by Shaun Meeks
“If you can’t find something in it that can help you in the next life, I’m afraid that you risk reliving the same mistakes until you do. But it’s time to go for you I think. Are you ready?”
“Not really.”
The old man stood up and helped Jeff to his feet. They walked over to the door, and Jeff looked around at the people in the terminal, this time with his eyes open as to who they all really were and what they were doing here. He wondered if any of them would move on and get to live a better life than the last one, something that would bring them some kind of joy. He looked to the door as he approached it and wondered why he couldn’t just think that he deserved a better life this time, if he didn’t deserve to walk around with a smile on his face. Would that be so bad?
“Will I remember this when I am…reborn?”
“No, that would defeat learning, wouldn’t it? Every time you go back, you have to rediscover what it means to be alive. Try to remember this; if you can’t take the joke, you risk becoming it. I saw that on a t-shirt once and really liked it.”
They reached the doors and the old man patted Jeff’s back as though reassuring him that everything would be okay, but he wasn’t so sure it would be. He wondered how many times he had gone through these doors before, if maybe he had lived a bad life time and time again for a hundred or a thousand lives. He felt weak as the doors began to open, wishing this had all been just a bad dream, some chicken he had eaten last night giving him one Hell of a fucked up dream. But as the doors opened and the warm, calling light kissed his cheeks, he knew this was as real as life could ever be and maybe this time, he would be happy. He turned and looked at the old man who was now a young boy again and saw that the boy was smiling with such innocence to him Jeff wondered if this is what angel’s really look like, but the boy shook his head.
“So are you an angel?”
“There are no angels I’m afraid, only guides up here to help you to the door. What you do from here, is up to you.”
You Can’t Always Run Away
NOW
Robin is driving the Honda Civic along the deserted road that the government has the nerve to call a highway. It is no more than a thin stretch of asphalt, one lane on either side of the faded yellow line that cuts through the middle. The so-called “highway” is more of a paved country road and it seems as though right now, her car is the only one on it. Well, that isn’t completely true now; the car really isn’t even hers. She’s not sure who it belongs to, nor does she care about it at the moment. Knowing the owner of the beat up old hatchback is the least of her problems. The fact that she is speeding along a deserted highway, not seeing any other moving cars around her is one problem. There is also the dried blood on her pants, the empty seat where her husband should be and the memory of what had taken place not that long ago. She gives the rear view mirror a quick glance, not knowing if she is being followed or not, and is not surprised to see that all is as empty behind her as it is in front of her. She has little doubt in her mind that things will change anytime soon either.
Although, she tries to hold onto a thin string of hope.
Very thin.
Robin clutches the steering wheel with both hands so hard that her knuckles are as white as the sclera of her own eyes staring back at her from the rear view mirror. She grits her teeth and tries to ignore the thin sheen of sweat that is now on her forehead. She looks at the digital clock on the dash and realizes that she has now been awake going on forty hours and she doubts that she will be able to go on much longer like this. She has been running and driving straight since the world had fallen apart, and through her exhaustion she knows that if she does finally stop, possibly even for half a minute, it will catch her and then it would all be over and done with. She glances back to the mirror wondering just how close it is, just how many seconds she would have if she did stop, knowing that it had to be close now.
How much longer can I last like this? She asks herself and reaches beside her, picking up a stale, half eaten Twinkie and takes a bite of it. The sugar rush of the now partially crunchy sponge-like cake is good, but it is a fleeting feeling and she knows it. Not only is she lacking sleep, but she is lacking any kind of proper food. And even the food she does have, which consists of chips and cake-type things, is running out fast as is the bottled water she has with her. There had only been two bottles of water and a handful of snacks to start with, which now equals half a bag of chips, almost a full bottle of water and the stale Twinkie. She would have rationed things better if she had known that what had happened was going to happen, but not even a true psychic would ever foresee such a thing. If some palm reader had told her a week ago, a year ago or even when she was a more imaginative child that these things were going to take place, that she would have to run for her life feeling her husband’s blood drying on her pants while being chased by some nightmare, she would have laughed the impossibility off, still not thinking to ration the food and water she had. But the impossible seems all too possible now. And with no sleep and her water and food quickly running out, the biggest possibilities are all looking bleak.
She gives her head a quick shake, her eyelids feeling heavy and tries her best to wake herself up. She unrolls the window to let some fresh summer air in and turns the radio on, hoping to hear something back this time, even if it was some god-awful country music. She moves the dial up and down along the AM and FM stations and hears the same thing that she has been hearing for the last day and a half.
Static.
Hissing nothingness is all that greets her ears as she drives, like the sound of a television when the only picture you’re getting on it is snow. As she listens to the hissing sound again, just as she had when she first stepped into the car and began driving away from the death miles behind her now, she can hear something else. Under the hissing, almost hidden in the static filled depths are another sound, a horrible sound barely audible, but once you hear it you can’t unhear it. It is voices, their voices.
Them.
She doesn’t want to allow herself to believe that there is a “they”, or a “them”, because that makes her feel as though she is crazy. Every crazy person has a “they”, a “them”, some shadowy figure or group that seemed to control their every action and make them act as crazy as they were. Those “thems” and “theys” are all symptoms of a mental imbalance, an imaginary creation to justify what was wrong with them. Robin’s finger traces the blood stain on her pants and knows that she isn’t crazy, not like those delusional people, because her husband’s blood proves that what she had seen in the mall, what had made her start running was totally real.
How can it all be real? How can what happened not be some nightmare that I can’t wake up from?
She thinks that maybe she is in a coma, has been involved in some horrible accident and can’t wake up from the horrible dreams she is having: dreams induced by watching too many horror movies. Is it possible to feel and see things this vividly in a dream? She doubts it. Not even if the dreams are being caused by her dying body fight to hold on to the last of her mortality.
Robin turns the radio off, not wanting to hear the hissing sound or the voices whispering underneath making a sound like wind whistling through tall grass. Better to concentrate on driving, and on not falling asleep than to think on this madness anymore. She won’t let her mind fall onto the events in the mall, or her husband or the whispered voices in the radio. She tries to think of where this road is going to lead her, hoping that at the end of it there will be some kind of happy ending waiting for her, like her suddenly waking up and finding she that this is all just a horrible nightmare brought on by eating chocolate before bed. She laughs at the idea as the sun peeks out from behind a cloud and hits the gold wedding band on her left hand. The light shines in her eyes, nearly blinding her for a moment, but she recovers quickly as tears wield up, not from the brightness, but from the reality of this whole mess that she is trying to deny.
Logan!
She bites
her lower lip to fight back the wave of sobs that want to consume her, sobs that will be so hard and over powering if she lets them some out of her, a fit of tears that will be so bad that if she allows them out she will have no choice but to pull the car over to the side of the road and let it all out. Just think about his name makes all the memories of him come flooding back into her head like a tidal wave of uncontrollable emotion. Just thinking his name brings his smile to mind, the way his dimples looked when it was a true smile that spread across his beautiful face. The thoughts of him brought his eyes, glimmering like pools that she fell in love with long before she told him those words. She wants to do anything but think about the way he held her, kissed her or made love to her, because she knows that thinking about it too long will cause her to break down to tears and she will have to stop the car. She can’t allow that though, not at the risk of losing any fluids that she can’t afford to lose and not at the risk of being caught by the living malice that had wreaked carnage in the mall. Robin knows she cannot allow herself to lose control as her exhausted mind pounds from fighting the tears back and as memory over take her regardless of how much she wishes they would just go away.
THEN
“Hurry up, Logan!” Robin laughed excitedly, pulling her husband by his upper arm, trying to move him quickly though the over-crowded mall. The two of them had a busy day ahead of them, one that she had been planning all week and she knew they didn’t have time to stop for a second to “dilly-dally” about as her mom use to say. They had just stopped off at a store to buy drinks and treats for a movie they were going to watch seeing as Robin refused to buy those things in the theatre. Why go and pay twenty-five dollars on a movie then another thirty on popcorn and drinks when you could just sneak your own in? It just made way more sense to her that way.
“Don’t worry, Robin. We still have all day to get to theatre. It’s not like there’s just one show.” Logan said with a smile as he slowed again looking at the large LCD television in the electronic store.
“Yeah, let’s go to the later show when all the dumb kids and drunken idiots get there. That always adds to the great atmosphere of the place.” She said, her voice filled with sarcasm. She smiled at him though as he looked at her, his gorgeous eyes glowing, seemed to be made even brighter by the shirt he was wearing. She loved to see him in that shirt, one that she had bought for him when they were going to Disney World, their first real vacation as a couple. “Now stop looking at your little boy-toys and get your little hot buns moving mister!”
Finally she was able to pry her husband away from the window full of male temptation and they continued their mad trek through the busy mall and the thickening crowd. Robin’s next stop would be to the trinket shop where she had seen a cute little porcelain pig statuette that was made to look like Abraham Lincoln. She had seen it two days ago when she had come to the mall for a birthday present for her younger sister, and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it and how cute it would look on her desk at work. As she dragged her reluctant husband behind her, she just hoped that it was still there.
Not that she ever made it to the shop, so she never found out if it was.
Robin and Logan turned the corner next to an overly expensive jewelry store with lights so bright that they were blinding if you were to look straight at them, and as they did, she saw a little girl. There were many small children in the mall already, running around, crying, acting out so that their parents would break down and take them to the toy store, but none of them caught Robin’s eye like this little girl. The girl reminded Robin of a doll she had once had as a child, a porcelain doll that she had been given on her sixth birthday, her pride and joy for years. The little girl, her pale skin almost glowing in the florescent lights of the mall, under a head of golden curls that fell on her equally pale shoulders and on the purple velvet dress she wore. Robin looked at the child’s face, into her deep green eyes and smile to herself, thinking of the doll and wondering if she would ever be a mother. She gave Logan’s hand a squeeze at that thought, continuing to watch the child skipping alone across the mall, as graceful as a ballerina and humming a strange song to her. The little girl’s movements seemed to mesmerize Robin who slowed her steps as she walked, and didn’t even notice when Logan let go of her hand as he continued to walk. She paid her husband no mind, but watched as the life-sized doll moved towards the wish pond with the huge statue in it. The girl was smiling and seemed to be alone as nobody around appeared to notice her, aside from Robin who again was having those feelings welling up inside her for a child of her own, her own little porcelain doll.
Robin and Logan had talked a while ago about having kids, as did Robin’s mother, although her mother went from talking about it at times to insisting upon it. The talks would usually start after Robin watched a show with a child in it, or saw a new mother with her lovely baby and she’d feel the same feeling that she was having looking at the little girl. She would tell Logan that she was thirty-one and that she was getting to the age where having a baby was not really going to be an option anymore. She would sit there with him, usually on the couch in their living room after dinner and he would explain how they were not financially able to have a baby, that if he got his promotion at work, then, then they could think about kids, but right now it was just not an option. She would always get angry because she could feel her biological clock ticking and she also felt the urge to have a BIG family like she had had growing up. Her mother, who called at least three times a week asking if she was pregnant yet, had instilled in her that kids were the meaning of life, that life was all about family. Children. Roots. You needed someone in your life to love and nurture, to watch grow and to teach. Someone to...
Robin’s thoughts of a child of her own were suddenly brought to a halt as she was watching the little girl who was now standing completely still in front of the pond, so motionless it was eerie. Whatever the girl was doing, or actually not doing, touched a cold nerve in Robin that sent a wave through her and made a pinching feeling in her stomach. It should be silly for a thirty year old woman to see a child standing still and get the creeping-willies, but that was just what was going on. The way her arms hung at her side, how she seemed as still as the statue in the pond, was just so unnatural.
“What do you think of that, Logan?” She asked as she continued to walk towards the girl. “Logan?”
Robin turned her head and saw that her husband had stopped again at another store window, another man-store, this time a sporting goods store with fishing equipment displayed in the window that was causing her husband to gawk like a child. She shook her head and laughed at how much he was like the child she wanted, only without the diaper changes.
Well, I’m not going to wait for you, little boy. She thinks quietly to herself and continued to walk through the mall, turning her attention back in the direction of the little girl and the wish pond. When she did turn her head around, she saw that the girl was no longer standing motionless in front of the pond as she had been, but was now standing in it, as still as she had been and as creepy as before, but the fact that she was in the water now and nobody else around there seemed to notice or care, struck Robin as odd. She wondered why nobody was telling her to get out, or why the mall security guards who were close by seemed to just be ignoring the child, choosing to stand by the Wal-Mart and drink their coffees. She looked back at the girl who seemed to be staring right at her now; a sickening smile had unfolded on the child’s face. The smile didn’t seem like a smile at all, but looked more like the flesh on the little girl’s face had shrunken and peeled back to expose her teeth, like a corpse whose skin had begun to dry up and reveal teeth.
Robin slowed her steps, but seemed unable to stop walking towards the girl and the pond,
And then something began to happen, to change.
The air around Robin suddenly became silent, as though someone had pushed a mute button on a television and the entire mall became a moving, silent show. There seemed to be no sou
nd there at all that Robin could hear, except for her own footfalls that echoed in her own ears, yet slowed down as though she was being played in slow motion or walking through air as thick as taffy. It was like she had stepped out of the real world and into a dream world, one where you can’t make your legs move as fast as you want them to or how they normally would. And those dreams usually ended with something bad happening, something that made her feel as though she needed to run away, some sort of nightmare thing chasing her.
She hoped that this was not a nightmare come true, but then her eyes fell back on the child and she knew that she would not be so lucky. As she looked at her, the little girl’s deep green eyes suddenly started to lighten and become brighter, even seeming to be growing in size as well, and looking more unnatural with each passing second. They began to take on a cat-like look, only larger and brighter, almost to the point where they were glowing, and that gave Robin another cold shiver as she continued to walk, feeling unable to just stop.
You’re just being silly. She tried to tell herself, but found that she wasn’t very convincing at the moment. It’s a little girl, a child, what in God’s name are you freaking out over? She’s only smiling at you, standing in the water and smiling because she’s not getting in trouble. Relax.
Only she couldn’t relax and couldn’t let herself stop thinking that way, could let go of the fear that was knocking at her mind’s door. Nobody else around noticed any of this as far as she could tell and that made it all the stranger. This little girl standing in the wish pool near the statue, dressed like a doll and smiling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, it didn’t seem odd to anyone else? They all just continued to stand around chatting, staring into store windows drinking their coffees and teas, oblivious to the oddity before them. Very few people seemed to even be walking around at this point and still nobody noticed.
