The Collector
I like walking. I can think about things that need thinking about. I found a workaround, by the way, I got tired of death taking everyone I loved, so I started collecting.
There’s nothing death can do about it except take me away, too, and even then, I think I’d have the upper hand. I’m going to figure out a way to remember forever.
I started by pretending. I could take the memory of any person in my family, or my dog, or the actress who didn’t deserve it so hard, or my friend from when I was a kid, and I could picture them, dream them, and remember them.
The more real they became, the more of them I kept in my mind’s eye and in my heart, the better I heard their voice or their laughter, or their bark or their triumphant holler, the better my plan worked.
I couldn’t tell anyone, though. If I did, the magic would die, and so would everything I’ve collected. The only way magic works is by keeping it secret. You start blabbing about it, everybody thinks they can do it, and then there’s nothing special about anything, anymore.
You have to hide your collection, too, keep the pieces in pictures on the walls and in trinkets loved, in the desire to know them and feel them again, just once more. The bigger you can feel them and the more places you can hide them, the safer they will be.
Should I put them all back where I found them? Let myself forget? It would be so much easier to let go, fall, give into hopelessness, but to me, that’s as horrible as death taking them in the first place.
My way, you can remember them forever because if you can’t do that, what is worth doing? Love is why we’re here and death is why we go and sometimes I welcome the thought of dying. Those days are when it is hardest—to remember I’ve collected anything—when nothing’s real and all I know is I don’t want to feel so devastated anymore.
I keep pretending, reminded of the things in this world I’d rather never remember, all those memories are phantoms in shadows—good memories getting harder to keep in focus the further I get from the day I was born.
I’ll keep walking, though, nothing else to do. I’ll keep collecting, too, there’s no one to stop me. I will stuff my pockets with phantoms and pain, burn with desire to see them again—hold them and tell them I’m sorry I took them for granted, I didn’t know any better.
I need those memories. If I collect enough of them no one ever has to die all the way.
So, come here, look at my collection. This is it, everything I remember, everyone and everything I’ve ever loved; they were everything to me. I’d tell you more, but that part’s secret.
Josh Price
Josh Price lives in Northern California with his patient wife and terrible dog. His debut chapbook, Trailer Park Ocean, was published with ThirtyWest in 2025 and features “Philemon,” which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The Los Angeles Review, SoFloPoJo, and others have published his flash. Scribble Magazine and others have published his short fiction. Find him on Instagram and Threads @s.joshuaprice and at josh-price.com.
