by Lea Ryan
Part 2
"This is Mom's kitchen." Juniper recognized the dark cabinets and counters. She recognized the feeling of the ceramic tile floor under her feet. She recognized her mother at the kitchen table.
Francine Townsend sat at the round table with her back to the shaded bay windows. Head down, she traced her finger along the label on the bottle of wine next to her.
Of course her face was flushed red and streaked with drying tears.
Her only child had died. Francine's heart was broken. The bottle was nearly empty, much like the rest of the house.
Juniper lived with three roommates at an apartment near school most of the time, but there was always the expectation that she would come home to visit. Not anymore. If only she had stayed in the house like her mother wanted her to.
Juniper said, "I should have woken up or smelled gas or something. No. I should have stayed in my old room. I just wanted some time alone."
"She’ll be happy again some day. She has memories of you."
"I want her to know I'm here. I want her to know that I still exist."
Cricket rested her chin on the table and her hands at her cheeks.
"We aren't allowed. You’ll have to wait until you meet her in the afterlife."
"That doesn't make me feel any better."
"Watching her grieve won't make you feel any better either. This is a private moment for her. We should move on."
Juniper reached down to touch her mother's hair but stopped herself. She sighed, then left the kitchen and the house.
In the front yard, she looked down and realized she still wore the clothes she died in.
"Am I stuck wearing pajamas forever?"
Cricket giggled, "Of course not. You look how you want to look. You can change whenever you choose. Just think of what you want to wear and it should manifest."
"Finally something I'm allowed to do." She closed her eyes. She shook out her dark hair so it fell loose over her shoulders.
Red t-shirt with the black spray-painted star logo of a local indie record label, black jeans, black boots.
"Much better." she said.
Cricket approved, "Very hip."
"Hip?"
"Um, cool?"
"You aren't really a kid, are you?"
"Nope. Where do you want to go?"
Juniper walked down to the street. The pavement, parked cars and grass were wet from evening rain. The full moon shone between patchy clouds.
"What are we supposed to do - just hang out and walk around?"
"You're in Limbo. What did you expect? You'll have to cross over if you want a more fulfilling existence."
"I don't recall anyone offering me an option."
Cricket frowned.
"A portal usually opens just after you die. Most people walk right in. Damaged souls or people with unfinished business are the ones who don't enter. There wasn't any portal?"
"No portal."
"I've never met anyone who ends up in Limbo against their will."
The pair strolled together to and beyond the subdivision entrance. People out for walks or jogs passed without noticing the spirits. On the other sides of windows, the living tended to the needs of loved ones or performed mundane tasks like cooking or cleaning. The more Juniper saw, the greater she ached to join them. Her time had ended, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was lost to anyone who loved or needed her.
She and Cricket wandered until they came to a two-story brick apartment building with beat-up cars in the parking lot.
"My friend Nikki lives here. I haven't seen her since Mom's Christmas party. I want to go in."
Seeing her best friend would make her feel more connected. Seeing Nikki, someone so close to her own age, might allow her to experience life vicariously.
She passed through the closed door, ascended two flights of stairs. She crossed the threshold and found a mess.
A pizza box, cans, and other garbage littered the floor and furniture in the living room. A couple of holes were punched through the dining room wall. The sink overflowed with dishes in the kitchen. Farther in, she found clothes carpeting the floor in the hallway and the bedroom.
She and Nikki played together. Juniper remembered her honey-haired friend on playgrounds, in the shade of clubhouses too. They shared dolls when they were smaller. In their teen years, they debated which boys were cute. They curled each other’s hair for proms. Both were only children serving as sister to the other. Only when Juniper left for college, Nikki stayed behind.
This cramped, cluttered life wasn’t what Juniper envisioned for her friend.
Nikki’s parents had the means to offer her a strong start to adulthood. She had a full-time job at a bank. The last Juniper heard, she was training to become a loan counselor. She was independent. Somehow she’d ended up immersed in dysfunction.
Nikki lay in bed awake with her back to a man in a chair in the corner by the door.
He was a burly creature - shirtless and hairy, fat, much older than Nikki and Juniper. His eyelids drooped under a trucker style hat with a barbecue restaurant’s happy pig logo on it. An empty pint of gin hung from the end of one of his sun-baked arms.
He muttered to himself.
"Stupid bitch, can't clean, don't work, worthless sack of..." His voice trailed as he nodded off.
Was he talking about Nikki? She told Juniper at Christmas that she had a boyfriend and that she was pregnant. She seemed happy. Surely this wasn't the father of her child.
Nikki, with her delicate features and outgoing personality, could have any boy she wanted in high school. She wouldn't have settled for this life. She wouldn't have to.
This couldn't be the man.
Juniper noticed cuts across the knuckles on his left hand.
No.
Visions of him yelling at Nikki, throwing her into walls and furniture flooded Juniper's mind. She saw liquor bottles in the sink, a broken lamp, dishes smashed on a wall when dinner wasn't good enough, cigarette burns when his woman spoke out of turn in front of his clique of equally scummy comrades. His face turned red, veins bulging in his forehead when he screamed at her.
Juniper went to Nikki's bedside to check her face for injury.
A swipe of ruddy purple bruise marred her friend’s left cheek. Her arms were scratched in places and showed circular burn scars up to her elbows. A blanket covered her body from the chest down, which spared Juniper from seeing any further injury this less-than-man may have caused.
Juniper felt gutted. To think this beast had put his hands on Nikki (especially while she carried his child) sickened her. She left the room behind. She couldn’t handle the sight of either of them.
She stopped at the bathroom door. The mirror lay shattered, shards everywhere, some over the counter and sink, some on the rug, some speckled with blood.
Cricket told her, "This won't end well."
"She's pregnant." Juniper said.
"How far?"
"I can't remember. I should have paid more attention."
The night of the Christmas party, friends and family crowded the Townsend house. Nikki had come alone. Juniper, who shared the hosting duties with her mother, spoke to her friend only briefly.
"Seven months? Eight months?" She guessed. "He's going to hurt them."
Cricket nodded solemnly.
"Man is too often the downfall of woman."
"That's an awfully feminist view for someone who chooses to reside in the body of a eight year old girl."
"Never underestimate the power of adorable."
"I have to do something. I can't just let him hurt her or the baby."
"I won't try to convince you to let this course run naturally. Just remember the consequences. Gareth may look like a man, but he isn't human. He has centuries of experience hunting offenders. He will find you."
Death was more than the loss of the physical.
If Juniper were alive, she would have swept into that apartment like the de
vil, ripping through the mess, tearing through the man to rescue mother and child. She would have brought a sheriff and Nikki’s parents.
Limbo’s rules handicapped her.
Anger at the situation – both Nikki’s and her own – simmered in her throughout the night. She paced the bedroom while Cricket watched from the corner with wide eyes.
Gareth told her she could observe, so that is precisely what she did. But she longed to do more. She longed to hurt the man, so content in his drunken stupor.
The smug bastard wielded his control violently and had the nerve to sleep. He deserved fitful nights of remorse. He deserved to burn with guilt in his subconscious.
