Blank

 © Michael C. Keith

       Only in the world I fill up a place, which may be

      better supplied when I have made it empty.

            -- Shakespeare

Bruce Keltoff's existence was not in synch. Frames in the reel of his life were missing. At any moment a chunk of time might vanish and be unaccounted for. Nothing was the same since his accident that resulted in a severe concussion, but lately things were moving toward a tipping point. In the couple of weeks immediately following his car crash, his “blank spaces,” as he called them, had happened twice, but the rate increased in the weeks that followed. Grade III concussions often cause bouts of temporary amnesia, noted his doctor, who had assured him that the side effects of the accident would eventually subside.

Fortunately, Bruce was home watching television when the initial blackouts took place. The first happened at the start of “Office,” his favorite sitcom. Just after the opening titles he felt disoriented and confused and then he realized that the show was well in progress. In fact, it was nearly over. Had he dozed, he wondered, but he was sure he had not. Yet try as he might he could not account for the twenty minute lapse in time.

The second time he zoned out he was heading for bed and in what seemed a blink of an eye he found himself in his pajamas and under the covers. That night he sat in his bed for hours trying to figure out why he was experiencing these disturbing gaps in time. He alternated between being convinced that his doctor was right and that the spells were nothing more than the result of his head trauma. At the other end of that pendulum he fretted about the possibility of something far worse—maybe a brain tumor.

That morning he made another appointment with his doctor but could not get in to see him for two weeks. He was told if it was an emergency to go to the hospital but he hated hospitals. Yet he feared the black outs would happen when he wasn't home, and as fate would have it they did.

The first incident took place while he was waiting for the commuter train that would take him to work. The train approached the station and in a split second the doors were opening at his stop. He exited the train and sat on a nearby station bench trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened, and as before he found no answers other than what the doctor had said and his growing belief that he had a quickly growing malignancy in his head.

Two days later, while alone in a restaurant he suffered another meteoric spin of the clock. As soon as the server placed his dish of tacos on the table, she removed the empty plate and handed him the check. He resolved then and there to go to the emergency room but as he approached the hospital from a block away he could go no further. Hospitals had been on his dread list since he had been treated for a leg and ankle fracture and ended up getting a bacterial infection that nearly killed him. That complication extended his stay by two weeks and turned out to be one of the most miserable experiences of his life.

A week before his scheduled appointment with his doctor, another of his so-called post accident events struck him at a very inopportune time. He was about to remove his boxer shorts for a first time sensual encounter with his new girlfriend and at once he was lying next to her as she slept. This time he clearly felt cheated, but mostly he was afraid.

Before each one of his blackouts he noticed a slight tingling radiate throughout his body. It was like a warning of what was to come, a premonition. He also noticed that the attacks were now coming at shorter intervals. When he felt the tingling sensation the next day, he held his breath and closed his eyes tightly bracing himself.

“This will not happen,” he muttered desperately. “This will not happen.”

And to his utter amazement and relief it did not. When another tremor occurred later that day, he held his breath, shut his eyes, and repeated the same words. It worked again . . . and then again and again as he experienced more tingles, but by the time he met with his doctor the attacks had ceased.

His doctor was skeptical of his simply willing away the side-affects of his accident, telling Bruce that they had just run their course, but Bruce knew better. Regardless of what his doctor said, he was convinced he had the special ability to ward off the seizures and was confident they would not happen anymore. If they did, he was prepared to block them.

Weeks passed and the auras that signaled an approaching attack did not return. However, over time he discovered he had apparently developed yet another unique mental skill. He could erase bad memories. He found this out quite coincidentally when he uttered the same words that had prevented his black outs. As soon as those four magic words fell from his mouth, the disturbing recollection of his father beating his mother stopped instantly. He was relieved that whatever it was that had upset and disturbed him was gone, and from then on “This will not happen” became his cherished mantra. It was the beginning of an extensive purging of all the negative experiences that had bedeviled him throughout his life.

For days he went about cleansing his mind of anything at all that had caused him discomfort or sadness. His quest included erasing any feelings of guilt or shame. Among the things that had long nagged at him were urinating in the lap of his wheelchair bound, blind aunt for the fun of it, shooting young blue jays as they ventured from their nests, stealing money from a Salvation Army donation bucket, and pleasuring himself too frequently. His catalog of sorrows, resentments, and grievances was prodigious and thus managed to keep him engaged for weeks. Eventually he had cleared his head of everything except what had provided him happiness, but he soon discovered that without the unpleasant and disturbing memories and feelings, the good things that remained began to lose their meaning and weight. He had no point of reference anymore, nothing with which to contrast the ups and downs of life, and subsequently his days had become an arid plain with no distinguishable features.

Bruce felt as if he'd been anesthetized. His friends and colleagues at work began to notice a dramatic change in him as he no longer was the amicable person they had known. They started to think the head trauma from his accident had robbed him of his personality--and they were right. On most days all Bruce could muster was a blank expression that reflected his empty soul.

While the activity of enterprise buzzed around him, he sat immobile in his office cubicle with his dull eyes fixed on the barely worn surface of a pencil eraser.

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Michael C. Keith is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. He teaches Communication at Boston College