0 comments/ 10002 views/ 0 favorites What We Do With It Ch. 01 By: IndysGurrl Authors Note - This story is a result of my inner monolouge combined with a sleepless night, alot of coffee, and a wild imagination. It's also my first short story in years. Let me know what you think please! Let me tell you a little something about regret. For I am it's scholar I sit here on the edge of this man’s bed his head is lowered, one hand firmly resting on the bed side table beside him. My hand rests on his as I take his appearance in as I have done countless times before. The smell of him fills the air, and I memorize his eyes, and his lips, and his shoulders. My thumb gently brushes over his hand but he makes no motion to return this affection, my tears are falling down my increasingly cold cheeks and he makes no move to brush them away. That dark skinned woman is standing over my shoulder now her hand is resting on one of my slumped shoulders, and she speaks. The man does not take notice to this stranger in his bedroom. “It’s time now…” I remove my hand from his and turn my head to look at her. Breathing in another breath, not out of need anymore but out of habit. I reply in a cracked voice. “A few more minutes please?” She doesn’t want to give it to me and for a moment her green eyes graze my face before she relents stepping back and I turn my attentions back to him, inching closer to his form, his head hanging, breathing deep. My eyes speak volumes of how very sorry I am, and yet I can’t phrase it right to say it out loud. Not that it would really matter at this point. So I sit watching him just be there his music filling the room, every now and then his lips mouth the words to the current song. I remember those lips, I feel the other woman’s presence and rise. The mattress doesn’t move, it betrays nothing about my presence in this bedroom. As it always has my soul aches because I’m going away from him again , I turn away anyway and looked up at the woman. Without her telling me I know she’s my guide, when she’d came for me earlier she’d called herself Jada and I followed her trustingly. As am I doing now “I’m ready now, we can leave.” Without looking back at him she lets me walk beside her through his wall and back into the endless labyrinth of blue light, not over bearing, and most defiantly not underwhelming either. “You’ll be able to go back to anywhere you wish soon little one,” she has a soft Creole accent that I immediately loved, even during this extremely strange voyage. “ but first you must be shown the ropes. And you need an explanation” I nod passively and glance around as we walk. The structure of this maze amazes me as I watch the paths change and the glow it’s made of swirl and twist under our feet. And then just like that we’re back in New York, in a place I had not requested to go. The familiar swings and the jungle gym, and the asphalt under my spectral feet. Furrowing my eyebrows I look to my guide questioningly “It’s time to learn now, I chose here because this was a place of your happy times. Uninhabited and…I think I like it as well.” I can’t help but smirk at her, I liked this park too after all it’d been my haunt for most of my child hood (pardon the pun), however not many people can appreciate the subtle beauty of a New York City playground. Sitting on a bench I crossed my ankles and patted my pockets for my pack of trust cigarettes logically finding none. Jada stood before me and smiled almost tenderly watching me practice those life-long habits that, unlike me just wouldn’t die. “Well,” she said thoughtfully clearing her throat so I raise my eyes to her figure in front of me, “You are gone, as you have been for the last twelve hours and fourteen minutes. Do you remember anything of how you died Glory?” I blink and nod very slowly as my last living memory is rehashed in my mind. “My friends car, it slid off the road. It was foggy and raining. Off an -” I paused squinting my eyes trying to recapture exactly what I’d last recalled seeing. “off an over pass. I remember the ground, then standing on the side of the road, with you.” I look up at Jada and blink with wide eyes. “Did…did Emma make it out?” My guide nods quietly, “She’s in the hospital, intensive care. Your friend is quite a fighter. You were lost on impact.” The finality of death is finally sinking in now and tears again roll down my cheeks. I rasp another breath as the last 20 years highlights play in a loop inside my head, if my guide is speaking I can’t hear her right now, because I’m fifteen years in the past, right over there on that swing set playing with the other little girls. And then I’m somewhere else, fifth grade inside a classroom up at a board writing out a math equation and the memory of my intense satisfaction surges through my heart as my teach affectionately pats her mathematically inept student on the back. Same year, a few months forward and the little me is walking through the Nile temple they had at some museum. The traces left of the longing I’d felt as I reached out to touch its sand colored walls are all relived in this moment. I remember the security guard clearing his throat harshly and my little arm dropping to my side immediately. Jada is merely standing there another look of tenderness on her motherly face. I pay no mind to her right now lost in my own silent revelry, she doesn’t seem to mind one bit. Thirteen years old in the sunlit woods, the red headed older boy helps me over a rocky unsettled patch of earth. Almost effortlessly I’m in his arms and he’s kissing me, my real kiss and I smirk slightly in spite of my self and my distressing non corporeal state. But nothing is dragging me away from this rehashing of what made life so very beautiful. It’s my birthday and I’m eighteen getting my first tattoo while my best friend looks on, my heart fluttering as the exhilaration and the utter independence I’d felt that day is relived for a heartbreaking second before I’m someplace else. Only a few months ago, the man I’d left a few minutes ago in his bedroom, a porch, in wintertime. So many emotions hit me then that I hold my chest and shudder for a good minute or so until it passes enough for me to look back up at Jada. “Am I going to my funeral?” I’m shaking like a reed as I watch her face very closely in the slowly dawning light. “You may, and then again you may not get a chance to,” Slowly as if collecting herself as well she comes and sits beside me wiping the still falling tears from my cheeks. “Your body is alive Glory, and you are in a coma .We pulled you out early, its all fairly open ended at this moment in time my dear, and it’s all up to you really.” I swear to you. If she wasn’t already dead. I’d strangle her. What We Do With It Ch. 02 *Love makes us gods - With one exception; after the crucifixion we have to roll away our own stone* - S.M. Sitting there in the early morning in the middle of Queens listening to my guide explain to me exactly what The Powers That Be had done to my soul is an experience that will stay with me forever. “We pulled you out early as we do with a good many select souls, your body is safe and alive beside that of your friend’s. And you can go back two things provided.” Standing up now I looked down at Jada’s face my own expression mixed with so many feelings I can’t begin to list them here, “ What do I have to do?” Smoothing her blue robes she sighed and began to speak, the look on her face telling me I shouldn’t interrupt again. “You have to want to go back, and you have to give me good reason why going back is so important to you. There are a great many things you can do with yourself on this plane of existence Glory, You can become a guide like myself. Or you could ascend to the upper world after a time and learn all there is to know in paradise. And of course, you can go back and do it all again with a new life.” Looking at my face thoughtfully she began again. “Of course, with your opting to go back you’ll have to relive some of your more unfortunate moments as well as those beautiful ones you just recalled. The Powers that Be might wish for something else as well my dear. Everyone who wants to go back has to endure The Waiting Place.” Well at least she was matter-of-fact about the whole situation I have to give her that. These things she’d told me rolled around in my bed and I spoke again after what felt like an hour. “I need to think, but you need to teach me to navigate the labyrinth first.” Rising to her feet she beckoned me with a nod of her head and I followed her through air until we where back inside the swirling blue maze. “It’s a matter of mind in this plane, you see you must remember the place you wish to go to without letting other thoughts inside. Something about your destination has to drive you on, an object there, or something that happened once in that particular place. You see?” I nod an affirmative here and she edges me on. “Try it then, I won’t be far away should something go awry.” Walking forwards in the swirling blue light I can understand how one would get distracted in here, I’m finding it hard to focus on much of anything except the infinite patterns before me. Then a thought comes to me, another memory and I walk forward remembering the cup of tea I’d drank inside my closest friend’s house. Inside her room to be more exact, and then with another turn of the maze I’m there, watching her dress. Of course she doesn’t see me and out of living habit I look away immediately glancing at the light on her stereo. Suddenly I’m hit with the overwhelming vertigo of having the living walk through me as she exits her room. Being the diligent specter I’m slowly becoming I follow her into her car and onto the highway beyond. She’s upset and I see that, we’re in a coma Emma and I and she’s going to the hospital. I’m at her heels the whole time standing beside her in the elevator as we go up many floors, and into intensive care. Side-by-side is my body and my friends, my mother is sitting beside my bed and I am caught staring at my soulless body. If I jump onto it who knows what I’ll do but being so close to life again I can’t help inching forwards to try. That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder. He must’ve been about six and a half feet tall, dark skinned like Jada and gruffly seeming. “Peeping in on the living eh?” he says to me in that sagely manner certain people have about them. I nod turning away from my family and looking up at the spirit before me. He looks over my shoulder and sees my body too and his eyebrows raise a moment, “Going to The Waiting Place soon, huh?” Silent I nod again and look over my shoulder at my figure on the hospital bed, I’d never been a patient at a hospital before. The man is leaving now and I am drawn to follow like a whelp of a ghost. “Have you ever been there?” I ask after him and he stops, sitting in a chair lining the wide hospital hallways. Sitting beside him my elbow resting on my knee face in hand I listen intently to any information he could give me. “It goes like this, or at least it did when I was up for my statement : You stand before them like in a courtroom trial, and they ask you questions about life, and about your life in particular. And then they make you wait, usually in a nice spot from your breathing days. You stew for a little while and your guide comes to you and tell you their decision. If they allow you back in the body you go back to life. And if they don’t…then you become a Wanderer for as long as they tell you to, like me.” I nod thoughtfully and my brain is already working on what I’d say to these Powers when my hearing came, but first apparently I’d have to survive old pains again, that’s what Jada told me. Snapping back to the here-and-now I looked back up at the guy and squinted a bit thinking “A wanderer is what? A ghost who haunts places and people?” He exhaled loudly and nodded several times. “Been doin it for twenty years now. My next hearing is in another year, but this time I’m not trying to go back, I’m just trying to get home.” Blinking, it may’ve seemed ignorant to a well seasoned specter but I had to ask “What’s home now?” The man smiled kindly at me and his eyes rolled to the heavens, I understood immediately. That’s when the man walked past me, I’d haunted his room last night and now it was his turn to haunt mine, like a carrot waved in front of a hamster’s nose I almost was dragged out of my chair by his breeze walking past. The other spirit chuckled softly as he watched my rather obvious outpouring of emotion. Rising out of his seat the other ghost looked after my man and chuckled softly, “One of your reasons for goin back I take it?” The corner of my mouth twitched a little and I nodded my eyes following the man until he disappears inside of my hospital room. I hear conversation in there and let my gaze linger for a moment longer on his shadow in the doorway before turning back to the ghost who’s smiling wisely down at me, “Looks like you’ve got a pretty good reason to me. I think you have some questions that you need to think on answers for.” Lifting his hat to me respectably he walked through the wall across from me and was gone. I got out of my chair and walked back into my hospital room to stand behind my mother who was engaged in a conversation with my best friend and the man. Studying there faces as they were talking about what could, and might happen to my body. Yes I had a lot of things I needed to answer for myself. What We Do With It Ch. 03 ~Please note: The lyrics are not mine, they appear courtesy of Norah Jones' marvelous talent~ Back with Jada walking through the dazzling light show of the labyrinth she praises me for my ability to learn how to navigate myself so quickly, and I in turn am telling her about the ghost I met at the hospital and what he told me of the trial I am to face in the near future. We arrive after a time in my bedroom , I look around and then at her with an odd expression on my face. Certainly I wasn't expecting to come back here, Jada can tell this from my face and she gestures me to sit, I sink onto my bed, and she takes the chair at my desk turning around to look at me. "The pain is something you feel you are ready face this soon after being separated from your body ?" All I can do is nod, she stands and suddenly the serious of events rolls through my mind another montage of my breathing twenty years. Four year old me is waiting bundled up in her winter coat. Today is the day my father comes to visit me. He doesn't usually but that doesn't mean I don't wait all the same. The door bell rings and I feel the excitement I felt sixteen years ago, innocent anticipation only a little child could have. The younger me bursts through the front door of the tiny apartment shouting an over-joyed greeting to…the paperboy. The child me is crestfallen, and I feel that inside all over again and seeing this scene replayed made me remember why things like this stuck with you through life. Seven years after this, and I've moved up north to a new suburban place and school leaving everything I ever knew behind me. I'm walking through my front door after a strange unremarkable first day. I remember thinking that I'd done well of just sinking into my surroundings until my grandmother walks past me and pulls a sign off my back. Another milestone in rejection and disappointment for me. Same father, eleven years later and I'm not getting out of bed for something it'd be better that I didn't go to. He's not understanding this…and he's ripping the posters off of my walls. Fury is being reborn inside me and I'm out of my bed and screaming at him, and he's slapping me. Inside my heart on this other plane I am sinking further and further into this montage of my past agonies. Sixteen now and on the telephone with a boyfriend, I feel how much I love him and I'm grinning as I pick up the phone talking in my happy lively way until I stop suddenly, my face falling eyes wide listening to what he's saying. I'm not his soul mate, he can't be with me anymore. Very quickly I flash through the achingly terrible fighting that occurred between he and I, and the six months of healing that followed. With focus on the rough spots. I'm beginning to get this feeling in my chest like my hearts becoming almost to full, re-feeling all this at once. The sadness of my life I think now, that it's over while still scarring in it's own way could not be nearly as bad as others I've known in my life, or just the standard of bad itself. Now with eternity sitting out before me I contemplate this and look up at Jada from across my bedroom. She says nothing, and her face is unreadable, at once she rises and leaves me alone with my thoughts. Turning around I stare at my semi-neatly made bed and think back on the sobbing nights I'd spent here. Almost defiantly I shake my head and remember the wonderful nights and days I'd also spent here, laying back across my comforter when my door opens suddenly. I've forgotten myself caught by such surprise that I give the man a huge welcoming grin as he stares right through me at my undoubtedly cold and empty bed, sighing heavily I stand before him, watching him look right through me. If only there was some small way I could tell him I was still here for him. He enters my room and sits in the same Jada did, his eyes roving over my cluttered and messy walls, smiling a bit at my collection of photographs on one section of my wall. I sit on my pillows, leaning back and watch him for a moment before looking questionably at my stereo. Casting a sideways glance at the man, who is still looking at the photos smiling in a sort of sad, sort of fond way. I look back to the CD player and center my energies reached a spectral finger out the machine comes to life. Guilty I pull back seeing him stiffen and cast a speculative eye at my current area, I wait a moment longer and Jada does not bust through my wall with some reprimand, I mean it's not like she told me I couldn't be doing this. My eyes never left his startled face as the slow blues sounding music filled the room. The song floated around in the air, almost as ghostly as I was. Sitting there I smiled sadly at how precise those lyrics knew what they were talking about. "My heart is drenched in wine But you'll be on my mind Forever" That's when Jada came in, and she looked almost pissed off. My stereo shut off immediately, the man was left alone sitting there, and I was dragged by my guide back to the labyrinth.