by P. R. Mason
"You're body isn't dead. Not yet," Holden said with a sad shadow in his eyes.
Shaking my head a sob slipped out. "What are you saying?"
"You can go back to your body now and you'll survive. You have a choice."
"I can live?" Turning out of his arms I made to descend the stairs. "Okay then. Let's go."
The sad eyes returned. "Like I said, you have a choice. But if you choose to live...if you don't die now, we can never be together."
"Why? You said—"
"You can go back but I can't."
"What?"
"He's already dead," Mrs. Gazardi said. "He has no body to go back to. And his soul can only remain on earth for three days after his body passes."
"I didn't move here from Miami, I died in Miami." A tremor shook his voice as Holden said the word died.
"But—"
"And if you don't die now, we won't be reborn at the same time for our next lives," Holden explained. "We won't live and love each other in the next incarnation."
Shaking my head, I tried to clear it. Fear still pounded through me forcing out every other thought, making my mind foggy. "This makes no sense."
"Don't be afraid. Fear blocks love and it's your fear that has kept us apart before."
He placed his palm against my chest and memories flashed in my head. Memories of him. Of me. Of us together as teens running hand-in-hand through a field. His appearance was different then and so was mine but somehow I knew it was him...me...us...in a past lifetime. Maybe he really was a Viking then.
"Why didn't you do that before?" I asked.
"Because you weren't ready," Mrs. Gazardi interrupted with an impatient twitch of her hand.
"I'm still not ready." But I had to be. This was happening.
Locking eyes with Holden, he answered my unspoken question. "I appear to you now as I will when we meet each other in our next life," His lips twisted in a grimace. "If we meet each other next."
"You mean I'll remember all this?" My arm swept in an arc around me.
"No," he shook his head. "Probably not consciously. But your unconscious will know me."
"You said we were married in one of your five lifetimes. Did we have children?" My tears had stopped and I moved closer to Holden, leaning against him.
"One." I felt his smile against my forehead. "A boy. But then I was called to war and died in battle. So we didn't have the years together we should have."
"What about your other four lifetimes? Weren't we together?"
"No." He stiffened. "You were too afraid to feel the pain of loving someone to take a chance in each of those lives, so we missed each other. That's why this time they allowed me to come here and talk to you."
I felt his displeasure. His disapproval—anger even—lashed me with guilt and I pulled away.
More memories of my past lives came to me. No painful jolts this time. The images were more like old friends. But from them I realized that the pain of losing Holden in our first lifetime together had so traumatized me that I had not wanted to experience that soul wrenching pain ever again. And that fear had followed me from life to life. I still didn't know if I'd be able to break free of the fear. Hadn't I been living this lifetime shackled by inhibition, choosing not to take chances?
Stepping toward the window, I gazed down at the street as an ambulance screeched to a halt.
"Come on," Mrs. Gazardi demanded. "This is taking too long."
"So who are you in all this?" I asked. "Obviously, not just my school counselor."
Her inner light began to shine so bright I had to shield my eyes.
"I am Gazadriel," she said in a booming voice, part the woman I knew and part otherworldly baritone. "I am here to guide you to where you may go."
"Are you certain if I go with you now we'll have a lifetime together?" I asked Holden.
"Nothing is certain," he replied. "We will still have to make it happen. But it's certain we will have the opportunity. If you stay here now...we won't.
He held out a hand. "Please, my love. Take a chance to be with me."
"I don't know." Gnawing on my lip, I tried to process everything.
"The time is now or it will be never." Gazadriel climbed onto the sill where the wind whipped the long strands of gray-white hair that had escaped from her bun. The folds of the gown billowed about her body.
A whirlpool turned in the clouds over the square and the swirling increased its velocity.
"You have to make the choice now. There's no more time." Holden held out a beckoning hand. The hand shook. His face was grave and serious.
Through the window I could see the paramedics performing CPR, trying to save me.
At that moment, I knew my decision. I chose my fate. I would save myself.
The bell tolled in the clock tower, indicating 9:15. Only three minutes left.
Just thinking about returning to my body caused my soul or my consciousness, or my whatever, to jerk out of the bell tower, and it traveled down the stairs, passed over the sidewalk and reached the street. For a few moments I hovered over my still form before slipping back inside.
"She has a heartbeat," one paramedic shouted and ceased the rib cracking compressions on my chest.
No pain. That was the first thing I marveled at as I pried up my lids and peered up into the face of the man working over me. I didn't feel anything but a heaviness in all my limbs. Still I managed to lift one arm that felt like our living room sofa was on top of it as I moved to take the oxygen mask off my face.
Opening my mouth, I shouted out a whisper. "Lashonda."
"I'm here," my friend said, inserting herself between the paramedics to kneel beside me. Tears had etched a path down her cheeks and kept flowing. "You're gonna be okay. Hang in there."
I wished I could reach up and put a comforting hand on her arm. I wished I could tell her it would all be okay. I wished I could say so many things.
"Tell my dad I love him." The sofa seemed to be on my chest now, but I forced myself to speak anyway.
My words caused a new gush of tears to flow down her cheeks.
"You gotta stay strong so you can tell him yourself," Lashonda cried.
I just had one more thing I had to say.
"I love you too...girlfriend." I closed my eyes again and sighed out relief.
"Eve, don't go," I heard Lashonda shout from far away.
But by the time she spoke, I'd willed myself from my body and my soul had already traveled halfway up the stairs of the church again. In an instant I was in the steeple where Holden waited.
His expression went from pleading to joyous.
Reaching out, I placed my hand in his outstretched palm.
"If you are coming, it has to be now." Gazadriel spread her wings wide, silvery long locks windswept and flowing free around her head. She tested the edge of the window with her feet and pointed to the full-blown tornado in the sky. "There's no more time."
"I'm ready, I said, squeezing Holden's hand. He squeezed mine in return, pulled me to his side and pressed a sweet kiss against my lips.
Side-by-side, hand-in hand, we climbed up onto the parapet beside Gazadriel. We grasped her robe with our free hands and she took off with us in tow. With Gazadriel as our guide, Holden and I flew off the side of the church, traveling up and into our future together.
The end.
**Author's note: If you enjoyed Fated Hearts, I hope you will post a review at Amazon.com. And if you would like to know more about me, please visit my website at http://www.prmason.net. Also, please check out the following excerpt from my full-length novel, Entanglements.
An Excerpt From: ENTANGLEMENTS
Copyright © Patricia Mason writing as P.R. MASON, 2011
All Rights Reserved, Patricia Mason.
Chapter One
June 21st
No one had ever lived after jumping from the Talmadge Bridge. Until now, in my entire fifteen years, I had never been particularly special or unique. So the chances I, Kizzy Tayl
or, would be the first to survive were probably slimmer than the cheerleading captain at my high school. The nighttime Savannah skyline, with its gold domed city hall, loomed in the distance, serene and beautiful. Leaning over the railing, I peered down to the water far, far below me. The whipping wind slammed my ponytail against my forehead.
In the darkness, the black sheen of the water’s surface had the appearance of asphalt after a rain. It would probably feel like asphalt on impact. At the thought, my knees buckled. Even if I wasn’t particularly afraid of falling, I was suddenly very afraid of heights…Weird.
Straightening my shaking legs with defiance, I dragged my gaze away from the river and deliberately stared at my feet. They weren’t as scary as the height. From the purple polish on my toes to the blister on my right heel, they were the same feet I’d slipped into clear plastic flip-flops this morning. The garishly happy sunflower appliqué of my shoes mocked me.
“Kizzy.” Adam’s tiny four-year-old fingers tugged at the denim of my pants. He held his favorite plastic pterodactyl toy in his other hand.
Glancing back at him, I pried his fingers away. “Get back,” I ordered, giving a little push behind me. Okay. Maybe my life was over but I was going to save my little brother.
“I want to go home and see Mommy.” Adam's blue eyes were wide and glistening with fear.
“I know, baby. We will. But get back now.” I tried to keep my tone firm but loving.
A car’s horn blared. Rising as it approached, the tone of the honking then fell as the car left us behind. The lights of the enormous suspension bridge must be illuminating us as if we were on a theater stage. Why didn’t any of these passing cars stop to help?
Adam’s sobs tore at me as I balanced my belly against the icy metal of the railing and climbed over. With barely enough room for my feet, their tips hung over the concrete edge.
“Shhh.” I glanced back over my right shoulder at Adam to try to meet his eyes but they were scrunched tightly shut. “We’re just playing a game. We’ll go home soon. I promise.”
“This isn’t a game.” The baritone voice, so agonizingly familiar, drowned out my brother’s cries. “You have to do it,” the man shouted prodding me in the back with his revolver.
The muzzle jabbed into my skin through the thin fabric of my t-shirt and pushed me forward. I would totally have a bruise tomorrow...if I survived until tomorrow.
“Jump,” the man screamed.
Gripping the rail behind me, I clung. A jagged piece of metal on the rail bit into my flesh and I winced as liquid pooled in my palm. I couldn’t help jerking that hand away to hold it in front of me. Blood dripped off my palm before disappearing into the darkness and becoming part of the Savannah River water.
“Kizzzzzy!” My brother screeched.
“Shut up.” The man started with a jerk. “Do you want to make me shoot?”
The pitch of Adam’s wailing heightened.
Clutching at my necklace as if it were a religious medal, I turned to try to talk to him.
“Can’t you just leave Adam alone? I’ll do what you want.” My pleading had the same effect on the man as it did on the steel of the suspension cable a few feet away.
“This is because of you,” he said. He. My dad. He didn’t even look like the hero I’d always known. My once handsome father was now ugly with his face set in angry angles and with unrecognizable wild eyes. "This is all because of you."
Tell me something new. I’d always suspected I was to blame for my parents’ divorce. But could the breakdown of a marriage actually send my father into this kind of craziness?
“What about Adam,” I said. “Will you take him home…after this?”
“That’s not important.” He—I refused to think of him as Dad again—waved the gun around as if he weren’t even aware of it anymore.
His monotone statement sent an uncontrolled shiver rushing through me. Suddenly, my heart raced so fast and hard it wouldn’t have surprised me if it burst through to the outside of my chest like that creature in the movie Alien. I was terrified for myself and for Adam.
If I tried to get past him, my father could easily block me and throw me over. Mind racing, I remembered the door in the concrete tower—one of the two supporting the deck of the bridge—we’d passed walking up here from our car. I hoped that door led to a stairway down or possibly an elevator. The tower and its door to freedom tantalized me at only about fifty feet away. I could walk the edge of the bridge like a balance beam and make it there pretty quickly.
But what about the gun? It occurred to me that, for some reason, shooting me wasn’t what he wanted or he would have done it by now.
Carefully turning my feet and preparing to get away as fast as I could, I gripped the rail with my right hand and held out the other toward my brother.
“Come to me,” I said.
With complete trust Adam ran and hopped so I could lift him into a “seat” on my left elbow. His arms wrapped tightly around my neck. The smell of chocolate in his hair bolstered my resolve.
“What?” The man blinked as if coming out of some kind of trance. “What are you doing?”
Not bothering to answer, I inched my way along. A wall of wind I hadn’t counted on thwarted my progress. Worse, a sudden gust threatened to sweep us over the side.
“Stop,” the man ordered.
A popping from behind me was almost immediately accompanied by a burning in my right bicep. The arm I’d been using to anchor us to the rail went numb and I lost my hold. Apparently, he was willing to shoot me after all.
Only a few more feet to the door. We could still make it, but I needed to go back over the rail to get there.
Twisting, I prepared to set Adam down on the safe side. Another popping noise sounded from behind me and a thud reverberated in my body as if I'd been slammed in the side with a twenty-pound barbell. The numbness in my arm expanded into the rest of my body and fog seeped into my brain. I know I dropped backward and lost the precarious balance I’d had with my feet.
Falling seemed to take forever as the water slowly rose to meet me. The dome of city hall continued to gleam in the distance, with its golden reflection extending to the river water. Strange that I hadn’t seen that before.
No, I thought. The glow wasn’t on the water it was above the water. A luminous oval pulsed between the river and me. The oval transformed into a circle tinged not only with gold but also with violet.
This must be some dying hallucination the brain generates, I thought as I passed into the shimmering ring. The teacher hadn’t covered this in Biology I. Maybe death tripping was in next semester’s material. The stuff I wouldn’t be learning.
Hitting the water felt like a giant wet mouth sucking me in before swallowing me down.
* * * * *
“Does she yet live?” A gentle female voice asked.
“Yes…A curse on Jupiter’s eyes.” This voice was male and harsh in its reply.
“If the consuls are informed of her presence, we will all be condemned,” the female voice said. “Your position in the Senate will not be of protection, Gaius.”
No longer numb, my arm and side burned as if I’d been used as an ashtray by a stadium full of people. My eyelids weighed heavy and their seams were crusty with a substance that felt like a cross between sand and glass shards. I wanted to gasp and pant with pain but these strange people with their odd accented words stopped me.
“Let us return her to her people with all possible swiftness before shame is brought to the house of Calixo,” the female said.
“Return her? But would that not further violate the edicts of the Senate?” asked a male voice with a slightly higher timbre than that of the other male.
“Yes, but the gods have left us little choice, my son,” said the deeper male voice.
“And upon whom will you bestow that glorious task?” the son asked with heavy sarcasm. “Surely not my exalted brother.”
The father’s voice spoke as if between gritted
teeth. “If a father orders, your duty is to but obey. And absent complaint."
“But—” the son began.
“Try not my patience with such tone," said the father. "You test the bounds of paterfamilias too often for my taste.”
Managing to pry my lids open slightly, I saw the young man kneeling over at my side but his attention was focused beyond me, probably to his father. He had short black hair with the slightest of waves and that perfect olive complexion I’d always envied due to my pale, untannable skin. Dark, almost navy blue, eyes glared from beneath perfectly arched black brows converging in a furious vee. A grimace twisted the full lips of his angular face. The young man wore a red tunic in a style I didn’t recognize. Square cut and trimmed with gold at the neck, the garment fell loosely and then draped to the side at his waist. Even though he scowled mightily at his father, my friend Petra would have called him “so fine he’s divine”.
The thought of Petra and the normalcy she represented made me want to cry. As if I wasn’t already on the verge of tears from the pain humming over my skin and through my body.
“Why do we not just execute her,” the divine one said. He turned his head to look at me and I snapped my eyes shut. If they knew I was awake they might decide to execute me right now.
“No,” said the woman. “The Gods have not revealed what consequences might beset this world if her death was upon us.”
“I do not see the situation could yet worsen,” said the young man. “The boy’s death is already here.”
The boy?
”Adam,” I screamed, struggling to sit up.
“Sedate her again,” I heard the female voice shout. “With quickness,” she ordered as I struggled.
My eyes darted around me but I was blind to anything but the angry navy blue eyes of the young man holding me down.
I felt a pinch in my arm.
My lids drifted shut but I fought to stay conscious aided by the continuing burning of the gun shot wounds. That pain was nothing compared to the soul-destroying agony attached to my thoughts of Adam. These strangers had better hope I did die, I thought. Because if they’d killed Adam I wouldn’t stop until I killed them.
