by D. M. Raver
DYING TO LIVE AGAIN
A Paranormal Short Story
By D. M. Raver
Copyright © 2015 D. M. Raver
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. This is copyrighted work. Do not replicate it or distribute without written permission from the author. Brief quotes may be used for a review or critique.
Front Cover © 2015 D. M. Raver, Commissioned Artwork
SMASHWORDS EDITION
For Amanda.
Your beauty flows from within.
“Are you going to sing?”
“Dance – or do something!”
Voices from the crowd taunt me. Some of the spectators begin to leave. Enough stay to satisfy my purpose. Today they will see.. what I really am.
A freak.
I look out across the crowd of strangers. The appeal of some free afternoon entertainment has drawn mostly a younger crowd, early and mid twenties. They converse with each other, laughing, amusing themselves as they wait in anticipation for the sunset.
I feel it begin. Leaning heavily on the wood box, I try to steady myself.
“Aw come on, when’s the show gunna start?” a man’s voice demands, eliciting jeers from the crowd. More start to leave, but my concern for them is diminishing. A chill creeps up my legs.
On my position on the community stage, I see the sun lower beneath the second story balconies down the street. Shafts of sunlight fall upon me, and the crowd stills, collective gasps rising above the sudden silence.
They can now see, I am not a late-aged, brown haired woman. My hair has turned gray. Pronounced wrinkles cover my face.
Some of the spectators laugh and cheer, thinking it is some sideshow illusion. Some take out their phones and the chime of fake camera noises mixes with their delighted chatter.
The end comes quickly now. My flesh sags across my form. Dark patches splatter my brown skin. The strangers quiet again as they witness the gradual transformation.
Muscles lose their rigor and it is difficult to hold myself against the pull of gravity. The vision of the crowd blurs. I look to my hands... drying and wrinkling like a drought on a riverbed.
“What is happening?” a voice shouts from the crowd.
My bones slowly fuse, my joints deteriorate, leaving my fingers slightly misshapen, my back and shoulders bent. The luster and fullness of my hair fades with its color, and I push the dry, white strands off my face.
Trembling, I feel my cheeks, covered with the deep cracks of age. The cold is strong. I start to sway.
“Somebody help her!” a woman yells. Her voice echoes the fear in my heart. They see, they finally see... the curse of my existence.
With both hands on the corner of the box I struggle to hold up my weak, shaking body. The crowd is still there, staring at me.
Though I can barely see, I can hear them, strangers... gawking at my feeble form. I curl up my body, trying to keep it warm.
Tears glaze my eyes. It is the end, and I am alone. What have I done?
“Da!” I call for my father like a child, though my voice rasps, worn and aged.
The cold has come. My breath feels coarse. There’s pain in each muscles, each bone. My heart strains in my chest like it is encased in ice, trying to warm a frozen body.
Someone pushes through the crowd. I recognize his dark hair and medium build. He climbs the platform and catches me before I collapse.
His warmth surrounds me. Emotion gives me more strength than I feel I have, and my fists grab tightly onto his shirt.
“Oh Da!”
“It’s alright, I’m here,” his familiar, even toned voice comforts me.
I want him to carry me away from this place, but there isn’t time. Though he blocks most of the view, the crowd can see my form, a frail shell of life.
I blink the tears from my eyes and look up to my father’s face. He is sad, but not angry with me. I remember the cross words I spoke to him that morning. Biting my lower lip, I wish I could take them all back.
My hands lose the power to hold him, but he pulls me closer as I start to slip. I see my face reflected in his dark eyes. Petite, frail, with skin like weathered earth.
Weakness has taken my chest. I gasp, choking on my fear.
“Please... help me.”
Da holds me tighter, running his hands over my hair, but I can barely feel him. My heart begins to slow, giving into the cold at last. I try to hold onto the feel of Da holding me, the feel of air in my chest.
“I’m scared.”
Da hears; I feel him tremble as he holds me.
“Don’t be afraid, Aruna. The night will pass, and a glorious sun will rise again.”
The sun. I look up, past the blurred outlines of the crowd down the street. The orange disk kisses the horizon.
As the last remnants of life leave my body, my mind returns to the yogi woman, to the market, to the pool, to the start of this sad tale...
So many people pass by here each day. Hundreds. Thousands. There’s so many people in the city that someone could spend their whole life here and never be noticed.
Many people come to the market, where we run a small outdoor booth under the overhang of a two story building. Our apartments are upstairs. Dyed fabrics flap in the breeze, one of our best selling wares besides the beaded jewelry boxes. They are all commercially made, imported from India, but they are popular with the tourists and the locals.
The market is the perfect place to hide. I never spend too much time with one customer, and the draped scarves and shawls offer some privacy from the other vendors.
Da appears, a handful of cut red vanda flowers and his thoughtful smile lighting his golden-brown face. He ties the flowers so they swing upside down in the breeze.
“For my Aruna.” He kisses me on the cheek.
I try to return his joy. It is mid morning and so far the day has been good.
“How about some spinach and lentils?” he offers and ducks beneath the back kashmiri shawls. Soon he returns with the salad and fresh-squeezed carrot and fruit juice.
“Not that it matters,” I comment as I eat his prescribed healthy snack, “I could eat potato chips and Coke and it wouldn’t change anything.”
Da gives me a paternal, scolding look, but he doesn’t comment. His interventions have helped prolong the good each day, but have done little to improve my dark thoughts.
Carrying my straw mat under my arm, I reach the renovated warehouse a few blocks to the east of the market. A yogi meets here several times throughout the day, teaching sessions of various skill levels. She must be in her late seventies, but she is still fit and healthy, her long gray hair always tied back, and her bright eyes piercing like the sun through a foggy sky. She is a master of spirit and body.
Young men and women of the neighborhood had cleaned out the first story of an abandoned warehouse and fashioned it with open air and natural light, and a layer of soft wood planks atop the concrete.
The master yogi stands at the edge of the large open room. She is beautiful, even at her age, which is another reason why so many gather here for her sessions.
I sit at the back, pulling the scarf near my face. I unroll my mat and join the light yoga session, the crowd of thirty or more expertly following the yogi’s calm spoken directions.
I ease myself into a head-to-knee forward bend. The stiffness in my back and legs slowly loosens as I relax into the stretch.
“Be aware of your breath,” the yogi’s voice drifts over the group. “Don’t let your senses be consumed by what you see or hear.” I let go of my anxiousness and allow the yogi to guide my body to complete relaxation. “Expand your consciousness to everything present in the moment.”
Finding m
yself in a savasana pose, I realize I’ve stayed too long. I pull the scarf over my face, roll up my mat and quietly leave.
On my way back through the market, I take a detour through the tourist section. A few blocks from the beach, many vacationers flock here like flamingos to the mud flats of the Rann.
I take a route through some community pools. The water glistens such a soft, perfect blue, glimmering with the full light of the sun. The cool, clear water calls to me. I stand near the edge, staring at my rippling, distorted reflection. In the prime of my life, my body is firm, full, and soft in all the right places. I pull off my scarf, revealing my sleek black hair. My unflawed skin shines with a light sweat.
Laughter pulls me from my reprieve. Two women lounge at the end of the pool, sun bathing in bikinis and expensive sun glasses.
They joke and laugh again, and I suspect it is at my expense. I must be an amusing sight, fully dressed in my anarkali dress and leaning over the pool to stare at my reflection. Their shrill laughter gnaws at me like rats. I am angry, but mostly jealous. Jealous that they can spend hours of their day lounging around, exposed, carefree.
I turn to leave. With a jerk, my foot catches something hard and concrete. A panicked moment I try to keep my balance. But I fall, clenching my eyes shut, as if it would prevent injury. My head connects with the sidewalk and the impact jars my thoughts.
I’m surrounded by something cool, blue, clear. It is roaring, but silent. So peaceful, it holds my breath.
My breath... I’m not breathing. But I don’t care. Shafts of golden sunlight sparkle through the crystal blue, getting darker, turning purple, then black...
The sillouhette of a form leans over me.
“I’m a doctor,” a man’s voice says, muffled. It is Da. I try to speak to him, but I can’t breathe. I feel him lift me in his arms.
I should be frightened, I should be relieved, but I am disconnected from my body. It doesn’t feel real, like I’m look on someone else’s dream. Darkness returns.
I open my eyes to my Star of India mosaic quilt. Closing them again a long moment, I feel a rush in my head. After I feel I can stand it, my gaze focuses on my surroundings.
Da has brought me home. He has rescued me, again.
I hear him in the kitchen. I decide to lay still, gently testing all parts of my body to check for injury. Nothing hurts, not even the back of my head where I hit the pavement. It was too real to have been just a dream, which means that a day has passed.
Da enters my room with a steaming plate of stir fried squash and zucchini. My stomach rumbles loud enough to hear it.
Da sets the plate on the night stand and leans over me. He wraps his hands on the sides of my head and places his forehead against mine.
“You were asleep so long, I was worried you wouldn’t wake.”
I look at my hands, feel my face. It is still early morning.
Da helps me sit up and passes me the plate. As I ravenously eat he sits beside me in silence. When I am finished he takes the plate, deliberately placing it on the night stand before turning back to me. By the look on his face I know I am in for a lecture.
“Drowning yourself?” His dark eyes are full of concern, his proximity and expression demanding an answer – demanding the truth.
I bite my lip, reaching for the back of my head where my mind remembers the pain, though my body has forgotten.
It is not he first time I’ve tired to kill myself. Twice with pills, and once by cutting my wrists, though Da caught me that time before I lost enough blood. It doesn’t surprise me that he thinks this was intentional too.
“It was an accident,” I explain, not in defense, just as a statement. It doesn’t matter how I speak the words, Da probably won’t believe me.
He sighs and looks away. It troubles him, more than anything else, when I try to end my life early.
“An accident?” he asks.
I nod, though he doesn’t face me to see it. He wipes his face. It was another sleepless night for him.
“How did you get me home?”
Da shakes his head, like he can’t believe he did it. “I had to bribe an EMT. Even then, he tried to follow me home.”
“You could have just told him the truth.”
He turns back to me, surprised. This is a new self-destructive suggestion of mine. He huffs in exasperation and stands.
“So you could spend your days in a research facility? What kind of a life would that be?” His voice gets softer as he grows angry.
I try to restrain myself as he starts out of my room, but the words are stronger than my will... “What kind of life is this?”
Da pauses and bows his head before he leaves, but doesn’t return an argument. His restraint is greater than mine.
I carefully stand and head for the shower. The day has already started, and the best parts will pass without me if I don’t join them.
A peace settles on my heart. A sad, heavy peace. Sitting in the hammock on the roof of our apartments, I stare at the city.
I should feel connected with the buildings and streets. It has been several years since we moved here from India. I can’t remember exactly how long. After Mother left and Da lost his job at the hospital.
It should be familiar, but the only places I feel any semblance to comfort are within the walls of our apartment and the renovated warehouse.
Though it is later in the day than I usually go, I decide to make the short journey. Perhaps some exercise can distract my thoughts for a time.
It is mid afternoon and the day has worn on me. The journey is slower now than the early morning. My joints catch and ache.
By the time I make it to the warehouse there’s a new crowd there. Young tourists, come for the amusement and wonder. In their capitalistic society, they don’t understand how someone so talented could offer these sessions for free, no organization, just allowing anyone to wander in.
The natives hang back as the yogi goes through several basic poses with the tourists. They don’t appear to be the rich snobs that frequent the downtown beach area. Some even know the yoga moves the yogi teaches. They put their hair in dreads, buy their clothes and food at chain organic stores and consider themselves living naturally.
“Acquiring possessions only increases our fear of losing them.” The tourists smile as the yogi speaks. “Let go of the weight of material things, and your spirit will be free to experience the completeness of the universe.”
She shows them the beginning level vrksasana, tree pose, and then takes it to the more advanced stretch, looking upward and raising her arms. The locals follow her, and the tourists do their best to do so.
“Learn how to move and flow with the energies of the body.”
We return to a standing pose, with the yogi directing us to return to the center. She takes us gradually into a standing forward bend, and reaching to the floor I forget about the tourists.
“Don’t try to force your body. Meditation and relaxation are a letting go, not a battle with existence in how you want it to be. Relax... into who you are.”
Her calm, accented voice drifts inside my soul. I feel my chest open as I reach upward. My body awakens through the stretch.
“We find joy when we accept who we are, who we are meant to be.”
I blink, finding myself to the back of the crowd. I stand a moment, amidst the room of strangers, wishing someone would see...
...who I really am.
I’m tired of hiding. Every thread of my being screams, wishing the crowd to turn around, someone, anyone. But they all continue their stretch, oblivious. With emotion so strong I begin to shake, I collect my mat and force myself to leave in silence.
Da is helping a young couple when I return to the booth. They glance at me, probably figuring I am Da’s mother because of my age.
They smile as they pay, genuinely happy together. I watch them leave, holding hands and browsing the other vendors.
Carefree.
Bitterness darkens my mood like ink
dripping into water. Da comes beside me and places his heavy hand on my shoulder. I look to the sun hanging above the building tops and understand – soon I won’t be able to walk. With solemn steps he follows me inside.
The day is young and my mind is troubled. Da expects me to join him at our booth, but each step I take towards the stairs amplifies my agitation. I go back to the couch and lay down, wishing we had a TV.
I’m wasting the best part of the day, when energy flows from my body like a fountain. But I don’t care.
My will feels broken. Still here, still present, just in pieces. I stare at the dappled ceiling, wishing time would pass quicker – but also that it would stop, and I could hold onto this moment forever.
After about an hour, I hear Da climbing the stairs. He’s left the booth unattended during one of the busiest parts of the day.
He stands before the couch and his calm dark eyes assess me. In a moment I know he’s figured out the reason for my lethargy, but he will still want me to tell him.
“Why are you still inside?” His tone is between cautious and commanding. He’s trying to figure out if today will be a bad day.
“I don’t know.”
“You should come out and enjoy the morning.”
I heave in exasperation. “I don’t see the point in us running the booth everyday.”
“We all need something to do to occupy our time.”
“But what’s the point?” I sit up and meet his calm resolve with anger. “We go down there, sell useless trinkets and jewelry to passing tourists. What good comes from it?”
Da crosses his arms across his chest, not wanting to get into a heated argument.
“When you worked at the hospital at least your day had purpose. At least you were helping people.”
He bows his head. “I made a choice.”
