The Fine Mingling

A short novella I finished as my thesis. Please read and comment! I appreciate blunt honesty! Thank you!

            I was killed with my face pressed against the stick of the bathroom floor, nails dug into the caulk that separated each tile. A blade, the size of my palm, slipped just under my spine.

            I decided to run that night. I ran the park course. The sun slid behind the soft purple clouds and its dying amber rays succumbed to the dusk. I remember thinking that I was done running.  

            I went over to the bathroom stalls and used my shoulder to push open the heavy door. The light that hung buzzed from above; everything was motionless and stale. It made me want to start running again.

            The mirror was dotted in soap scum. I wanted to cut my hair short; I remember picturing it as I washed my hands. I went to leave. I shoved open the door using one arm and I was looking down at my feet. I saw a square of the cement walkway and then it was the dark blue tile again.

            I didn’t feel anything at first, but I saw the pipe-like fingers cupping my mouth; the one hand there, the other around my throat. Then I was against the wall with his elbow lodged under my cheek bone. That’s when I felt the first stab; a thick, cold pulse next to my ribs.

Somehow I was stomach down on the floor and a fire ignited around my knee caps. I felt all the sea salt of the world stacking in my throat and I couldn’t inhale any longer. The corners of my eyes hardened. My lips felt foreign: fat and dry.

I’m not sure if I ever thought that I was dying.

            I swear there was another man with us. I was screaming to him, but he didn’t move. He just watched with an empty look on his face, a fatter round face blanker than a sheet of paper. I yelled to him with the last sounds I had in me; I emptied myself, begging for his help. He didn’t seem to blink. He watched. My voice chords ripped and struggled to reconnect so that I could call to him again.

            I was killed with my face pressed against the stick of the bathroom floor, nails in the caulk that separated each tile. A blade, the size of my palm, slipped just under my spine.

            I’ve heard that in near death experiences your soul hovers over your body and you can watch everything happening from above. That’s false. I was in there. I felt people tugging and stabbing at my arms with tubes filled with fluid and shots and needles and stabs and pulling. I heard them calling stats on my life. I could sense their bet making; they bet against me. I think I realized then I was dying. The overhead lights flashed and burned my eyes; the glow dove behind my sockets and rushed through my insides. I felt my soul being ripped from my body and I fought it back. I wouldn’t let it leave. I forced it to reattach. I forced it to stay. It tore itself away again, like a stripping knife carving it loose and I battled it back; every effort made the pains of my body strengthen. Every struggle to stay alive made me want to die a bit more. It tore away again and I tried again to contain it but now I could feel the sharp slivers of the surgeon’s equipment digging through my muscle tissue. I tried but it was winning. That’s when I heard Steve’s voice muffled from behind the glass window he watched me from. He must have sensed my surrender. His voice rang through me as he begged for me to come back, but I had already given up. I was gone.

 

            That’s how I ended up stuck in this place where nothing exists except for me.  There is nothing here. No sounds, no movement, no shape or color, just a blank-boundless fogged space. This must be death.

            I am heavy and weighted down, as if nailed to the space and I can’t force myself to make a single movement. I can’t blink, can’t bend my fingers. I can hardly make out the shape of my own body with my eyes. It seems as if I am blending in with this fog that engulfs me, the contour of my hands melting into the empty-space. I adjust my sight to try and see myself. I don’t want to surrender again. I should have kept fighting. With every surge of a thought of concentration I feel more drained. How could I let this happen? I could have made it, but I let it all go in a moment of weakness. All I had to do was keep my head above and I could have survived…they just needed more time to save me and I bailed. I let up and now I am nothing.

            The weight intensifies; it’s like a brick building is sitting on my face, pushing my insides outwards. I tense up to force it off, but it worsens. The weight sinks in deeper. I want to scream but I can’t form a sound in my throat. My voice is disconnected. I can’t cry, either. The effort to speak is too draining and the weight keeps forcing itself deeper into me. The more I struggle with it the harder it binds me, like a pool of quicksand stirring inside of my chest, making me cave inside of myself. I try to relax, but I am too anxious. I’m scared to let go again and fall further into this whatever it is.

            The pressure crushes me and I collapse. Instinctively, I stop resisting. I release every thought and let my mind go blank. The pressure rushes in and settles like cement hardening every nook of my insides and I permit the pain to run its course. There is no other option. The opalescent fog turns black and I can no longer make out the smudged form of my body.

            Slowly the pressure subsides. The blackness is fading and the soft-white haze is returning. I can make out my hands again, this time clearer. My fingertips are more defined. I start to move, too. It takes me a few attempts but I eventually lift myself upright. Now I can blink, I can lift my arms above my head. I stand up, though that doesn’t mean much because I am surrounded by nothing. I walk for a while looking for anything, but it is the same as if I stood still.  There is no air or wind, so even when I run I feel nothing. It is just a continuum of blankness, a tunnel of white space and dim light that never ends.  I notice I’m not breathing. When my fingers touch my skin, I feel nothing. There is no sense of touch. I can tug at my hair and not the feel pull on my scalp or the strands in my hands. I still can’t muster together any sound; not a cough, or hiccup.

            Death. I've imagined it a million ways but never so lonely; this I never expected. You spend your life surrounded by people, building relationships, sharing ideas and dreams just so that when you die you can be left alone with your thoughts and unfinished plans.

            This is cruel.

            This must be hell. You expect the flames. The heat, the burn, a relentless fire binding your skin together; that, I think I could tolerate. This is worse. You expect the pool of souls swimming in a mass of pain and misery. You envision yourself being whipped and led by Satan’s minions as you dig with the ultimate goal of never being able to finish in order to repent for your sins. You picture yourself suffering these torments side by side with others who had shared your selfishness in life and then you’re put here, in a realm of vacancy where your only wish is to be engaged in something other than being alone with yourself.

            I suppose that’s the point of it all. I suppose the plan-maker decided that our own worst enemy is ourselves and realized that a cheaper hell is to cage us in alone. A beautiful businessman he must be to think of such a productive plan: high efficiency, low costs. F*****g brilliance.

            I want to cry. All I want to do is cry. I want to feel a tear on my cheek. I want to feel it crawling together in my throat, sneaking to my eye, and then rolling over my eyelid. I’ve never wanted anything more than to feel that tear tumble over the side of my face. I want this desire to burn in my stomach but it doesn’t. I want to feel it flutter on the intersection of my ribs and heart, being born inside my chest, and just to explore myself, but it doesn’t. The thought of it sits in my mind and fuses, like a firework that just never fully ignites casting and fizzing off. It’s tiring and frustrating and weakening.

            I want to finish this afterlife. Living, I had never wanted to die. Dying, all I want to do is live, and being here, all I want to do is end it, be obsolete and silent, and never had existed. I always knew I had been underestimating my sins...always rounding down. You never count the why you're late lies or the return policy schemes you devise when tallying up all your evils. Twenty-eight years of those I guess really will condemn you.
            I was ten the first time I let a boy touch my chest. I was twelve the first time he went inside me. I was fourteen when we had sex. I knew it was too early. I knew it felt too uneasy to be okay, but I finished it. I let it carry on, even though I didn’t want it. Four strikes on my sin tally.

            I was fifteen the first time I had smoked. Tommy Dillinger. He was eighteen. His fat fingers and fat lips; I sacrificed a sin for him? A movie, my mom had dropped me off. I’m not even sure if we went in. He found us outside and convinced me to follow him to the back where he chewed off my mouth and forced a blunt into my lips. If I have one sin strike, he deserves two.

            When I was sixteen, I kissed a girl. I was less drunk than I convinced myself I was. She kept asking me, kept grabbing me. I wanted to, but I resisted. She kept pressing me, and I resisted. I turned away and when she grabbed me to spin me back, I let her take me.

            I spent high school cheating and helping cheaters. I ran away. I drove drunk. I stole a handful of accessories, a few thongs. I didn’t like sex… but I did it. I made excuses. I wrote strings of lies that I would self-validate. I said things I didn’t believe and smiled at things I was disgusted at.

            But I am not naïve. I know my slate wasn’t clean but I never expected to be sentenced to an eternity of this, stuck, isolated in a white-wash realm. I’m left to meditate on all the half-started projects that I pushed back a day thinking I had all the time in the world to finish. I’m left to count all the people I left behind on earth and imagine how they’ll deal with their last memory of me, now having the insatiable feeling of never saying goodbye wedged inside themselves.

            My parents will have to bury my body. Mom will dress me in blue to match my eyes, my eyes that will be sealed shut but she’ll match them regardless. That was her gift to me; blue eyes. She won’t cry at the funeral because Dad will be a mess and she won’t eat either. She’ll pick at bits of soggy lettuce from a salad or rip flakes of bread from the dinner rolls but that will be the extent of her diet. She’ll thin out, her face will hollow, her cheek bones sharper and angled, and you’ll be able to read the hurt on her face. She’ll become a twisted piece of art: so beautiful but so painful to look at.

            While Mom roots her love deeper in Sam and Tj, Dad will distance himself. He’ll feel guilty loving them without me there. He won’t want me to think he loves me less since I’m gone. My death will fester in his mind and he won’t be able to cope. He won’t turn to Mom claiming she isn’t mourning enough and he’ll try to be fair to me by ignoring my sister and brother. I was robbed of a full life and my death will stunt theirs.

Who decides this? Who decided that it was my time? I wasn’t ready. They weren’t ready to let me go. How can my death be justified?

The white-wash of my new world darkens to a dove grey.

I wasn’t a good Catholic, but I had a strong faith. I talked to God and thought he was listening to me. Why would he do this to me? Why has he trapped me here! I loved life! I loved living. Was I not good enough? Was I that arrogant?

Around me the now grey walls peel back and flake off in small bits, revealing muted splashes of colors.

This isn’t right. This can’t be right. I’m not supposed to be here. Someone made a mistake. I need to get out. I’m not supposed to be here! This isn’t how I end.

The colors decking the walls shift around one another like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming together. I start to feel that weight pushing back into my body.

F**k God! F**k Him and His rules, His playbook. I don’t deserve this. I was good. I was a wholesome person who cared for others and didn’t take life for granted.

The weight makes its way inside of me, settles into the crevices of my intestines and beings to push outwards against the barriers. The colors layer over shapes that move slightly then reset. The box-like shapes gravitate to me and start to build onto one another, creating a static image. Then the picture slowly starts to take on definition. The blurs of shadows separate into figures and the colors that were once streaming in an unregulated loop find places to settle in. The pressure attacking me ceases then quickly returns with more drive and I collapse under its strength. The figures are still distorted but I can make out what they are; they’re people. These faded shapes of people are all lined in rows, most sitting with their backs to me, except for a few standing huddled together in the forefront. The others shift in their rows uneasily, their movements delayed and uncomfortable.

The weight flattens me but I refuse to break my concentration and the images keep tightening. The movements of the people become more fluent and their faces chisel down to reveal expressions.

The pressure is snapping me, contorting my body and I’m crippled but I won’t release my stare. I feel a swift, blunt impact to the side of my face and I’m close to succumbing to the pain again. That’s when I hear something. The sound is deep and brief but enough to fuel me for a fight. The pressure continues to battle me and I hear another sound, this time one that lasts longer.

While the weight settles onto my body again, preparing for its next attack, I listen as more sounds blend with the last. The sounds, like the colors had before, mix together and just when I thought I couldn’t hold on any longer I hear a voice.

“…prepared for this…”

The weight is wrapped around me entirely, a snake on prey, suffocating me. The voice breaks through again.

“..will be missed..”

I can make out a melted-mouth shaping in sync with the words from one of the standing figures.

“…waiting to meet us again.”

I taste the sharp bite of frankincense on my tongue. The weight mutes me while I fight to call out to the figure. As if startled, the shapes break apart, disfiguring the scene back into unorganized streaks of colors until I am blinded by the pain and can no longer see.

           

            Whatever that was was real. Whatever world I just…tapped into… those people. It felt familiar, like it was something or somewhere I had been before. But I’ve never seen it, that I know. 

            Was it a funeral? The deadened voice of that who was speaking lingers in my ears. Was it my funeral?     If it was, that would mean I am dead. But why show me? To embed the fact, make it concrete? I think I get the picture. Thank you for the clarification. Why bring me there?

            Being there was like being stuck between two panes of glass that are squeezing me out, but I think I can break through. I think I can go further and see more if I can just last longer. I need to get back. I need to try it again.

            How do I set it off again? How do I start the jump?

            This white world is even more maddening knowing the colors its hoarding in its reserves. The process had drained me. I’m flaccid and hardly have the strength to sit upright. I’ll need to rally all my energy in order to withstand the weight’s force longer.

            Am I a ghost? Is this what I am? Am I caught between worlds?

            The last of the essence of frankincense that I clung to has faded.

            I need to go back.

            If I am a ghost, maybe I can see my family. Maybe I can somehow direct this channel or portal or whatever it is and see them one last time… maybe I can see Steve.

            An incredible dropping sensation floods my body.

            No, I can’t see him. I won’t see him. I will never forgive myself for abandoning him. I left him on earth with loose ends he’ll never be able to tie down. I left him with all of our unfinished plans and expectations and hopes for us that we were robbed of. I left him alone, with nothing and no one, and nothing he ever wanted. Remembering me will intoxicate him. My ghost will drive him mad. I can never bring myself to see him again.

            This void tunnel of emptiness feels familiar and it’s aggravating. It reminds me of the white-bare walls of my doctor’s office during my last visit; the flat paste colored room shrinking around me as the doctor spoke, evoking the same feelings of hopelessness I feel now…

 

            “So, what did she say?”

            I had two brochures rolled like tubes in the palm of my hand as I entered the waiting room where my sister was sitting cross legged, peeping up from her Good Parenting magazine.

            “Nothing, I’m fine. Everything’s normal.” I would have never imagined those words being so hard to admit, but each syllable had to be forced out.

            “Don’t look so excited, Jillian.” Sam stood up from her plastic chair and flipped the magazine onto the seat. “You work yourself up. Now you can relax… it just wasn’t your time yet. It’ll happen.”

            “Yeah,” I said looking around at all the wide-smile baby faces beaming at me from the posters on the wall, “I know.”
            I didn’t know. I didn’t believe it would happen. This unstable flutter in my stomach told me every day that they were all wrong, that it would never happen.

            “Listen, you need to stop putting all this pressure on yourself! You’re driving yourself insane.” Sam held the office door open to let me slip through and then followed me outside into the parking lot with her gum smacking in my ear from behind. “Besides, you don’t think you’re a little young? I mean, twenty-eight isn’t really the time to be having a mid-life crisis…”

            “Yeah,” I said as my voice died under the noise of traffic passing by. I pulled open the passenger side door after hearing the twitch of the locks unlatch themselves. “But two and a half years?” I stepped up onto the foot step of her Explorer and pulled my body into the seat as my frustrations began to stir in the cavity of my chest. “It’s just… it’s not like anyone’s giving me a good reason as to why I can’t get pregnant. They just keep saying I’m fine, I’m healthy, I’m regular. I rather them just tell me I can’t so I can stop f*****g waiting for something that’s never gonna come.” My fist smacked down on the dashboard before I could close my mouth around the last word.

            Sam kept focus out the windshield, starting up the truck to pull out of the narrow spot we shouldn’t have parked in the first place. “I get it, Jill…”

            “You don’t get it.” My interjection cleanly cut her off.

            “Okay, Jillian,” she whispered, her stare never breaking from the road laid out in front of us. “Okay.”

           

            I couldn’t give Steve the one thing he wanted and now he’s forced to walk through life alone carrying the memory of me. I failed him. I deserted him. I destroyed him.

            A flash of heat bursts in my stomach and races to my face. I try to bear down to endure the pain but it paralyzes me and my efforts to overcome its force are futile. The unseen fire swallows me and my skin clinches together under the heat.

            Why is this happening! What is this hell! This isn’t fair. I was a good person! I didn’t want to die! I wasn’t ready to die! I want to go back. I shouldn’t be here!

            The more I struggle against the pain, the stronger it retaliates but I’m sick of succumbing to this punishment I don’t deserve. I stiffen and the flame intensifies. Before my eyes close under the burns, the drab streaks of color return, seeping out from behind the white-blanketing prison.  I force my eyelids to re-open and watch the colors tunneling around me fan out into shapes again and illuminate. I endure the pain so that the scene can come into focus. The figures move about rapidly and more fluently than the mechanical movements of my last encounter, but I still can’t make out any faces. The sounds are subdued but rhythmic; it’s a conversation I’m listening to, each voice playing off the other.

            The fiery-sensation weakens, giving me a moment of relief to concentrate on the pictures coming together. I find the figures making the sounds though I still can’t make out their words; the fainter voice is that of a woman’s while the other less frequent voice is owned by a man. The man keeps moving about uncomfortably while the woman sits, only offering slight hand gestures every so often. The outline of the figures’ anatomy tightens and their stifled voices start to tune.

            “…unhealthy to live like this…”  Her voice is sweet and consoling. I know that voice. I want to catch it and let it repeat endlessly in my ears. The details of the image grow finer revealing thick chocolate waves of hair that roll off over her shoulders. I want to touch her and to speak to her and to hold her. The soft arches of my little sister’s face are tougher and her skin still brilliant but coated in age.

            “Don’t tell me it’s unhealthy, Samantha.”

            The sober tone of the male’s voice suffocates hers and my knees give in; the fire ignites again. The pain festers on my back as I buckle down on the floor but I can’t leave yet.

            “Is it not natural for me to be like this? It’s called mourning. I will be fine…”

            I keep my eyes fixed on the plush carpet that fades out and in like dying light bulbs flickering.

            “..I just want him dead.”

            His voice penetrates deeper than the inferno ravaging my body. I lift my stare up from the floor to be met by Steve’s face, masked in suffering. The colors dim from their bright types to the shadow-hues of their original state; I don’t want to leave him again.

            His lips are drained of any pigment and the rest of his body is tinted olive, yet still he is captivating. These flames can have me if I can just stay in this moment with him longer. My chest hardens like it had before, everything thickening inside of me, immobilizing me. His face is right before mine and I reach out to him, dying to have my fingertips graze any spot of his face but I am still too far away.

            “Steve!” I scream. My torso tears apart as I force my body to stretch out towards him. “Steve! I’m here! Steve!”

There’s a hit to my face that dives into my mouth, yanking the words from my throat. The image of my sister’s body dissolves, disseminating back into the white as if it hadn’t been there at all.

“No! No! Steve, please!”

            He tilts his head to face me and I feel alive for that fraction of a moment; the breath from his lips infusing me, relieving the pains I’m competing against in this realm. But the void stare in his eyes shakes me back from this brief sanctuary and the fires ignite once again…

 

            “You got my blue shirt over there, right?”

            I laid the tip of the steaming iron into the collar of the shirt, tightly tracing the curve of the neck. The way the steam sizzled off the ironing board was enchanting and I was lost in its haze screen.

            “Hey, you? You okay?”

            “Yeah,” I said, “it’s over here.”

            “Good,” Steve answered from behind me.

I didn’t need to turn to see what he was doing. I had watched him a thousand times before. He’d undress and stand there, back pressed against the bedroom door as his eager eyes would escape to race over my body. I could feel the way he looked at me in the same way I felt his touch, intrigued and protective, I was his Ann Darrow. Our conversation would quickly be snuffed out by his kiss and we would tangle ourselves in each other until we were so closely bound that our bodies would pulse to the same rhythm of our breath. That day, however, I kept my head down; eyes locked on the denim seam I was pressing under my hands. I didn’t deserve to revel in his awe anymore.

I had trained myself to extinguish the secret that had been boiling on my lips for so long but the more I worked to hide it, the more attention it demanded. That battle raged on inside of me and was on the brink of erupting. The words “I can’t get pregnant” started scarring on my face and the disappointment and disgust was so readable. I had to hide my face from Steve. If he caught the ache in my eyes, it’d be out and that, I couldn’t let happen. My coldness caught up to us and I could sense his concern.

“Hey J-bone, how about we watch that show with the vampires tonight that you missed Sunday. I mean, I could deal with forty-some minutes of terrible drama if it means we can act out the bite scenes later.”

A soft charge of adrenaline scurried from my heart to my knees as Steve tried to get me to yield to his charm.

“Jillian?”  He mumbled in a voice almost as heartbreaking as the news I withheld from him. My tonsils burned behind my tongue from pushing the words back down into my throat. The pile of clothes that sat unfolded and wrinkled by my side looked taller and the ground seemed unfit to hold my weight any longer.

“What’s going on?” He asked, his hot words slipping into my ears as he wrapped his arms around my waist pulling the arch of my back into his hard abs.

“Steve, I just…” My sentence was cut off by a fierce burn to the fat flesh below my thumb. I looked at my hand, branded by the sleek hot iron side. The wound quickly rose among the raw, pink flesh that pinched tight around it and a white, cool liquid drooled out from each end.

“God damnit! What the hell.” I looked at the thick, swollen marking that ran from the end of my finger to my wrist as it pulsed and secreted clear ooze. It was an excruciating sensation, the way I laid my hand so heavily into the iron’s mouth, but I appreciated its timely release from the stress I had been tolerating. I admired that concrete scar compared to the intangible torment that advanced in my mind. 

Steve wrapped his thick fingers around my wrists without hesitation, bringing the wound up to his face to look closer.

“Stop Steve,” I said, as he interrupted my satisfaction. I tried to slip my hands away from his, but instinctively he tossed them back to examine the damage. “Let go,” I tried to shake him off once more without success. “Let go!”

I ripped my arms from out of his nurturing grip as if I was fending for my life. I pulled away with such fervor that I stumbled back a few steps off balance to be caught by the edge of our bed. Realizing my intensity, I looked up to see Steve’s reaction; I had scared myself with my command but his expression proved that I had scared him even more so. His eyes were round with confusion and his mouth mimicked the gaping shape of his pupils. Steve looked at me as if we had never met, as if he woke up to find this indigenous woman stalking over him in his house. In that stare, I felt alone like I had never felt alone before and I wanted to climb on top of him and shake him until he saw me again.

As I stood arrested by my regret, Steve’s eyes reanimated returning to their lively hue sparkled with youth, shedding the layers of fear I had buried them in with my resistance. He looked down to the ironing board and quickly lifted the still hissing metal iron to his palm where he pressed the nose of the tool heavily against his skin.

“Are you crazy!” I yelled as I watched his jaw line tighten and his cheeks flush a vibrant red. His fingers loosened around the handle of the iron which then dropped to the floor and I rushed over to rip the plug from the wall.

“What are you doing! Why did you do that?” My mind was frantic as I saw the fluid-filled sack of flesh rise up from the rest of his skin, the white outline of the iron embedded in his hand changing to a cardinal red color. “What’s wrong with you!”

His other hand was locked around his wrist in an attempt to isolate the pain and his grip was so tight that his fingers spotted white with the loss of circulation.

“I didn’t want you to be in pain alone,” he said from behind his grinding teeth.

My anxiety submitted to his sincerity as I looked at his hand caked in the thin puss from his burn. Between the abraded patches of flesh, a pattern of small, perfectly shaped ringlets surfaced reflecting the iron’s metal pattern. My lips fell to his arm kissing his un-burned fingers. He rested his raw hand on my shoulder and pulled me in closer from my behind back, holding my face against his chest. I nestled my cheek bone between his pecks and we stood entangled in each other’s embrace as the wail of the iron died at our feet.

 

The familiarity of my new white world welcomes me back to consciousness. The searing pains that had swallowed me during the episode subdue and I am again lying on my back looking up at the infinite tunnel of emptiness. I close my eyes to find the obscure image of Steve’s face lingering in my memory; what I would do to have that face brushing mine again. I can remember the way his eyes reminded me of green tea, the same hue and effervescent lucidity. But the face that now haunted my imagination was not the one that I had known in life. This face that I had seen was alien: both dry and distant. His eyes were dark, brooding vessels that flaunted his despair like a ticker-tape kiosk flashing news feed, not the vivacious windows to a soul that I used to swim in.

I need to speak to him, to talk to him. He needs to hear me and know I haven’t left him. There has to be a way to somehow show him that I’m here. If these images are the only element of interaction I’m given in this after-life, there has to be some reason for their delivery.

The longer I sustain the pain, the more authentic the images become. The last episode, I lasted longer and the scenes were more corporeal, even my senses were more engaged. Instead of trying to outlast the pain, I need to focus on investing my energy into something tangible. I need to make what’s happening there more relevant to me and break from the imprisonment of this limbo. If I can create a message to forge into their world, maybe Steve will hear me and know that I haven’t left him.

The ends of my feet are bitten by a malicious frost as if the circulation pumping through my body is being blocked just under my calves. Quickly, the chill jumps to my fingers and builds up my arms to my chest. As the coldness encases my body, I repeat the message I want to relay to Steve in perfect form in my head, articulating each word and making sure not to break my concentration.  The chills grow extremer and I witness my body convulsing under its wrath though any sensation of movement to me is deadened. I can sense that the colors are moments away from appearing to guide me back through this ‘in-between,’ back to the world I left behind.

I surrender my body to the force and continue to repeat to myself the message I created, honing in on the inane image of Steve that scars my mind.

“I didn’t leave you. I am here. I didn’t leave you. I am here…”

As expected, the washed-out hues of red, blue, and gold exude from my white-wall canvas prison, this time hastily blending together almost as soon as they materialize. The feeling of a blade carving the muscles off the bones of my rib cage exceeds the other merciless sensations coursing through my body. I resign a bit, weakened by its severity. I lose sight of Steve’s face in my mind as my focus shifts to the pain. The colors encircling me mix together slower as I try to redirect my attention to avoid acknowledging the attack on my body.

“I am here. I’m here. I didn’t leave you. Steve, I didn’t leave you.”

The colors successfully invade my blank domain and thin out into profiles to build an unfamiliar setting. While the past episodes seemed disconnected, this one embodies me, taking me into it and forming its frames around me. A blast of wind whips my face and torso, whistling in retreat just to do it again. In front of me, two darkened frames materialize and neon stripes break through a black background on either side; I am sitting in the back seat of a car.

 My ears are stiffened from the tenacious chills surging throughout my body and I know that the pain is countering my efforts to hear anything. I commit to listening to myself repeat my message in my mind, hearing each word verbalized in the raspy character and Jersey cadence of my worldly-voice. I concentrate on the physicality of listening to a voice; the way one sounds, the pitches of expression, and the way words fuse together to create an unappreciated song.

“…gonna be a rumble out on the promenade..”

The sound rings in my ears without static and the excitement of finally hearing something lightens the razor-sharp stabs of pain I’ve been combating. Behind those husky words, I hear something else, something I had forgotten how to listen to. The sweet strum of a guitar and unfaltering taps of a drum cushion the singing voice, building up around it in support then succumbing to its authority.

"Well now, everything dies and baby that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back…”

The allure of the music distracts me from my concentration and I take another blow to my face; I detect my energy waning as it had before. I shut my eyes and recite my message, hoping to re-center my concentration in order to be prepared for the abrasive attacks I know are yet to come. When I open again, the scene I am submerged in has evolved so that it seems perfectly authentic, just as I would experience it in life. My senses are heightened; all the smells of this car jump me at once. The offensive musk of cigarette smoke and a wooded cologne mask the peaty accents of whisky.

“…so put your makeup on and fix your hair real pretty..”

 Between the car seats before me, a tawny hand taps out the beat of the music on the gear shift. The fingers are strong and thick but too short for the broad base of a palm which they stem from. As the hand lifts up to drum out another piece, I notice a faded, cream-colored scar tracing the grooves of the radius bone. Steve.

“…and meet me ta-night inna Lantic City.” His voice sifts between the fluent measures of the song, chiming in just after Bruce Springsteen’s so that the lyrics are hardly audible. From my place in the back I can’t see his face, only the scruffy stubbles of hair crawling down his neck and his right arm loosely leaning on the center console. The interior of the car is dark and dancing with shadows that chase us from the lights flashing past as we drive.

“Oh yeah, and meeting tonight in ‘Lantic Citay.”

The car decelerates and the shadows of the car topple over one another sloppily. The muscles of Steve’s wrist flex around his bone as he shifts the car gear into park. He stops trying to match Springsteen’s voice and the song carries on as he slinks back into the seat.

“Well I’m tired of comin’ out on the losing end…”

My skin is taut and sheer from the cold, fighting to keep the rest of my body intact. The thrashing force strikes me again, this time repeatedly, trying to encourage my surrender. I keep my eyes focused on Steve, not wanting to forfeit a second away from him but the pains are too profound to ignore. The music grows louder as the outlines of the dashboard and sound system blur. I stay fixated on the crown of Steve’s head wobbling against the head-rest to the steady pulse of the song and give in slightly to the force’s hold on me. The pain exploits my fault and amplifies its wrath, recklessly hammering my body.

The dynamic stresses that pull at my body work to lure me back to limbo, out from this wormhole portal I’ve managed to climb through. I focus on pronouncing each word of my message and repaint the waxen image of Steve as to remind myself why I was there; I need to save him from his suffering and let him know I am still with him.

The driver side car door swings open and the interior lights sting my eyes as they beat down from overhead. Outside, I watch Steve stagger to the front of the car and walk off into the distance, illuminated by the headlights of his car still running.

Taken over by anxiety, my panic breaks my concentration and the cold sting impels me without delay. I stretch out to grab the handle of the car door to follow him but each attempt to grip it puts it farther from my reach. My hands pass through the plastic material of the handle reminding me of my ghostly limitations. The more I work to get Steve’s attention the less vivid the scenery becomes indicating that my only permitted action in this world anymore is to observe. 

“I am here. Steve, listen, I’m still here. I didn’t leave. Steve!”

I muscle together enough energy to push myself straight through the framework of the door. The feeling of the hard surfaces of metal permeating my body is unsettling. In front of me, Steve continues his off balanced stumble into the distance. Even in the blue and black skies that hang above us I can make out the finest details of his clothing. My face is licked by a cool stream of air and the back piece of Steve’s shirt flares up simultaneously. The gust of air slips away leaving me alone in the still of this atmosphere and I watch the shirt tail deflate flat against Steve’s back pocket.

I can feel the wind!

The figure of Steve grows smaller as it marches on. Instinctively, I move towards him; moving, step after step the same way I walked in life. A gritty rub sifts under the heels of my feet as I work towards catching up. I pick them up faster, springing off from the soft ground beneath me to pick up pace until I’m running. Each time my heel hits the earth, a burst of sparkling grains toss up around my ankle; it’s the sand of a beach. The wind kisses my cheeks as I break through its resistance and the raw scent of sea salt flushes my nostrils. Before I know it, Steve is a few feet away from me, slinking against the chipping wood of a lifeguard stand. I stop running and stand facing him; his glassy eyes peering right through me.

His head is titled back and he gazes up at the sky, eyes tumbling around in their socket, unhinged from his drunkenness. The moonlight reflecting off the tossing waters that wrestle with the edge of the sand highlight his profile and I notice that his sideburns are weeded with tiny patches of grey.

“’Cause everything that dies somedays-comes back,” he mumbles, voice broken and dominated by the fierce whistle of the shore winds. He jams his hand into his pocket and pulls out a white box of menthol cigarettes, effortlessly slipping one out from under the lip of the carton, a movement so cultured that it contradicts his intoxication. “Put your makeup on, your hair real pretty,” he whispers, pressing the butt of the cigarette between his lips. “And meet me tonight…”

The unlit, tightly rolled cigarette peels off from his mouth and falls to the beach floor where it’s cloaked in a spread of sand that the wind drops. Steve turns his head to watch the ink-black waves that clash and grapple in front of us. His focus is casted off into the violence of the ocean, as if hypnotized by the beauty of an event so passionate. He erects himself and steps away from the lifeguard stand.

The wind picks up, tossing Steve to the side as he moves towards the edge of the shore. The dropping sensation of a rollercoaster races under my breast bone and I buckle at my waist to compose myself.

“Steve,” I whisper breathlessly, “baby…”

I follow him to the edge where the mouth of the ocean rushes up and retreats. A froth of cool water skids up the wet sand then retires back to its whole form. Steve follows the recoil of the tide doubtlessly in his black leather dress shoes and I trail his footsteps. My mouth feels empty as if something that was there has been lost but it’s hard to recall as I watch our knees become absorbed in the thick, black liquid. Small clouds of smoke spout from Steve’s mouth and his body shivers from the cold.  

“I can meet you halfway, J-Bone,” he says bearing the pulls of the now waist-high waves.

“I’m right here, Steve. I’m right here.” The bags cupping my eyes swell up in tears. I finally feel them; the salty diamond flakes stacking up and pouring out onto my eyelashes, scolding my cheeks as they engrave a trail to my chin that the next heap will follow.

Steve keeps looking outward, his stare not latching onto anything particular, just scouring the horizon as he trudges through the thick waves. I try to keep up but fall a few strides behind and have to thrust my frame through the slight moments of calm before another wave crashes around me.

“Baby, I’m here, I’m coming,” I call as I close in on him. The waves have engulfed his shoulders and now his chin bobs just above the murky surface, being smacked every so often by the ripple of a larger wave. Steve throws his head back to look straight above him. The ocean and sky, both as black as coal, merge together and the borders that define them are unrecognizable.

“I’m coming, J-Bone,” he says, pushing the words from his lips which quiver uncontrollably.

“It’s okay, Steve,” I answer, “I’m right here, baby.”

I pull my hand out from the ocean and a few stray black, silk beads drip off my wrist. I reach out cautiously to touch Steve’s face, fearing I might pass right through him. As the pads of my fingers approach his chin, a subtle warmth bounces back and forth between us. I let my index finger collapse to his skin, followed by the middle and my palm. Around us the waters quiet and I cup his face in my hand. We stand motionless facing one another, surrounded by absolutely nothing but silence and darkness, yet I have never felt so sated.

“I love you, Steve,” I sigh into his mouth, my lips brushing his as I take my time to shape each word.

His eyes align with mine and the anesthesia of my delirium wears off. He stares right at me but sees right through me. I am not alive and I had forgotten. Lost in this world together with him, I forgot that I am not of this place anymore, I am not real. While my body and senses strengthen against his touch, he feels nothing but the reckless bashing of the ocean.

I look again at the waves that had escorted us out here as they tower in the distance and wildly break just before they reach us. Steve’s shirt is transparent, clinging to his body in fear, but he doesn’t budge. He stands tall and stanch as the waves smack against his chest, shattering against his body. I wrap my arms around his neck and I catch a glimpse of his empty eyes again. Now I understand. Now I know what he’s doing, why he’s out here! 

“No!” I yell, awakening to his intentions, “Steve! No!”

He closes his eyes and takes another step deeper into the ocean. 

“Steve, we need to turn around. You need to get out of here. Please, Steve, let’s go back. I’m here now, you have me. Let’s go,” I beg him between the heavy sobs that have plagued my voice box, but he doesn’t hear me. My concentration continues to be interrupted by the fear that a wave may take him away if I let up for a second.

“I’m not hurt, I’m okay, baby,” I cry, “I’m okay.”

I dig my nails into the hardened flesh of the back of his neck. I drill them through him so deeply that they burn against the tender meat of his muscles but he is unresponsive. The black unforgiving waters erupt around us. My body flares up releasing the hardest cry I have ever felt while the raging tiers of water shave my flesh away. Tear after tear catapults from my eyes, mixing into the wet hell that has rooted us stationary. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck, my swollen face rubbing against his.

“Steve, I love you.”

The black water turns red without warning and the sounds of the ocean are hushed.

“I love you, Jillian.”

I rip my face away from his to see his eyes staring into mine before everything evaporates around me. The screaming cries of the wind and the angry thrusts of the ocean have disappeared and I no longer cradle Steve against my body.

Again I’m surrounded by nothing except for the white reflections of light that are a host to no one except me. My body holds no evidence of the ocean, no remembrance of the salt-soaked smell of the wind or the gritty brush of the sand. Nothing tangible remains to validate that I was there, as if I awoke from a dream. But the restless ache in my stomach is too powerful to dismiss as a dream and I know that I was really with him just then, holding him against me in the heart of that violent water.

 

The late afternoon sunlight crept under the curtains of the picture box window in our bedroom, sneaking up onto the edge of the bed. The heat of the light activated the sweet scent of our sex and remainders of detergent that hid in the threads of the sheets. I let the neck of the sheet kiss the bottom of my breasts but pulled the rest of my body out from under the covers that blanketed us. Steve lay on his stomach with his arms scooped under a pillow watching me spin the ends of my hair around my fingers.

“Do you believe that we’re all really made for one person, and one person only?” I asked, the words sort of spilling out of my mouth unedited.

Caught off guard by my question, he stalled to answer by readjusting his head against the plush pillow beneath him.

“Well, first off,” he started, coughing to shake the rust from his vocal chords, “I think such intense Q & A sessions should be put off until we at least eat breakfast.”

His humor was irritating at times but mainly because I hadn’t learned to fight off the smile that he fished for when I was intent on being serious.

“Honestly,” I continued, arching my eyebrows to counteract the involuntary smile that tried to stretch out across my face. “I mean, you only pass about a hundred-thousand some people in your life time. There’s billions and billions of people in the world, more being born every day! You really think there’s some kind of system working to make sure that lovers are crossing paths?”

“You’re the marketing major, kid. Didn’t they teach you the significance of networking?”

“Forget it,” I barked, defeated by his charisma yet again.

“I’m kidding, Jill,” he said. He twisted around to his back and then slinked up to lean against the cherry-wood headboard beside me. “I don’t know if there’s a ‘system,’ but what does it really matter?”

“I guess it doesn’t,” I responded, sighing in disappointment from my unmatched curiosity. “But you don’t ever wonder if the way things work out were planned?”

A cold, sticky fluid seeped from under the gauge and tape strapped around my hand and crept down my forearm. I picked at the gold film of pus that veiled the burn ends poking out from under my bandages, waiting for Steve to respond.

“Like destiny? Huh,” he said watching the blades of the ceiling fan circle, “I suppose things happen for a reason.” He slid his hand under my picking nails, taking my fingers up in his. “I mean,” he continued, “there’s sometimes when you just have to believe that that’s true or you won’t get through it.”

 He put one of my fingers in his mouth and gently wrapped his lips around it, his teeth combing my skin. I could feel the shame of my lies paint themselves on my face, tattoos of the Illustrated Man. The thin wrinkles of Steve’s forehead aligned in concentration, casting miniature shadows over his brows as they caught the sunlight streaming in. His eyelashes were locked close over his lids as he made his way from hand to arm, arm to chest, until my chin sat hovering over his head. Each kiss reeled the words of my secret up my throat and I forced myself to swallow them back, like swallowing shards of glass. He brushed the ends of my hair off my shoulder with the tip of his nose and nestled his face in the side of my neck.

I felt my heart beating against the skeleton cage of my chest, surging with the adrenaline of my anxiety. My spine curled forward, curving deeper with the nerves pulsating through me. The slight gaps of space between my palms and his body quickly filled with a damp condensation making my hands suction to his muscles. He wrapped his hands around my lower back and effortlessly swung me on top of his lap not looking up to catch the band of tears that snuck out from the corners of my eyes. His lips found their way to the line of my jaw where they were met by the salty stream cascading over my cheeks. 

He tilted me back to examine my face, turning my shoulders in the sunlight to get a glimpse from each angle. At that point, something had detonated in my stomach and all of my pent up frustrations spewed from my body in tears, cold chills, and spit.

“Jill, what’s going on? Tell me,” he said desperately. “Ttell me!”

His voice struck a chord in me like an earthquake rupture, casting aftershocks in its echo which devastated my body. I made a last attempt to hold on to it, but the words pried open my teeth diving out into the air between us.

“I can’t get pregnant, Steve,” I said softly.

The taut skin of his face relaxed as I watched him digest what I said.

“What? What are you…?”

“I can’t,” I interrupted.

“Baby, we haven’t even tried. You said you wanted to wait. I thought you said you wanted to put it off a few more years.” He spoke around a cracking smile that was half lifted with relief and half weighted in confusion.

“I lied,” I answered trying to blockade the tears that were spilling out from behind my eyeballs. “I’ve been trying.” I wanted to elaborate, to share with him everything, and pawn off the pain I had been carrying alone for the past three years but I was too drained to continue and short, spurts of news was all I could muster together. Steve’s face was mobbed by different expressions that shuffled on and off statically like a flip-book.

“Don’t worry, J-Bone,” he said, expression settling with optimism, “not everyone gets pregnant right away, my sister didn’t. You know that. We’ll get some of those books; we’ll go see a doctor, a specialist. We got all the time in the world. Everything will be fine.”

The word ‘fine’ had been harassing me for three years, fastening itself to every doubt and demon I dealt with. It amplified in my ears, taking on the snobbish character of all the doctors I had listened to impatiently. It sandwiched itself between the empty promises of my friends who said that it’d happen sooner than I’d imagine. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ said my sister as she watched the lonesome pink line streak the blank circle of the ninth pregnancy test.

I shook Steve’s arms off my waist and dug my fingers into the tight cuts of his shoulders, fueled by a sudden swell of energy.

“I can’t Steve,” I said, sobs drying up from my determination. “I just know that I can’t.”

It was as if right then my announcement became clear to him, as if he dove into all the clips of office visits and Google searches that had been eating away at me like acid. The look in his eyes as he rummaged through my memories made me uneasy; his focus scoured me for answers, reading all the truths I was concealing from him. Despite the fact that I expected it, I was still stunned by the way the sense of relief was overridden by remorse and regret.

His fingers loosened from my waist and he held me upright by the palms of his hands. I felt vulnerable and exposed with my legs twisted behind his back naked, even though our bare bodies had been knotted together for hours like this. My hands quickly covered my chest instinctively to ward off the tension that stacked up like bricks between us. That was the moment we both knew it was true.

He leaned into my stomach and warily kissed the sides of my obliques. I felt breakable in his embrace. I pulled my hands from my breasts to let them fall around his face and I ran my fingertips over his back and shoulders. Threading ourselves back together, we worked vainly to alleviate the impact of our realization but silently admitted its certainty; something unexplainable spoke to us and we knew that what we longed for so desperately would never be in our reach.

“I love you, Jillian,” he whispered into the curve of my neck. There was no doubt in my mind that he didn’t, but it didn’t help to cushion the gravity weighing down on us as we sat locked in each other’s arms under the rays of that late-afternoon sun. He sank his lips into mine and then gently slid his body out from under me.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said, unwrapping himself from the sheets. I watched as he ushered himself upright unsteadily, the guilt that consumed him a perfect match to mine. Standing in front of me naked, he bent down and took my face in his hands tracing the cartilage of my ears with his fingers before letting go. Then, he softly closed my eyes with his lips, his kiss pressing into each lid.

“Okay, baby,” I answered, taming the hurt in my voice, “I think I’m going to go for a run.”           
             I was killed with my face pressed against the stick of the bathroom floor, nails in the caulk that separated each tile…

 

Lying lifelessly in my white-wash hell, I feel like I’ve just been mauled by rapacious beasts, left torn open and exposed to await the more intimate violation of vultures. I convulse on my back, my body lashing out in wicked spasms uncontrollably. The cut dry silence of this world is the loudest sound I’ve ever experienced. I tear at my face trying to rip my ears from my head. The sight of Steve being devoured by the restless tides of the ocean haunts me.
            How was that possible? How could I feel so alive, feel the cold rub of his skin so definitely, when he couldn’t feel or see me at all. Steve hadn’t flinched when I pierced my fingers into his arms; the soft flap of a fly’s wings would have had a stronger response.

My mind unzips letting my thoughts race about rabidly in my head. The chaos becomes unbearable to the point that I buckle over in anguish trying to manage the mania. As I kneel, calming myself from the grips of this panic attack, I notice my white realm has evolved to reveal another scene. Contrary to the raging transitions of the ones before, this episode set in unannounced. However, it is nonetheless just as genuine as the last.  

In front of me, a narrow trail of chocolate-colored soil unravels, guarded on either side by soldiered apple trees. I comb through the branches that sprout out, following the light poking through the tree limbs a few yards off ahead. The sugary whiff of nectar strengthens with each step. I feel the gentle breaks of twigs under the heels of my feet and hear the muffled crunch of leaves that have dried up on the floor. Premature crab apples deck the sides of the path every so often, wilting from their solid, ripened bodies to pockets of spongy mush browned with age.  Only a couple steps from the end, I start to run.

The dirt under my feet quickly turns into concrete and I find myself standing in a parking lot littered with people. The reserved tweets of the apple orchard are diluted by the overwhelming chorus of human voices and it takes me a moment to adjust to the calibration.  Dizzied by their fast strides and upbeat hilarity, I work to compose myself. My senses are flooded by the rumble of tractor engines, the honeyed aroma of candies, and the wildly commotion of children breaking out from their packs in striped-turtle necks and denim. The fever which coursed through me minutes ago is quieted by the reminiscence of life which I had forgotten.

   I step into the mass of people and shift among them, slipping in and out of their light-hearted jokes and trivial compliments, imagining what it’d feel like to hold a conversation again. A pair of teens stride towards me, hands linked together so tightly that I notice the boy’s knuckles whitening with the pressure of his squeeze. Wanting to feel that throb of a lover’s touch, I reach my hand out to grab theirs as they pass. I catch the clammy sweat of nerves from their clasp and delicately pass it along each pad of my fingers, missing how it felt to have that mist escape from my own pores. But the couple continues on unaffected and unaware of my presence as was everyone else.

The crowd parts a bit and I stand facing a man in oil-slicked overalls ushering people up straw-covered steps into the bed of a tractor where they then file into seats made out of bales of hay. Absentmindedly, I squeeze into the line of people eager to climb aboard the roaring machine, yearning to hear an angry patron lash out from my cut in the line. But I sneak in unseen, my feckless actions triggering no effect whatsoever on anyone or anything in this world.

  The last person in front of me makes his way up the shaky pull-out stairwell and then shuffles to the side into an open seat. I grip the iron neck of the railing and pull myself onto the first step, briefly so engaged that I forget this life is not real to me anymore. Suddenly, a godly sensation swamps me, throwing me off balance and I have to lean into the railing to keep from falling off.

“J-Bone!”

My body trembles and my knees hit the lip of the stairs. Even being dead, the sound of him calling my name makes me crumble. I choke the railing and spin myself around. There he is. He stands in front of me at the bottom of the steps, his jaunty eyes swimming with enthusiasm and conviction. It is impossible for me to recall the somber expressions of Steve that I witnessed before when the face staring at me now wouldn’t be capable of morphing into that image.

“I made it! Told you I’d be here,” he says now bending over his knees huffing heavy pants and sighs. His cheeks are flush and he puts his hands on his lower back to prop himself up in order to catch his breath. Just above his brow, a single crystal bead of sweat squeezes out on to his skin.

“Daddy! Get on,” a lisp-laced voice beckons from the tractor bed.

I twist my head away from Steve, back to the bed of the tractor I had been working my way up. Right at the top step, perfectly eye level with me now, stands a tiny, china doll faced girl, no older than six years. She uses the back of her hand to push her mousy brown locks of hair off to the side. Her eyes are the same mobile pattern as Steve’s, but host to a different brown-sugar iris; I am stunned by her beauty. I run my hand over her hair which is braided in slivers of hay, weaving my fingers through some of the thicker curls. Her bottom lip is plump and red in the center from the nip of the autumn breeze. I can’t break my eyes from hers as she stands there impatiently, pale arms folded over a pudgy stomach, tapping out all the wasted time with her foot.   

“Coming, Miss Julie-Bean,” Steve responds. He steps onto the foot of the stairs and pulls himself up onto the tractor in a single quick pounce, pushing through me untouched. 

“Me and Mommy saved you a seat,” she says as Steve swings her up into the cradle of his arm. 

He coasts down the aisles of hay towards the front of the tractor with the little girl’s arms strewn over his shoulders and her head facing me. My fingers fan out in a wave as I think she’s looking at me only to be reminded of my insignificance. Hypnotized by her ethereal gaze, I trail behind the pair, carelessly bumping into the legs and arms of the other passengers. I no longer notice the rolling pitches of their laughter or smell the tart aroma of the apples baking on the floor of the orchards. My senses only consider the pretty face of that little girl which is being whisked off in an embrace too familiar to me.

Steve stops at the end of tractor bed and turns to the side, but the little girl maintains her stare in my direction as I near. She kicks her heel into his abdomen trying to adjust her legs around his side and without hesitation he flexes his forearms so to give her more support. Pleased with her position, she relaxes her head onto his shoulder. Steve lays his lips into the thick swell of her unruly hair, intently closing his eyes. I could almost hear the prayers he recited in his head as he kissed her.

The tractor jerks as the conductor shifts gears to commence the ride, and Steve takes a seat on a haystack. On my knees, I crawl up to them, nudging my body in between his legs so that my face was within inches of their noses. Julie, she was every admirable element of Steve rolled out onto this tiny canvas, uncontaminated by injustice and affliction.

I weave my arm between them, linking myself in their embrace; this had been all we were waiting for and now it was ours. I lean in and press my lips against her cheek, taking in her scent of indolent flowers, similar to the scents of spring that stir up after a heavy rain. I trace the contour of her fingers with mine then cup her entire hand under my palm, tenderly squeezing it against Steve’s peck. Finally, we were together.

The lulling bumps of the ride are interrupted by a sudden halt and the other passengers stand up anxious to get off. Steve pulls Julie in tightly against his body holding her in his arms for a minute before he loosens to let her get up. She unfolds her legs, stands and tugs at the waist of her jeans while the people of the ride file into a line to get down from the tractor bed.

“Come on! We gots to hurry ‘cause we got to pick all the good ones for pie,” she says with her arms extended straight over her head. “Let’s go guys, come on!”

Steve stretches his arms out and then uses his hands to help push himself up from his seat.

“You heard her, Mommy,” he says, his voice competing with a weak yawn, “let’s get out there.”

I rise up from my crouched position on the floor of the tractor bed. Julie runs off ahead, her hair tossing side to side with the bounce of her steps; my eyes are glued to the back of her as she scurries into the crowd of passengers lining up.

 The image of Julie blending in among the strangers is suddenly eclipsed by a thick shadow and I feel a force like two magnets competing from each end of my body break through my center. Steve walks right through me with his arm hanging on the back of a tall, mousy-haired woman. They follow Julie down to the end of the tractor where the tough hands of the conductor escort them back off the stairwell, never looking back once to find me standing here alone.

I am pathetic! How could I be so disillusioned? I let myself get lost here and had forgotten that this world has no place for me anymore, that I don’t belong here. I was stupid to think that that little girl was mine, that she was ours, mine and Steve’s.

The features of the people’s faces rapidly distort and dissemble; the vibrant colors filling the images melt and run into one another as if they were being washed away. The body of the tractor breaks apart into fragments that shrivel up until they’re completely dissolved and the sweet, sheer scents icing the episode dissipate, rendering my senses worthless as I return to my prison of barrenness.

What was I doing! Why would I do that to myself? How could I be so damn naive! Not being able to have a child was painful enough in life, but to have one and have her ripped away…What am I saying? She wasn’t mine!

My head is throbbing from the back and forth lashes of conversation I wrestle with myself and I feel like my organs are being extracted from my body through the eyes of small needles.

God, what are you doing to me! I believed in you, I had faith. I had faith in a God who was merciful and forgiving, but you abandoned me! My life was ripped out from under me and now I rot and suffer in this f*****g hell, tormenting myself until…eternity?

My body bellows out in the hardest cry: an explosion of sobs shoot off from the ends of my nerves like a military salute. I see the translucent image of Julie slipping away and my fingers try to latch onto her figure escaping me. The feeling of belonging that overcame me while my arm was nudged between hers and Steve’s is impossible to remember, overshadowed now by the feeling of Steve pressing through my fleshless body. My presence was not pertinent to them, while I, on the other hand, was entirely absorbed in their world. The scene keeps running in a circuit in my mind, rehashing the mortification I felt each time it replays, but now I notice something I disregarded before.

A bittersweet flavor secretes on my tongue as the images of Steve rocking Julie flash like a film reel in my mind; he squeezes her in his lap as I work to force myself between their embrace. I extract myself from the picture and the scene plays on more easily, unaffected by my absence. I didn’t fit in that scene and I would never find a way to.

I empty myself into my white prison, casting my cries off into the distance where they run on infinitely. I let go of the resentment that boiled under my skin onto the floors, cleansing myself of any notion of pain or sorrow, encouraging every morsel of emotion to thrive one last time and to pour out into this world where they can wander for eternity separate from me.

In my life, I found a love that is unmatched by any other human condition. Its influence is so compelling and innately rooted in my soul that it has the power to fuel me now, here in a realm that prohibits and suffocates even the most minuscule gesture of activity. While I fell short of dreams of ‘what would be,’ I never lacked fulfillment because I was invested in something that is so unworldly and grand that it was able to outlast me. The essence of my existence isn’t trapped in this vault; I didn’t die, I transcended.

I rebelled against this retirement under the misconception that there was more on earth for me than what I had experienced, but I was wrong. I had bathed in the richest marvels living has to offer. In my twenty-eight years, I was a witness to an energy others spend life-times merely dreaming of. The love that I shared with Steve was an uncompromising solution to all obstacles I encountered and with nothing left to overcome, physically living lost relevance. I wasn’t deprived of life. I had simply exhausted it.

My thoughts transition so expeditiously from one to the next that it feels like they’re being unearthed rather than forged in my mind. The constraints that have been manipulating my body like the pull of puppet strings release and I stir freely about at my own will. Suddenly, a nimbus illustration of Julie surfaces and even as a halo of light, her beauty radiates.

I am only a chapter of Steve’s story. His fever was restless in the world I was no longer a part of because he couldn’t exhaust himself the way I had since I left. Now, Julie has changed that. She’ll allow him to love to the fullest capacity, the way I had because of him. So, if this realm is the conclusion to life, I embrace it with no regrets. I will withdrawal from the world I had known entirely and let it continue on without me.

The aura of Julie clears, thinning until the white reflections of light are all that remains. I inhale deeply, taking in the last memories I have of Steve; his electric touch and ecstasy-laden kiss, the unrestrained resonance of his laughter and the hypnotic flicker of his eyes. Exhaling, I expel my memories into this orbit to drift alongside the other charms I collected in life that are of no use to me here. Finally, I allow the bridge that linked me to earth to crumble.

 

“There was a man who said that ‘the art of living lies in the fine mingling of letting go and holding on.’”

My ears spasm unconditioned to the sound of another voice in this world, and I jump to my feet desperate to find the source. The stillness of this place makes me doubt what I heard; nothing occupies this deserted continuum but me.

“God?” I ask.

“Ha, not God,” the voice answers playfully, an affection I scarcely remember; “now you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Suddenly, before me, a short, dark-skinned Hispanic man appears. His heart-shaped face is complimented by a tangled, black mustache that hangs over his upper lip and a pair of quarter-sized eyes.  He stands there observing me, like he’s watching through a double-sided mirror. He doesn’t move or speak, just stands there looking on with no expression. I swing my arms in his direction trying to scatter his image, but to no avail. He squints his eyes and c***s his head as if amused by my erratic behavior.

“What is this,” I demanded, the generic expression of his face unreadable and agitating, “why are you here?” My voice is defensive, rejecting his invasion of my retirement. I don’t care if this place isn’t property to be owned. This place is the only thing I know here-after and I won’t stand to have it overrun by strangers after having to navigate it alone all this time. 

“I can definitely see now why you took so long,” he says, responding unthreatened by my temper. “You’re quite a spit-fire, even after detachment.”

“Detachment?” I say, probing his face in search of context, but the indifferent expression he initially met me with is steadfast. “Is this hell?”

“No,” he answers readily, “hell is not a place. Hell is a discipline of the mind, a barrier personalized to the individual and it is a condition only warranted by the individual themselves.”

Words escape me, scattering hysterically from my mouth and mind. I try to capture any mix of them just to piece together some phrase or sentence. There are so many things I want to say and to ask.

“You don’t need to talk to speak,” he says through his lips which never open to formulate the words. The man’s mouth slackens and his almond eyes twinkle, putting me more at ease. The chaos that rattles on in my mind silences to await his next comment.

 “Jillian,” he continues in a motherly tone, “our existence extends far beyond the physical lifetimes we experience in the world. Those links we construct with others around us, those connections and experiences, they are elements of one phase of many to occur with our endurance. We are undying beings, created in the image of God, and the life that we know on earth is a stage we must master in order to progress.”

“Immortal?” I can only manage to generate a single word in response.

“Immortal, I suppose, yes. I’d say ‘continuous.’ It may be a less arrogant way to think of things.” He smiles as he speaks, like I would when looking at puppies through the glass walls of pet stores.

“So, what is this?” I ask, my arms pointing out to the white desert we stand in, “Another stage?”

The man’s rough whiskers shuffle as his lips widen. Something about his face is comforting and it feels good to be the reason this strange man is smiling. My desperation for any sort of interaction with another person, I’m sure, lends to the situation, but nonetheless, I am eager to keep him happy.

“Yes, this is a stage,” he says, “this is detachment. God created us and deployed our souls to a place where we could learn to execute His most indispensable gift, the gift of free will. He created an entire kingdom with the purpose to encourage our souls to thrive and interact with one another by employing this power of voluntary choice. There, we are our own teachers and we continue our education until we can finally graduate to the next level.”

“You mean die,” I question trying to follow him, “I mean, die on earth at least.”

The man pauses and his smile softens. He takes a moment before speaking as if he was trying to put together precisely the right words.

“We spend as much time as needed on earth manipulating our surroundings, exercising our creativity, forming profound connections with other souls, until we have prepared ourselves well enough to be able to progress. Dying is a concept that we invented, Jillian, it is not an actual state.”

“So then, I was ready to ‘progress,’ and God decided to have me violently killed in a recreational bathroom?” I feel embarrassed for not being able to contain my frustration and sarcasm. I look to the man’s face to see his reaction, to see if he was as startled as I was by my insolence. But his face remains candid and he continues to speak, ignoring my lash of disrespect.

“The power of free will is both a thing of beauty and tragedy; God had no hand in your death on earth. Your death was the consequence of an erred use of power, which is necessary to development.”

Slight gestures of emotion surface as he makes his way through his explanation. The wrinkles of his forehead pinch together empathetically and even the tone of his voice is compassionate. 

“We were all intimately hand-crafted and given uniquely different characteristics,” he says, slowing down as if to stress the importance of these ideas. “ In saying that, some souls will progress through the different phases more rapidly than others, while others may struggle to advance. Those like the man who killed you on earth will recycle in that stage until he can achieve his full potential. You can be certain that that life you had lived was not the first cycle you experienced.”

His reference to incarnation awakens me and I imagine all the other personas I must have experienced during my time in the world. I wonder how many different lives I lived? Who I had been and what my lives have been like!

“Then, what’s the point of this detachment?”

“The transition from one stage to the next is not an easy one, especially after the first stage, as it is all we know thus far. Not to mention that every tour of that world, every cycle we undergo, makes it that much harder to abandon it. Detachment is the stage that enables us to strip ourselves from our earthly possessions so that we are open to ascending to the next phase of our true lives.”

 “If detachment is for letting go of our lives on earth, then why was I sucked back into it!” My voice booms, yet the man remains tolerant. He seems to understand and expect my frustration and I wonder if his patience comes from his experience in doing this. 

“Like I said,” he continues, “the transition is not easy. Detachment is just a platform for us to use in our transition, but it does not sever the ties we have to earth itself. In detachment, you are given the sovereignty to let go of that stage at your own pace, but again, it can be harder for some than others. Those episodes you experienced in detachment, those jaded warps back to earth, resulted from your soul’s desire to hang on to some connection that you made.”

He knods as his lips close around his last sentence. The way he taps his head in my direction as he finishes makes me feel like he’s referencing something specfic.
             “Detachment is a frightening phase because of the window between stages it creates. If your soul has escalated to detachment than it is entirely prepared to move on, but that is not to say that your mind, the part of you that is molded on earth by the use of free will, is also ready.      Souls that make it to detachment no longer need the experience of recycling through lifetimes on earth. But during the process of detaching, some souls become so fixated on their bonds with that stage that they force their way back. While their untrained minds refuse to let go, their souls are too mature to coexist or be recycled and they become stuck in the gap between worlds practicing both the transcending qualities of their greater life and the constructs they learned in that stage.”

“Is that what ghosts are?” I ask, my voice cracking as I recall the way I had forged myself between realms, trying to get back to Steve on earth.

The man nods and takes a step in my direction so that his face is only inches from mine.

“Ghosts, lost souls, sky-walkers,” he says, the sounds of his words graver than they had been. “The longer they hold on to their experiences on earth, the harder it is for them to believe in more than what they already know. They become intoxicated by the life they remember. They reawaken the tools we were given to help us create and interact in that stage, tools not required after that, and they throw themselves back into a world not suited to host them any longer. These souls become caught between a glass ceiling and glass floor and I had worried that I would lose you there, too.”  

I think about the times I had spent linking myself back to earth: the church, my sister and Steve arguing, following Steve into the waves as he tried to kill himself, then seeing Julie on that apple-picking ride. The episodes I experienced were more vivid and authentic each round and the costs of travel, the pains that inflicted my body, lessened each journey back. Was I that close to becoming stuck? I feel naked and abashed as I remember how I cursed God between warps, when in actuality it was me causing my own torment and anguish. I recalled my faith in His love. I justified my defiance like a spoiled child post-tantrum. I was too ignorant to allow myself to advance to a new life and instead flung myself back into the apathetic hold of one that didn’t want me.

“How long was I here? How long did it take me?” I ask, desperate to quantify my ignorance.

“Ha,” he chuckles sweetly, “Jillian, time is a concept only applicable on earth. Time doesn’t exist here because we ourselves are timeless. There is no means of counting moments; there is no purpose to it either. The things we created on earth are manipulations of our environment and simple expressions of the more profound powers we possess. Earth was a canvas provided to us to experiment with our abilities. Here, you won’t need time.”

I have thousands of questions I want to ask but I can tell that he isn’t here to satisfy my curiosity. Choosing my words carefully, I ask, “What above love? Is love a concept we created there?”

His face illuminates.

“Love,” he says, “is what we’re composed of. We were created in love, we grow with love, and we live by loving and being loving. That is not a man-made concept; that is the divine power that enables us to exist.”

He stops speaking and we stand facing each other in silence. I know that he is reading the real question that I meant to ask; the question I still couldn’t disregard after all this talk of our connections to life on earth.  

“Just because our time on earth is only a tiny fraction of our existence does not mean what we accomplished there was irrelevant,” he says in a softer voice. “You’ll be surprise at just how relevant those experiences really are,” he continues coyly.

Even though I am besieged by the excitement of this conversation, I can’t help but long for Steve. If our souls were recycled a thousand times again, I couldn’t imagine ever loving someone the way I loved him, in that life or the next.

The sparkling aura of the man brightens and he extends his hand out towards me. I take his fingers up in mine and the unmistakable sense of familiarity strikes me.

“We must have met before,” I say, “did I know you on earth? Is that what this is?”

“There will be a time,” he says without acknowledging my concern, “when you’ll have to host others after detachment. It’s like conducting a debriefing to help escort them to the next phase of their life.” The way he dodges my question irritates me but I politely respond given that I’m sure I haven’t been the most docile listener since we met.

“How will I know who to host?” I asked truly uninterested.

“You’ll be with them as they transition.”

His words strike a chord; I do remember that face. During my last moments in life, his face hung over me like a cloud of smoke; it was the last face I saw before being conquered by the unwelcomed thrusts of my murderer. This man was witness to my last experience on earth as he watched me struggle under the sadistic stabs of my killer. As I laid on my stomach, my blood pouring out of my body and streaming into the cracks between the tiles, this man hovered over watching me fight for my last few gasps of oxygen. I called to him, begging for him to save me, but his eyes just skimmed the scene indifferently. I feel sorry for him now, imagining how painful it must have been to witness such an event, unable to interfere.

The palm of my hand warms against his touch. He swiftly maneuvers his fingers to line mine up against them.

“You won’t need to concern yourself with any of that now,” he says.

“Then what happens next?” I ask.

 “Here, you will learn to create. On earth, we were given an environment and the means to manipulate it; there, we were engineers tinkering with our surroundings. Products of that life used the minutest portion of our true capabilities. Instead of creating, we were merely toiling in mediums already provided to us.” The man cups my folded fingers in both of his hands, gently pressing against them. “Here, you will become the absolute designer; creating from absolutely nothing in the same manner God was able to create us.”
            He pulls back his shoulders, straightening up, with his hands still cupping mine. One by one, he pulls off his fingers from their clasp until my hands are untouched. Between my palms, a warm sensation remains even though he is no longer touching me. I twist my wrists apart, opening my palms to reveal a blue petal flower wilting in between them.

I look up to find that the man I had just been speaking with is no longer here.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do! Where do I go? What am I doing?

“Jillian.”

I hear a faint version of Steve’s lively voice say my name.

I thought I detached? Didn’t I renounce my ties to that world? Why can’t I shake Steve’s voice from my mind.

“Hey J-Bone.” The voice grows louder and sounds as if it’s coming from somewhere near me rather than stirring up in the dust of my collapsed memories. My neck is ignited by a tickling sensation and I can sense someone staring at me from behind.

Slowly, I turn to glance back and I am met by a pair of bright green iris’.

“How is this happening? Am I creating you right now? What is this?”

The mirage of Steve laughs and the sweet sounds tug at my emotions; I’m scared to approach him in fear that he’s not real and that the fervor he unleashes in me will go unfed again.

“Creating me? Ha, that’s a new one even for you,” he says.

If this is just a fabrication of Steve I’m creating, I am impressed with my graceful adaptation to this realm. The design of this figment is finely detailed and capable of flawlessly mimicking the wild thunder of his laugh. It is an exact replication of the man I knew in my lifetime. However, he is a more youthful character than I met in our last encounter, a snapshot of Steve from when we first met in college.

“I waited for you,” the vision says and his words seem so honest it summons a reaction that is unmistakable to me in life or death. It is Steve.

“Steve!” I fling myself onto him, drowning in the touch of his body pressing against mine. “How is this possible? Does this mean you’re…”

“We don’t die, Jillian,” he interrupts assuredly.

I look up at his face which glows with vivacity. He looks so young to me now!
            Suddenly, I realize what his being here means and I am polluted by heartbreak as I imagine all the ways he could have transitioned. Was he alone when he died like I was, seized by panic? Was his death violent? An accident? An acidic concoction swirls in my stomach from my disgust as my imagination runs wild with possible scenarios of his death.

“I left there eighty-three years into it,” he says, as if he is reading the manic thoughts that plague me, “an old man hardly able to lift myself from bed to bathroom.”

“How is that possible?” I try to picture the way Steve would look with a bare head with stray curls of silver and darkened marks of age freckling his arms.

“Jillian,” he says, as he sweeps his arms around my waist, wrapping around me tightly. “After I died in that life, there was no need for me to waste time in detachment,” he says, and our bodies meld together, “because I knew that you were here.”