The Extraordinary Tale Of Mr Topham

There was once, a very long time ago, a man named Mr Topham; Mr Henry Topham who had been blessed, from birth, with the extraordinary ability to control people’s memories; he could make them forget things and he could also make them remember things that had never happened.

Oddly, Mr Topham had never thought to use his peculiar power for good ends but, instead, used it to cheat people and take advantage of them.

For example, he would approach a wealthy person and say to them,

“Don’t you remember that large sum of money which I loaned you and which you swore you would pay me back with interest. Well, I’ve come to collect what you owe me”.

And the person, because he had planted the false memory of having borrowed money from him in their mind, would feel beholden to him and pay him the money he asked for because they believed that they were paying him back.

But that wasn’t the worst thing that Mr Topham was guilty of, because whenever he saw a pretty young single woman he would say to them.

“Why, my beloved wife, why are you not wearing your wedding ring? What about the vows you made to love me for all time? Did you lie upon the altar?”.

And, because he had placed a memory in the young woman’s head that she had met the man and, experiencing “Love at first sight” hastily married him, the woman believed that she was married to Mr Topham and, remember, this all happened in the days when a wife had to not just love and honour her husband but obey him like her lord and master and so the woman would take Mr Topham home with her and make dinner for him and do all other kinds of wifely duties.

And if that failed, well Mr Topham could even plant a memory within a young womans mind that she had committed a terrible crime and then blackmail the woman into doing his evil bidding.

And the best thing of all, from the wicked Mr Tophams point of view, that is; was that Mr Topham, when he had got whatever it was he wanted, could just make the person he had conned forget that they had ever met him.

And, oh, you could say that, for many years, Mr Topham lived the life of Riley.

However, one day, as Mr Topham was walking down a foggy London side street; a strange man suddenly attacked him and, stabbing him with a knife, inflicted a fatal wound upon him.

“But what did I ever do to you?”, Mr Topham asked the shadowy stranger in the fog as he gripped the wound and blood poured out from between his fingers.

“You don’t remember me do you?”, said the man stepping closer so that Mr Topham could see his face more clearly, “How ironic. I’m someone that you swindled and whose daughter you took advantage of but I always keep a secret diary; one that I never tell anyone; not even my family and most trusted friends about and I wrote down everything about my strange encounter with you and have been searching ever since to find the man who stole my money; my daughters virtue and my memory as well”.

But, truly, Mr Topham couldn’t remember the stranger. You see he had cheated and used so many people during his life that he had forgotten most of them.

And yet, in spite of Mr Topham’s mastery of remembered time or, perhaps, because of it; the past had come back to haunt him.