Love on the Edge of Time

by Julie A. Richman

  “But there is not pressure for them in that. Not like what I went through.”

  “There are many strategies you can employ to work on the pressure and get your life back.”

  “Why do you assume I want it back, Claire? Maybe I don’t equate thin and perfect looking to happiness. I was thin and perfect and I wasn’t remotely happy. Why the hell would I want to go back to that?” Kylie visibly shuddered, memories of starving herself, hours in make-up before pageants and the stress and competitiveness rolling off her mother and the other parents. It was Hell. And it certainly wasn’t her dream.

  Claire remained silent for a few moments. “I had you scheduled for a regression today. Is that something you would still like to pursue?”

  Kylie shrugged her shoulders and took another sip of her Frappuccino. “Sure. Why not?” She seemed resigned. She wanted the process to work, but up until now, all she’d seen were some hazy images, like viewing an old slide show, and who knew if that was even real. Although she desperately wanted it to be, mainly because lack of a truly successful regression in her first twelve attempts was making her feel like a failure. Yup, add that to the pile.

  With the press of a remote, the window shades darkened, giving the Inner Sanctum an insulated, cocoon-like feel.

  Immediately relaxing in the darkness, Kylie reached over to the side-table next to the couch, feeling around with her hands as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she picked up a pair of what appeared to be oversized sunglasses. Situating them on her face, she played with a small scroll button that adjusted speed and intensity of colored light flashes. Placing headphones on as she laid back on the couch, soft drumbeats played and the lights before her eyes danced to the music.

  And then they started. Just like they had done a dozen times before.

  “Are you in a comfortable position?”

  “Yes.” She could hear Claire’s soothing voice through her headphones. Her voice is so soothing, so why does she grate on my nerves so much? Kylie wondered, before shooing the thought from her consciousness and finding a comfortable spot lying down on the couch.

  “Good. Now, let’s begin. Start with a few deep, cleansing breaths. Each breath is like a gust of wind, blowing all concerns and stresses from your mind. Concentrate on your breathing and where the breath is going. It’s traveling down into your lungs and oxygenating and relaxing your chest and your shoulders. Feel it flow into your arms, relaxing them as it enters your fingers and along the trunk of your body as your lower back melts effortlessly into the couch. Your thighs relax as the oxygen moves down your legs, relaxing your quadriceps and your knees. Let your calves sink into the couch as the arches of your feet become oxygenated and finally allow your toes to relax. That’s right, sink into the couch, concentrate on your breathing. Feel the white light that surrounds your body. Envision it entering through the crown of your head. Feel the warm, calming glow as the light slowly spreads down the pathways opened up by the oxygen. On one of your hands I want you to touch your thumb to your forefinger. This is your anchor. At any time, should you need to stop, or if this gets overwhelming, touch your thumb to your forefinger and it will activate your anchor and take you out of your hypnotic state. Do you understand, Kylie?”

  “Yes,” her answer was slow.

  Concentrating, Kylie could feel all the tension leave her body, as she listened to the dulcet tones of Claire’s voice.

  “I want you to go back and find a happy memory from when you were around five years old. Visualize it. Who was there with you? What can you smell? What are you wearing? I want you to concentrate on what you were feeling.”

  Claire remained quiet for a few moments, allowing Kylie to visualize the memory.

  Sitting in Grandpa’s lap and playing with my new doll. She’s so pretty. I want to look like her. Her hair is black and shiny and her eyes are so blue. Daddy just mowed the lawn this morning and it’s making my nose itch. It feels like there’s a line of ants walking in there. I’m so tired. I want to nap, but if I do, I might miss the barber Q.

  “Now, I want you to go back to just after your birth. Take note of your surroundings. Your feelings. Your needs.”

  Again, Claire went silent.

  So cold. I’m shivering. I think it’s hunger I feel. I’m so cold. The light hurts. And I’m so cold.

  “Focus on a time before your birth. You’ll be able to communicate with me, describing things with your knowledge from today, from current times. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you, Kylie?”

  Shaking her head, “I don’t know.”

  “Look down at your feet. What are you wearing?”

  “Oh, they’re cute,” there was surprise and emotion in her voice. “Lace-up boots. Practical. Not fancy. Pointy toe, low, curvy heel.”

  “Do you know what year it is?

  “1870.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Strasbourg.”

  “Is that France?” Claire asked, trying to visualize the region on a map.

  “It was. We are now under German rule. The city fell a few months ago.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Noëlle.”

  “And you are French, Noëlle?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “What is your last name?”

  “Regensburg.”

  “Hmm, that sounds German,” the doctor mused.

  “I am Alsatian.” Noëlle was quick to insert.

  “What are you seeing, Noëlle?”

  “There are so many wounded. Not enough of us to take care of them. And they are so young. We need more supplies. We’re losing boys we should be able to save. We don’t have enough medicine for the pain or the infections.”

  “Are you a nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I am twenty-two.”

  “Tell me what you are seeing.”

  “It is after hours. My shift is long over. But I am still at the hospital. I am with a patient. He is the enemy, but someone special because we are treating him at this hospital and not a field hospital. He was in custody and shot trying to escape. But the commanders want him kept alive. He is very important to them.”

  Claire watched as her patient’s demeanor became almost giddy, her shoulders alternately lifting in a flirtatious manner. She made note of the physical manifestation on her iPad.

  “What is his name?” the psychiatrist probed.

  “Gunther.”

  “Do you remember his last name?”

  “Wolff.”

  “And he is a patient of yours?”

  “He was, but now I come to read to him and spend my free time with him. He makes me laugh and tells me that I am the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen and that someday he will marry me. He said that Berlin will become the capital of the German Empire and he will take me there to meet his family and to live and I will have servants and maids.” She stopped speaking, although the twitches in her cheek and jaw muscles indicate that the story was continuing. “He’s so handsome and every day I grow more attached to him. But his fever is still high and we can’t find the source of the infection.”

  “What do you see?”

  “His eyes. So clear. They are the color of the sky after a rain storm has blown through. I have never seen so much love in eyes. They tell me a story, and if I look deeply enough into them, I can see our future and the smiles of our children. But I am so afraid of what will happen when he recuperates and I know he is scared for me being in a war-torn region if he isn’t with me. He wants to take care of me, protect me.

  “He told me that if he leaves, that I should wait for him. He will come back for me or send for me. I don’t know what they are planning to do to him once he is well enough to leave the hospital. I’m scared.”

  Kylie falls silent again, her face contorted as tears stream down the sides of her cheeks and drip to their final resting place, buried within her thick, auburn hair.
r />   Claire waits, remaining still.

  “What has happened?” she finally asks.

  “We could hear the sounds in the dormitory. Gunshots. And when I went in the morning to see him, he was gone. But my heart already knew. I knew the minute I heard the shots.”

  “Gone? What happened?”

  “He was executed trying to escape. They killed him. He was just trying to get home and they killed him.”

  Writing continuous notes as her client spoke, “What happened to you after that?” Claire asked without looking up.

  “It took a long time, but I finally married. He was much older. Very stern. But he kept me fed.”

  “What was your husband’s name?”

  “Christophe.”

  “Did Christophe know about Gunther?”

  “He did. But I wasn’t permitted to speak of him. Only in my heart. If I spoke of him, even aloud in my sleep, Christophe would get very angry. Feel that I was betraying him and he would make me apologize,” she visibly shivered. “He would hurt me, physically. Sexually, he was rough. He’d lock me in the basement for days.”

  Kylie’s chin sank to her chest, her eyes remained closed.

  “Are you still here?”

  “No. I am gone.”

  “What did you learn in that lifetime?” the psychiatrist ended with a question she always asked.

  “That love has no borders.”

  Patient: Kylie Martin

  Session #59

  Regression #13

  November 4, 2014

  Regression Length: 10:25 A.M.–10:48 A.M.

  Entity: Noëlle

  Location: Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine

  Year: 1870

  ••••••

  Bundled up in her faux fur jacket and scarf, Kylie rode the elevator down from Claire’s office remaining firmly entrenched inside her own head as she fought to retain her grasp on the fading visuals of a world so foreign, yet so familiar. And the feeling. She couldn’t shake the feeling. Gunther’s eyes. The emotion in them. He didn’t need to speak to her. She knew the depth of his love and devotion, even though their time together had been short, and now she felt empty, positively hollow without him, without someone loving her so deeply, so purely.

  As the elevator doors opened in the lobby, Kylie wandered to a trash can, mindlessly tossing in her now empty Starbucks cup. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, the blast of frozen air on her face caused her head to snap back, as if she’d just been slapped by an overbearing stage mother. Although the sky was gray and threatening snow, she scrounged around the bottom of her purse feeling desperately for her sunglasses. Finding herself surprisingly overwhelmed, she needed a barrier, not yet ready for this world.

  A man. A man she loved deeply. The thought running through her head was it was us against the world. We didn’t care if they called us French, Germans, Prussians. It didn’t matter as long as we were together, because our love was right.

  How do I know this?

  None of the other regressions had left her with such a strong, lingering emotional imprint. Claire had warned her that as they continued their work, what were initially snippets of visuals or feelings would become more complex and richer in nature. But this was a feeling she couldn’t shake. It was so real. So emotionally real that it had her yearning.

  But for what?

  Crossing 63rd Street, Gunther’s eyes, as she saw them in that last vision, were the only thing she could see now. The traffic and noise and smells of New York City evaporated to the far side of a translucent veil, parallel to the space she was currently inhabiting. The overwhelming pull on her heart as she and Gunther were separated forever, felt like a fresh wound.

  The rhythmic sound of tapping swiftly catapulted her back to the streets of New York and out of the netherworld she had been caught in while walking the previous block. He was gently rapping on the glass with his knuckles and when she turned toward the sound, there sat Jesse Fucking Winslow, in his full camouflage, on a stool at the counter along the window. With a sexy as-fuck lopsided grin on his face, he held up a frozen drink, and motioned for her to come inside Starbucks.

  Entering the warm coffee shop, the heady aroma of the dark roast and rough-hewn brick walls brought immediate comfort and much-needed grounding, although walking toward freaking Jesse Winslow was anything but grounding, she mused. Weaving her way through the tables and overstuffed chairs toward where he sat, Kylie wondered how many people in the coffee shop realized the camouflaged man sitting on a stool by the window was the one and only leader of the iconic rock band, Winslow. The man who’d been the focus of more press, in the past month or so, than any world leader.

  Somewhere in a former life, not the kind of former lives Claire brought her to, but one of just eighteen months before, the former Miss New Jersey would have had the balls to stroll up to a man as gorgeous and famous as Jesse Winslow, and know with the utmost confidence, that just the sight of her was causing his testosterone to run amok and feverishly race toward both his heads, obliterating all sound logic and reason in his northern one.

  But today, size eighteen Kylie Martin, would have willingly vowed to never, ever again eat another spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream just to possess the super-power to make herself invisible, or at least a size four, as she walked toward one of the most famous, sexiest men ever to have sauntered a rock ’n’ roll stage.

  “I think I got it right.” He held up the drink and handed it to her as she slid onto the high stool next to him. With his lopsided grin, he added, “I asked the guy what the cold drink was that the gorgeous redhead had gotten about an hour ago.”

  Slipping the straw between her teeth for instant pacification, Kylie took a sip. The Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino was perfect. She smiled, straw still in her mouth. “You done good.” Gorgeous redhead? Seriously? This man needs to go back into rehab because he’s on the good stuff.

  Jesse laughed and nodded his head, spiky bangs flowing out the edge of his baseball cap and over the shiny rims of his sunglasses. “I’m Jesse.”

  Kylie just smiled, but didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, so you knew that.” He was off balance. This girl wasn’t gushing. “So, Dr. S would shit right now if she walked by here and saw us together.”

  Kylie’s smile broadened as she clicked the straw between her teeth. “I told her I saw you.”

  “Did she freak?” Jesse looked amused, his tone suddenly conspiratorial.

  “It was awesome,” Kyle confided. “I’m surprised she didn’t excuse herself to change her panty liner.”

  Choking on the hot coffee he’d just swallowed, Kylie reached out and patted Jesse on the back. “Take another sip, it will help.”

  “You are funny.” He sized her up.

  “Yeah, hilarious,” her voice dripped sarcasm in a way only confident girls from the northeast could pull off. Had she taken off her sunglasses, he would’ve seen her rolling her eyes.

  But neither Kylie nor Jesse would remove their sunglasses that day and give the other a glimpse into psyches that neither one was prepared to expose. Just knowing the other was one of Claire’s patients was enough exposure for one day.

  “So, I have something really personal to ask you.” Jesse’s demeanor had turned serious.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Well, first, what’s your name?” He leaned in close to her.

  Kylie could feel the intensity of his gaze from behind the mirrored glasses.

  “Kylie.”

  “Kylie,” he smiled. “That’s a pretty name.” He reached out and let a long lock of her hair absentmindedly slip through his fingers.

  Looking down at his hand, Kylie watched the movement, stunned. He had just invaded her personal space, with a very intimate gesture. She could immediately feel the contraction in her muscles pulling away from his touch.

  Realizing his overture was not being well received, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. When I saw you in Dr. S’s office
today, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful your hair was and I don’t know why I just reached out and did that. I’m sorry,” He was actually stammering, seemingly almost confused as he apologized to a woman for touching her, something clearly not a staple in his repertoire.

  Kylie remained silent. Jesse was in a very public, media-fixated relationship with a supermodel named, Claudine. Claudine. Just Claudine. Nothing else.

  The only other time Kylie had ever been near Jesse Winslow was during Fashion Week, nearly three years before, when she modeled at a runway show for a designer friend of hers. Her buddy, Travis, was the “Opening Act” to the mega-popular lingerie company where Claudine held the exalted role of top model. She remembered catching his lopsided smile that day, and returning it with one of her own, as she confidently strolled the catwalk. But she knew she was one of many models catching Jesse’s eye at the show as he waited for the main event to appear. Claudine.

  Usually quick with a retort, Kylie was left speechless. Embarrassed that she had backed away from Jesse’s touch, and yet, aching desperately, wanting him to touch her again. Needing another chance, this time not shying away.

  Beyond her oversized, dark glasses, she was trying to remember where she had experienced this feeling gripping her, and wondered if maybe it had been in a movie. A woman backed up against a wall. The man, dangerous. A knife to her throat as he slipped his fingers inside her underwear, discovering her wet with desire beyond her control. Turned on. Scared. Helpless. Captive. Captivated. Wanting his fingers to continue their slow, deliberate strokes. Needing him to go even farther. Breathless with fear and desire.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  Kylie shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I just had an intense morning and I’m a little spaced out.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. I know this is really personal.”

  Feeling an immediate pang of fear, Kylie’s radar immediately propelled off the charts. How does he know about the knife to the throat, the man’s fingers stroking me?

  Jesse continued, bringing Kylie back to the here and now, “As you know from my little appointment faux pas this morning, I recently got back from Australia. And I’m home now. I’m not going to be out on tour for a while.”