Twenty-four hours dedicated to the memory of someone who wasn’t dead. We went to visit her favourite horse. A small group of us were sitting in a circle around the animal in her family’s stable, shuffling our asses over loose hay, hoping that the dirt on the ground wouldn’t touch the identical pairs of Levi’s high-waisted jeans we wore tucked into combat boots with pull loops at the backs. We were asking each other where she had gone and when she would come back. 

The Wiseman girl had always been on my side. When we were kids, she’d steal Pokémon cards for me. One time we took them to the neighbouring school to sell the holographic ones for money so I could buy a birthday gift for my mom. I remember the Wiseman girl yelling at random kids to come over and look at the cards. Telling them what a great deal they were getting. She didn’t know much about the cards, but still managed to trick everyone into thinking they were more valuable than they really were. A lot of the kids were younger and didn’t know any better. The Wiseman girl didn’t care. Then we got chased off by one of the teachers. 

We were all home from college for the long weekend when we heard she’d left town. Left a note with her parents. The news was an excuse for us to gather. We wanted to see the horse. Was it remarkable that she left? Seemed like she never would. Unlike the rest of us, she didn’t have any skills to take to a bigger city. I know this sounds harsh. She just didn’t. Seemed happy in that small southwestern town. 

It had been a long time since any of us had spoken to the Wiseman girl. In our teenage years, she’d been dismissed as a slut. Someone not to be spoken to. Was that fair? Seemed right at the time, as that system of classification was all we idiots knew. If she’d been around, I would have told her it’s cool to be a slut now. She was better than all of us. 

The horse wasn’t moving. It looked like a giant stuffed animal. I stood next to it and ran my hand down its long snout. It opened its eyes. 

Someone lit a candle and then another person yelled to put it out. You could start a fire, she said. There’s hay. Whatever ceremony we were putting on ended because the tension was high, and the rejection of the candle had escalated things. That was that. One person asked if we wanted to drink down by the lake. We were tired, though. We looked at each other to see who would admit it first. 

Five years passed. It took a while to stop seeing the Wiseman girl everywhere in the city I’d moved to. Apparently, a part of grief. One morning, I ended up running after a girl on the subway, following her up the stairs and hugging her while crying. A bunch of people felt the need to film us, videos that ended with me getting punched in the face.

It was hard to get a job after that. Potential employers could search my name and easily find the video, as an ex-girlfriend identified and doxxed me about thirty minutes after it got popular. Don’t know why she did it. Maybe for clout. I was labelled a bad man because my ex kept posting about evil things I’d done, specifically how I used to hide my special pens from her while we were living together. 

The reason I did this goes deep into my childhood. There is a significance to my guarding of the pens. I could make an infographic about it, but no one would be able to handle that. I’m just kidding. I didn’t want her to touch my pens because I didn’t like her very much. Hiding them felt thrilling. Once, I even put one inside the toilet tank. I loved watching her try to find them when she thought I wasn’t looking.

Anyway, I was told I was a bad man. I wanted to reflect on how I could change. I’d get a job. I didn’t really need the money, but the vast amount of free time was starting to bother me. It can be hard on the mind if you’re someone who likes rules. 

Instead, I ended up using some of my savings to pay a company to put me asleep cryogenically. It seemed like a good investment for some of my inheritance. You see, my mother died suddenly while I was still in school with the Wiseman girl. My father disappeared some years after. I moved in with my aunt in the small southwestern town. It was only on the day I graduated college that I heard about the inheritance. 

I would remain myself during my “period of freeze.” Basically wake up the same, but I’d be entering a world of different circumstances. Since I’m hot and tall, I’d still be looking good, for a man, but it’s not likely I’d be able to adjust psychologically. There was a short declaration on the waiver that claimed it might not work. 

I’d already lost touch with most of the people who knew the Wiseman girl. It was possible they would all be dead by the time I was thawed out.

Still, freezing myself seemed like a good way to spend my money. I didn’t have a lover or a care in the world. My friends had ceased to answer my text messages after I was named and shamed. I had new urges. I wanted to give myself up to something without knowing what would happen. I wanted to learn to die. 

Would I dream while I was put into this long sleep? Unlikely. But what do I know about the inner workings of the brain? About a good night’s sleep? 

On the day of the procedure, I wore my best suit. I went through thinly veiled mental health screenings and somehow passed. I imagined I would have to record a video for myself, followed by another for my loved ones in case something went wrong. 

Since I didn’t have any loved ones other than my aunt, whom I hated, I would make up a family that I thought would be pretty sad if I died. Recite some lines I remembered from a movie about astronauts. 

The staff were wrapping everything up. I asked when they were going to start the freezing, only to be told that the procedure wouldn’t happen until I was already dead. This had simply been a part of the consultation process. 

I’d signed up for cryonics, a practice different from what I’d seen people do in movies like Alien. In fact, there were entire societies of people who had decided to go through with it. I hadn’t looked too closely at the documents and pamphlets. Upon review, I noticed that there was an option to freeze only my brain. 

Realizing that I had completely misunderstood the concept of what I was doing made me feel dizzy and confused. Embarrassed, like a real piece of work. Everyone had left the room, so I sat for a while until I regained my composure. 

When I left the building, it was certain that nothing had changed. Everyone was still on their phones. No one looked different, not hotter, not more sad. It was boring. 

I decided to throw a party. I’d buy cheese and wine and get some drugs to put in a little ceramic container that looked like a seashell. I called my drug dealer. He told me to meet him at the fountain. 

A lot of people were posing by the fountain, as it was listed as a popular spot for Instagram photos. I saw the man who went by Francois. He handed me a takeout container filled with gnocchi, and the drugs were underneath the pasta in a little baggie. I didn’t understand why the container of food was necessary, but Francois had always been a little weird, paranoid, even. He informed me that he’d be adding the cost of the food to what I owed him. He asked for a tip. I said fine. 

Francois told me we had to sit by the fountain for a few minutes at least. I asked him what he was going to have for dinner. What he was going to do that night. He told me to chill and be silent. We watched some pigeons and he started naming them after characters in the novel he was writing. He told me that the novel sucked. He said he wouldn’t be able to write anything good until he truly got outside himself. Until he could find a drug that could do that. I agreed. 

I started to reflect. Maybe I had become a robot. Somewhere along the way I’d started to register events in passing, barely participating or noticing. Too detached to read too much into the major procedure I had been considering. I wondered if I’d have to pass a test to do with emotions, or even math, to fit into this world. 

Francois made eye contact and saluted as he left. I found the gesture weird and felt secondhand embarrassment for him. 

The party was underwhelming. Not many people showed up and I felt like a loser. Then I posted online about it, an Instagram story with my address. We were all standing in my kitchen listening to a podcast featuring a popular British documentarian whose movies were scored with a lot of nostalgic music. Not the right thing for a party. I put some of the drugs I’d bought on the table. Some people seemed repulsed, but others just asked if they were clean. I assumed they were, is what I said. 

Everything became fast and triumphant after that. I held onto my phone and felt elated. I let a few more people in. Then some more after that. My apartment became full of people I didn’t know, but I kept kissing their cheeks. I treated them like they were my oldest friends, as if their presence elevated my life into a greater realm. I told everyone how I would eventually be frozen. I don’t know what I believed about it because I hadn’t been able to process what had happened. I was high. 

Then the Wiseman girl showed up. I’m just kidding, it wasn’t her. It was someone who looked exactly like her. She was very shy. I could tell because she kept twisting her long hair into a knot, pretending to look at her phone while her frantic eyes scanned the room as if she was being hunted. 

When I went up to her and said hello, she looked like she wanted to laugh and throw up at the same time. I’d later see that one of her eyes was bigger than the other, but you would have to stare at her for a long time to notice. 

She introduced herself as Nancy and asked me to tell her a story. Obviously, I informed her who the Wiseman girl was. That they looked alike. She vowed to help me find her, no matter the cost. 

When I woke up everyone had left except Nancy, who was asleep on the couch with a laptop open next to her face. I couldn’t remember much from the previous night. I took the laptop to look for clues. We’d looked up the Wiseman girl. There were a lot of people with that last name, though. The night started coming back to me. We’d gone through all the profiles while I proclaimed that what we were doing was a fool’s errand. I might not even know what she looked like now. 

Nancy made me French toast. While she cooked, she specified that the staleness of the bread was good, as it would add to its ability to absorb the eggs, honey and vanilla extract, as well as the vodka she would put in the mixture. I asked her if the bread was going to light on fire in the skillet since there was vodka involved. Nancy said it wouldn’t, as her mention of the vodka was simply a joke to see if I was listening or not. She made me an omelette, too, retrieving my dusty cutting board and slicing a bunch of vegetables that I didn’t know had been in the fridge. They could have been in there forever. 

Nancy ate a corner of her French toast then offered the rest to me. She did the same with her omelette. She then proclaimed she wanted to continue to look for whomever we were looking for. 

We never found the Wiseman girl. We came close once, after contacting someone who could age an old photo I found of her and me, then doing a reverse image search using what they’d created. We travelled across the country, concealing the endeavour as a romantic vacation. 

At some point, the freezing company contacted me and asked me to review their initial consultation services. What was novel about this was that they cold-called me and told me everything was being recorded. Lying in bed together, edging closer to the point where we would give up and go home, Nancy and I yelled into the phone. I don’t remember what we said. ⁂

Sophie McCreesh is a writer living in Toronto. Her first novel, Once More, With Feeling, was published in 2021.