Maz and Eli stand in front of the fridge as they stare at the note. Her hand finds his arm, gripping harder by the second, before…

The Viper makes itself at home with a slow syrup of calm. Fear dissolves, and the urgency it was holding on to goes with it.

Maz’s hold eases; Eli’s shoulders uncoil. Their eyelids flutter closed. A rhythm thumps under both their skins, the beat borrowed, each other’s pulse and none of their own.

When they open their eyes, the flat seems to snap back into its boxy angles and bright colours. Shadows return to their assigned corners. The fridge’s buzzing finds a volume that works as ordinary. Reflections start behaving no other way than normal reflections should.

Maz locks her gaze on the note.
You know the shape of that, how his hand digs in on the first letter of a warning.
“You wrote that… right? Now?”

“I… I don’t know. But it’s my ‘E’.” He turns to her.
“I don’t tend to leave myself random reminders about… you know.”
Clearly, I do now. I should know.

“What kind of note is that, anyway.” She gives him a tilted smile that aims for a tease.
“Had an urgent need for bad poetry?” The brittling tremor in each of her words ruins the aim altogether.
You know it’s more than that. Otherwise, why would he need a reminder for the scales? Does he want to keep taking them?

His eyes drop to her hand as it slides down a little on his arm.
“I must’ve written it when we decided to quit.”
Why would I write about quitting? It’s either done or it isn’t, unless I had a point. What was I thinking? What does this mean?

He turns back to the fridge.
“No, it must be something else.”

His fingers rest against the magnet for a second before drawing back.
If I can’t remember the rule, then trust the handwriting. That’ll have to be… The ink looks fresh, though. Okay. This could live in the same file as ‘I don’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.’ I’m moving on. Can I?

Maz’s attention slips to the clutter below the note. A few fruit-shaped magnets hold receipts and takeaway menus in place beside a large calendar, which happens to be half the width of the fridge. One scrap sticks out. Its corner curls from under an electricity bill stuck beneath a stack of torn pieces of paper.

Her eyes narrow at the stack.
If we wrote one that we don’t remember writing at all, what else did we write?

As she tugs the one that sticks out free, the pile tilts before it avalanches. The notes slide down onto the tiles. She kneels to gather them where the cool ceramic presses into her knees.

Eli flinches at the scatter and crouches beside her. He moves half the scraps into rough stacks to start sorting both by touch and sight. Coffee ring here, a thumb smudge there, feathered edges after the parched scraps of newspaper pages, his initial on some, hers on the rest.

The note in Maz’s hand looks creased, written in pencil, which has allowed the lines to fade to a whisper:

***

‘Scales are in the mint tin. Don’t miss a day. Seven in a row, and done for good.’

***

She shapes the words with her silent mouth.
“What? I don’t remember that. Or having a conversation like that. Or about that.”

“Guess that’s the point of writing notes.” His brows jump upwards the moment the words leave him, and he stops short of reaching for the scrap.

She gives him a sideways glance before picking up another. Its corner has a rusty mark. The ink on it, blurred to near illegibility, carries a few crossed-out lines at the top, and near the bottom resolves into:

***

‘You won’t remember why. Take it anyway. Wait for the hiss.’

***

“That’s… too specific for my liking.” She flings the piece of paper across the kitchen.
“And it does sound like the sort of thing I’d argue with.”

As the Viper leans in further, the spike of panic slides away to somewhere dull.

She looks at the scrappy memos on the floor.
Did past you tell you what to do? Do you trust that version of you? Surely not. But they remembered enough to write… something down.

He watches her.
I’m not doing anything ‘anyway’. What reason did we have? How can I know? Unless we were trying for a joke. Obviously not.

She takes a third note that holds its line on the back of a receipt. The words on it seem jagged from having been pressed a little too hard into the paper:

***

‘Don’t listen to yourself when you want to stop.’

***

Eli shakes his head with a huff, not convincing anyone that it could be a laugh.
“We were bossy.”
Why shouldn’t I listen to myself? Ah, it’s plausible that we were blackout drunk. It’s obviously nothing.

Another one on a neat slip in looping handwriting:

***

‘Quit quitting after two days. If all else fails, count.’

***

“That sounds like me.” Maz pinches the bridge of her nose, as if she can capture the thought right there.
“I still don’t remember writing it.”

“That bit might have sort of worked? We forgot the why but kept the counting.”

“Nope. You know that’s different.” She looks up.
“Maybe it isn’t?”

Next one, a smaller sticky paper that doesn’t stick anymore, holds a single word written over the many beneath it in different colours:

***

‘Why?’

***

They stare at that one longer than the rest.

“Did we ever answer that?” Eli reaches for the note.

Maz doesn’t answer that.
Would you even remember it, maybe… if you gave it more time?
She looks up at the ceiling.
Nothing. The blank stays blank. Thanks, brain.

She shrugs.
“Apparently not.”

Eli nudges her arm while he stares at the fridge.

Where the fallen scraps used to be pinned, there are now short vertical lines revealed. All scratched into the door near the middle, six carved deep. A seventh was never added. Beneath them sits the final, or first, note scratched directly onto it. The etching seems partly worn, either by countless fridge wipes or negligent magnet drags.

***

‘Remember this instead. Half for you, half for me. All of it ours. The price of forgetting was always about forgetting what it cost. – M & E’

***

Her touch traces along the indentation.
How come you don’t remember carving it? Actually carving it. Don’t shout at it. Don’t shake him. Don’t start ripping the notes. The paper won’t answer however many times you scream ‘why’ at them.

She turns and lines up the scattered reminders that lie on the floor like tarot cards on the cold tiles.
Maybe… these are the instructions you might actually manage to follow this time. If you can assume they’re actually telling the truth.

Her fingers twitch with the urge to crumple each bit of paper. It slides off as the hiss gives her a heartbeat to count when Eli’s hand finds hers.
“How many times do you think we’ve failed to see through a week?”

Eli lets out a scratching grunt.
“It appears losing count is part of whatever deal this is.”

He takes her hand and places it over his heart, where he feels her pulse as if it were his own.
Right. This many notes… and warnings I have no idea about. We should at least give what old us tried to say a go. Right?
“So… Let’s call this day one?”

His head rests against hers as he catches the smell of old smoke, dampened by the weather from her hair.
“Ah, forgot to ask. What were you saying about the mirror earlier?”

Her shoulders go stiff, eyes hazy.
The evening already feels like something that happened to someone else.
“What mirror?”