yimakh shemo

i can't remember his name. i can't remember. i watched as they carted his body away and i couldn't remember his name. the man who lived across the street, the husband who worked as a lawyer. he had a name. i knew it. now i don't.

she said he was trying to hurt her. hurt their daughter. that's why she stabbed him nine times. i heard her yelling at the police, telling them they couldn't take her away from her daughter. but when they asked what her daughter's name was, she couldn't tell them. she couldn't even remember her husband's name.

i can't remember. i wrote it down in a notebook, i remember that. i wrote it down, but now it's just a smudge. a smudge for a name. a name of nothing.

when my mother was out, my grandmother babysat me. she used to tell me that my father was "shmutz" and every time she said his name, she said "yimakh shemo." one day i asked her what it meant. "shmutz means dirt," she told me. "that's what your aba was." and the other, i asked her, what did the other thing mean.

"yimahk shemo," she said, "means 'may his name be obliterated.' harshest curse we have."

i can't remember his name. it's just a black smudge.


yimahk shemo. may his name be obliterated.


i have to go.

Q & A

So I left my house and walked over to the neighbor's. I knocked on the door. The wife opened it. She hasn't been going to work lately.

"Hello," I said. "I, uh, I live across the street from you. I just, I mean, yesterday I saw your daughter, I mean, I saw that your daughter was playing in the street." Not a complete lie. Unless their daughter is just a figment of my imagination.

"Oh," she said. "Yes, thank you. We should be more careful and keep a watchful eye on her." She looked nervous, but at least she had confirmed her daughter was real.

"Did you adopt her?" I asked point blank.

"Yes," the woman said. "Yes, that must have been it. We adopted her." It seemed like she was just now realizing it.

"So what's her name?" I asked.

This simple question seemed to cause a schism in the woman. Her scrunched her brow and squinted her eyes and said, "I'm sorry?"

"Her name?" I repeated.

"Oh," she said. "Sorry, I have a lot of my mind right now. She needs so many things, you know. Kids. I mean, we call her sweetie pie and pumpkin and our little angel-"

"But she does have a name, right?" I asked.

"Yes, of course," she said and then stopped. She turned, as if she was hearing some silent voice in her head. "I'm sorry, I have so much to do. Thank you for coming over, Mister?"

I gave her a fake name. She turned and went back inside, but before the door closed, I managed to catch a glimpse of the little girl again. I don't know how to describe her. Literally, I don't. I don't remember how she looked, nothing. I remember seeing her and then the door closed. But there's this...blank spot right before the door closing.

She's real, I know that. Now the question is: is it just my mind playing it's abnormal tricks on me or is there truly something wrong with this girl?

Photographic Evidence

I indulged my paranoia: I took a picture of the little girl across the street. Click. Snap. And there it was. Photographic proof that she existed.

Except she didn't show up. The image was of an empty sidewalk. She was there, but she didn't show up. I looked again and she was still there. I snapped a dozen pictures of her. Each one the same: nothing.

Was she a figment of my imagination?

Should I ask them? Should I ask my neighbors if they actually have a daughter? Can I do that?

What if the answer is no?

The Worldwide Mad Computer Gangster God Is Back

Yeah, I'm back. I took a short break to go somewhere. Okay, a hospital. Spent a little amount of time in a hospital, but they said I wasn't a danger to anyone. So I'm fine. Just paranoid.

There's a little girl who lives across the street. She didn't use to live across the street. I've never seen her before today. But I was gone for a bit. So maybe she moved in.

But the couple that live there didn't have any children and they still live there. I know. I've seen them before. Man, forties, grey hair on his temples, works as a lawyer. Woman, late thirties, works as a nursing assistant. I've written down their licence plate. I know their schedules.

They didn't have a kid. Or if they did adopt a child, why adopt one so old? This girl is at least nine years old. Or maybe seven.

She saw me. I looked out my window and she saw me. That's impossible. I'm trying to remember what she looks like. Seven years old. Or eight. Brown hair? Blonde hair? I can't remember.

I'm okay. I just got out of the hospital, but I'm okay. It's just paranoia. I can live with it. I can live with it.