Amnesia: Helping You Forget

Helping You Forget
Chapter 1

Daniel woke up and found himself lying on the floor next to the couch. ‘I must have been rolling about in my sleep. Perhaps my unrest has something to do with my nightmare?’ he thought. After lying on the floor for a few minutes, savouring the strange comfort of wood, he rose from the ground clumsily. He checked outside through the window. It was possibly midday and ponies were trotting casually outside, going about their daily lives.

Daniel heard hoofsteps behind him. He turned to see Twilight looking quite dishevelled. Her mane had hairs sticking out in all directions and she generally looked quite sleep deprived. Daniel chuckled slightly inside at the sight. It seems as if she was having a worse time at getting to sleep than he was.

“Morning Twilight, or should I say afternoon?” Daniel said wittily.

“Yes, yes. Ha-ha indeed. I couldn’t sleep last night. I woke up at least five times. You’re getting me very worried, and I stayed up most of the night thinking of ways to cure you of your nightmares.” She stated.

“Oh? And what solutions do you have in mind?” He asked.

“Well I was thinking maybe you could share your past with somepony. Talking about something you may regret can help release you of it.”

“I already told you Twilight, my past is much too graphic to be heard by such innocent creatures as yourselves.”

“Oh, I’m sure I have seen worse things than your past,” she lied, “I insist you tell me about your past.”

“Trust me, you have seen nothing compared to what I did.”

“I know.” She mouthed to herself.

“Do you have any other alternatives?” Daniel asked.

“Yes as a matter of fact. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?” She questioned.

“I am afraid not. I was an archaeologist, not an Oneirologist.”

“I understand. Lucid dreaming is where you are conscious inside a dream.” She began. “I can be achieved through meditation and through consuming special herbs. Literally, all there is to lucid dreaming is realising you are dreaming.”

“Have you undergone this experience?” Daniel asked doubtfully. He could not see how you can be conscious whilst unconscious.

“Why yes, once or twice. While it will happen to everypony naturally at least once, they may not remember it as their dream recall may be poor. Some ponies can have lucid dreams at will, even entering the dream world and initiating a lucid dream while they are conscious. It can be a difficult art to learn, but once you have at least one, you can start having them more frequently.”

“What do they feel like?” Daniel asked curiously.

“A lucid dream is a very surreal experience. Some ponies use lucid dreams to enlighten themselves as you can talk to your sub-conscious mind while in one. You can shape your dream world at will through lucid dreaming and you can practice musical instruments, problem solving, even mathematics while lucid dreaming. After waking from a lucid dream, you will feel warm and happy inside as the experience itself is very cleansing.”

“Where are you going with this?” Daniel asked impatiently. He wanted to get to the point.

“I am getting to that!” She snapped back. “Now, in lucid dreams, you can learn valuable lessons from your sub-conscious as well as experiment with music, writing and practice tasks that require muscle movements. While in the dream, your brain will remember the muscle movements you perform in the dream, because the dream feels and looks like real life. While in the dream, you can forget you are dreaming. This usually happens when something frustrating, exciting or frightening happens. Say for example, your nightmare. If you begin to lucid dream in your nightmare, and then get chased by the monster again, the experience of panic can cause you to forget you are dreaming. The trick is to remind yourself you are dreaming every few minutes.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Daniel asked, even more impatiently than the last time.

“There is a way to induce lucid dreaming through remembering the nightmare and realising you are dreaming when you see the nightmare again. I will take you through the exercise, but not now. Right now, I am too tired to do anything that involves much more concentration. I am also quite hungry. I haven’t eaten anything all morning.”

“I thought you might say that.” Spike’s voice came from the kitchen. He walked out with a tray holding two plates of eggs and toast. “I heard you both wake up so I made this while you were giving Daniel your exciting little lecture.” He put the tray down on a table. Daniel and Twilight both got up from sitting on the floor and walked over to their brunch.

“Wow! You got out on the wrong side of the bed.” Spike remarked when he saw Twilight’s state before scurrying off to avoid hearing a harsh comeback. As he hurried off, he could feel Twilight’s death glare burning into the back of his head.

“Hmm... how rude.” Daniel stated. He did not appreciate Spike’s cheeky behaviour towards the others. Spike and Daniel got along just fine, but each of them held nasty thoughts at bay while around each other. Daniel hated Spike’s cheekiness, as mentioned above. Spike hated how Daniel was always complaining about his memories and dreams. It was irritating to constantly hear “I can’t take it” or “I can’t go to sleep”. It’s not as the nightmares could have been too scarring and life threatening right? Of course, Spike didn’t know the scale of disturbing which Daniel’s memories hit.

“Just ignore him. I have to put up with him every day. Of course, he is still my number one assistant, he can just be a bit on the rude side now and then.” Twilight informed Daniel, for at least the thousandth time.

After they finished their breakfast, Daniel told Twilight that he needed to stretch his legs before they began to try and rid Daniel of his nightmares.

Daniel would do this every morning. He had a quick stroll through Ponyville, usually finding Lyra along the way, and then went about what he was to do for the day. He had adjusted surprisingly fast.

He headed towards the park for today, taking in all the bright and happy scenes around him. Birds every colour of the rainbow were chirping lightly in the trees and bushes. Small animals, squirrels, chipmunks and the like were running around on the grass and climbing up the trunks of tall trees quite happily. It was a sudden change from Daniel’s past surroundings. The sun was beating down on Daniel’s back giving him a warm feeling. He had not yet seen Princess Celestia in person, but he had heard of her magnificence and power. She was doing a very good job with the sun indeed.

As Daniel walked through the park, he heard chattering amongst the ponies. Stormy weather had apparently been scheduled. Daniel was not entirely certain on how the Pegasi controlled the weather, but he decided not to dwell on the subject. He should be enjoying this life, not questioning it after all.

“Hey! Daniel!” A familiar voice cried. Daniel turned to see the mint unicorn running towards him with a smile plastered on her face. “What’cha up to?”

“Having a morning stroll as usual Lyra. How do you keep finding me?” While he wasn’t going to admit it, he chose a different route each day in hopes of not being spotted by Lyra. She tended to get a tad irritating after a while.

“You don’t exactly blend in well. I can see you miles off.” She stated. “I hear you’re having a hard time with your memories?”

“Indeed.” He confirmed.

“Ah. That’s a bummer. Sometimes memories can be hard to get over. You just have to ignore them and move on.”

“I’m afraid I have tried. Sometimes I experience visual hallucinations.” He truthfully stated.

“Sounds like some pretty rough memories.”

“Trust me. You haven’t seen anything like them.”

“Oh come on, they can’t be that bad can they? I have seen some pretty messed up stuff in my life.”

“Like what?” He asked. He knew nothing she said could even match with his memories on the scale of ‘messed up’, but he thought it would be amusing to see her try.

“Well, the other day, Bon Bon messed up some cupcakes pretty bad. They looked like piles of-”

“I see.” Daniel interrupted. He was familiar enough with Equestrian slang to know what she was going to say. Of course, now he knew what she meant by ‘messed up’. It was not the type of ‘messed up’ he was thinking of.

“So what are your memories like? I’m pretty sure they don’t even come close to my story.” She stated confidently. Daniel actually thought she was joking until now.

“I am not going to tell you about my memories. Your reaction if I told you them may be slightly varied to my reaction to your story.”

“Are you sure? It’s always good to tell somepony about your troubles. It helps make you feel better about them.”

“I don’t think I will ever feel better about the things I did.” Daniel stated, sounding quite depressed all of a sudden.

“What do you mean? You have regrets? Is that it?”

“I suppose you can call them regrets.”

“What did you do?” She asked.

“I already told you. I am not telling anyone. My lips are sealed I’m afraid.”

“Humph! Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you are reduced to tears because of some overly-dramatic hallucination.” And with that, she headed off, possibly in the direction of home. Deciding that this walk was over, he headed back to the library.

Daniel vaguely remembered Twilight’s mini-lecture she gave him on this ‘Lucid Dreaming’ concept, but he remembered enough to know that he was going to have to face his fears in the dream while he knew he was dreaming. If it was his dream world, could he morph it and change the scene completely? Yes. He did not feel like running from Gatherers again. When he became lucid, he would simply morph the dream into something peaceful and beautiful, a meadow perhaps.

When he finally arrived at Twilight’s library, he noticed Pinkie had arrived again. Curious as to what they were talking about, he picked a random book and sat at the couch. He was allowed to eavesdrop. What could be so personal in a world of talking ponies that he couldn’t listen in?

“How are you gonna get rid of them?” Pinkie asked.

“I have an idea or two. One is to try and eliminate them with a peaceful nightmare recognition exercise. This will hopefully allow him to recognise when he is having a nightmare and stand up to his fears.” ‘Oh. That’s what this is about.’

“I don’t get it.” Pinkie stated.

“Basically, I am going to run him through a short exercise which will hopefully induce lucid dreams mnemonically. That means that by setting an intention in your brain, you will carry out the intention. In this case, the intention is to have a lucid dream.”

“What’s that?” Twilight sighed.

“Basically, it’s when you know your dreaming.”

“Oh! I do that all the time. It just kinda happens you know. I do some real strange stuff in my dreams. Like once, I imagined I had wings and I flew into space and saw a giant space worm! He was a real nice guy. Oh, and there was this other time-”

“Pinkie. I really don’t have time.”

“Oh! If - I mean when – you get rid of his nightmares, I can throw him a surprise you-got-cured-of-your-nightmares-party!” She shouted. Daniel guessed that he wasn’t meant to hear that, because Pinkie gasped when she saw him.

“You didn’t hear that did you!” She practically screamed in his face.

“No Pinkie, I was simply too entranced by this book to hear you.”

“Hey! Twilight does that sometimes. Don’t you Twilight?” Twilight merely shook her head slowly, getting a bit of a headache.

“Well, anyway. Gotta go Danny-man! See ya!” And with that she sped out of the window. Daniel scrunched his face in irritation at his pet name.

“So, you heard every word didn’t you?” Daniel looked up from his book and smiled cheekily.

“I have no idea what you are talking about Twilight.” Twilight sighed in irritation.

“I don’t have time for jokes; I have to practice for your mnemonic induction tonight.”

“I apologise Twilight. You know you don’t have to do this?”

“But I do! I won’t sit by and watch you go insane because of these nightmares. I will help you if it’s the last thing I do.” She insisted whilst looking for a book.

“I think you are exaggerating a little bit. I have not heard of anyone who has been driven to insanity by dreams.”

“But you aren’t just having dreams. I know you can hear voices that aren’t there and see things that don’t exist, and I know you know I am reading your diary and have refused to put all the details in there. Your attitude towards this isn’t helping me help you.” Daniel didn’t quite catch everything she said since she insisted on making everything sound like a loop, but he got the general message.

“Very well. I will allow you to assist me.”

“Excellent!” Twilight beamed.

“Now then,” Daniel began, “I will write in today’s events in my diary. Please excuse me.” He strode over to the table stool and whipped out the diary. He picked up the quill and dipped it in the ink once before writing on a new page.

Day 6 (Early Afternoon)

It seems I awoke late today. It is already the afternoon after my morning stroll. The nightmares did not relent and I was troubled again last night. Twilight has promised me assistance (although I was reluctant to accept that I need help). I do not want to trouble these ponies with my petty problems, but they seem persistent in strengthening our friendship by helping. A trait I admire and respect.

Since it is only the afternoon, I do not have much to write about. I will continue this entry after Twilight uses this ‘lucid dreaming’ to cure me.

He put the quill back in the pot. He decided to take a quick nap as he was still rather tired. He hoped that he would sleep most of the day away and awaken when Twilight was ready.