by Becca Fox
Charlie planted a clumsy kiss on my lips before he tumbled out of my window and disappeared into the early morning light. I smiled as I watched him go. I was glad he’d stayed over. I was glad I could be there for him. It really sucked that Jasmine was gone, but I looked forward to being his comfort and strength in the future.
October 12th, 2019
In my wildest dreams, I never thought this would happen. Could happen. Jasmine has disappeared. She has become Lady Death and freed us of our curses. And even though my heart breaks at the thought of an innocent child doomed to ferry the souls of the dead forever, I know in the deepest part of my soul that it is exactly as it should be. Someone has to be Death, and why not a compassionate, innocent child instead of that wicked trickster?
I will never forget her, nor will I forget the family she left behind. Poor Charles, knowing who Jasmine is now and having no say in the matter. But despite his pain at the utter unfairness of it all, I know someday he’ll embrace the truth that the universe is as it should be: filled with suffering and joy. One cannot exist without the other. It is the cosmic balance.
My brethren too feel this balance acutely with all its joy and suffering. I feel for Fadele and Nij, but they chose their path and must follow it to its end. Izz and Segil have also embraced the horror of mortality and know their ambition must be stopped. They will meet their natural end as well. One false move and they could be imprisoned like Fadele and Nij.
Segil and Izz showed us one final kindness I didn’t expect. They invited us to their home in peace. We sat in their garden and we were silent for a long time. I felt their balance of turmoil and peace. But their words surprised me. They offered gratitude for our actions and, though they said they would not apologize for their past actions, they did wish us good fortune for the rest of our now short lives. They wished to send us off with a gift. They offered money and permanent identities, for they knew we never were very thorough with either of these things. It was so strange to pick our names and new home. I was surprised by Dymeka who immediately asked to be located in Paris, France as a surgeon and myself as a medical doctor.
We had never spoken at length of where we would settle down, mostly because we never truly expected to have the option to settle down. But I trusted Dymeka in this. And I am grateful, as always, that I did.
I offered a gift to them in return but they waved away the offer, saying we had given the world enough. I’m not entirely sure what they meant but I didn’t press the matter further.
We parted on the street. They promised all the documentation for our new lives would be ready by the next day and delivered to us.
Dymeka and I opted to walk. We wandered aimlessly until we were fatigued. I felt physically tired for the first time in heaven knows how long. I cried.
* * *
Epilogue
Charles
On the morning of Jasmine’s fake funeral, I chose to work. She hadn’t been in a newspaper in years but I knew there were still people out there who thought of her as something of a celebrity, “the psychic freak who helped Detective Campbell solve murders.” I knew it would be a large turnout. Milling about in a crowd full of recording phones and reporters wasn’t my idea of a good time.
I did feel a little guilty for making Uncle Vic and Vanessa go by themselves, but they were better suited to field questions anyway. Besides, I’d basically disappeared from the public eye after the curse had been lifted. If I went to the funeral, I’d be back on their radar again.
For a little over a year now, I’d introduced myself as Chuck Winslow. The purple had faded from my eyes with time. One morning, after months of gradual transition, I woke up and they were brown. Not the same brown as the contacts I’d been wearing all my life, but a lighter, almost hazel color. The same eye color as my dad. With a haircut and a slightly more “woke” wardrobe courtesy of my girlfriend, I was practically a different person. It took work to associate me with the twin brother of the girl who’d supposedly been driven mad by her psychic visions and had committed suicide on the North Precinct’s roof.
So there I was, being the perfect medical scribe, asking the same boring questions I’d asked about a hundred times yesterday and would ask a hundred more times before the day was through. I typed up the patient’s answers with a polite smile fixed on my face.
I wasn’t a fan of sick people. I had no plans of becoming a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant. I was here for one reason and one reason only: Jasmine. Every time someone died, I got a surge of déjà vu. Sometimes, if I was fast enough, I’d arrive on the scene with just enough time to catch a glimpse of her reflection in a window, a bedpan, or a computer monitor. She looked exactly the same. Short, scrawny, with wispy black hair and eggplant purple eyes almost too big for her oval-shaped face. Pale and pearly as a ghost. She still wore my old hoodie, her favorite jean miniskirt, and those God-awful swampers with tears along the seams. Becoming Lady Death had, apparently, done nothing to change her sense of style. Or lack thereof.
But with all the times I’d glimpsed her, she’d only looked at me once. She gave me this sad, disapproving sort of look, like, “What are you doing here, Charlie? I told you to go out and live.”
Well, if she would just stick around long enough to let me explain, she’d know I was living.
I’d finished my general education courses and was ready to transfer to a university. I was leaning toward criminal justice but Esmer kept encouraging me to get into the welding program at Green Bay Community so I could start my own business. I loved my art, which was why I was hesitant to turn it into a career. It was supposed to be a stress-reducing hobby; I was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay that way if I made it my job. Still, I saw the appeal of making things all day and charging a ridiculous amount of money to let people display my pieces in their parks or squares.
Every time I asked my uncle what he thought I should do, he said I should go with what I loved the most. He refused to pressure me into following in his footsteps so he talked up my hobby like it was the greatest thing ever. My soon-to-be-aunt talked about her academy days all the time, trying to convince me of its awesomeness. And Anthony…well, we only saw him for Friday night dinners now. We got him for two hours before he had to rush back home to Georgina and the kids. He was working full time at a local clinic. His time was precious.
“I’m sure you’d find happiness no matter what you chose, Charles,” he said when I’d asked him.
Which was no help at all.
I needed my sister’s input. I knew she’d be the tie-breaker, the one with the greatest insight and, therefore, the best opinion.
At least I only had two options. Esmer had too many to count and her list was still growing. This week alone she’d added domestic violence lawyer, drug rehabilitation specialist, and social worker. All of which were great, but with her grades, she’d have to work harder than me to get into a good school. But she wasn’t discouraged. She was on a mission to make something of herself, using all of her shitty experience to help other people going through similar shitty experiences. Her words, not mine. It still blew my mind.
I knew Jasmine would’ve been proud…if she would just talk to me for a second.
I was wheeling my computer out of my latest patient’s room when I felt it. Jasmine’s presence, just down the hall. I docked my computer at the nurses’ station as calmly as I could. Then I booked it to the room where an elderly man was crashing. There was already a doctor with a team of nurses in there, working their asses off to try and save this guy. And there was Jasmine, a silent shadow in the corner of the room, watching with a mixture of awe and sympathy. She was almost transparent. If the curtains hadn’t been drawn, I wouldn’t have seen her reflection in the window.
It didn’t make any sense; she was invisible to everyone else. I wasn’t cursed anymore. By all rights, I shouldn’t have been able to see her either. But I could. I’d come to believe it was because we were twins and we’d always have an intangible
connection, even if one of us wasn’t entirely human anymore.
I wanted to wave and get her attention but that would look really weird to whoever was passing by. The nurses working at the speed of light probably wouldn’t appreciate seeing the medical scribe waving at them from the other side of the observation window. So I stayed where I was and waited for my sister to acknowledge me. I shook my hands out at my sides. I was staring so hard at her profile; I was sweating a little. Then, finally, her attention shifted to me. I exhaled, smiling in relief.
Can we talk? I mouthed.
She gave me a stern look and a slow shake of her head.
Shoving my hurt aside, I held up two fingers. Two minutes? I begged. Please.
A tiny upward curl of her mouth turned her stern look into one of nostalgia. When she shook her head this time, it was like she was saying, “Oh, Charlie. When will you learn?”
The old man flat-lined, drawing Jasmine’s attention.
“I need your help,” I whispered in desperation. “I don’t know what to do.”
She glanced at me one more time. “Yes, you do.”
It was like a whisper on the air, as soft as a leaf falling in autumn. It made chills creep down my spine. Because yeah, I did know. Deep down. I was always going to try and become a detective. Solving murders and catching bad guys brought me the most satisfaction and fulfillment. Why would I do anything else?
Jasmine nodded, like she’d read my mind. Then she blew a kiss my way and vanished.
The doctor pronounced the poor old man dead.
I wiped the moisture from my eyes and walked away before anyone could wonder why I looked so sad to witness the death of a stranger.
◆◆◆
I went home for lunch.
The basement apartment underneath the North Precinct had been too big without Jasmine in it. I lived with my uncle now, in his apartment. It was a little awkward, what with Vanessa coming and going all the time. There wasn’t any room for my workbench so we’d put it and all of my crafting materials in storage. I drove forty minutes one way several times a week to create stuff now. It wasn’t ideal, but it was temporary. Once I’d saved up enough money, I’d get a place of my own, do a year or two of the bachelor life before I asked Esmer to move in with me.
Hell, if we were still together by then, I’d ask her to marry me.
I pushed the front door open and tugged the key out of the lock, expecting to be greeted by a dark, quiet interior. I was surprised to see the light was on. Uncle Vic sat at the small table in the kitchenette, having coffee with my parents.
I froze in the doorway.
My dad looked just like my uncle, only he had some gray in his hair and crow’s feet. He, unlike Victor, was clean shaven, wearing a suit and a tie. He was also sitting in a wheelchair.
My mom looked over her shoulder and jumped right out of her chair. Her dark hair was long and curled at the ends. She didn’t wear any makeup, but she had big gaudy earrings and a matching necklace. Her dress was black, plain. She wore those flat ballerina shoes that Jasmine wouldn’t have been caught dead in.
“Charlie.” She let out a sob and pressed a handkerchief against her face. Her eyes were bloodshot. So were my dad’s.
I glanced at my uncle, looking for an explanation.
He grimaced in apology.
My mom came walking toward me. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
I thought she was going to throw her arms around me. So, naturally, I backed out of the apartment and closed the door. I was in the parking lot when my uncle caught up with me.
“Charlie! Wait. I didn’t know they were coming.”
“I know. You would’ve told me,” I said over my shoulder.
He grabbed my arm to keep me from putting any more space between us. “They want to talk to you.”
“That’s nice,” I deadpanned as I turned to face him.
“Charlie,” my uncle said with a flat brow and a warning in his tone. “They’re your parents.”
“You’re my parent.” I tugged my arm away. “I only have thirty minutes to grab lunch and then I have to get back to work.”
“Just hear them out, would you?” He waved at the apartment building looming behind him. “They came all this way.” With a sigh, he dropped the pleading look. “I know I would be devastated if—”
“If what? You made a deal with Death herself to spare the lives of your children and then gave them up when things got hard?” I demanded. “If you asked for forgiveness a decade later and only because one of your kids allegedly committed suicide? No, you wouldn’t. Want to know why? Because you wouldn’t do anything that shitty or selfish in the first place.”
My uncle stared at the ground with his head bowed in defeat.
I took a second to breathe. I wasn’t going to let them get to me. When I was calmer, I gestured to the apartment building behind him. “They’re just feeling guilty because they think they’re the reason Jasmine killed herself. They want reassurance that they aren’t terrible people. I won’t give that to them, Vic, and neither should you.”
“What should I tell them then?”
“Tell them the truth. It’s too little, too late. They fucked up and now they have to deal with the consequences.” I unlocked my truck with the fob hanging from my keychain. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Charlie.”
I opened the door to my old Chevy and half twisted around to look at him.
“You’ll never be able to move on if you don’t forgive them,” he said softly.
“I have moved on,” I said because it was true. “I haven’t thought about them in months. I don’t look for their letters anymore. It didn’t even hurt to see them.” I tapped my chest. “I’m good. I don’t need them.” I gave a shrug and a close-lipped smile before I said, “I have you.” I climbed in and shut the door. Started the engine. Rolled down the window. Said, “I’ll see you tonight,” for the second time. Then I took off.
◆◆◆
I grabbed a sub sandwich and went to the precinct. The captain let me visit whenever I wanted. People were always filtering through the precinct; there were only a few remaining who knew me and my history. They gave me solemn nods as I passed. Everyone else ignored me. Except for the new janitor. He made it a point to smile and wave at everyone who passed through the precinct’s doors. He was a vast improvement from the last janitor, who’d turned out to be the spy working for the Velazquezes.
I saw Vanessa while I cut through the first floor, making a beeline to the stairs. Arresting the Velazquezes had earned her a promotion. She was a full-blown detective now with a partner. The two of them sat at her desk, huddled around the computer screen as they talked about their latest case. I was happy for her. The gal she’d been paired with seemed nice, young, eager to learn. Nothing would beat her temporary partnership with my uncle, but, hey, at least one of them hadn’t been forced to relocate to another precinct when they’d started dating.
Once on the roof, I sat on the parapet to eat my sandwich with my back to the glass birdhouse.
It had been turned into a zen garden since I’d moved out. It was nice, I guess, but it didn’t look like a lot of people used it. Maybe the stigma of hanging out where a girl had supposedly killed herself was too much. Which suited my purposes just fine.
I scrolled through my phone as I chewed. A ping told me I had a new email. I hesitated when I realized who it was from, but I knew Jasmine would get on my case if I ignored the new message. So I opened it up.
My dearest Charles,
I think of you daily. Every morning when I wake and hear my little Jasmine crying for me, I think of you. It’s almost like a prayer. “Thank you, Charles.” A prayer of gratitude because I know you sacrificed the most to allow us our lives as mortals, as parents. I don’t mean to be so morbid right off the bat. I just want to remind you that we, your family, still hold you in the highest esteem.
I hope you’re doing well. As well as you can be in your predicament. I hope
you stay away from the hospital and walk with Esmer in the rain. I hope she’s taking care of you and you of her.
Send my love to Esmer and your uncle. Please, remind them yet again that we wish to host all of you at our home either here in Paris or our country house, whichever pleases you all. We would love to fly you all over if you would allow us. As painful as it will be, I think it’s important for you to meet our little Jasmine. So you can see the other side of Death: Life.
I don’t wish to pressure you to do anything you don’t want to do because it’s not my place, but I know it will help you to see that the world is a great and terrible thing. I think you’re missing the great part of the world. I wish to show you a piece of it.
Yours always,
Ashki
Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry anymore. I locked my phone and set it next to me on the parapet. Hadn’t Jasmine said something in her final note about visiting Europe, something about the great big world we lived in? I personally had no interest in traveling, but I knew it had been one of Jasmine’s dreams. Plus, Angela made it sound like it would be a personal favor to her if I showed up at their house with Esmer and Uncle Vic in tow.
The roof access door opened. I growled, lowering my sandwich into its wrapping. What did a guy have to do to get a little privacy around here?
But it was just Ralph, stepping out into the sunshine. He was breathing hard as he frantically searched the roof. He wore the suspenders again over a pink button-down shirt. His socks were white with tiny brown teddy bears.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m over here.”
Smiling sheepishly, he ambled toward me. “Hey. I heard you were back.”
“Just visiting,” I said, wrapping up the rest of my sandwich. He wasn’t going to let me finish eating. We’d done this too many times before. “This isn’t healthy, man. You have to move on.”