Soul Sense

By Emme Saunders

 

 

Part One: The End

 

Snow falls soft through me, simplifying things. It seems to say, “Yes, life does and will go on Patricia. No sense getting all bajiggity over it.” Rust pieces collapsing from the back end of my orange Subaru wagon bring me back to earth. They hit the snow with a soft puff, despoiling the pureness of white and marking the place where I have found my spiritual intersection.

 

“Sir! That woman! She needs your attention, stop harassing me and do your job!” The gentleman with a punchy, violet Ralph Lauren tie yells to the policeman handling him. The officer huffs and jostles Mr. Ralph Lauren off the snowy curb where I sit, my car behind me. A heavy scent of wine lingers in the air as they pass, and I watch their haunted faces look back at the wreck. I follow their gaze to where the passenger side of my Subaru became well acquainted with the brick and mortar of the local city bank. A silver Audi is implanted into my driver side door. Bad, bad news. My brown hair, or my body’s brown hair, drapes over the Sub's broken, driver’s window. Streaks of metallic, red goop highlight it. Glass is interspersed everywhere and sparkling in the artificial street light. It seems at home in the beautiful, white snow.

 

The need to vomit keeps threatening my sanity. How could that function even work at this point? There’s the body of Patricia Lee in a car over there, and the ethereal Patricia Lee sitting on this damn curb like a vagrant cast out of her home. Mr. Lauren appears to have no injuries, while my remains are likely to be pieced back together just in time for a closed casket ceremony.

 

Bad thoughts sending me right over the edge. Jesus Patricia, why’d you have to go there?

 

This can’t be happening. I have opening night tomorrow and friends arriving in from out of town. There’s no food in the fridge, except for some moldy and half-frozen baby carrots and a jar of old strawberry jam. Groceries in the back of my car are totaled now.

 

“Christ, really! It looks s’like somebody died,” Mr. Lauren stutters, nodding his head in my body’s direction. “You ought to be getting to it,” he finishes, attempting to wave his arms and almost falling over as the large, stocky gentleman dressed in blue subdues and cuffs him.  They walk toward a cacophony of machines and lights, away from me.

 

Forget it. The clichéd surrealism of the situation is going to make me lose it, and hard. Smashed, idiot asshole hits me and gets a night in the drunk tank. And here I sit, somehow on the curb, but I can’t touch the cement because my hand goes through it. I can scream, cry, rave like a lunatic, but no one hears me. There’s no bright light, no misty, dark tunnel, and no grim reaper lurking in a shadow. No one seems to be bothered with coming to help me through this process. Where’s freaking Jesus to tell me it isn’t my time yet, to work hard at giving more and to stop being so self absorbed and petty?

 

Slow, cold tears defy death and slip from my brown eyes and I am almost comforted by their presence. I still, somehow, live.

 

This must be hell for living a life of mediocrity to its ultimate conclusion. I made bad, theatrical performances bearable, while romancing every moron I could find in hopes of finding true love. Only to have it all come to an absurd and unnecessary end. I applaud the fragments of my life with grandiose aplomb. What else can I do? It’s my goddamn curtain call, and I have no one to stand and cheer for me.

 

“Hey, Paul! We need to get the Jaws of Life on this, we can’t get her out!” A short, tired looking fireman yells to a cop directing the action.  A group of firefighters stop their efforts and walk toward a nondescript, white van. The scent of canned coffee steaming in Styrofoam cups fills the air. They wait and talk quiet, averting their eyes from the scene. Except for one. His eyes pierce through the falling snow and find me, not the car me, but the real me, and for a brief moment I sense a connection, distant, but real. I turn my head away. There’s no point in communing with the living. They can’t help.

 

I get up and walk over to the car wreck. My body is alone. She sits so still. I’m waiting for her to get up, cough, choke, something. But there is no motion at all. The silhouette of a broken form beneath a simple, white blouse breaks me. Tells me the thing I know, and must accept… she sits so still.

 

I weep.

 

But my somber mood fades. It’s too hard not to notice what a comical, yet real, picture this is. The set design is perfect – the night and the buildings quiet and black, while the street lamps’ dull light detail the steady fall of snow. Blue and red colors whirl with spastic frenzy. People huddle together on either sides of the accident, keeping warm, saying novenas, and probably thanking their various deities they didn’t know me. An occasional tear falls from a kind hearted soul, acknowledging my gruesome passing. Honest and pure – I could not have set the stage better myself. Maybe this is a death worth dying.

 

I walk through the gathered crowds. A group of women, talking in mumbles, sink me back into Earth reality. I’ve bitten the big one. I’m 37 years old. No husband. No kids. I don’t even own a dog. I live vicariously through my sister who pumps out babies like she has no other care in life and I treat my parents to take-out Sunday dinners in my downtown loft. I had a boyfriend. We ended bad a few months ago. I caught him with his male assistant on the set of God Wants A Trophy Wife during the wee hours of a Tuesday morning. Fucking Tuesdays, nothing good happens on that day.

 

“Break a leg, Patricia. It’s time to cut the banter and move on.”

 

The voice is clear, and catches me mid-thought.

 

“Hello? Is someone finally here to help me?” Crickets.

 

“I said, hello?” Still nothing.

 

My eyes don’t register them at first, because, well, who sees brilliant, colorful, fairy lights move in flocks like birds on the wind? Death did not grant me instant access to all the unknowns of the Universe. I force my mind blank and push myself into the present, letting go of expectations and the need to call someone and share all this insane wonder. Before my mind breaks the silence, they swarm around me. Hundreds of little orbs – white, purple, green – engulf me and then swim away, out of sight.

 

Hope zigs through my heart. A gust of air blows from behind me, floating my hair above my head. I spin on my heels and see it. White. Crisp. Divine. It’s a light manifesting from nowhere and the orbs spin and dance into it. All things beyond dreams radiate from this light and I move toward it, without will. Visions of a big, blue, bug zapper and summer mosquitoes flame through my mind.  And then the fear is gone. My head may be off the charts and terrified, but my heart is singing; it’s speedy thumping is not from fear, but from untold joy.

 

The buildings, the crowds, the cars all dissolve and fade. Celestial darkness and light remain. Standing centimeters before it, I outstretch my hands and arms, my fingers grazing the edges of this sourceless glow. I’ve not known beauty until this moment and begin to question if I am worthy to pass.

 

“Patricia you’ve always been a brave soul and I’ve loved you for it,” the voice tells me, returning. Strong arms, real arms, pull me into the light and embrace me while lips brush close to my mouth. My eyes do not see. There is only feeling, touch and the sense of being home and eternally loved. My being can sense another pressed up against it. I touch the arms and body embracing me and the curves and contours of a bare, human back become definite. My hands find thick hair and a face. Lips that were gentle now engage my mouth in a deep kiss, making my head swoon.

 

(A lover’s kiss?)

 

Then it is gone (he is gone?) and I depart.