[This is based on a dream I had a few weeks ago. Most of it is my dream, almost verbatim. I left out a few distracting details, like someone handing the main character a derringer.

Inevitable dash of pretension: ‘Nepenthe’ is the drug of forgetfulness in Greek Mythology.]

We walked through a rather ordinary-looking sunlit atrium, and rounded the stairs up into the cloakroom of a large banquet hall.

My partner-in-training, Max, and I surveyed the room. It was brimming with people sitting in long rows of tables. I estimated about two hundred people. Despite the large number of people, the room was strangely quiet. A pall hung in the air, as if something was about to begin.

The far wall of the room seemed obscured by haze, though no one appeared to be smoking. It gave the room a distant, dreamlike quality. A small lounge sat near the entrance into banquet hall, with a bar, a few chairs, and an uncomfortable-looking couch. The lounge stood empty, and the bartender leaned against the bar with his chin on his fist. He glanced at us as we walked in, then resumed glaring off into space.

“This is it, huh?” Max asked casually. “Looks pretty ordinary to me.”

I nodded, and threw my jacket down on the couch.

“Yeah, this is it.” I’d never had an assignment remotely similar to this, and was unsure of what to do next. I hoped a better idea would come along while I gave Max some busywork. “Why don’t you start getting names, dates of birth, and residences for these people?”

He grinned, pulled out a new legal pad, walked over to the first row of tables, and began asking questions. He was young, and his easygoing manner and broad smile made people trust him. He was already furiously scribbling notes.

I meandered through the tables, pausing every now and then to look at the assemblage of people. There seemed to be no common thread between them, no reason they should all be here. At random, I finally sat down at a table of pierced and tattooed bikers. A few looked at me without interest. The rest stared blankly. No one said anything.

“Mind if I ask you folks some questions?”

Most shrugged or nodded their assent. The others seemed to have no feelings one way or the other. No one spoke.

“Do you know how you got here?”

The woman closest to me wore a do-rag, heavy black eyeliner, and leather jacket. She furrowed her brow, and seemed to be trying to concentrate on the question.

“No…” She replied hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “No. I can’t. I…” She trailed off. I could tell she wanted to say more, but didn’t know what it was. I jotted a note in my pocket notebook.

“How long have you been here?” I asked of the table at large.

I surveyed the faces at the table. It was clear that none of them knew, and equally clear that none of them cared. I looked down to make a quick note of this as well. When I looked up, the woman who had spoken to me was gone. I jerked my head right and left, searching for her. There was no way she could have walked or run away so quickly.

“Where did she go?” No one answered. “Where did that woman go?”

“Who?” Asked a huge, bear-like man sitting next to her now-vacant seat.

“The woman. The one I was just talking to. Where did she go?”

He gazed at me quizzically. “There was never any women at this table, pal. Trust me, I’d know if there were!” He roared with laughter and pounded the table. His raucous display seemed out of place here, and a few people at neighboring tables turned slowly to stare at him. His face slowly went slack, and he resumed placidly staring into the distance.

I rose from the table, and started walking towards the entryway. The few answers I’d gotten only raised a lot more questions. I didn’t know what was going on here, but I knew I didn’t want to stay here any longer than I had to. Fear was rising in my throat, and it was only with a great deal of effort that I managed to stop myself from running.

I stopped at the table where Max had begun asking questions. His legal pad lay on the tablecloth in front of an empty chair, his pen lying on the floor nearby. The table’s group of white retirees chatted quietly with each other.

“Excuse me.” I said, trying to keep the urgency from my voice. “A young man was just here asking you some questions. Did you see where he went?”

The retirees shook their heads. No, they seemed to say. There was never any young man.

“Max?” I tried to quell the rising panic in my voice. And failed. “MAX?! HAS ANYONE SEEN MY PARTNER MAX?!”

No one answered. The only response was something that sounded like distant laughter.

I blinked.

When I opened my eyes, I came to myself suddenly with a jerk and a snort. I was lying on the lounge couch covered by my jacket. I immediately sat bolt upright and frantically looked around me. Everything was exactly as how it had been a moment ago–except that I had been standing next to the retiree’s table.

How could I have fallen asleep in this place? I never even sat down. I never closed my eyes. I slapped myself hard across the face, making sure I was really awake. I couldn’t feel it. If I was still dreaming, I couldn’t wake myself up.

There was one difference–Max was again sitting at the retirees’ table, still writing notes. The older crowd seemed delighted to have a young man around to pay attention to them, and were answering his questions with smiles. I grabbed Max by the arm a bit harder than I had intended, and he winced.

“We have to get out of here.” I whispered roughly in his ear. “We have to get out now.”

“Why?” He asked. “We just got here.” I looked at the legal pad he’d been taking notes on. He was twenty pages into it. I took it from his hands and flipped to the front page.

It was blank. I flipped faster and faster through the blank pages, finally stopping at the first page with writing on it. Max’s chickenscratch began in the middle of the page, in the middle of a sentence. The letters in the words disappeared as I stared in mute terror. It was like watching someone write in reverse, a pen lifting the words from the page, line by line.

His notes were disjointed, filled with non-sequiters and repetitive babble:

“…no memory! dissapear, no one notices their gone or were even there…”

I kept flipping. Two pages later:

“Noone remembers anything, dissapear, reappear, no one notices!”

I looked up. One of the old women smiled serenely at me. Max stared at me fearfully and without understanding. I lifted him by the arm and threw him towards the door. I shoved him forward, and began running.

I blinked.

When I opened my eyes, I came to myself suddenly with a jerk and a snort…