Indelible • Tate Langdon

i. intro

"Memory is more indelible than ink."
- Anita Loos, author & screenwriter

There is supposed to be but one reality a person can find themselves living in; just one version of the possible and the impossible. That is a simple fact that is drilled into our heads from the time we're born - what's real is real and what's not is make believe.

When the boundaries of that cardinal rule are stretched, when the category of what is true and exists is pushed go accommodate the impossible... Well, you can't get away without a mark, something that colors everything and changes the way it looks for good.

That scar, that change is absolutely indelible.

It doesn't always happen fast or even all at once. In my particular case, the shift of perspective is insidious and slow.

• • •

The first time I meet him, it is so much less than a fairytale encounter. There are no sparks, no fireworks to be seen. There isn't even some angelic orchestral soundtrack that only I can hear.

The only sound in my room is that of a short, barky cry escaping my lips. Not quite a scream so much as a sound of surprise as the stack of books in my hands hit the floor.

"What the hell?" I snap, frozen in surprise. "Who are you?"

Not even a few hours into unpacking and acclimating to my new place in the Harmon household, and already I've has seen several guests, none of them invited in.

As though the crass old woman and her kind but eerie daughter weren't enough, a boy not much older than myself has found his way through what apparently is a revolving door in this place.

He smiles awkwardly, dimples appearing in the corners of his mouth, and shoves his hands into his pockets.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he says despite the fact that he seems fairly amused with himself, "I just thought I'd come see what was going on. Y'know, say hey."

I'm doing my best to appear unshaken, as though he is the last thing in the world that could manage to scare me. I'm pretty sure I'm failing, but I don't let up on the act as I gather the spilt books from the floor.

"Are you another neighbor, or something?" I ask, shelving my books haphazardly. They're out of order; Stephen King doesn't belong next to Chuck Palanhuik, but I'll fix it later.

"Not exactly. I'm one of your dad's patients," he admits. There's no trace of sheepishness on his face. He's apparently unaffected by the stigma of seeing a psychiatrist.

"Ben isn't my father," I correct him. "He's my uncle."

That's all the information I provide him with. He doesn't need to know why I'm rooming in with Viv and the Doctor, although it's not some sort of tragic or clandestine secret - my mother and father divorced a few years and his job-hunt took him out of state.

It was either spending a few months with his sister and her head shrink husband or endure a move to Valdez while my father worked on the Pipeline. California has never been my dream locale, but it beats the hell out of Alaska.

"Oh, cool. Sorry," he apologizes. Not much for wordy smalltalk, I guess.

I briefly wonder what it appears to him that I'm doing, and if he can see that I'm unpacking, why he would think a surprise daughter had shown up out of nowhere.

I suppose it isn't something he would share with a patient, but Vivien and Ben's struggle to conceive has been the whispered talk of every major family gathering for years, so far back as I can remember.