This is why I don't sleep at night
This is a dream that I had last night. You'll understand my typos (sleepiness induced) when you read it.
Darkness had taken the city. The last rays of sunset only sharpened my awareness of the pervading gloom. I reran the phone call in my mind as I stared out of the window.
"There are two souls in that building. We need you to clear them out."
"Salvage mission?"
"Clean up."
So they were already too far gone. I'll still see what I can do, though that doesn't lift my spirit.
We've seen a lot of wars in this world, but none like this. Land wars, military coups, even mass genocide pales in comparison. I'm so tired of running.
Our last mission had failed. They were listening, and I had only discovered them too late. As the dark and empty buildings of the city passed me by, I said a silent prayer for the good men we had lost in the slaughter. We're good at running, but this morning we just weren't good enough.
I was heading to the new safe house when I got the call. My mind was reeling, everything happened so fast. The rain drops on the windshield echoed the sounds of the gun shots in my mind. The taxi slowed as we reached our destination, a very small apartment building. The kind that the mob bosses loved. You could walk in, kill everyone in the two story building, and be out before anyone could register what was happening. I could feel it, but only faintly. The residual sense of pain made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. As I walked through the hallways, I could hear them, echoes of horror imprinted on time itself. The screams rang faintly through my consciousness as I peered into the rooms, looking for my "client." If it weren't for the thick layer of dust and the rust colored stains on the floors and the walls, you would never have known that no one lived here anymore. A bullet hole here, a bloody hand print there, bloodstained sheets from what must have been a couple in bed together, even a few toys melded to the floor in all that was left of their owners.
I crept cautiously up the stairs, the feeling was getting stronger. One was a dark pink, almost red, older, slightly primitive, driven to animalistic tendencies from a lack of contact with other sentient beings and the inability to fulfill her purpose, and the other was faint and gray, tethered to this world though some unfortunate accident.
I reached the top of the stairs, my hear pounding in my ears as I saw the reddish glow emanating from the room. She's on the edge, this may be it for me. I cautiously crept toward the door, wishing I could run, holding my breath, fighting to keep my heart in my chest. Through the crack in the door, I could see what I was looking for. The foot of a body. The mob must have been interrupted in their work. I gathered myself, unwilling to let it prey on my fear. I know what I'm doing. I'm the best. I've done this a hundred times before. I pushed open the door, slowly, cautiously, but still my stomach turned at the stench that rushed to meet me. If you've ever smelled a body that had been rotting in a humid room for several weeks, you'd know what I was talking about. In an instant, I was able to take in all the details of the room and its occupant: she was a twenty something year old woman, shot twice, once on top of the other, in the stomach. Her body was sprawled o the bed in the corner of the room, one hand still reaching toward the cradle that stood silent in the shadows. Not good. The body had blackened and had started to rot, but was somewhat preserved as if it had been in a warm, dry area (which did not at all match the icy chill of the room). This one was attached, and did not want to leave. All at once, the cadaver sat bolt upright, eyes open, and smiled a grisly smile at me. The pink aura flared and cracked, and everything was back to the way it had been a second ago, but I knew better. An Arctic hand rested itself on my shoulder, though I knew if I looked, I would see nothing there. I kept my eyes firmly on the body. I could feel her wildness, her anger. I was the first living thing she had seen since she had died, and she blamed me.
All at once I saw it. She was standing over the cradle, smiling as her baby slept in the sunlight, when she heard the gunshots below. She panicked. She rand for something to fight them with, but they were too fast. When he knocked down her door, she could see them carrying away the twitching bodies of her neighbors. Not my baby. I could feel her fierce determination as she stood in front of her sleeping child, shielding her with her own body. The man laughed, and his image flashed a bright red in my mind. Two shots. It was a slow death, as he had meant it to be. The wounds were incapacitating, but not immediately lethal. She remembered the shock, before the pain set in. How she stood there, mouth open at the warmth spilling out from her body as he laughed.
She had watched him, as he turned his head to the silent call, anger flashing briefly across his face. He turned to look at her one final time, and a wicked smile twisted his lips as he thought about the fate he left her to.
She had tried to survive. The hungry cries of her baby kept the unconsciousness at bay. She would not leave her baby. Her child was her life. She tried her best, but no one can defeat death. As she felt the last traces of life leave her body, she heard the sounds of her infant as she starved to death.
It's much harder for a spirit that was supposed to pass to manipulate dead flesh, but that did not stop her. She fumbled uselessly with bottles and diapers, but to no avail. Not willing to fail, she had grabbed at her baby's spirit as it fled, trying to bind it to her. In the confusion, the child's soul was lost. In my minds eye, I saw the blackened form of the infant, still and lifeless, frozen in its final shriek of pain.
An instant later the connection was severed, and I could once again feel her malicious grin at my back. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, blocking out the smell, and focused on exuding calmness, love, and a sense of friendship. I filled the room with the warm yellow light of my positive energy, making it clear that I was here to help her baby and her, and that I wished them no harm. She was so close to madness that I do not believe that words would have an effect on her. She released her grip on me, and was instantly standing before me. Her head was down, hair in her face, and anger clear in her eyes. Her spirit matched her body in appearance, her dress stained and torn, decay marring her features. Confusion wrinkled what was left of her face. Good. She wasn't a being of hatred,she was only consumed by lonliness. I was sure to keep one eye on her body as I overflowed with peace. I felt her relax, but she was still quite wary. She slowly opened and closed her mouth, trying to regain the now unfamiliar feeling of speech. The sounds that emerged were a garble of nonsense, and her thoughts weren't much better. So, I guessed.
"My name is Lindey, I'm here to help you find your daughter and to keep you both safe." I used everything I had to emanate the truths of this statement. She relaxed, but only a little. She continued to babble, I assumed that she must have talked like this once upon a time, before the war, when a girlfriend came over. I nodded and made appreciative sounds as I thought her cadence dictated. No one chatters like this anymore. There's never anything to say. I don't remember much of the days before the war, but I missed the lost art of talking just for the sake of talking. Being able to hear the sound of your own voice without the worry of being tracked by it.
I was quickly brought back from my mental wanderings as the took me by the hand quite warmly, and as every second went by her aura cleared from almost red to a more yellowy white. I fought the urge to lose my stomach contents as the cold, sticky fingers enveloped my own, clammy, living ones. We sat on the floor by the crib, she leaned against a piece of furniture, myself with my legs crossed facing the door, no longer worried about keeping an eye on her body. I don't think she wants to hurt me anymore.
I took out my candle, a short fat red stub of an excuse for equipment, and she quieted, looking at me with what I assume must have been a wary expression. I nodded and smiled at her encouragingly, ignoring the vacancy in her eyes, and she resumed. It seems that she made an attempt to put her body's hair in a pony tail, and succeeded only in wrapping the elastic around her left eyeball. Her spirit self was so attached to her body that it affected her at this level, and she was trying to get the elastic undone, to no avail. She would never be able to get it out unless she removed it from her body, but I digress.
I lit the candle and watched the smoke slowly curl and rise. I took a moment to breathe, afraid of the outcome of this meeting. The smoke wound its way sinuously toward the cieling, twisting and writhing, but never dissipating. As it reached the ceiling, the smoke gathered itself into a column ignoring the grotesque housewife's prattle.
Soon the smoke flowed into a single, thin column as if the candle's smoke reached straight to all of the goodness in heaven, or as if heaven were pouring smoke down into it. I never did figure out which it was. I leaned over to the candle, and smiled briefly at my inquisitive companion.
"Alice?" I called
"Yes"
"Alice, I need you to find someone for me, the soul of a child, tethered to this room but lost somewhere between here and there."
"Yes, I think I know the one. Hold on."
I waited, listening for the soft spoken voice to return with the information I would need to call the soul back. Alice said something, but all of this was making the woman restless. Her eyes rolled wildly in her head, and she began to babble more loudly, almost shouting, and I could barely hear...
I began to make out the notes of an eerie lullaby emanating from the candle. At first, the babbling grew so loud that I had to close my eyes and force all of my attention to the notes, but as I began to sing, all other sounds stopped. I glanced up at the woman as I channeled the music more effortlessly, and she looked back at me with wide eyes for a brief second. I watched as her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped to the floor, twitching as if she were having a mild seizure. The music became more clear to me, and it became a part of me. I turned inward, searching the darkness. In the distance, there was a bright, pure light, and I beckoned to it. I watched as it drew near, pulled in by the melody of the lullaby. I opened my eyes as a teenage girl began to materialize. I almost lost my focus as something pulled at my memory, but I completed the ritual, and the candle went out. In the darkness of the room, I used my heart to see the figures. One, glowing a pale, ragged gray, the other a weak orange.
"Zoe?" I called
"Yes. Yes it's me. I know you."
"Yes, I know you too. My heart has missed you!" I reached out to embrace her, and she reached out to do the same. The same familiar burning tingle of her touch told me that she was the spirit of the baby. In my heart's eye, she was a teenager, almost fifteen. They had been here longer than I had expected. I communicated wordlessly what I needed her to do, in the way that only soul friends could. We would meet again in another life.
"Mom?"
The body on the bed twitched, and the spirit on the floor convulsed.
"Mom, it's me."
"Zoe?" a weak voice called from the floor, and then from all around "ZOE?"
The spirit was instantly awake, the film gone from her eyes, the madness leaving an edge to her voice, but finding her able to communicate. "Oh Zoe, I tried to hard. I missed you. I love you!"
"I know mom, and I love you. I've been wandering so long. Will you come home with me?"
The mother stroked her hair, "but we are home, sweetheart."
"No, Mom, I know of a place where we can be happy, and we can be together for always."
As they talked, I felt them. How had I been so stupid! We had been giving off so much energy it must have been like a beacon for the mob. They saw how close she was to madness, how easily she could be corrupted, and they were coming for us. Instantly I dragged their bodies together near their spirits and began walking in a rectangle around them, using my bell to make protective patterns in the air. I needed to work quickly.
"Zoe, I know of a safe place we can go, but we need to go now. I can keep you both there, safe, but they are coming. Can you convince her to come?"
Zoe needed time to convince her mother to rest, and time we didn't have. I could take them to the safe house if we ran, but they were coming, and quickly.
"Zoe, this is our home. We are safe here."
"Mother, I would like to go. I want to talk to you more, and they will take me away if we don't go"
"NO, THEY WILL NOT TAKE YOU. THEY CAN NOT HAVE YOU"
"Zoe, we need to go soon" my bell wove a wall of sound around us, but I couldn't keep it up forever
"Mother, it's ok. Just for a little while?"
I could feel the red energies coming up the stairs, they were surrounding us.
I wanted to call for help, but it would be a suicide mission for the others. There are so many. There isn't much time left.
"It will be safe and warm, and I've missed you so much"
I could see the mother breaking, so happy to have her daughter back. So weary from years of loneliness and fear.
"Ok"
In that instant, their spirits turned a blazing white, and they looked to me with absolute peace and happiness written on their faces. Their features were perfect, each the image of loveliness and completeness. I quickly lit the candle and said the appropriate prayers for their souls.
Zoe looked at me as she faded, and I could feel her say "I will see you soon"
As the light faded from the room, the door burst open, and everything was filled with red, angry light.
Darkness had taken the city. The last rays of sunset only sharpened my awareness of the pervading gloom. I reran the phone call in my mind as I stared out of the window.
"There are two souls in that building. We need you to clear them out."
"Salvage mission?"
"Clean up."
So they were already too far gone. I'll still see what I can do, though that doesn't lift my spirit.
We've seen a lot of wars in this world, but none like this. Land wars, military coups, even mass genocide pales in comparison. I'm so tired of running.
Our last mission had failed. They were listening, and I had only discovered them too late. As the dark and empty buildings of the city passed me by, I said a silent prayer for the good men we had lost in the slaughter. We're good at running, but this morning we just weren't good enough.
I was heading to the new safe house when I got the call. My mind was reeling, everything happened so fast. The rain drops on the windshield echoed the sounds of the gun shots in my mind. The taxi slowed as we reached our destination, a very small apartment building. The kind that the mob bosses loved. You could walk in, kill everyone in the two story building, and be out before anyone could register what was happening. I could feel it, but only faintly. The residual sense of pain made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. As I walked through the hallways, I could hear them, echoes of horror imprinted on time itself. The screams rang faintly through my consciousness as I peered into the rooms, looking for my "client." If it weren't for the thick layer of dust and the rust colored stains on the floors and the walls, you would never have known that no one lived here anymore. A bullet hole here, a bloody hand print there, bloodstained sheets from what must have been a couple in bed together, even a few toys melded to the floor in all that was left of their owners.
I crept cautiously up the stairs, the feeling was getting stronger. One was a dark pink, almost red, older, slightly primitive, driven to animalistic tendencies from a lack of contact with other sentient beings and the inability to fulfill her purpose, and the other was faint and gray, tethered to this world though some unfortunate accident.
I reached the top of the stairs, my hear pounding in my ears as I saw the reddish glow emanating from the room. She's on the edge, this may be it for me. I cautiously crept toward the door, wishing I could run, holding my breath, fighting to keep my heart in my chest. Through the crack in the door, I could see what I was looking for. The foot of a body. The mob must have been interrupted in their work. I gathered myself, unwilling to let it prey on my fear. I know what I'm doing. I'm the best. I've done this a hundred times before. I pushed open the door, slowly, cautiously, but still my stomach turned at the stench that rushed to meet me. If you've ever smelled a body that had been rotting in a humid room for several weeks, you'd know what I was talking about. In an instant, I was able to take in all the details of the room and its occupant: she was a twenty something year old woman, shot twice, once on top of the other, in the stomach. Her body was sprawled o the bed in the corner of the room, one hand still reaching toward the cradle that stood silent in the shadows. Not good. The body had blackened and had started to rot, but was somewhat preserved as if it had been in a warm, dry area (which did not at all match the icy chill of the room). This one was attached, and did not want to leave. All at once, the cadaver sat bolt upright, eyes open, and smiled a grisly smile at me. The pink aura flared and cracked, and everything was back to the way it had been a second ago, but I knew better. An Arctic hand rested itself on my shoulder, though I knew if I looked, I would see nothing there. I kept my eyes firmly on the body. I could feel her wildness, her anger. I was the first living thing she had seen since she had died, and she blamed me.
All at once I saw it. She was standing over the cradle, smiling as her baby slept in the sunlight, when she heard the gunshots below. She panicked. She rand for something to fight them with, but they were too fast. When he knocked down her door, she could see them carrying away the twitching bodies of her neighbors. Not my baby. I could feel her fierce determination as she stood in front of her sleeping child, shielding her with her own body. The man laughed, and his image flashed a bright red in my mind. Two shots. It was a slow death, as he had meant it to be. The wounds were incapacitating, but not immediately lethal. She remembered the shock, before the pain set in. How she stood there, mouth open at the warmth spilling out from her body as he laughed.
She had watched him, as he turned his head to the silent call, anger flashing briefly across his face. He turned to look at her one final time, and a wicked smile twisted his lips as he thought about the fate he left her to.
She had tried to survive. The hungry cries of her baby kept the unconsciousness at bay. She would not leave her baby. Her child was her life. She tried her best, but no one can defeat death. As she felt the last traces of life leave her body, she heard the sounds of her infant as she starved to death.
It's much harder for a spirit that was supposed to pass to manipulate dead flesh, but that did not stop her. She fumbled uselessly with bottles and diapers, but to no avail. Not willing to fail, she had grabbed at her baby's spirit as it fled, trying to bind it to her. In the confusion, the child's soul was lost. In my minds eye, I saw the blackened form of the infant, still and lifeless, frozen in its final shriek of pain.
An instant later the connection was severed, and I could once again feel her malicious grin at my back. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, blocking out the smell, and focused on exuding calmness, love, and a sense of friendship. I filled the room with the warm yellow light of my positive energy, making it clear that I was here to help her baby and her, and that I wished them no harm. She was so close to madness that I do not believe that words would have an effect on her. She released her grip on me, and was instantly standing before me. Her head was down, hair in her face, and anger clear in her eyes. Her spirit matched her body in appearance, her dress stained and torn, decay marring her features. Confusion wrinkled what was left of her face. Good. She wasn't a being of hatred,she was only consumed by lonliness. I was sure to keep one eye on her body as I overflowed with peace. I felt her relax, but she was still quite wary. She slowly opened and closed her mouth, trying to regain the now unfamiliar feeling of speech. The sounds that emerged were a garble of nonsense, and her thoughts weren't much better. So, I guessed.
"My name is Lindey, I'm here to help you find your daughter and to keep you both safe." I used everything I had to emanate the truths of this statement. She relaxed, but only a little. She continued to babble, I assumed that she must have talked like this once upon a time, before the war, when a girlfriend came over. I nodded and made appreciative sounds as I thought her cadence dictated. No one chatters like this anymore. There's never anything to say. I don't remember much of the days before the war, but I missed the lost art of talking just for the sake of talking. Being able to hear the sound of your own voice without the worry of being tracked by it.
I was quickly brought back from my mental wanderings as the took me by the hand quite warmly, and as every second went by her aura cleared from almost red to a more yellowy white. I fought the urge to lose my stomach contents as the cold, sticky fingers enveloped my own, clammy, living ones. We sat on the floor by the crib, she leaned against a piece of furniture, myself with my legs crossed facing the door, no longer worried about keeping an eye on her body. I don't think she wants to hurt me anymore.
I took out my candle, a short fat red stub of an excuse for equipment, and she quieted, looking at me with what I assume must have been a wary expression. I nodded and smiled at her encouragingly, ignoring the vacancy in her eyes, and she resumed. It seems that she made an attempt to put her body's hair in a pony tail, and succeeded only in wrapping the elastic around her left eyeball. Her spirit self was so attached to her body that it affected her at this level, and she was trying to get the elastic undone, to no avail. She would never be able to get it out unless she removed it from her body, but I digress.
I lit the candle and watched the smoke slowly curl and rise. I took a moment to breathe, afraid of the outcome of this meeting. The smoke wound its way sinuously toward the cieling, twisting and writhing, but never dissipating. As it reached the ceiling, the smoke gathered itself into a column ignoring the grotesque housewife's prattle.
Soon the smoke flowed into a single, thin column as if the candle's smoke reached straight to all of the goodness in heaven, or as if heaven were pouring smoke down into it. I never did figure out which it was. I leaned over to the candle, and smiled briefly at my inquisitive companion.
"Alice?" I called
"Yes"
"Alice, I need you to find someone for me, the soul of a child, tethered to this room but lost somewhere between here and there."
"Yes, I think I know the one. Hold on."
I waited, listening for the soft spoken voice to return with the information I would need to call the soul back. Alice said something, but all of this was making the woman restless. Her eyes rolled wildly in her head, and she began to babble more loudly, almost shouting, and I could barely hear...
I began to make out the notes of an eerie lullaby emanating from the candle. At first, the babbling grew so loud that I had to close my eyes and force all of my attention to the notes, but as I began to sing, all other sounds stopped. I glanced up at the woman as I channeled the music more effortlessly, and she looked back at me with wide eyes for a brief second. I watched as her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped to the floor, twitching as if she were having a mild seizure. The music became more clear to me, and it became a part of me. I turned inward, searching the darkness. In the distance, there was a bright, pure light, and I beckoned to it. I watched as it drew near, pulled in by the melody of the lullaby. I opened my eyes as a teenage girl began to materialize. I almost lost my focus as something pulled at my memory, but I completed the ritual, and the candle went out. In the darkness of the room, I used my heart to see the figures. One, glowing a pale, ragged gray, the other a weak orange.
"Zoe?" I called
"Yes. Yes it's me. I know you."
"Yes, I know you too. My heart has missed you!" I reached out to embrace her, and she reached out to do the same. The same familiar burning tingle of her touch told me that she was the spirit of the baby. In my heart's eye, she was a teenager, almost fifteen. They had been here longer than I had expected. I communicated wordlessly what I needed her to do, in the way that only soul friends could. We would meet again in another life.
"Mom?"
The body on the bed twitched, and the spirit on the floor convulsed.
"Mom, it's me."
"Zoe?" a weak voice called from the floor, and then from all around "ZOE?"
The spirit was instantly awake, the film gone from her eyes, the madness leaving an edge to her voice, but finding her able to communicate. "Oh Zoe, I tried to hard. I missed you. I love you!"
"I know mom, and I love you. I've been wandering so long. Will you come home with me?"
The mother stroked her hair, "but we are home, sweetheart."
"No, Mom, I know of a place where we can be happy, and we can be together for always."
As they talked, I felt them. How had I been so stupid! We had been giving off so much energy it must have been like a beacon for the mob. They saw how close she was to madness, how easily she could be corrupted, and they were coming for us. Instantly I dragged their bodies together near their spirits and began walking in a rectangle around them, using my bell to make protective patterns in the air. I needed to work quickly.
"Zoe, I know of a safe place we can go, but we need to go now. I can keep you both there, safe, but they are coming. Can you convince her to come?"
Zoe needed time to convince her mother to rest, and time we didn't have. I could take them to the safe house if we ran, but they were coming, and quickly.
"Zoe, this is our home. We are safe here."
"Mother, I would like to go. I want to talk to you more, and they will take me away if we don't go"
"NO, THEY WILL NOT TAKE YOU. THEY CAN NOT HAVE YOU"
"Zoe, we need to go soon" my bell wove a wall of sound around us, but I couldn't keep it up forever
"Mother, it's ok. Just for a little while?"
I could feel the red energies coming up the stairs, they were surrounding us.
I wanted to call for help, but it would be a suicide mission for the others. There are so many. There isn't much time left.
"It will be safe and warm, and I've missed you so much"
I could see the mother breaking, so happy to have her daughter back. So weary from years of loneliness and fear.
"Ok"
In that instant, their spirits turned a blazing white, and they looked to me with absolute peace and happiness written on their faces. Their features were perfect, each the image of loveliness and completeness. I quickly lit the candle and said the appropriate prayers for their souls.
Zoe looked at me as she faded, and I could feel her say "I will see you soon"
As the light faded from the room, the door burst open, and everything was filled with red, angry light.