“My name is Suzy Wilkinson, and I am recording this for my own safety.”

Suzy looks into the lens of a handheld video recorder. She squints her eyes as she checks the camera’s balance and placement in relation to where she stands by her small desk and laptop computer. Seeing the red light is still on in the few seconds since she has pressed play, Suzy continues talking.

“For the past three days – no, wait, maybe it was four?” Suzy’s composure starts to crack, her thin and dry hands rubbing together as if she is washing them. Her eye’s blue-green pupils cloud over slightly as she tries to remember the right number of days. “Four,” she finally decides, “It’s been four days since this started. And now, I am going to figure out what it is.”

Suzy turns back to the camera with renewed confidence. She wears a short-sleeved V-neck shirt that extends a bit too far down her waist, smooth sweatpants that she likes to sleep in, and a pair of slip-on sneakers. Very casual wear for what Suzy hopes will be a casual recording.

“For the past four days, I have been suffering from amnesia. Short-term, that is, uh, and it only happens at night. It’s been affecting my studies, and my social life, and my… Okay, I’ll just say it,” she quickly summarizes. “I can’t remember anything that happens after a certain time each night until when I wake up in the morning. 11:30 at night is when it starts.”

Suzy looks to the side of the camera, tracking for herself the layout of her college dorm room. Mounted on a tripod, the device’s range primarily focuses on her desk and computer. Beyond that, Suzy has her bed with white sheets and a brown blanket, a small throwaway rug to place her day shoes, a cheap wall lamp by the bed that currently lights up the room, and a simple closet for her clothes. The adjacent restroom is one she must share with the introverted girl in the room opposite her.

Suzy has no roommates to compete with for space, which she considers a great boon. A smaller boon is the pair of windows looking out onto part of the college campus below. Despite the privacy and view of the outside world, it would be nice for her to have help on hand in this situation.

“I am going to record what happens tonight using this camera,” Suzy says before she looks back at the device. The red light near its top indicates it is still working properly. “If anyone is watching this and I get hurt or put in danger, you can use this to find me. Just, uh, be quick about it, okay?”

Suzy wants to retract that last statement the moment she hears it leave her recorded self's lips. But she cannot go back and change the recording unless she wants to start over again, which she feels even more embarrassed thinking about. She looks at the window, noting the Sun has already set outside. She then looks at a digital clock by her bed, reading the red numbers “10:52 PM”.

“Just over an hour,” Suzy mutters. “This thing should have enough battery life for the night.” Suzy’s eyes drift down to check the tripod’s posture, seeing it is stable. Having the camera fall over mid-recording will probably wreck any footage already taken. She refuses to have her efforts be for naught, hence the tripod for extra balance.

“Okay,” Suzy says with forced calmness. “Time to unwind.” She turns around and starts to scratch her back through her shirt. As she feels the strap of her bra, she stops and spins back towards the camera. The constantly open lens unnerves the recorded Suzy, making her feel like she is being watched by someone else despite knowing she is recording herself.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she tells the camera. By extension, she tells anyone watching the video – herself included – to be respectful with their thoughts. The camera says nothing. It also does nothing beyond showing its red light and continuing to record. Suzy figures that is the best response she is going to get tonight.

Suzy does not call herself a “clock-watcher”, but the next thirty minutes go far too slowly for her comfort. Every time she glances at the clock and those red numbers, she pictures them ticking over to “11:30” and sealing her fate.

Different activities that she does in her free time – idle browsing of social media feeds and the odd news topic of the day is one example – do not provide comfort. She is unable to remove the sense of urgency from her mind. She does not want to have the time get away from her. Despite this, she suddenly realizes the clock is showing “11:28 PM”.

“Oh, God, two minutes!” Suzy’s hands and legs shake while she tries to smooth out her hair and turn her chair to face the camera. The bedside clock shows the same red numbers, silently ticking towards the critical moment. Suzy’s fear turns her veins a few degrees closer to freezing. She looks at the camera for support but only sees it is working as usual. It won’t be a help for her anxiety.

Calm down, Suzy tells herself. You are going to figure this out. If not now, then when you watch the video.

The clock ticks to 11:29. “One minute,” Suzy announces, mostly to herself but also her future self. Best to keep track of things like this. She pulls out her phone to look at the exact second when the clock shifts over. The camera will catch what she needs to see. She’ll figure this out.

“Ten seconds.” Suzy whispers the sentence, a final reminder and warning. Ten seconds until the point of no return. Suzy looks to the camera, straightens her posture, and suddenly tosses her phone onto her bed. No sense in keeping it by her if she can’t remember what she is doing.

“Here… we… go.” Suzy wants to shut her eyes as the final seconds tick down, but her eyes do not shut at the turning point. When the clock moves to 11:30, Suzy tenses up, braced for something terrible to happen.

After what feels like an eternity, condensed into twenty seconds in Suzy’s mind, she opens her eyes again.

“Nothing happened?” Suzy looks from left to right, fearing every shadow and change of light. “W-What’s going on here? I could have sworn it was—”

Silently, swiftly, Suzy’s vision goes pitch-black. Her sentence is left unfinished; her brain completely forgets about it. Then her other senses turn off, one by one, with small flicks of a mental switch.

A warm sensation tickles Suzy’s cheeks. The heat causes her brain to start waking up from deep slumber, nerves firing off. She mumbles, “Wha…?” as she starts opening her eyes. “Wha’s goin’ on?”

Suzy turns to the side and feels something shift on her body. She glances down to see a brown blanket over her chest and everything below that. She moves one of her hands, sluggishly reaching her head and touching the pillow she thinks should be there. She is in bed, she realizes; when she tries to remember why she got here, she comes up with nothing. There’s a pit, some kind of void, in her head. It just stays there, an empty hole where something should be.

Suzy shifts on the bed, moving her legs and feet as if pedaling on a bike. She gets enough strength to push her upper body off the bed and look around where she is. She instantly remembers the college dorm room she is in. Then she looks at a tripod and video camera mounted by the bed and experiences the equivalent of a post-hangover rush of emotions.

“Camera… Camera!” Suzy surges out of bed, falling onto all fours. She scrambles along the floor, getting to the tripod and camera in just a few seconds. Breathing quickly, she plucks the camera off the tripod and checks its exterior. The device’s red light is still on; it is still recording.

Suzy turns the camera over and opens the side of the device. This turns on a small display screen and reveals a few buttons along the screen’s edges. She presses a red dot on the screen to turn off the “RECORD” function. Her eyes dart across the screen, checking every button to try and figure out what to do next.

The camera shows a recorded time of “7-36-22”. Suzy’s brain shakes off more of its sleep, doing some quick calculations. “Seven hours,” she tells herself aloud. “Seven hours, thirty-six minutes, and twenty-two seconds. Holy shit.”

The recording rewinds to the beginning and starts with the push of a few more buttons on the camera’s screen. Suzy first sees herself, dressed in a short-sleeved V-neck shirt that extends a bit too far down her waist, smooth sweatpants that she likes to sleep in, and a pair of slip-on sneakers, setting up the camera, including a close-up shot of her forehead.

As Suzy looks into the camera’s lens, it is clear she looks nervous. Suzy feels nervous that she is nervous in the video. What happened to me?

“My name is Suzy Wilkinson,” the recorded Suzy says, “and I am recording this for my own safety.”

More memories burst out of a hidden containment chamber inside Suzy’s brain. She blinks rapidly, feeling a momentary sense of vertigo. She remembers the memory loss, the uncertainty, and the desperation leading her to choose this route forward. By the time Suzy comes back to the current moment, the video has moved on to see Suzy sitting by the computer.

“Please, please, please…” Suzy mumbles in desperate hope. She glances at her own body and finds, to her shock, that she is not wearing the sneakers in the video. The other clothes she is wearing now are the exact same as in the video. “Oh, God, what did I do?!”

The watching Suzy goes to her bed and sits down, camera still in hand. She presses the fast-forward button on the screen, eager to get to the parts that matter. She watches the video time closely and changes the playback speed to normal when she sees herself sitting on the chair with the camera facing her.

“Here... we… go.” Suzy says before she tenses up in the recording, looking at the bedside clock outside of the screen. The Suzy sitting on the bed tenses in turn, fearing what will come next. The camera’s clock ticks out the next twenty seconds with no change to Suzy’s state.

“Nothing happened?” The recorded Suzy looks from left to right, her fear still very visible on her face. “W-What’s going on here? I could have sworn it was 11:30.”

The camera’s clock continues to count the passage of seconds. The time has passed, and nothing happened. The recorded Suzy figures out the most logical answer to this situation.

“I’m safe.” Suzy smiles in the video, gleeful at this discovery. “I’m safe!” She laughs, showing a moment of mirth and relief. She calms down quickly, but her eyes remain wide and bright.

Suzy – the Suzy watching the video – holds the camera with trembling hands. I don’t remember this. I SHOULD remember this.