John rolled over and checked his phone. “Tuesday, July 24th, 2029”. It was 8:12 in the morning.

Two things initially struck John.
First, he’d overslept. He’d woken up between 7 and 7:30 AM every day automatically almost his entire life.

Second, and more strangely, John couldn’t remember anything since Thursday night. He’d gone out with friends and while he’d been known to appreciate a double gin and tonic as much as the next guy, he’d never forgotten four days entirely before.

His mind wandered, trying to picture anything from Friday, or the weekend, or… any damned thing at all. Where the hell had that four days even gone?

It hit him – he opened the calendar on his phone and scrolled through the days. He’d had a shitload of meetings on Thursday, as always. There was the reminder to see Carl at the campy bar they always met up at, on Thursday at 8. Nothing else noteworthy there.

He looked at Friday, and two things were there. First, his schedule was marked as “out of office”, but the title simply said “Time Away”, with no other details.
Second, was a more curious appointment on Friday that said “Dr. Block”, from 9AM to noon.

John asked himself, “Who the fuck is Dr. Block?” There were no more details, no address, and no phone number. No contact info in his address book, either.

He was starting to get frustrated. He felt his back, to ensure nothing weird had happened, like that stupid “kidney theft” urban legend. Nope, no blood, no incision, and no pain at all.

In fact, that was the weirdest part for John. No pain at all. He felt good. He felt better than he’d felt in a ‘long time. He thought back to see if he could remember any of the dreams just before he woke up. But it was a clean slate. But he also felt quite light-hearted, as if some pain in his soul had been lifted.

He decided to get cleaned up and see if he could find any other clues.

He grabbed some clean clothes and headed to the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and decided to skip a shave.

He started the water, and let it warm up to the scorching temperature he loved. He hopped in to the shower.

He grabbed his shampoo bottle with his right hand, popped it open, and squeezed some shampoo into his left hand. As the shampoo oozed into his palm, John noticed something. His left ring finger was compressed from a wedding band, and like the watchband echo on his left wrist, there was clearly a pale mark from where a wedding band had been for a long time.

Only one problem ran through John’s mind…

He couldn’t remember being married, having a wife, or who she was. He could clearly remember his two kids, long grown up and moved away with young ones of their own. He could evenn remember his children’s spouses, weddings, and entire families.

But it was as if those children of his had appeared out of thin air.

This was weird. He finished showering, dried off, and got dressed.

His mind kept wandering as he headed downstairs. As always, he felt like starting the day with his morning coffee. As he approached the machine, John noticed a sheet of paper folded in half. Written clearly in his own handwriting on the outside of the note, it said “About Dr. Block”

He opened the note. It simply said,

John – one day next week you will wake up and feel weird, like you’ve forgotten something. Or forgotten several things. It’s okay, and it’s better this way.
Don’t try to dig these things back out.
Let that shit go, and live your life.

–John on Thursday afternoon

Okay, that gave him some context as to what the hell was going on, but it still felt weird.

He got together his coffee and some breakfast, and decided to give it a bit of time to settle in.

After breakfast, John headed in to his office to see if he could scout out any more clues, unconvinced that “John from Thursday afternoon” necessarily had his best interests at heart.

Nothing immediately struck him. His laptop and books were all in their normal places. He sat down at his desk and thought for a few minutes, gently swiveling back and forth in his chair like he had done when he was young.

He looked across the room and noticed ash in the bottom of his fireplace. He never used that fireplace, but this also wasn’t from burning wood. Which wasn’t surprising – it was almost August, and even Seattle didn’t get cold enough in the summer to justify a fire.

He thumbed through the ashes, telling himself he should probably listen to the note he found in the kitchen. But even with that he was still slightly annoyed. He wanted some details.

He’d clearly burned a lot of shit in the fireplace last week. And he’d tried to finish it off – as not much was left but ash.

A tiny can of lighter fluid from his bbq grill was in front of the fireplace, along with a ream of blank printer paper, three sheets of wadded up printer paper that he’d clearly prepped as kindling but never used for this burn last week, and a box of matches from the Red Door, where he’d met Carl on Thursday night.

He kept thumbing through the ash. As John’s fingers got increasingly filthy, he noticed a photo. Clearly a wedding photo (he could tell by the shoes), all that was left now was the bottom of the photo, with his feet (he recognized them), and some woman’s feet that he didn’t recognize. He turned the photo over and it said “June 17, 2006” in a gently smeared typeface clearly put there by the photographer.

Weird. Although even with the void in his brain, John was starting to come to terms with whatever the hell was going on.

There was almost nothing else left among the soot, other than the bottom of a sheet of paper off to the side of the fireplace.

The paper was blank, other than a woman’s handwriting that simply said,

I never really felt a connection with you. – Renee

John couldn’t remember anyone named Renee at all, other than a girl he’d gone to school with. But that’s just it. He remembered her. And he hadn’t seen her since high school – he clearly recalled that. And he hadn’t felt anything when he’d read the crass statement on the paper. No connection, no anger, no pain or resentment, nothing. It was just trash to him now.

John decided that whatever the intentions of “John on Thursday” were, and whoever the hell “Dr. Block” was, they had his best interests in mind.

He placed the photo on top of the note in the fireplace, topped it off with the three wadded balls of paper, and gave it a good squeeze of lighter fluid.

He checked the flue to make sure it was open, lit a match, and with a resounding “FOOOMF”, the fire took away the last of this memory kindling.

John grabbed his phone, and as he walked towards his garage, called Carl to see if they could go grab lunch that afternoon.