Bewildered in Other eyes

Another flash of pain shoots up your side. You shift your weight from one ass cheek to the other. Still sore. You shuffle to the edge of the hard, plastic chair.

'Mind if I stand up for a second?' you ask. The officer glances up. 'Ass hurts.'

The officer - you've forgotten his name again - makes a 'be my guest' gesture with his hand and continues writing. Though his seat looks conspicuously more comfortable than yours, he seems to share your discomfort. He shifts around in his chair restlessly, drumming the table with the fingers of his spare hand.

You stand up and arch your back. Stretch your arms. Kick the air a few times.

At first, the officer seemed as bored and reluctant as you. Detached. Just getting through another routine day at work.

Work boredom. You'd recognise it from a mile away. He made a little small talk about it as you settled in.

'You have many plans for the day?' he asked you.

'Not really. Day off. Was hoping to just chill,' you said.

'I hear you.'

'Guess that's out the window now, huh?'

'Nah, we should be able to breeze through this. You seem like a good guy. Let's just get these questions out of the way quick smart so we can have you out of here while the sun's out.'

That was over an hour ago.

'Sorry about that, mate. Paperwork,' he says, shaking his head. 'Just take a seat and we'll get on with it.'

You don't usually like cops. But this guy seems cool. Just some dude with some job. You sit down and your ass instantly starts to ache again. You move in closer to the table and lean on your elbows.

The officer studies his papers for a moment. 'So I've got here that you worked a night shift on the eleventh?'

He meets your eye again. You nod to keep the process moving.

'And you went across the road to Minibar afterwards?'

You nod again.

'And this would have been around midnight?'

You shrug. He regards you with a neutral expression. 'Yeah, around midnight,' you say compulsively.

'And who did you go to Minibar with?'

'Uh . . . probably just some of my workmates.'

A glimmer of suspicion sneaks into the officer's stone face. You feel compelled to speak.

'Well, I'm not exactly sure. I mean, it was like two weeks ago . . .'

The officer continues to look at you silently. It feels important to maintain eye contact.

'Like, I don't really remember the specifics. That's just generally what happens on a Thursday.'

'Can you say for sure that you even went to Minibar that night?'

'Uh, not for sure, no.'

'Can you say for sure whether you went to work that night?'

'I guess not . . . Wait, no. Yeah. I definitely had work that night. I always work on Thursday nights.'

'Right.' The officer scans a piece of paper on the table with the back of his pen, stops around the middle. 'Well, I've written here that you went to Minibar on Thursday the eleventh. Is that not accurate?'

'I mean, well, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what I did. I can't remember specifically but . . . I'm probably like ninety percent sure .'

The officer says nothing and scribbles some notes in the margins of the page.

You squirm in your chair. Your discomfort is now more than physical. When the officer had asked these questions, he did so casually, placing very little importance on them. Just another formality to rush through. Really, you have no idea what you did that night. But chances are you went to Minibar.

The officer looks back into your eyes. 'So I've added a note to say that your memory of this particular night is not entirely accurate. Okay?'

'Yeah. But not like 'cause I was drunk or anything. It's just 'cause it was a while ago.'

'Right.' The officer turns back to his paper.

'I just made a guess. It didn't seem all that important. It was probably just another Thursday night.'

'So you just made that up?' the officer asks without looking up.

'Well, not exactly. It's more like . . . I kind of just figured out what I would've done that night. I guess what I'm saying is I'm pretty sure nothing significant happened that night. If that's what you were asking.'

The officer regards you again for a second, then turns back to his page.

'I mean, would you usually expect someone to know specific details about what they did on a random night two weeks ago?' 

The officer doesn't respond. What you wanted to say was that the first time he asked the question, you didn't feel like you were a suspect.

A most enigmatic function of the human mind is that of the imagination. From the spontaneous and often ingenious fabrications of the sinner caught red-handed, to the elaborate fantasy worlds of the novelist, the ability to envision and articulate that which is not perceived by the senses is a testament to the infinite nature of the mind. Oblivious to the profundity of such an act, we humans regularly run simulations in our own minds and make real-life decisions based on their outcomes. In quiet times, we entertain ourselves with controlled hallucinations about alternate versions of reality and the endless possibilities of the future. At night, while the senses sleep, our consciousness explores environments created entirely by our imagination as if they are as real as the world we share. An intellectual is one who can effectively maintain the information provided by the senses; a genius is one who can effectively imagine possibilities not yet manifest.

You continue to writhe around in your seat, but the discomfort is now entirely psychological. The interrogator - who you now identify as a detective - seems to have shed his earlier restlessness. His voice is steady, his words direct. Concise. His eyes are dead-locked on yours, unwavering.

'Your encounter with the officer occured in Newtown, a little before one AM,' the detective says. 'But you've said that you were in the city centre at that time.'

You fight the urge to break eye contact. 'That was a different night,' you admit. 'Sorry, I forgot - I remembered just now. That was the night we went to my workmate's leaving drinks. In Newtown. We didn't go to Minibar that night.'

The detective continues to hold your gaze. He is no longer writing. He no longer looks at you with suspicion. His eyes and face reveal nothing. Sprayed black windows on a featureless ceramic mask. The silence seems to echo in the tiny room. You have to speak.

'I don't actually remember that night too well.' Your memories of leaving the party are vague, but you can remember walking home. You weren't blacked-out.

'You were questioned by an officer at an all-night service station at one AM.'

'I don't think that was me.'

'With regards to a series of break-ins in the area.'

A sense of familiarity grows, but vanishes before it can take form in your mind, like a dream upon awakening. 'Maybe . . . Honestly I can't say for sure.'

'You were questioned about your gloves.'

You start to remember something again. Joking with the officer about how it had been bad luck that you were wearing gloves and a hoodie. How, believe it or not, you were using them for their intended purpose. Something like that. Some details are still out of reach.

'You provided your name and address and the officer dismissed you.'

Suddenly, a memory forms from the blur. 'Oh shit! Yeah. That’s right.' The officers had offered you a ride home, before spotting a group of suspicious looking characters in the distance and driving off. Then you walked home. 'Then they went off to question some other people. Nothing happened after that. I just walked home.'

'Are you sure about that?'

'Yeah,' you say, failing to convince even yourself. 

Equally profound, yet seemingly less exotic, is the function of memory. The notion that our recollections are predominately fabrications - more akin to the capacity of the imagination than to that of perception - is widely accepted in both the hard and soft sciences; even the most wilfully ignorant layperson can come to some dim acceptance of this when challenged with the fact. On a deeper level, however, even the most devoted disciple of the sciences resists the notion to a degree, regardless of what they profess to believe intellectually. To accept that our memory is, for the most part, a work of fiction is to pull up the psychological anchor that keeps us moored - the events of our past. However ignorant, it is our faith in the accuracy of our memories that keeps us from losing sight of the shore.

'Why were you on Owen Street if you were heading toward Hanson Street?'

The detective's expression is no longer concealed. There is a manic glint in his eyes, a faint quiver of ecstasy in his voice. With a flash of raw terror, you remember reading about a fatal assault that had occurred in Newtown that night, the queer combination of fear and relief you felt when you realised you had been in the same area. Now aware that you're being questioned about the murder, your entire body convulses with anxiety. You move your shaky hands to your lap, trying to hide your fear.

'Fuck, not Owen Street, uh . . .' you say, unable to keep the shiver of terror out of your voice.

'Hiropi Street?'

'No, not - wait, no it was Owen. Yeah. I took a piss at the playground down the road. I wasn't actually on Owen Street. I just went there, went past, uh, 'cause there were cops around, I just . . . Oh wait, no. I went the long way 'cause I didn't wanna walk past those guys. They looked shady. I was worried they might think I sent the cops over to them. Yeah. So I went home the other way. Like, behind the, uh, behind the -'

'I'm just gonna have to ask you to settle down a bit. I can see you're nervous, just take a few -'

'Hey man,' you blurt out. 'I'm just kind of freaking out 'cause I realised you're questioning me about that murder. And, like, I know it sounds bad, like my memory's a little sketchy and shit, but I'd remember if I - like I know what I would and wouldn't do. I never get violent.'

'Then tell me,' the detective's eyes smile while his face remains still, 'what you were doing on Owen Street.'

'I don't know. Maybe I was lost. Drunk.' You want to use your right to remain silent, but it's too late. You can't stop talking now. 'I didn't kill that dude, though. I remember reading about it the next day and thinking about how crazy it was that . . .'

You look back at the detective's wide, hungry eyes. He hasn't written anything down in a long time. He's mentally recording every word you say, every pause, every inflection. All you can do is tell the truth.

As it happens, this is harder than it sounds.

The Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting - hypothesised by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 - describes the decline of one's ability to recall a specific memory over time. In this way, it is not the vividness of the memory that is diminishing, but the accuracy - one's sense of personal narrative distorts specific details and fills in gaps with each successive reminiscence, until all but the most personally significant aspects of the memory are reduced to a work of fiction, no more representative of objective reality than speculations about the future. Most of what is known of human history is a patchwork of various written accounts and remnants of word-of-mouth mythology, with the gaps filled by the speculations of myriad historians and scientists; likewise, the majority of what one remembers of their life up until the present consists of imaginative accounts of the past by themselves and others, their edges worn smooth like shards of glass in the ocean.

Your past is a movie based on a true story.

'Well, yeah, but I mean - it's just a pair of black gloves. They're not exactly distinctive.'

You can feel the detective staring into your essence, but you can't meet his gaze. Your eyes are locked on the pair of black gloves sitting on a metal tray between you. Dark maroon streaks reflect the fluorescent light above with a dull shine.

'The officer who questioned you said you were highly intoxicated and agitated.'

The memory becomes clearer. You had joked with the cop, but not in a lighthearted or jovial manner. You can now remember being sarcastic and indignant. When the officer offered you a ride home, you accused him of having ulterior motives, before spotting a group of thuggish looking characters down the road and asking why the cop was questioning you and not them. At the party, a drunk guy you didn't know accused you of drinking his beer. It got pretty heated, but your friends defused the situation before it got physical. You left the party in a bad mood soon after.

'I got into an argument at the party,' you say, still unable to look away from the gloves. 'I was pretty pissed off. I probably took it out on the cop.'

'No,' the detective says, his voice low and his syllables measured. 'After being questioned by the officer, you left in an even worse mood. You then went across to the park, and took it out on Joseph Hartman, your murder victim.'

'No. No I went -'

'You went to the park, maybe to take a piss, and crossed paths with an intoxicated Joseph. One or both of you started an altercation, ending with you breaking a bottle over his head and leaving him for dead.'

'No . . .' You can faintly remember having a shoving match with someone on the way home. But you didn't beat someone to death. 'No, I think someone tried to pick a fight with me, but I . . . Wait, that's why I was in the park. I didn't want to run into that guy again.'

'Yes, it's possible that the initial encounter between you and Joseph happened outside of the park.'

'We only had one -'

'You have proven to me that your memory of this night is unreliable. What I know is that the officer who had previously apprehended you apprehended Joseph soon after on Constable Street. After Joseph was dismissed, he headed off toward the service station where you were apprehended. He was extremely intoxicated and agitated, as you were. The two of you crossed paths at some point. This may or may not have been at the park. Whatever the case, the two of you had an altercation at the park, resulting in Joseph's death. You then left the park through the back entrance, then disposed of your gloves and the murder weapon in a rubbish bin several blocks away.'

Another memory forms: Angrily throwing your gloves into the bushes after being questioned by the officer.

'Wait, maybe they are my gloves,' you say. ''Cause I threw them in the bushes after I talked to the cop. I didn't wanna get questioned again. Yeah. So maybe whoever killed Joseph found them. I remember him being pretty belligerent. He probably tried to fight someone else after me, and -'

'And that someone else was you. He found himself an empty bottle and followed you to the park where he attempted to assault you. You overpowered him and disarmed him. He continued to attack you, until you, in a panic, struck him over the head with the bottle, before stabbing him multiple times in the face and neck and fleeing the scene.'

The detective's words bring about images of the scene in your mind. But you know what he's doing. You've read about false memories and interrogation techniques. Or maybe it was a documentary you watched. The detective is just planting a memory in your mind by describing a fictional event in great detail. He's trying to trick you into remembering something that never happened.

Besides, you can remember throwing the gloves in the bush, so his story makes no sense.

'No, I would remember that,' you say confidently, looking into the detective's gaping pupils. 'I remember throwing my gloves into a bush.'

The detective's eyes quiver while the rest of him remains still as a statue. For the first time, you actually feel like you're lying. But that's how he wants you to feel. You know you're telling the truth. The detective's version of the story has even more holes in it than yours.

In his 1987 instructional Occult book, Psychonaut, Peter J Carroll describes the 'Psychic Censor', an internal mechanism that shields us from intrusions from other realities. Also known as the Doors of Perception - a term coined by the poet William Blake in his 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and expanded upon nearly two centuries later by the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley - the Psychic Censor prevents irrelevant sensory input from reaching our conscious mind; without it, we would be overwhelmed by the constant barrage of information being picked up on by our senses. While the primary function of the Psychic Censor is to prevent us from being distracted by the mundane and trivial details of our reality, it also blocks out any information that would threaten our perception of ourselves and the world. It is what prevents us from recalling our dreams and registering supernatural occurrences. It also prevents us from forming memories of traumatic events, and even our own actions, if they are incongruous with our self-perception.

Snapshots of images and events real and imagined strobe through your mind, too fast to take form. Most revolve around the detective’s version of the night in question. Some are clearly false, some too familiar to be fiction. Some contradict one another, while others seem to confirm the detective’s story, flashes of coherence forming within the chaos, gradually filling the gaps in the timeline. But it can’t be true. You’re trying to zoom out, get some perspective, but you can’t concentrate. The second you try to focus, your attention is stolen by one of the many unrelated, racing thoughts swarming your mind. All you can do is keep reminding yourself that it’s not true. It can’t be.

Your senses come into relative focus and you become aware of the detective’s form shimmering through a watery blur. He’s looking at you as if he’s waiting for a response, but you’ve lost track of his words. You’re not even sure if he said anything at all.

‘I didn’t . . .’ a hushed whisper escapes your mouth.

The detective says something, but his voice is lost in the high pitched hum ringing in your ears. Your numb hand gravitates to your forehead, like ice on your burning skin, and compulsively runs through your hair.

‘No . . .’ Your voice is distant and unfamiliar, like your surroundings. The alien forms in your mind are the only things that feel real, and you’re beginning to doubt even them.

The detective says something you can’t make out while rearranging some papers on his desk. You try to remember what you were thinking about but can’t find a single coherent thought in your head except that it’s not true. It can’t be.

‘It can’t be . . .’

The detective speaks again. You try to reply, but the words seem to be caught in your throat, and you only manage a palsied spasm of the mouth.

Another memory forms in the distance. A room. Kitchen. Faceless human shapes move around like shadows, their voices like cicadas. But there’s something there. Something in that kitchen, those figures, their bizarre trill, that ties it all together, makes it all make sense. Something that proves it’s not true. That it can’t be true.

‘You need to pull your fucking head in and answer me,’ the detective’s booming voice rips through your confusion, grounding you firmly in the horrible, nauseating moment. Your senses return as a pain in your knee and you realise you’re clawing it. ‘You can sit there mumbling to yourself all you want, but that doesn’t change a damn thing,’ he continues. ‘We have eyewitnesses who saw you in the area behaving aggressively - two officers, in fact. We have your gloves covered in the blood of your victim. And your ridiculous shambles of an alibi is as good as a confession. So just answer the fucking question so we can move this along.’

‘What was the question?’ your voice trembles.

‘I asked what it can’t be.’

‘Huh?’

‘You keep saying “It can’t be”. I’m asking you what it can’t be.’

You can’t remember. Your mind is turbulent but fragmented. Indecipherable static.

‘It just can’t be,’ is all you manage to say.

‘Well, look,’ the detective says, his voice human again. ‘This guy had been spotted in a belligerent state that night, and there’s some evidence of a struggle. Did you walk away with any wounds from the altercation?’

You suddenly remember the bruise on your rib cage and the scratches on the back of your neck, which you had assumed you got play-fighting with Ollie that night.

‘Uh, yeah. I think so,’ you say. ‘Bruise and a few scratches.’

‘They still there?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well you might want to document them before they fade. If you make a solid case for self-defense you could possibly take it down to a manslaughter charge. Much lower stakes than murder.’

You lift up your shirt. You’re elated to find the fading blue remnants bruised along the grooves of your ribs. You have a friend who got about four years for vehicular manslaughter. Ended up getting out in a little over two. You could get through two years. Might as well start getting your case together.

Most people have had the experience of forgetting that which occurred while heavily intoxicated; similarly, many professional athletes describe a trance-like state that occurs during peak performance, of which they remember very little. Perhaps it is not the events that we remember, but our thoughts; during these peak experiences, when we act with instinctual, animal flow, there is no conscious experience for the memory to record. Our thoughts define how we see ourselves and how we try to behave; when our bodies act independently of this, it is excluded from our personal narrative. Thoughts arise out of hesitation; when we act upon instinct, we do so without thoughts. Without thoughts there is no memory.

You put your shoes back on and follow the detective down the hallway, which reminds you of a YouTube video about liminal spaces you watched a few days earlier. While Henry’s stories about his time in prison were grim, they painted a much nicer picture than the movies and shockumentaries you’ve watched. He said it was pretty much like high school. Just a bunch of bored and immature guys trying to entertain themselves. He said that prison rape hardly ever happens, and you’re not likely to get into any trouble if you keep to yourself and show respect. You remember him telling you to choose gen pop over protection if you ever find yourself facing that decision. He got some tough motherfuckers on his side by helping them with their studies, and even got into selling and trading his hand-drawn porn. Henry’s no intellectual, so you could definitely see yourself taking on a similar role. The tutoring, that is. You’ll have to have a catch up with him before sentencing. Soak up some wisdom.

‘Down this way,’ the detective snaps you out of your ruminations.

Walking through the labyrinth of liminal spaces, you start to wonder if you really did kill that guy. The possibility still seems pretty remote. But, either way, it’s not important. You accept that you’ll probably never really know and carry on mapping out the possibilities of your new life.

You have no memory of ever being your true self. There are things you have done that you will never remember.

'He who makes a beast of himself rids himself the pain of being a man.'

- Dr. Gonzo.