I think I may have once mentioned my photographic memory, but I sincerely doubt I�ve expressed how much I hate it.

Oh sure, you may think it is silly. Why would somebody hate such a remarkable gift?

It�s kind of selective�

I never seem to get photographic recollections of the things I wish to. I�ve tried and tried, but to no avail. All the photos I can remember, I wish to have not.

I collect them�

�the pictures. I collect them in my mind. Ever since I was about twelve, I decided to count them up and put them into sort of a mental cosmic gallery, only visible to me. But I only collect the ones I wish not to have.

The gruesome ones. The brutal. The horrific. The abhorrent. The repulsive.

The silent.

All the pictures I would give my whole soul and being to destroy, to banish from my recollection� they�re all there.

But I don�t look at them. At least I try not to� but every now and then, in the darkest of the night, or in the most silent of my thought, one will pop up without my notion. That�s why I spazz sometimes. All those times my family and friends have questioned my random twitching, spontaneous violent thrashes, or deep gasps� that�s what was happening. Oh, and I�m famous for gasping� but it�s the only way to get them out. It�s become reflex now, because it�s the only way to get them out of my sight, and back into it�s proper gallery.

Every now and then I make a weak effort to try to tell this to my friends, but� they don�t seem to realize.

Jonathan told me once on the phone, when my breathing got kind of heavy, and it was getting real bad, he said it sounded like something was haunting me�

It was a long time before I just said �kind of.�

They do haunt me. They will never leave. No matter where I go, they will always go with me.

The pictures are mostly from horror movies� you know, Bride of Chuckie, Exorcist, IT, the war movies my dad used to watch. Some are real. Those ones are the worst. I saw a car wreck once� the child died.

OH AND GOD DAMN THOSE FUCKING DRIVER�S ED. TAPES. I wanted to watch them, but I knew I shouldn�t. They�d stick. �but yes, I did have to add half a dozen new pictures to the gallery from those.

I told somebody once. Let�s just call them �HIM�. I told HIM that I could remember pictures, when I was about 8. HIM seemed to understand, and was very kind. I over heard HIM telling my parents to never show me horror movies, and make sure I never see stuff like that� but my parents misunderstood him. They thought he was just making sure they didn�t show me inappropriate stuff for my age� because I told HIM not to tell my parents.

I never saw HIM again.

Since then I vowed never to tell anybody, because I knew it was a problem only I could deal with. I discovered through hypothetical �innocent childish questions� that other people didn�t have problems with bloody pictures of mangled heads bothering them at night.

For awhile, I just didn�t see stuff, so it wasn�t much of a problem through the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school, but now that I�m in high school it�s getting worse by the day.

Today will be the turning point.

I�m just going to let them come. Who cares if I see rotting corpses all over the place? The only way to conquer this is to get used to it. So that�s what I�m gonna do.

Sure, I might go into another dark, gothic-looking phase, and lose my faith in god all over again, but hey� if it works�

�and yet I still believe in god.