Avant d'aller dormir

I wake each morning to a stranger in my bed, his face a landscape I do not recognize. My own reflection in the mirror is equally alien, a woman of forty-seven staring back, while in my mind, I am still twenty-nine, vibrant and unburdened by years. Taped around the glass are photographs, a mosaic of a life I cannot recall: this man and I, smiling, aging, a story written in faded colours that means nothing to me. He says his name is Ben, that he is my husband, that we have been married for years, and that an accident long ago stole my past, leaving me with a mind that resets each time I fall asleep. Every day, the same gentle, patient explanation, the same bewildered terror.

He leaves for work, and the house feels vast and empty, a beautiful cage. Then the telephone rings, a voice introducing himself as Dr. Nash, a neuropsychologist who claims to be helping me in secret. He tells me I've been seeing him, unbeknownst to Ben, and that I've been keeping a journal. This journal, he says, is my lifeline, a place where I can record the day's discoveries, a repository of memories that will otherwise vanish by morning. It is hidden, he explains, for my own good, a private truth in a world that feels increasingly fabricated.

With trembling hands, I retrieve the journal, its pages a chronicle of my own bewildered voice, a voice asking the same questions I ask now. As I read, a new layer of disquiet settles over me. The entries speak of growing suspicions, of inconsistencies in Ben's stories. He has told me we have no children, but my own writing, my own forgotten self, hints at a son, Adam. He speaks of a car accident, yet my journal murmurs of an attack, a brutal assault. The man I share my life with, the one who patiently reconstructs my world each dawn, seems to be withholding vital pieces of my fractured past.

The words on the page are both a comfort and a curse, each revelation deepening the chasm of doubt. I learn of a best friend, Claire, whom Ben claimed had moved away. I find a number, a desperate plea from my past self to connect. When I meet Claire, her face is familiar, a ghost of a memory stirring within me. She hands me a letter, a relic from the real Ben, explaining his heartbreak and his reasons for divorcing me years ago. The man I wake up beside, the man who calls himself Ben, is not my husband. He is someone else entirely.

A terrible clarity begins to form, a chilling portrait of manipulation and deceit. The journal speaks of a lover, Mike, and the truth, when it finally crashes down, is an avalanche. The man who has inhabited my life for years is Mike, the very man who attacked me, leaving me with this endless night of forgetting. He assumed Ben's identity after my real husband left, trapping me in his twisted version of our life.

The confrontation is inevitable, explosive. We are in a hotel room, a place I suddenly recognize with a sickening jolt - the scene of my assault. Mike, enraged, tries to destroy the journal, the only witness to his lies, setting it ablaze. In the ensuing struggle, the fire spreads, consuming the room, consuming him. I escape, miraculously, from the inferno.

When I wake again, it is to the face of the true Ben, his eyes filled with a weary love. And then, a boy appears, a young man named Adam, my son, alive and whole. The memories, for the first time in years, are still there, vibrant and terrifying, a complete tapestry of my past. I fall asleep that night, the weight of a remembered life heavy upon me, wondering if tomorrow morning, the slate will be wiped clean once more, or if this fragile, precious truth will finally remain.