Part 1The Memory Thief: Kill to Remember

I had a secret. A chilling, impossible secret.

After I killed someone, I could steal their memories from the past three years.

Before my college entrance exams, I killed my academic prodigy boyfriend. And I got into a good university.

* * *

When did I first discover this… ability?

It was when I was nine. My parents got divorced, and custody was awarded to my mother. I loved Mom, but deep down, I loved Dad more. I often snuck off to see him, to play. But one day, when I went to find him, I walked in on him kissing a woman I didn’t know. My parents had always kept me shielded from such things; it was the first time I’d seen a man and a woman kiss. The woman’s lips were painted a vivid, predatory crimson, so red they looked ready to devour.

A surge of anger coiled in my gut. Even at that tender age, I understood. It was my father who had done something wrong, which was why they’d divorced. My father was a bad man.

Furious, I stormed into his car and scattered a handful of marbles. They’d surely jab his backside, and maybe make that woman trip and fall. Instead, the marbles jammed the brake pads, causing the brakes to fail. The woman ended up in a coma, and my father died instantly at the scene.

The police reviewed the surveillance footage and found I’d put marbles in the car. But a nine-year-old child, they reasoned, knew nothing and bore no criminal responsibility. Moreover, I was openly distraught, weeping uncontrollably over the loss of my father. No one blamed me. Everyone just pitied me.

Yet, even as I wept, a torrent of new memories flooded my mind. Within those memories, I saw the woman’s face. So my father had been… “bad” long before that. I saw my mother and father arguing, saw my father secretly taking money from the household. I saw the woman and my father entwined, their repulsive entanglement nauseating me.

I threw up.

My mother and the police assumed I was simply overwhelmed by grief, my body giving out. Only I knew the truth: it was pure disgust. A child, still so small, I had witnessed two beasts entwined.