Seared Into My Brain Novels & Stories

The manager of the perfume factory was still saying something, but I could barely hear what the man was saying, the persistent, maddening itch in my brain making it difficult to focus. Fuck, have you ever had a feeling that there was something crucial you needed to remember but it just remained fucking blank. It was like a memory out of reach, tantalizingly close yet maddeningly elusive. I tried to focus on the PowerPoint presentation projected onto the screen but my thoughts kept returning to the night before. Ryder’s house, the taste of liquor burning my throat. But everything beyond waking up in my own bed was blank… My brain was a jumbled mess, like a puzzle I couldn’t solve. Fucking in

“Thankfully, we caught it early.” He looked at me with a sort of pity. “But prolonged intake would eventually affect your hormone balance, your emotional stability… and even your memory.” My heart skipped a painful beat. Memory. The same one I could barely remember fragments of? The word triggered a sudden, violent flash in my mind. The smell of wet asphalt. The blinding glare of headlights. The deafening, metallic scream of a crash. I blinked hard, shivering as the images vanished back into the dark. Why this again?

My mind kept replaying it, over and over in excruciating detail—the way he touched her, his fingers splayed against the fabric of her dress, possessively marking territory that wasn't his to claim. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn't help. The darkness behind my eyelids only made the images sharper, more vivid, more unbearable. The scene was still there, burned into the back of my mind like a scar I would never be able to erase, a brand of fire that would forever mark this night as the moment something inside me changed irrevocably.

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts, but it was futile; her image was burned into my brain like a tattoo. "Get a grip, Damian," I scolded myself again, the words harsher this time. I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, forcing myself to focus on the present moment. But no matter how hard I tried, the memory of Abby’s eyes, the way they seemed to look right through me, refused to fade.

I wanted to put her in a box, lock it, and hide the key where I could never find it. But it doesn’t work. No matter what I do, no matter how many hours I put in at the office, and no matter how many new people I meet, I still see her. Her face is tattooed in my mind. It’s etched into my brain like it was carved there with a knife. She shows no signs of ever leaving. She is just... there. Always.

"So you are thinking about me!" "You're constantly on my damn mind," he growled, sounding almost pained. "I can't escape you, no matter what I do. Your image is seared into my brain, printed on the backs of my eyelids. Our memories haunt me, stealing me away from myself at every turn." He exhaled heavily, as if suddenly overwhelmed. "Not even burying myself in work can fill the void you left inside me when you walked away."

The image seared itself into my brain with mortifying clarity. "What the fuck?!!!"

I tried to recall my encounter with her that very day but my brain was too disassembled to think straight. My cover was completely blown off!

I had been in the room a thousand times but this one time seemed different as a nervous gesture in the room made it so much better as my heartbeat pulsed heavily deep inside of me. Right there in her room, I could feel a smug pulling on my lips and I wiped it away with a palm. I could tell what was beneath that dress now as the mental image of everything we had was still at the back of my mind. It was stuck in the back of my brain, I had the image burned into my fucking brain. I stared down at her face, those dark eyes, soft and innocent, that pierced a hole through my chest.

{'Bite marks are love notes written in flesh.'} Headache. Bad hangover. It felt like somebody hit me with a hammer and my brain cells split apart from the regular throbbing inside my head. As I kept my eyes concealed underneath my eyelids, I shifted my weight over the soft bed, wrinkling my brows together from the constant pounding.