Story opening: The Memory Station
The smell of the underground is distinctive: the potent whiff of earthy engine fumes, car exhaust, the damp stench of gutters, putrid sewage and the occasional whiff of body odour. The atmosphere condensed, stifling. I can’t remember the surface but sometimes things come back to me through sights, smells and sounds. Sometimes the faces of the inmates remind me of people I can’t remember. Maybe one day they’ll release me but for now, I pry my mind for memories, what it was like, who I am, how I got here. I write them down in a spiderweb that I hide in the gap of a train seat. Seemingly, only useless things push themselves to the forefront of my mind. When I first saw the rail carriage an automated voice rang in my head “please mind the gap between the train and the platform.” Yet if I let my mind wander things become clearer, pieces of information feed into one another, making this clouded picture less hazy. I can still feel the presence of the past in the station walls. When we sle