Landers

Simon didn’t delete the notes. He thought about it. Stared at the screen for a long time, thumb hovering, Harrison’s voice still echoing in his head.

Don’t write me down.

It sounded like a warning. Or a threat. Or both.

Instead, he locked the note and backed out of the app like that might somehow protect it. Like secrecy could preserve something reality itself seemed intent on erasing. He didn’t sleep much.

Over the next few days, things began to slip. Not dramatically. Not enough that anyone else would notice. But Simon noticed. He’d open a conversation and forget what he was replying to halfway through typing. He’d walk into a room and feel like he’d skipped a moment, like a scene had been cut out.

And then there were the memories. They started duplicating. Not fading but splitting. He’d remember a night with friends, laughing, music too loud, someone spilling a drink. And layered over it, like a second exposure, was Harrison, standing beside him, saying something just out of reach, almost audible.

Both felt true. Neither could be proven.

He went back to the café. It took him three tries to find it. The first time, the street looked wrong, too narrow, different shopfronts. The second time, he was sure he’d turned the correct corner, but it led somewhere else entirely. On the third attempt, it was just… there. Same tables. Same chipped mugs. Same soft hum of conversation.

Harrison was already inside. “Wasn’t sure you’d find it again,” he said.
Simon sat down slowly. “I nearly didn’t.” Harrison nodded like that confirmed something.
“You’re not meant to,” he said.
“Right,” Simon muttered. “Of course. That would be too easy.” They sat in silence for a moment. Then Simon leaned forward. “You sent me a voice note.”
Harrison’s expression didn’t change. “Did I?”
“Don’t,” Simon snapped. “Don’t do that.”

A beat.

Then Harrison sighed. “Yeah. I did.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re pushing it,” Harrison said. “Writing things down, trying to fix it in place. That’s not how this works.”
“That’s exactly how this works,” Simon shot back. “That’s how anything works. You remember it, you record it, it stays.”
Harrison shook his head. “Not this.”
“Then explain it to me,” Simon said, anger rising now. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve decided to erase yourself, except not really, except only for me, except now reality’s glitching like a bad Wi-Fi connection and somehow I’m the problem?”
“I didn’t say you were the problem.”
“You said it was meant to fix me.” Harrison flinched, just slightly. Enough.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“Then what did you mean?” Harrison looked down at his hands.
“When I made the deal,” he said slowly, “they asked me what I wanted.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Harrison ignored that.
“I said I wanted it to feel like we’d never happened,” he continued. “That I could just… move on. Clean.”
“And?”
“And they said that wasn’t possible.”
Simon let out a hollow laugh. “Good. At least there are limits.”
“They said,” Harrison went on, “that I could remove myself from the structure of your life. The shared spaces. The external memory. Everything that could reinforce it.”
Simon swallowed. “But not…”
“Not the emotional imprint,” Harrison finished. “Not the part that actually mattered.”

Silence.

“So what,” Simon said eventually, voice quieter now. “I just… carry something I can’t place? Forever?”
Harrison looked at him. “You already were,” he said.

That landed differently. Not sharp. Not explosive. Just true, in a way Simon didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Why now?” Simon asked. “Why are you back now?”
“I’m not back,” Harrison said.
“You’re sitting in front of me.”
“For now,” Harrison replied. “Because you found me.”
“I didn’t find you,” Simon said. “You were just there.”
Harrison gave a small, sad smile. “That’s how it starts.”

After that, Simon stopped telling people anything. There was no point. He tried, once.

“Do you ever feel like something’s missing?” he asked Mark, over coffee.
Mark laughed. “Constantly. Usually money.”
“No, I mean something specific. Like a person.”
Mark shrugged. “If they’re gone, they’re gone, yeah?” Simon nodded like that made sense but it didn’t.

The notebook became an anchor. Every night, he added to it. Details sharpened when he wrote them. Moments solidified. He started writing conversations with Harrison as soon as they happened, sometimes in fragments while still sitting across from him.
“You’re doing it again,” Harrison said one evening, watching him scribble.
“I have to,” Simon replied.
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m forgetting things.”
“That’s part of it.”
“I don’t want it to be part of it.”
Harrison leaned back. “You’re making it worse.”
Simon stopped writing. “How?”
Harrison hesitated, then “Because the system notices.”
Simon stared at him. “You keep saying that like it means something.”
“It does.”
“Then say what it is.” Harrison held his gaze.
“It’s not built to hold contradictions,” he said. “And right now, you are one.”

That night, Simon noticed something new. The notebook was somehow wrong. Not empty. Not erased. Just inconsistent. A sentence he was sure he’d written the night before had shifted slightly. Not the meaning, just the wording. ‘We met at a house party had become We met at a party.’ Small. Almost nothing. Except he remembered choosing the word house. He always chose specific words. He flipped back through pages. Other changes. Tiny. Precise. Like something was editing him.

The next time he saw Harrison, he didn’t sit down. “I think it’s rewriting things,” Simon said immediately.
Harrison didn’t ask what he meant. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Simon echoed. “That’s your response?”
“What did you expect?” Harrison said gently. “You’re trying to preserve something that’s already been removed.”
“It hasn’t been removed,” Simon insisted. “You’re right here.”
Harrison looked at him for a long moment, “Am I?” he asked.

Simon’s stomach dropped, because for just a second, Harrison’s face didn’t quite resolve.

Not invisible. Not gone. Just, less certain. Like looking at someone through heat haze.

Simon blinked hard and Harrison was solid again.
“Don’t,” Simon said, voice tight. “Don’t do that.”
“I didn’t,” Harrison said quietly.

It got worse after that. Time slipped more obviously. Simon would start writing and look up to find an hour had passed. He’d read back sentences he didn’t remember forming.

And Harrison?

Harrison was harder to hold onto.

Sometimes he’d turn his head mid-conversation and have to refocus, like his eyes were struggling to keep him in frame.
“Stay,” Simon said once, reaching across the table.
Harrison smiled, soft and tired. “I’m not going anywhere.” But his hand felt wrong. Not absent. Just not entirely there.

The breaking point came a week later. Simon woke up and couldn’t remember Harrison’s face. Not fully. He knew the shape of it. The idea of it. But when he tried to picture him clearly, features blurred, rearranged, refused to settle. Panic hit, fast and sharp. He grabbed the notebook, flipping through pages, searching for something, anything, that could fix it.

And there, halfway through, a line he did not remember writing ‘If I keep him, I lose everything else.’

Simon stared at it. Heart pounding. Because beneath it, in a different pen, same handwriting, but heavier, more certain, was a reply. ‘You already chose once.’

That night, he went back to The Village Inn. He didn’t know if it would work anymore. Didn’t know if Harrison would be there. Didn’t know if anything would be.

The bar looked normal. Too normal. Like nothing strange had ever touched it. Simon stood in the middle of the room, scanning faces. Nothing. No flicker of recognition. No pull. Just strangers. His chest tightened.

“Alright?” He turned. A man stood beside him. Familiar in the way everyone was familiar in places like this. “You look a bit lost,” the man said.
“Yeah,” Simon replied automatically. “I think I’m looking for someone.”
“Good luck,” the man laughed. “Aren’t we all?” Simon forced a smile then paused.
“Do you ever feel like you’ve forgotten something important?” he asked.
The man shrugged. “If I did, I wouldn’t know, would I?”
And just like that, the conversation was over.

Simon went home. Sat at the table. Opened the notebook. The pages were still full. But the name was gone. Everywhere it had been written, there was now a gap. A space in the sentence. A missing shape. Only one thing remained. On the very last page. In dark, pressed ink.

‘Don’t write me down.’

Simon stared at it for a long time. Then, slowly, he picked up the pen.

His hand shook. He hesitated, just for a second, caught between relief and something that felt a lot like grief. Then he began to write. Not the name. Not this time. Something else. A description. A voice. A feeling. Something harder to erase. Because if he couldn’t remember who Harrison was he could still remember that he had loved someone. And maybe, he thought, maybe that was the part no system could ever fully take.

The next morning, if it was morning, Simon woke with a strange, hollow clarity. Not peace. Not even numbness. Just absence. The kind that sits cleanly where something complicated used to be. He lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling, trying to locate the unease he felt he should be feeling. There was a sense of something lost. But no shape to it. No name. No story. Just a faint, irritating impression, like a word on the tip of his tongue that refused to arrive.

He got up. Showered. Dressed. Each action felt rehearsed, like muscle memory running without oversight. In the mirror, he paused. Studied his face again. Still his. Still correct. And yet, there was a lag now. Not visual. Internal. Like recognition had to travel a fraction further than it used to.

“Simon,” he said. The name landed. But it echoed. Not in the room. Somewhere deeper. As if something else had heard it too. He left the flat. The city was intact. People moved as they should. Cars passed. Conversations overlapped in the background like a familiar soundtrack. Nothing had collapsed. Nothing had broken. Which somehow made it worse. He walked without direction. Let instinct, or whatever remained of it, guide him.

At some point, he found himself outside the bar again. He didn’t remember deciding to go there. But it felt inevitable. Inside, everything was the same. Too warm. Too loud. Men pretending not to look. Simon stood just inside the door, scanning the room. Not for anyone specific. Just looking.

There was a flicker. Not a person. A gap. A moment where the crowd seemed to thin unnaturally, like a frame missing from a film. Simon stepped toward it. It closed. People shifted back into place. Normal again. He frowned.
“Sorry,” someone said, brushing past him. Simon nodded automatically. But his attention stayed fixed on the space. Because something in him, something very quiet, very buried, had reacted.

He moved through the room slowly. Watching. Testing. Every now and then, it happened again. A subtle distortion. A person half-not-there for a fraction of a second. A laugh that cut off too cleanly. A movement that didn’t fully resolve.

The world wasn’t breaking. It was correcting. In real time.

“You see it now.” The voice was behind him. Simon turned. A man stood there.Not Harrison. Not anyone he recognised. But familiar. In the way a dream feels familiar while you’re still inside it.
“What?” Simon asked. His voice sounded steadier than he felt.
The man smiled slightly. “The gaps.”
Simon hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you don’t,” the man said easily. “You’re almost done.” A cold weight settled in Simon’s stomach.
“Done with what?”
The man tilted his head, “reconciling.”

The word landed strangely. Too precise. Too deliberate.

“I think you’ve got the wrong person,” Simon said.
The man’s smile didn’t change. “There are fewer and fewer of you to be wrong about.”
Simon took a step back. The noise of the bar seemed to dim, not physically, but in importance. Like it was being deprioritised.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Maintenance,” the man replied.
Simon laughed, short and sharp. “Right. Grand. And what, you’re, what?, IT support for reality?”
“Something like that.” Another flicker. Stronger this time. The man’s outline blurred for a split second. And in that instant Simon saw it.

Not a face. Not a body. A structure. Something layered. Versions. Edits.

Then it snapped back. Just a man again. Simon’s breath caught.
“You’re not… real,” he said.
The man considered that, “define real.”
“No,” Simon said, shaking his head. “No, you’re.. this is…” He stopped because the words wouldn’t form. Not properly.

The man stepped closer. Not threatening. Just inevitable.

“You attempted to preserve a removed element,” he said. “You reinforced it. Reconstructed it. Reintroduced instability.”
Simon’s chest tightened. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“That’s not accurate.” The man glanced around the bar. At the people. The movement. The noise. “All of this relies on coherence,” he continued. “Continuity. Agreement.” His eyes returned to Simon. “You broke agreement.”

Simon felt something stir. Faint. Desperate. A resistance he couldn’t quite access. “There was someone,” he said. The words came out thin. Unconvincing. The man watched him carefully.
Then asked, gently, “who?” Simon opened his mouth. Nothing came. Not even the shape of a name. Just a gap. His throat tightened.
“There was” he tried again. But the sentence collapsed before it could form.
The man nodded, “exactly.”

For a moment, something flared inside Simon. Anger. Or grief. Or both. Raw. Directionless.
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” he said, forcing the words out.
The man tilted his head. “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.” Hope, brief and fragile, flickered. Then the man continued, “it means it no longer is.”

The flicker died. Around them, the bar shifted again. Subtly. Fewer people now. Or maybe just less distinct. Like detail was being reduced.

“What happens now?” Simon asked. He wasn’t sure why he asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. The man’s expression softened. Not kindness. But something close.
“Now,” he said, “you resolve.”
Simon frowned, “I am resolved.”
The man shook his head slightly. “No,” he said. “You’re residual.”

The word landed heavy. Final. Simon looked around. The room felt thinner now. Less anchored. Edges softening. Voices blending.

“I can fix it,” Simon said suddenly. The thought arrived fully formed. Urgent. “I can just stop. Stop thinking about it. Stop whatever I did. It’ll go back.”
The man didn’t respond immediately. Then, “you already tried that.”

A pause.

Simon blinked. Because yes. He had. Hadn’t he?

“I can do better,” Simon insisted. “I can!”
“You don’t have the capacity anymore,” the man said.

Something in that phrasing. Not won’t. Not shouldn’t. Don’t have the capacity. Simon’s hands started to shake. He looked down at them. For a second they didn’t look like his. He inhaled sharply. Looked back up.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m still here.”
The man met his gaze, “for now.”

The room flickered again. Harder. Longer. When it stabilised half the bar was gone. Not empty. Just undefined. Like a background that hadn’t rendered.

Simon’s breath hitched. “This isn’t… this isn’t real!”

The man stepped closer. And for the first time there was something like urgency in his voice. “It was,” he said.

Simon froze.

“It was real,” the man continued. “All of it. Every version. Every contradiction. Every memory you tried to hold.”

A beat.

Then, “but you don’t belong to it anymore.”

The words didn’t hit all at once. They sank. Slowly. Irreversibly. Simon’s mind reached. For anything. A name. A face. A feeling. Nothing held. “I don’t understand,” he said. And this time he meant it completely.
The man nodded, “I know.”

Another flicker. Simon felt it before he saw it. A loosening. At the edges. At the centre.
“Wait,” he said. Not to the man. To something else. Something leaving. “I didn’t…” he started. But the thought dissolved. Mid-sentence.

The man watched him. Carefully. Clinically.

Simon tried again. “I…” Nothing. The space where the thought should have been remained empty. He looked down at his hands. They were still there. But less certain. Like a memory of hands. He looked up. The man was already fading. “No,” Simon said. Or tried to. The word barely formed.
The man’s voice, distant now, reached him one last time, “resolved.”

And then there was no one left to hear it.