I hold my son’s plush hands and count his pink fingers to make sure there are ten. I wouldn’t forgive myself if there were any missing, though I would forget how it happened. I have three severed fingertips—I can’t remember how it felt to lose them, but each finger fed my son for three months.

My phone vibrates like a heartbeat in my pocket, and I know it’s a request.

How much for a thumb?

I reply, $8,000.

The buyer accepts. I place my son in his playpen and kiss his soft head. He squirms like a little worm that thinks it’s about to be eaten.

When memories became a new type of NFT, everyone was quick to unload their baggage in exchange for vacations to faraway places and sex with people they never thought they’d meet. Happiness became the equivalent of fast food—cheap and of no nutritional value. These days, painful memories are scarce, and the market is teeming with people begging to feel something.

The memory must be at least ten seconds long. I take the knife I once used for cutting apples and place my thumb on the cutting board, like a nub of ginger waiting to be peeled. I know where to cut, I know how far to go. I cut through the red, counting the moments through gritted teeth. I can’t look away until it is done. I press the back of my ear to sync the memory and send it from my phone. The buyer instantly pays, and I am left with blind pain. My body moves automatically, a puppet pulled by the strings of the nurse I was before. I treat the wound with my son crying behind me, as if he feels it too. Then the world grows still, dark, and numb.

---

The memory from this woman pounds into my skull like a drill. I feel the sawing of her thumb, the anguish of hot flesh against cold steel. A scream rips through my throat and the skin on my forehead floods with salty sweat. It’s delicious. A rush of laughter erupts from the deepest part of my gut. I spiral in this feeling of pain that is not mine, of pain I paid for like a prime rib served on a broken platter.

It is over too soon. The memory clings to me sticky sweet, but the feeling is gone. I pull my phone out and view my collection with pride. There is the thumb, there is the fetus in a closet, there is the eye of a soldier, there is the burned flesh of a child in a war zone. It’s all there and so much more. I am rich with pain that I bought and now own.

My phone rings.

Sir, it’s time for your press conference.

I straighten my red and blue tie, adjust the pin over my heart, check my teeth, and smile.

A brusque Slavic voice ricocheted off the brick alley walls around the corner, and my level two high school Spanish was not helping me decipher any of it. My socks were soddened by the blood running down the front of my jeans. As I surveyed the empty sunset-lit block, my breaths came in jagged bursts. I didn’t recognize this part of town. My body was still shaking with the shock of what happened at the police station.  It’s not every day you see a man in a black suit and Ray-Bans shoot two cops while you are mid-conversation with them.

“Run!” That’s all I had heard. I didn’t know if it was my own voice or Sam’s. She had been next to me during the shooting. It was her blood running down the front of my jeans.

 I caught my breath and looked down at my phone. The GPS read You have arrived. I double-checked that the address I punched in while running matched the one that had come from the unknown phone number, which seemed more area code than number. I had ignored the texts at first. I had been busy climbing the unnecessarily copious number of steps leading to the police station. And I think I was finally convincing Sam to sell me her memory of the time she walked in on me mid-wipe at the movie theater’s unisex bathroom. If I had known that morally ethical inclusivity came at the cost of your best friend catching you in a frog squat with dropped trow, I would have thought twice about signing that petition clipboard.

They tell you to only sell your memories if prescribed by a licensed Memorist. Bunch of horse shit. Before everyone’s uncle owned one, Memor-link boxes were exclusive to Memorists’ clinics. That’s back when my trauma-laden shell of an aunt decided to visit one. She had been prescribed to sell her traumatic childhood memories. What they didn’t tell her was that even though the memories disappeared, the emotions stayed. And rope is much cheaper than you think. I didn’t have any trauma. What I did have was a memory of a certain popular senator guiding two blindfolded toddlers into an SUV during my alleyway pee break last week. After talking over what I saw with Sam, she had eventually convinced me to go to the police station.

I ventured down the narrow alley and found a blindfolded kid with a short buzz-cut connected to a Memor-link box. Beside him, a bald, pale man in a tracksuit grunted, “Do now. No more trouble.” He had a way with words.

Feeling resigned and chicken shit, I took the connecting pair of Memor-link wires, peeled the Giver-Tabs, and suctioned them onto my temples. I closed my eyes and brought the memory into focus. The box beeped. Then I heard hair clippers.

The shopkeeper lifted their head as the doorbell chimed. “Welcome.”

An old woman entered, her face a map of laughter and tears earned over a life well lived. She kept her crimson shawl pulled tight as she wandered the shelves, eyeing the shopkeeper’s wares. Many customers took time browsing, gathering courage before asking for what they truly wanted.

The woman paused and ran soft fingers over a stuffed bear. “A baby’s first laugh,” the shopkeeper explained. “It was sold for a new car.”

With a careful reverence, the woman picked up the bear and cradled it in her arms. “What a waste,” she mumbled, squeezing it before returning it to the shelf.

“Everyone has their reasons,” the shopkeeper said. “And everything has its worth.”

A moment passed and the woman sighed. She was ready.

The shopkeeper studied her as she approached the desk. It had become something of a pastime to try and guess what the customer wanted to sell. The shopkeeper had seen it all: first kisses, wedding days, funerals, friendships, favorite recipes, a mother’s voice. What had the old woman brought to sell?

She clutched at her shawl, finding some invisible comfort in the frayed woolen threads. “How much for a life?”

“More than you can give.”

She shook her head, “How much for my life?”

Interesting. “Do you understand what you ask?”

“I do.”

“I see. A lifetime of memories is not a simple thing to lose. What do you ask in return?”

“My grandson is sick. A heart defect. My sweet boy has fought hard, but he’s losing the fight. Unless something happens, he won’t see another month.” The woman’s voice was painted with emotion, but her eyes were dry. She had cried enough tears to know that they wouldn’t change anything. “I am old and have lived a good life. I will give you all my memories, every moment of my seventy-nine years, if you can make him healthy.”

“I can fix his heart, but I can do no more than that. I can’t promise him a long and happy life.”

“He only needs a chance. He will make his own happiness.”

The shopkeeper considered the offer before them. “Very well. If you are sure, sign your name in my ledger.”

They opened the book to a blank page and the woman signed without hesitation. When she looked up again, her eyes sparkled with tears. “Thank you.”

“You have until tomorrow morning. Until then, you will remember. I suggest you make use of today.”

The old woman nodded and the shopkeeper was alone once more.

The doctors will find a healthy boy with a healthy heart in the morning, but the woman won’t remember anything. Not her name, her family, her face.

But the shopkeeper is not cruel. Even when she has forgotten everything else, the woman will remember the sound of her grandson’s first laugh, and that will be enough.