The Body Never Forgets Book Novels & Stories

I can't get over a whole lot of things, a whole lot of shit has gone down in my life and there was a time I used to believe that one day, i'd forget about those horrid losses. "And?" I asked, weakly. "I have lived for about two centuries and do you know what I've learnt, an almost magical knowledge that has made my life sweet and happy." "I'm dying to know." I said as grief and sorrow struck me deeply. "You never forget them." She said, casually. "All those sad ¹ memories, events and losses, you never forget them. At horrible and despicable moments in your life, all of them flush back in to torment you."

“What if my memories never come back? What if I’m stuck like this forever, only knowing pieces of who I used to be?” “Then we’ll build new memories together. The past doesn’t define us, Aleta. What matters is what we choose to do now.” As he reaches up to cup my face, my body remembers his touch even when my mind cannot, and being this close to him awakens needs I don’t fully understand. “Elio,” I whisper, not sure what I’m asking for but knowing I need it desperately. His eyes darken as he reads the want in my expression. “Are you certain? You’re still recovering, and I don’t want to push—”

Only then did I remember that I was already dead, with only a lingering soul left. The man's fists rained down on Zack's body, yet he didn't struggle or fight back—merely laying on the ground, unmoving. I paced back and forth, overwhelmed with worry. Eventually, the man got tired and stopped beating Zack up. Meanwhile, Zack remained motionless and bloodied on the ground. The drug dealer spat angrily. "What a useless man! You're a lot weaker than your sister! She refused to reveal your house address even when I chopped all her fingers off! So much for being siblings, huh?"

I was nothing but a sculpture of ice with warmth only in eyes that melted and melted and melted. “I tried a million times…” she clenched her teeth. “But the more I tried to force myself to hate him, the more I missed him. So, I just wanted to forget him, get him out of my system. Get his touch out of my body. But even after all that, when by some forgotten memory I thought of him, I felt my body go cold yet my heart… warmer with every beat… reminisced about him. The funny thing is I never knew if he ever remembered me, loved me the way I did.”

I move toward the bookshelves lining the walls, my eyes scanning the titles. My body moves like it remembers. Like it's been here before. And then I see it. The same book. 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.' Tucked between a biography and a legal thriller, like it doesn't belong but he kept it anyway. Funny how I knew where to look. Like my body remembers even though my memories are still scrambled. I pull it off the shelf slowly, carefully. I open it. And there, pressed between the middle pages, is a dried rose petal.

My social psychology professor gave us a simple assignment: text the words I love you to the family member we were closest to, then record their first reaction. My parents had died seven years earlier in an ambush meant for the DeLuca family. With no one else to text, I sent the message to Roman DeLuca—the youngest Don in New York’s underworld and the man the court had once appointed as my temporary guardian. The typing bubble appeared and disappeared all night. At two in the morning, his answer finally came. [Mara, don’t confuse dependence with love. Whatever exists between us can never cross that line.] The next day, he stripped away every privilege he had ever given me, disconnected our p

I might be trying to purge that memory from my brain, but my body certainly hasn't forgotten. But how do I go about making it forget?

I sat there until the November light went out of the window, and then I sat there in the dark, and at some point I noticed I was crying quietly, without any of the dramatics the body sometimes gives a person, just water moving down my face the way water moves down a face when the body has, finally, been given a thing it had been carrying for two months and decided to put down. I was crying because he had been in the bookstore. I was crying because he had spoken first. I was crying because he had spoken to the book and not to me, and the speaking-to-the-book was the most exact thing anyone had said to me in a long time. I was crying because Eddie Doyle had been right the night before, and wro

"Jason darling, don't act like you forgot who I am just because you got rich. I remember that red mole on your ass clear as day." Sarah's brain seemed to short-circuit. Time stopped. Then she turned slowly and backhanded Yvonne so hard she hit the floor. Yvonne lay there, blood streaming from her nose. She looked up and saw Sarah coming toward her. She scrambled to her feet and ran. Everyone in the room turned back to me. I stood as straight as I could, but I couldn't stop shaking. "I have nothing to do with her. You can investigate. You can—"

“And what are we going to derive from that? They are not going to remember anything.” “Wrong. Even when I am redirected, my body knows it is missing something, and sometimes muscle memory takes over before it leaves my mind once again.” She nodded. “Shocking.” Again she had that different expression and tone. But I continued either way, maybe she did not understand. “The mind may forget, but the body always remembers because it has picked up a pattern and mastered it.” She chuckled. “It’s really hard raising your hackles, isn’t it?” “Let’s go,” she tapped my arm. “I’m not here for your lectures.”