Translucent

by Beardsley, Nathaniel

  Karena quickly halted her thoughts about what was in store for her in the future, and instead thought about her past. She remembered what she’d been doing the day that everything had disappeared and she’d woken up like this. Although it was only a couple days ago, it could have been eons to her.

  Karena had been a pretty typical person for her age, you could say. She’d had long brown hair and was quite tall, though not excessively. She had an average sort of face that takes a few times of seeing it before you can actually recognize it and say “Hey, that’s Karena.” She hadn’t been perfectly content, of course, as someone of the age of 15 is not likely to be extremely content, but she’d been content enough. She’d liked to laugh a lot, and she’d enjoyed going out with her friends when she was able. Above all, though, she’d been quite resilient to her circumstances. When something terrible had happened that had changed her life forever, she had at first been devastated and was under a state of depression. But as the time went on, she became strong, not letting that event ruin her beyond all hope of recovery. Just like she wasn’t going to let this dream ruin her. Her resilience to terrible things was perhaps the most prominent feature of her character, and it became what had defined her to her friends.

  She’d been with her friends that day, the day she’d disappeared. It’d been a Saturday, and they were going to go out somewhere to eat. Her friend had asked her where she’d wanted to go for lunch, and she’d said she wanted to go to Quencher’s, a great local restaurant that she’d went to from time to time. They’d gone to Quencher’s and they’d walked inside and sat down. She’d noticed a strange man sitting at a table in the corner with a large hat that hid his face from view. She’d seen him, but not thought much of him, since she’d been busy talking and laughing with her friends.

  The strange man had continued to sit there, not moving a muscle. He hadn’t had any food in front of him, or even a drink, just a blank table. A waitress had come and taken their order, and she’d decided to order the burger she usually got there. The strange man continued to sit there motionless, and Karena found him to be harder and harder to ignore the more she sat there with her friends. No one ever bothered him, and no waitress came to take his order, as if the restaurant was used to seeing him just sitting there with no apparent purpose in doing so. The food came, and they started eating, laughing and talking, but Karena had begun to feel a slight uneasiness with the man sitting in the back all the while.

  Finally, Karena had asked one of her friends: “Do you recognize that man back there?”

  Her friend had looked where Karena had glanced. “What man?” she’d asked.

  “The strange man sitting at the table in the corner, with the large hat,” Karena had replied. “He’s just been sitting here the whole time, not eating or drinking, just staring at the table in front of him.”

  Karena’s friend had cast another subtle glance to the back of the room. “I don’t see anyone,” she’d said.

  Karena had been confused for a moment, wondering why her friend hadn’t been able to see the man, but after a second’s contemplation she’d said, “Oh, whatever,” with a shrug of her shoulders and they’d gone back to eating.

  Karena had forgotten about the man for the time being, focusing instead on things she deemed more important, until the man did something that forced her attention to be drawn back to him. He raised his head and looked in her direction, before taking off his hat and revealing his face.

  Karena had turned around so that she was completely facing him. His face had been ordinary enough, she’d supposed. He’d looked to be in the mid-forties, with an average complexion and average facial features. But it was his expression that’d really gotten to her. He hadn’t been smiling, nor frowning, simply staring with cold, piercing eyes directly at her.

  Karena’s heart had begun to beat wildly, and again she’d turned to her friend. “That man is staring right at me,” she’d said. “And it’s kind of freaking me out.”

  Once again, Karena’s friend hadn’t been able to see the man. She’d asked the others at the table, but they merely laughed at her, thinking it was strange that she thought there was someone back there. And yet Karena had been growing increasingly worried that something was going to happen, although it was somewhat hard to explain why.

  And then the man had reached into one of the inner pockets in his long overcoat, and had pulled out a small item, which Karena had a hard time seeing at first. But with a closer look, she was able to make out that it was a small hourglass, about 8 inches high and 3 inches wide, with all the sand at the very bottom except for a tiny bit that was at the top and was in the process of falling to the bottom. The glass was translucent, so that the sand behind it was somewhat blurry and hard to make out.

  The man had reached out one of his fingers and given three small taps on the hourglass, staring directly into her eyes the whole time. In the moment, Karena had felt a sudden feeling of dread, stronger than she ever had before, and all the noise in the restaurant had faded away except for the small tapping of the man’s fingernail on the glass.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  And then the sand had run out, and everything had disappeared. The table, her friends, the restaurant, the man, it all vanished in the blink of an eye and she was floating through darkness, with a faint, almost unnoticeable violet color somewhere in the background.

  And then she’d woken up, and she’d found herself lying in the dark, helpless, and she’d begun crying. The shock of suddenly waking up in a new place, with a new body, had left her panicked, and she’d hardly been able to breathe through her wailing and screaming.

  Then her dad had come in, and after a minute he’d turned on the light, and then she saw him. Standing behind her dad was the very same man who’d been in the restaurant just moments before, with the overcoat and hat. He’d taken off the hat and stared at her, and though he’d looked a little older then, it’d been the exact same stare that he’d given her in the restaurant, with the same cold, menacing eyes and featureless face.

  The man had taken out his hourglass from his pocket, and this time the sand was all at the top. He’d lifted his finger and tapped the hourglass three times.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  And then the man had vanished, leaving Karena in too great a state of shock for her to comprehend.

  5

  Harold walked into Karena’s room and sat down in the chair with his head in his hands. He’d done this often in the past week, since she’d woken up as a baby, and Karena was quite used to it. She knew exactly what he’d do, sitting there for a while in silence, deep in thought. She also knew what he was going to ask of her, and so she decided that this time she’d start the conversation instead.

  “You can’t leave me in here forever, you know,” she said.

  Harold looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you can’t just leave me in this crib like this,” Karena replied. “I may be in the body of a baby, but I’m not really one, and so you have no right to be keeping me locked up in here.”

  “So what am I supposed to do then, let you just run around free?” Harold asked. “Like you said, you have the body of a baby still, and are bound to get hurt in some way even if you have the intelligence not to get into a dangerous situation. What would you be able to do, anyway? You don’t have the strength to walk, and you can only crawl very slowly.”

  Karena shut her eyes in frustration. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know that I don’t want to live the life of a baby with the mind of a teenager.”

  “What if you don’t have a choice?”

  Karena was silent.

  “Look,” Harold said. “Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on? It’s ridiculous to think that I’ll be able to help you with any of this if you won’t even tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t need you help!” Karena replied, though she wasn’t quite sure she believed it.

  Harold went on, undeterred. “You may no
t even be my child for all I know! Your mother and I have been getting hardly any sleep, we’re sick and exhausted, and above all we’re worried about our daughter. So please, do me a favor, for both our sakes.”

  Karena searched her mind, but she was beginning to run out of ideas for why she shouldn’t tell him what had happened. She knew almost for a fact now that this wasn’t a dream, that somehow, in some crazy way, it was all real. She was stubborn, and that was really the only thing that had prevented her from revealing the truth up until now. But she knew that Harold was right, that she had to tell them at some point. And so it might as well be now.

  “Bring Christi in here,” Karena said. Harold rushed out of the room and brought back Christi in the blink of an eye, anxious to learn what Karena had to say. Eagerly, he sat down, staring intently as he waited for his daughter to begin her tale.

  With a deep breath, she began. “I’ve been through this all before,” she said. She paused, letting the words sink in. “I was a baby like this once, but I’ve grown past it. Or at least, I had grown past it.

  “You two were my parents. I have memories of growing up with you, but from the early years when I was a baby like I seemingly am now, my memories are scattered and scarce. As time went on I grew up, went to school, learned to read and write, grew older and older until eventually I was 15 years old. I lived a perfectly normal life in a perfectly normal household.” She swallowed, knowing that that wasn’t perfectly true. But they didn’t need to know everything.

  “And then, all of a sudden, this happened,” she continued. “I woke up inside the body of a baby. I can’t explain it, and I’m sure that even though you’ve heard my story now you can’t explain it either, so there’s no point in trying to. There. Now you know why I was acting so strange. I know this explanation won’t satisfy you any more than it will satisfy me, but you just have to accept it for now.”

  Harold and Christi sat, shocked. Karena knew that her story hadn’t answered any questions they’d had, but at least they had the truth now. Well, most of the truth. She decided not to tell them about the man. She needed to keep at least something to herself, along with the lie about her living in a normal household.

  After a moment’s silence, she asked: “Will you let me out now?”

  There was a pause before Harold’s reply came. “Yes,” he said. “But I think we need to go see another doctor.

  6

  Karena was lying in a chair, finally free from her crib. She and her parents were at a psychiatrist’s, and she’d decided that this time she was actually going to talk. There wasn’t any point in hiding any longer, in pretending that she was an ordinary baby, now that she knew for sure that this wasn’t a dream. If she was going to get help, this was the only way.

  “So,” the doctor said. “You say your child suddenly had the ability to speak fluent English overnight for some inexplicable reason, and now she is talking to you as if she’s a grown—up.”

  “Yes,” said Christi. “I know the story is difficult to believe, but it’s true, and I’m sure she’ll demonstrate for you right now.”

  Everyone turned in Karena’s direction, making her feel a bit awkward. Although she knew she had to say something, anything to make the doctor believe that she actually did have the ability to speak, she all of a sudden had absolutely no idea what to say. She opened her mouth, and then shut it again without uttering a sound. This doctor made her feel nervous for some reason.

  “Karena,” Harold said. “Would you please say something to the doctor?”

  Finally, Karena said the only thing that came to her mind. “What should I say?”

  The doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Interesting,” he said. “And she couldn’t speak English at all before?”

  “No,” Christi replied. “Only small words that you would expect someone her age to be able to say, like ‘Dada,’ and ‘Mama.’”

  “Very peculiar,” the doctor remarked, before turning back to face Karena. “Tell me,” he said. “What caused this?”

  Karena went on to tell him about how she used to be a 15-year-old, having lived her whole life up to that point, and then having disappeared and appeared in the body of a baby. Once again, she left out the part about the strange man she’d seen, standing in both Quencher’s and the nursery.

  The doctor was quiet for a while, clearly deep in thought. “That’s an incredible story,” he said. “I’m sure that most people would have a hard time believing it, but I, for one, do not.”

  “Why’s that?” Harold asked.

  “I don’t know what could have caused it. Unless…” The doctor went off in thought again.

  Finally, he asked: “What time did you put her to bed at night?”

  “About 7:00, I think,” Harold replied.

  “And what time did she start screaming?”

  “Probably around 2:00 in the morning, though I can’t be sure. It wasn’t the first thing on my mind at the time.”

  “So that means she slept for about 7 hours until she woke up, correct?”

  “Yes, I guess so, but…”

  “Hold on. Did you check on her after putting her to bed? Say, before you yourselves went to bed, maybe.”

  “Yes, we checked on her briefly before shutting off the light in the hallway. She was sleeping soundly.”

  “And what time was it then?”

  “About 10:00, I think. But what does any of this have to do with the fact that my daughter can suddenly talk?”

  The doctor sat in thought. “It doesn’t seem very likely,” he muttered to himself. “I’d say there’s a very small chance this could actually happen, but I can’t think of any other rational explanation, not that this explanation is entirely rational itself. I suppose one might deem it more probable, however, than any other suggestion as to how this could have occurred.”

  Harold and Christi sat patiently, though Karena could tell they were anxious. Christi’s leg always started bouncing when she was nervous, and she started doing this now. Harold was also clearly not at ease, wondering why the physiatrist was asking all these questions.

  “OK,” the doctor said, spinning around in his swivel chair. “I have a theory, though it’s very unlikely and the chances of such an event actually happening are close to nil.

  “Sometimes people can have very vivid dreams. These dreams can interfere with your actual body in real life, and can cause confusion and even, in some extreme cases, harm.”

  Karena’s ears perked up. Was the doctor going to propose that this was all actually a dream? That she was really asleep this whole time and that sometime soon she was going to wake up? But no, that couldn’t be. That would mean that the doctor himself would be in her dream, which would make no sense at all. But if not that, then what on earth was he going to suggest?

  “For example,” the doctor went on. “I once had a dream that I was drowning, and when I woke up I found I’d been holding my breath in real life so that I couldn’t breathe, making the dream all the more vivid. This is quite a common occurrence. Sometimes people can actually learn things in dreams that may or may not be true, and that are influenced by your memories. Another time as a boy I had a dream that I looked up a word in the dictionary that I’d been wondering the definition of, only to find that in real life the definition of the word was the exact opposite of what I’d found in the dream, making things extremely confusing for a while.

  “My point is that dreams can cause people to learn things and believe things, and that’s what could have happened to your daughter.”

  “What do you mean?” Harold asked. “What sort of dream could cause all of this?”

  “It could be,” said the doctor. “Though it’s very unlikely, that your daughter dreamed through her entire life up to the age 15, learned to speak English, believed that that dream was real life, and then woke up, still as a baby.”

  Harold and Christi at first showed no reaction to this, simply because they did not know how to react. The very prospect was
so startling that they were quiet for a long time, just staring at the doctor. Harold rubbed his fingers on his forehead and looked down at the floor. Karena, however, was the most shocked. The prospect that her whole life, everything she’d ever done, all her accomplishments and failures, everything that she’d ever known, it was all a dream! And that the whole time she’d actually been an infant lying in a crib making up the whole thing in her mind! It was ridiculous!

  Harold looked up at the doctor. “This can’t be possible,” he said. “If you’d seen the change that came over her, you’d know it too. This can’t just happen through a dream. There has to be some other explanation, some other…” He trailed off.

  “Well I you can find one then I’d be very interested to hear about it,” said the doctor.

  There was silence again. No one in the room was sure what to make of this. The doctor appeared uncomfortable with the silence, but no one else noticed him. Karena was busy thinking through her life, thinking through all the important things that had ever happened to her, and thinking about how that couldn’t possibly be a dream. It couldn’t be.

  Karena almost didn’t notice when her parents picked her up and then left the physiatrist to return to her home, and the nursery where fifteen years had passed in the course of seven hours.

  7

  Time passed, and Karena slowly began to gain greater mobility in her chubby limbs, and, through lots of trial and failure, learned how to walk again. She found it ridiculous that she had to relearn all of this, since it was so simple to her in her past life, but she was even more frustrated by the fact that she actually found it to be quite difficult to relearn walking. In her head, she knew how to do trigonometry, and was a perfectly normal 15-year old, but on the outside she was a helpless baby that could hardly do anything without help from her parents.