They say the river keeps secrets, but the bridge keeps forgetting them.

Notos Sapwain Bridge spans the cold, slow water at the edge of town — a stretch of steel and stone that looks older than the town itself. The locals pronounce it lazily, as if the name were half a sigh: “No-tus Sap-wayn.” No one agrees on where the name came from. Some say it’s Native, others claim it’s Latin, others swear it means *remember me* in some lost dialect.  

But the joke is always the same: nothing stays remembered once you cross it.

It’s just a small bridge, two lanes wide, no footpath. On clear days, mist hangs beneath it like old breath. On foggy ones, the bridge disappears completely, leaving drivers unsure when they’re over water or air. There are stories—always starting with “a friend of a friend”—about people crossing at night and forgetting where they were going. Or worse, forgetting *who* they were meeting on the other side.

The first report I ever heard was from my uncle, a trucker who’d been on the road since he was sixteen. He told me how, one autumn morning, he crossed Notos Sapwain on his delivery route, humming along with the radio, coffee in hand. Halfway across, he realized he couldn’t remember his wife’s name. He could picture her face, her laugh, the color of her coat—but her name had gone completely blank, like the bridge had erased it mid-thought. He pulled over after crossing, shaking, and wrote down “M” on a receipt to remember at least her initial. By the time he reached the next town, it came back. But he swore he felt something in that silence—a tug at the edges of his memory, like something testing its grip.

He never crossed the bridge again.

When I moved back to the area for work, I passed it every day. It’s just a shortcut between the industrial park and the highway—an unremarkable piece of infrastructure. But each time I drove over, the same coldness ran through the car, even in summer. The radio crackled. My phone’s signal died. For those few seconds, I felt detached, like driving through a photograph. I told myself it was imagination.

Then one evening, I forgot my own name.

It was rush hour. The air smelled like rain on metal. I was thinking about dinner, my deadlines, my rent—normal things. Then, halfway across the bridge, the world folded inward. My hands stayed on the wheel, but my mind slipped blank, like a film reel losing frames.  

I knew my address. I knew my job. I knew my mother’s voice.  

But my name? Nothing. Not even the shape of it.

I pulled over at the end of the bridge, shaking, repeating it out loud, trying to trigger something. The sound came out flat, meaningless. For almost ten minutes, I was nobody. When it returned, it wasn’t gradual. It *snapped* back, like a word shouted from underwater.

I didn’t tell anyone. But I started keeping notes in my car: my full name, emergency contacts, the word *me* scrawled across the dashboard sticky pad. I told myself it was anxiety. A trick of the mind.

Later, I started researching.

In the town archives, the bridge didn’t exist before 1932. Before that, there was a ferry. But the official blueprints listed it as “Bridge 0.” The name *Notos Sapwain* appeared first in a maintenance log from the 1940s. No signature. No origin.  

The same document noted a worker who’d fallen from the scaffolding during renovations. His coworkers said he’d looked right at them before stepping backward into the fog. They shouted his name again and again—but afterward, no one could recall what that name was. Even the newspaper obituary referred to him as *The Forgotten Worker.*

After that, people stopped using the bridge on foot. Too many stories: lovers who crossed together and arrived strangers; police reports filed for “confused individuals” wandering near the river, clutching their IDs but unable to say their names aloud. Once, a school bus driver claimed the students fell silent halfway across, every one of them staring ahead with blank expressions until they reached the other side, where they began chanting the same word—none of them could recall it afterward.

The bridge was inspected dozens of times. Structurally sound. No gas leaks. No electromagnetic interference. No reason for what people described as “short-term personal amnesia.”  

But there’s something they never mention in the reports: the way the fog gathers underneath, swirling in slow spirals, like handwriting erased midstroke.

Last winter, I tried an experiment. I parked by the guardrail at 2 a.m., when the air was still and the river steamed faintly. I left my recorder running, windows down. For the first few minutes, nothing but wind. Then a whisper, low and rhythmic, like someone murmuring names just out of reach. I turned up the volume later, and though the words were blurred, one syllable stood out clearly, again and again: *Notos.*

It sounded almost like a question.

I played it for a linguist friend. She said it resembled an ancient root meaning *south wind* or *forgotten breath.*  

Sapwain, she couldn’t place at all.

Since then, the nightmares started. I dream of driving across the bridge endlessly, headlights swallowed by mist, hearing someone beside me whisper every name I’ve ever known, and with each whisper, one disappears. Faces blur. Voices fade. Only the sound of my own name remains—until that too is gone, and the car keeps moving without me.

Last week, the city closed Notos Sapwain for “structural review.” But I still see cars crossing in the distance at night, their taillights fading into fog that glows faintly white, like a film burning from the middle outward.

The new detour sign points nowhere in particular. And sometimes, when I drive past, I hear my phone vibrate even though it’s off. The notification says only one thing:

**“Forget me.”**

No one knows what the bridge was built for, or who named it.  

But every name has a purpose.  

And this one seems to have only one.

To take yours.