After the accident he couldn’t remember anything. His wife, as luck would have it, was a top-flight neurologist and was able to secure for him the best medical care available. He was told to lie down on tables, slid into MRI machines, given pills and fluids, poked and prodded but nothing would bring his memories back.

Finally he was sent home, and his wife (hoping to jog his memory) showed him his old wooden warhorse of a writing desk. The place he’d written so many books contemporary classics beloved by children and adults alike. But he just stared at it for several seconds his face contorted in horror and shouted, “This is not my writing desk!” His wife ran out of the room in tears.

In the ensuing weeks he would make little progress. He’d be in a supermarket, pick up a bunch of bright orange carrots by their hair and shout, “This is not my writing desk!” much to the consternation of the other shoppers.

He was in the park on a Saturday and while watching a mother duck swim away from him with her four baby ducklings shout, “”This is not my writing desk!” Whole families moved away from him in fright.

He was out with his wife having dinner on a Friday night when he saw a couple kissing passionately. He got right up on them, so close that they stopped and looked at him alarmed, and he muttered, “This is not my writing desk.”

His wife was beginning to lose all hope and threw herself into her work as a distraction. One day she’d come down with a nasty sinus headache and decided to catch up on her paperwork at home. It was nearing midnight and she was in their study. Needing to take a break from the puzzle of a particularly difficult case she picked up an x-ray of her husband’s head taken just after the accident. She stood and turned around holding it up to the light.

“Hey, my writing desk!” She turned and saw her husband in the doorway. Joy written all over his face.

Judson Hamilton lives in Wrocław, Poland. He is the author of three chapbooks: Celebrity Slumbers (Cervena Barva Press), No Rainbow and Black Box (Greying Ghost Press) and a novella entitled The Sugar Numbers (Black Scat Press). His book of short stories, Gross in Feather, Loud in Voice was published in 2017 by Dostoyevsky Wannabe.