Translucent

by Beardsley, Nathaniel

  “Could you please hold on for a second?” Karena called desperately. “I’m not nearly as fast as you are.”

  “Just keep following me, but from a little bit of a distance,” he said. “You’re doing great.”

  Exasperated, Karena jogged to catch up with him. He was opening the window and no sooner had he done so when he jumped out and landed in a cluster of bushes. He hardly stopped before he leapt out and ran away.

  “Oh, for goodness sake,” Karena said. She climbed onto the window sill which, luckily for her, was quite near to the ground, and, taking a deep breath, fell and landed in the bushes. The fall was longer for her then it had been for Mr. Ryker, and the landing was far from pleasant, but she knew she didn’t have time to sit there with all her scratches and bruises. She stood up and clumsily crawled out of the bushes, though not without a great deal of trouble, before she began running once again in the direction Mr. Ryker had.

  Once again, however, he was nowhere to be seen. Karena was standing in a parking lot with scarcely any cars, and with a small park in the background, but she didn’t see him anywhere. She figured that he couldn’t have gone straight forward, since she’d still be able to see him even if he had sprinted, so he must have gone around the building. Consulting her memory, Karena thought she remembered him going to the right, so she headed that way. She ran around the corner and saw a glimpse of him up ahead, turning onto a road going to the left. Quickly, she broke into a sprint and ran to the road, before going in the same direction he had. She saw him about 100 meters ahead, running straight down the street she was on. The thing that worried her, however, was the fact that since his legs were much longer, she was going to fall far behind, farther than she already was.

  Karena ran faster when she saw Mr. Ryker take another turn up ahead to the left. And so for the next 10 minutes or so it went on like this, with Mr. Ryker constantly far ahead and Karena barely catching glimpse of him before he turned another corner. Sometimes she would lose him and would have to quickly try looking down multiple paths before she could find him and start chasing him again. By the time she finally saw him go inside a house and shut the door, Karena, despite her cardio training, was exhausted.

  She walked up to the house in which he’d gone and peeked in the window. He was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if she should knock, but decided against it. It would be far too suspicious to anyone who happened to be watching to let a young girl walk right in your front door. So the obvious solution was to go around the back of the house. Just as she’d thought, there was a back door with a small hatch on the bottom presumably for pets to go through. Though it was strange that he had no fence around his back yard, she walked right in it before approaching the door and crawling through the small hatch at the bottom.

  She stood up, brushed off her pants, and looked around, still breathing heavily from the run. She appeared to be in a kitchen. Mr. Ryker wasn’t anywhere to be seen. But before she could start looking around the house for him, she heard his voice from an adjacent room.

  “You made it.”

  11

  Karena followed Mr. Ryker’s voice into the room where he was sitting, which appeared to be a sort of living room. He wasn’t out of breath in the least bit, and was calmly sipping a cup of water. Karena walked into the room and plopped down in a chair across from his.

  “Yeah, I did,” she said. “But barely. Seriously, who did you think would be following us?”

  “You never know,” said Mr. Ryker. He leaned forward and poured a glass of water for Karena from a pitcher on the table, which Karena quickly grabbed, entirely forgetting to thank him, and drank greedily. “That’s what I’ve learned from 7 lives on this earth,” he continued as she drank. “Someone could always be out to get you. Indeed, someone usually is out to get you.”

  Karena, whose mouth had been full of water, suddenly spat it all out, soaking her clothes and the chair on which she was sitting. “Seven lives!” she exclaimed. “You mean…you started your life over again? And again? 7 times?”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Ryker forlornly. “I should introduce myself properly. My name is Shawn. Shawn Ryker.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Karena, as she awkwardly shook his hand, though her mind wasn’t on the handshake. She was reeling from having found out that Shawn had been through his life 7 times. Did that mean that she…no. She wouldn’t think about it. At least not yet.

  “I’m lucky to have found you,” said Shawn. I’ve been around 7 lives and not once have I met a person whose been through what I’ve been through. But I continued looking, and as soon as I saw you I knew you were the one. I didn’t even need to do that trigonometry test to be sure.”

  “I knew you were too,” said Karena. “Though I can’t explain why.” Suddenly, a thought crossed her mind. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “You’re in your early twenties, correct?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “And do you start your life over at the same time every time you do so?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “At the age of 27. Meaning that right now, since I’m in the 21st year of my 8th life, and I wake up as a 2—year old each time, I am now 197 years old.”

  Karena’s jaw dropped. That was why he’d looked so weary and fatigued, and why he looked like he was full of knowledge and wisdom even though he was only 22 years old. What would that even be like, to live for 197 years repeating the same thing over and over again? She hoped she didn’t have to find out. “I-It’s impossible,” she stammered. “How could this happen? I don’t…”

  And then the drama of when she’d first woken up as an 11—month old came back to her all at once, and she broke down in tears. Though she was embarrassed to be crying in front of this man, she couldn’t help it, and the tears came flowing from her eyes as if they were the waters of the river Isen. She had ignored it for so long, ever since it had first happened to her, and now something was happening to bring it all back. It seemed so long ago that she’d woken up in this body, and longer still that she was in the body of a 15—year old.

  Shawn sat awkwardly as she cried, clearly having no experience with comforting crying children, or in comforting adults in the bodies of crying children. Finally, Karena got control of herself. “I’m sorry…I…It’s just…I can’t believe what’s happened. I don’t see how this can be real.”

  “I know what you mean,” Shawn replied. It took me forever to get over it after it first happened to me. If this is truly your first time, then you’re doing quite well.”

  “Do you think…?” Karena paused. She didn’t want to utter her thought aloud, but she knew she had to ask him. “Do you think I will start over multiple times? That I’ll start over again and again as you did?”

  Shawn sighed. “It’s hard to say,” he said. “Since you’re the first person I’ve met who’s been through what I’ve been through, I have no idea if you’ll start again, or if you’ll keep going on with your life normally again. How old were you when you started over anyway?”

  “I was 15,” she replied. “And I woke up as an 11—month old.” Karena shifted. She still hadn’t told her parents her full story, they wouldn’t understand. But should she tell this man? He seemed to understand her, even though she barely knew him. But how could she know if she could trust him? There was no way of knowing. But she knew she needed to tell someone, otherwise she’d go crazy from holding it in, away from everybody. And even though she hardly knew who this person was, she felt that she had to tell him.

  “There was a man,” Karena suddenly blurted out, almost without meaning to. But once it was out, there was no turning back. “There was a man,” she repeated. “Staring at me just before I disappeared. And he was there when I woke up, too.”

  Shawn looked up. “A man with a large hat and an hourglass?”

  Karena gasped. “You saw him too.”

  “Yes,” Shawn replied. “I see him every time I start over. And in my nightmares. I call him the Sandman.”
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br />   12

  “The Sandman?” Karena asked. “Because he has that hourglass full of sand?”

  “It was the best name I could think of,” Shawn replied. “And I needed a name for him, something that would sort of fit his character, which would be sinister and insidious. Every time I see him, just before everything disappears and just after I wake up, he’s a little bit older. The last time I saw him 20 years ago he looked to be over 90 at least. But he always has the same facial expression, no matter how old he is. He just stares without smiling, and without frowning, simply looking at you. And then, every time, he takes out his hourglass and taps it exactly three times.” It was clear that bringing up the subject and talking about it aloud was a source of great distress for Shawn. He’d probably never even spoken of it aloud before in all his lives.

  “That’s just what happened to me,” Karena said. “When I saw him the first time, before I disappeared, all the sand in the hourglass had fallen to the bottom. But when I saw him after waking up, all the sand was back at the top.”

  “Yes, I know,” Shawn said, leaning back and taking another sip of water. There were beads of sweat accumulating on his forehead. “That’s really why I call him the Sandman. It’s like one of my lives is the amount of time it takes for the sand to fall to the bottom of the hourglass, and that he’s the one who turns the hourglass over every time.”

  Shawn’s voice suddenly cracked and became filled with emotion. “I have nightmares about him practically every night now,” he said. “I hear the clicking of his nails against the glass, and then I wake up, and I recall the panic of when I first woke up as a baby, and I lay awake the rest of the night, knowing that I won’t be able to fall asleep again. Every time I actually do see him, my panic grows stronger and stronger. Most of the time I just freeze in terror as soon as I see him. I want to run, but I can’t, since my legs are frozen to the ground, rooted in place. And it’s even worse because I know exactly when it’s going to happen. I know the exact day, and the exact hour, and nearly the exact minute I’ll see him. My apprehension grows to be unbearable during that time, and then when it actually happens I can’t breathe through my fear, and then I wake up, and the terror starts up all over again. It isn’t for a few weeks that I can calm down and get used to be being a baby again.”

  Shawn stopped talking and lowered his head into his hands. It stayed like that for some time, no one talking, both of them just sitting there in silence, but this time it wasn’t awkward. Karena could still hardly believe Shawn’s story, about him having started over 7 times.

  After a while, Shawn continued. “And it’s always the same thing. It’s never any different. I always live my life from age two to age twenty-seven, and then I start over, and nothing ever changes. It’s agonizing, more so then you can believe.”

  “But what does this all mean?” Karena asked. “Do you mean to say that there’s this person called the Sandman who basically has the ability to control our lives with his little translucent hourglass? Why? What’s even going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Shawn replied. “I think that’s the point, really. We’re not supposed to know what’s going on. But whatever it is, I know that we have to keep pushing through this until it’s over, and not give in to him.”

  “But you don’t even know if it ever will be over,” Karena protested. “For all we know this could go on for all of eternity, and we could just be stuck like this forever, living the same cycle over and over again until we get so sick of it that we wish we could just die and not have to deal with it anymore.”

  “We can’t let that happen, though,” said Shawn. “I’ve learned from 197 years of being alive that simply giving up won’t get me anywhere. If I fall into a state of despair, things are only going to get worse for me, because that’s exactly what he wants. I need to keep myself busy, give myself something to live for, so that I don’t let myself give in. If someone really is controlling my life and is trying to make me give up on it, then they’re going to fail.”

  “But what keeps you going?”

  “All sorts of things. I like to try out lots of different jobs, for example. Right now I’m a teacher, but before I’ve been a lawyer, a mechanical engineer, even a filmmaker. As long as I have an incentive, I can forget about the Sandman and everything, and simply focus on better things.”

  “I still don’t see how you could do it though,” Karena said. “You seem unrealistically optimistic. If I were you, I would’ve lost hope long ago.”

  Shawn paused for a minute. “Karena,” he said. “If things go for you the way they did for me, then you will be me.”

  His words chilled her to the bone.

  13

  6 months later…

  Karena was at Quencher’s. She didn’t go there very often, actually, she never went there, because it reminded her too much of when she’d seen the Sandman and first started over. But she was there now because of a special occasion. It was her friend’s birthday, even though she wasn’t really her friend. She had been in her previous life, but now Karena just couldn’t identify with her. She had no idea what she’d been through. She had no idea of the terrors that Karena had faced and that she still faced every day. The only person that she could really identify with was Shawn, but he wasn’t here today. It was just her and her ‘friends’.

  It was probably a good party, or at least for a normal person, but Karena couldn’t pay attention. The atmosphere of the restaurant was crushing her, leaving her breathless with anxiety. Though she was surrounding by smiling, singing waiters and waitresses, she felt miles away, in a dark and desolate place, where it was just her and the Sandman, standing in front of her and staring at her, with his expressionless face. He was right there, with his long coat and his hat, and he was reaching into the coat and pulling out the hourglass. The sand was at the bottom. He raised his finger and with his long fingernails he clicked it exactly three times.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  And then everything went black, and Karena found herself in a bed. No, no! This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t time yet; she was only 8 years old. She couldn’t start over now. It was impossible.

  Frantically, Karena let out a wail as she leaned over and looked around, trying to find where she was. She couldn’t see a thing in the dark. She groped about madly, trying to find the switch to her lamp, but she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t even find her night stand. She wasn’t in her own bed!

  Karena rolled over and crawled towards the edge of the bed. She didn’t feel much like a baby, but there was no way of knowing for sure. She crawled until suddenly the bed ran out and she fell on the floor with a cry and a loud thump. She wasn’t in a crib. She was in her own room, and she’d been dreaming.

  Karena sat on the floor, in the dark. This happened often nowadays, the nightmares. But every time, she thought they were real, and every time she freaked out and desperately groped around in the dark until she found out where she was. Every time she felt like she was starting over again, and it wasn’t until she fell on the floor that reality returned to her and she could breathe easily again. And easily by her standards wasn’t the same as easily by another person’s standards.

  But she had to remind herself that although it wasn’t real this time, another time it would be real. Another time she’d wake up just like this, but instead of finding herself in her real bed, she’d be in a crib in the body of an 11—month old. She was convinced even more now that her first life couldn’t have been a dream. What’d she just woken up from was a dream, or rather a nightmare, and the fact that she knew it proved that her past life hadn’t been one. The Sandman was real.

  He was coming and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him.

  14

  9 months later…

  Karena was 10 now, and she knew it. She kept careful track of her age, though she didn’t want to. She knew that when she did so, she was counting down the years, the days even, that the Sandman would come for her again. An
d she knew he would. But keeping track of her age was something that kept her occupied, something that gave her something else to think about sometimes, even if it wasn’t much. She could use every distraction she could get.

  It was a Friday night, and her parents were gone. Karena was alone in the house. She remembered this night well from her past life, and although then there’d been a babysitter, and Karena hadn’t known what was coming, she knew it was the same fateful night.

  It was the night that her parents would die.

  She’d thought about warning them. She’d wanted to tell them that they couldn’t go out on a date tonight, that they were going to die if they did so. That the high rise on which they were eating dinner would catch fire from the very bottom, and people would be jumping off in desperate attempts to save their lives. That the fire department would come late, having not gotten the news of the fire in time, and that by the time they’d get there the fire would be consuming the whole building and there’d be no hope of them saving it. That the building, with Harold and Christi on top of it, would topple to the ground in a pile of ashes and that they would be buried under burning rubble after having fallen 20 stories. That the fire department would search for survivors, but would find none. That they would be dead beneath the ashes.

  But she didn’t tell them any of this. She couldn’t. Warning her parents about their own future would be a crazy thing for her to do. Besides, how would she, or even they, profit from it? Everything would start over again, her parents would be alive again, and nothing would have changed. It wasn’t like warning them about their fate would help anyone in any way.

  So she’d let them go. Now she was sitting in a chair, reading a book about something or other that had to do with physics, but she wasn’t really reading it. Karena had gotten into the habit lately of reading things without actually having her mind take in the information, like eating a delicious meal but merely swallowing it without letting it touch her tongue. She couldn’t focus much on reading these days. She couldn’t focus much on anything except for worrying about what would happen to her when she started over. But she tried.