Midnight struck. The clock tolled like a malicious reminder. Ethan sat on the edge of the motel bed, clutching a half-bottle of cheap whiskey, eyes hollow. Whenever he thought he might escape the memories, his brain kindly hit "replay" and delivered that assassination night in high definition and close-ups.
The scene always began on the street: a slick stone lane, like someone had spattered it with oil to make blood shine brighter. Fog rolled, lamplight winked in and out like a second-rate magician's prop.
Then the gunfire. At the sound he could almost smell the gunpowder and a searing flesh odor.
He remembered being a bystander that night—meant to watch a political curtain-call and then the dark assassination act. But reality rarely keeps to a script; it prefers ad-libbing. Bullets flew, screams rose like waves.
He could even recall the target collapsing, the tie flipping up in a pose almost elegant—like a last expired dance move at a dying ball—if not for the way blood made the suit a tattered patchwork.
"Quite a show." Ethan often thought, not praising the act of killing, but his own performance: frozen at the edge like a poorly cued extra. While everyone fled, he blinked. Maybe even the director thought his acting poor.
He remembered then his friend standing at his side, patting his shoulder. "Quit dawdling—move!" The voice was quick, familiar warmth—last time he heard it from someone still breathing.
What followed in the memory was fragmented, like old film scorched by flame. Shots jumped frames.
He saw a bullet graze his friend's chest, blood splattering on Ethan's face.
He saw the fallen man's eyes wide, as if trying to take the entire world in.
He saw his hand reach out and grasp nothing.
"Ha—heroic rescue failed," Ethan would mutter, darkly joking. But there was no rescuing, only a bloody puddle.
People say time heals wounds, but Ethan called that a lie. Time can at best sand the edges and put lipstick on the wound—make the scar presentable—but it's still a wound.
In nightmares he kept rewatching the night. He tried letting himself be killed in dreams, but each time he died earlier than the target, as if the nightmare insisted he be the main character. Ironically, even nightmares wouldn't give him a clean end: they always woke him at the cusp. So he became a half-finished ghost, stuck to the past.
"The past never really leaves." He spoke to the empty bottle. "It just puts on different masks and throws a party in your head."
Rain lashed the glass—applause from bored spectators. Ethan laughed, shoulders trembling, not from humor but from the absurdity.
—He knew the scene would replay. Whether sober, drunk, or trapped in dreamstuff, there was no escape.
Sometimes he suspected that was the Bureau's true control method: drown agents in their own memories, and tack on a label—'served humanity.' Clever, perhaps; no bullets needed.
Ethan raised the empty bottle, made a toast to the air's blurred silhouette.
"To you, old friend." His voice was raspy and cold, as if to prove to himself that the past did remain.
And the past had no intention of leaving. It simply rehearsed until he could no longer laugh.