maybe, on his side, he’s the mayor. Or maybe he's even happy.
Maybe that’s his disappointment I see every day.
He watches me loosen my tie, take off my jacket, and unclip the badge from my belt. He watches me unholster my sidearm and set it on the bathroom counter. And the whole time he’s watching, mimicking everything I do like Harpo Marx, he’s got these crinkled crow’s feet sitting over his cheeks that are downturned in that way that only deep self-hatred can create.
In this moment, I wonder if he hates me as much as I do.
---
238.
I stood in the hall and stared at the numbers beside the door because they'd been in my head the whole morning. Overnight, they emerged from the ether, and I turned the digits backward and forward in my mind like a sore spot on my tongue. By the time I was in the car, backing out of my driveway, they'd branded themselves onto my brain.
It was unlike me. Were they numbers in my high school locker combination? A fraction of some long-forgotten phone number? It was a puzzle piece with no puzzle—a pebble in my shoe.
Irritated, I drove across town to a strange address, where a crime scene tech took me upstairs and, standing in a little, open-air hallway, I discovered that 238 was the victim's apartment number. I stared at the wall-mounted black numbers in confusion. This wasn't a detail I'd half-forgotten; the call came in early this morning while I was asleep. And it sure as hell wasn't a coincidence, detectives don't believe in those.
I was vaguely aware that Sharon Li, the CSI tech, was staring at me with concern. She glanced around the little walkway, which had been cordoned off with crime scene tape, to see if anyone else had noticed my stunned expression before asking, “Ellis. You good?"
I smoothed my tie and tried to look normal. “Yeah. Good."
Li watched me out of the corner of her eye. She wore khakis and a black polo with blue surgical booties over her tennis shoes. She'd already been on the scene for hours, collecting evidence. Pulling aside the yellow tape strung across the door, she ushered me inside.
The second my feet crossed the threshold, I was hit by the most intense wave of déjà vu I've ever experienced. It washed over me like a cold chill, a crystal clear memory of walking in that same door. It was confusing. At first glance, the apartment was so unremarkable. It was just a lonely one-bedroom with dirty laminate floors and cheap Ikea furniture. There were a thousand places in the valley just like it.
Why would I remember this one?
I knew the apartment intimately. Everything about it was familiar to me. I knew the little round table with its matching chairs in the corner of the kitchen. I knew the David Bowie albums hung like pictures on the walls. I knew the crusty shag rug on the living room floor. I knew it all, but I just couldn't place it.
I kept this feeling to myself as I mutely wandered the limited floor space. There was no point in burdening Li with any of this. Déjà vu is like a dream: it’s only interesting to the person experiencing it. No one cares that your brain just shit itself.
Li watched as I let my eyes drift across the room. I consciously erased the patches of fingerprint powder here and there, trying to jog my memory. It didn't work. I began to doubt myself. Surely I was thinking of somewhere else, somewhere similar. Shit, half the people in L.A. County live like this.
"Where are they?" I asked. Deep inside, I already knew, but I still asked.
"Bedroom," Li said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder.
"We got nothing in here?" I gestured vaguely at the combination living room, dining room, and kitchen -- referencing the absence of evidence tags.
Li shook her head. "There are two sets of latents, probably our victims. We found them everywhere except where you want them. The weapon's clean. The doorknobs and coffee table look wiped. I wouldn't hold out hope for a fingerprint match."
“Well… Hope’s overrated," I mumbled.
Just as the words left my lips, it hit me. I was frozen to the spot as a vision hijacked my mind. It was just for a moment, but it seemed to happen in slow motion. Suddenly, I remembered how I knew this apartment.
I’d murdered two people in it.
I was in the dark, cramped bedroom with a red-haired woman, my hand clamped tightly around a fistful of her dress, not letting her escape. Beneath us, on his hands and knees, was a man in a suit, bleeding like a sputtering garden hose from a hole in his chest.
I stabbed the redhead, and her eyes opened wide with shock. She looked down to find a blue-handled kitchen knife stuck between her ribs, just where I’d put it. Looking up in horror, her expression begged me to understand that this wasn't how her story ended, then she fell sideways to the ground.
I shook the memory away and came back to reality, immediately checking to see if Li noticed me stop in my tracks while the color drained from my face. Luckily, she was facing away, walking through a beaded curtain into the adjoining bedroom.
“Hate these things,” she said, pulling the strands aside and inviting me in.
I clenched my molars together, trying not to look horrified, as I robotically followed her. Once inside, I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. The bedroom was exactly as I'd remembered. It was dark and cramped. Lying on the wood floor were two corpses: Red Hair and The Suit. Blood everywhere. It took a conscious effort not to panic.
"Okay," Li said. "Two vics: one male, one female. The male’s got three deep torso lacerations, any one of which would have been fatal. Female has one, here on her side.” She pointed to a strip of gore beneath the redhead’s left arm where the blood had dried black and crusted.
I examined the cut, trying to appear calm. "Where's the knife?”
Li pointed with her chin. “On the bed.”
I walked over and all I could do was stare at it. Blue-handled. Fuck. How was any of this possible? My mind raced, flipping through all the questions I’m supposed to ask. "You checked the kitchen?"
Li nodded. "Yeah, they must have found the weapon here. It's part of a multi-colored set. Pink, blue, orange… The rest are in the dishwasher if you want a look."
Not knowing what else to do, I stared at the corpses. “I’ll take your word for it. Any ID?"
“Personal effects are bagged on the bedside table if you want to look. DLs say they lived here."
I walked over and took a cellphone picture of the drivers’ licenses. “Time of death?"
CSIs don’t love this question. In the early stages of an investigation, determining the exact time of death is more art than science, but it’s also some of the most crucial information they can provide. Li grimaced, hands on hips, then said, "I can't be precise, but sometime this weekend. More than 12 hours ago, less than... 48? Probably Saturday night, judging by their clothes."
I stared at the bodies, wondering how I knew them. Did I know them? Where was I Saturday night?
They stared back, answerless. Then I nodded for Li’s benefit, playing the part of the calm, collected professional investigator. “That's enough for me to work with."
---
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in my car, parked at the curb. I stared into the rearview mirror and gripped the steering wheel so hard I could hear it crunch between my fingers.
In my mind's eye, I saw The Redhead and The Suit. It was like a video played on repeat—red hair, blood, disbelief, over and over again. Tormented, I thought about baseball and did my times tables until slowly the images receded into the back of my mind. Then I checked the alibi of my one and only suspect: me.
One of the great joys of living in Los Angeles is leaving. Some go to Palm Springs, some to Joshua Tree… My summertime ritual is to take advantage of the off-season rates and rent a cabin in Big Bear for a weekend of solitude. I'd only just gotten back last night.
I opened the bank app on my phone and scrolled through recent transactions. My chest unclenched in relief when I realized there was a paper trail. I checked in at the cabin rental agency with a credit card on Friday afternoon. I also bought beer at the grocery store in town and gas at a Mobil station before driving back late Sunday night. Some of those places would have security cameras to corroborate that I was 100 miles away when this happened.
It was an uncomfortable experience, looking through my phone for evidence, but it made a truth I didn’t want to believe so real that it was almost tangible. I didn’t kill these people. Of that, I was certain.
I didn’t kill these people because those weren’t my memories.
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