“Stop running!” the voices screamed in her ears. Sharp dry fingers pushed at Cali’s shoulder, knocking her off the bike again.
“No!” Cali cried out as she tumbled to the ground. “Why can’t I wake up?”
“This isn’t a dream.” The scratchy voice echoed around her like she was in a small, enclosed space. “You can’t escape.” The chorus of voices faded to one that was right in front of her.
Cali shook her head and stood. “My brain, my dream. Leave me the hell alone!”
“No!”
She looked for the bike, but a bright beam of light caught her eye. The raspy voice and putrid stench was gone. Cali made a snap decision and approached the light. She crept, trying to be silent until she saw a smashed vehicle in front of her. She gasped, rushing toward it. The light illuminated a shape in the driver’s seat. Rain mixed with blood inside the shattered car. Lexi’s car.
“Lexi!” Cali ran, ignoring the pain in her feet and how tired she was. She rushed to her friend. Slamming into an invisible barrier where the edge of the light was, she felt her head bounce while spots ran across her eyes. Ignoring the pain, Cali pounded her fists on the barrier. She circled the light, but there was no getting in.
Then, the streetlamp was gone. Lexi was gone. The car vanished. Cali was alone in the middle of the street. She backed away, confused.
The world flashed with lightning for just a second and Cali could see. It was still dark, but she could see shapes in the blackness. The voices sounded from a distance. She ignored them and ran. Something tangled around her foot and Cali fell to the ground. She hit her face hard and could taste blood. A putrid stench surrounded her. She choked on the stink of rotten eggs as the dim colors around her seeped yellow.
“Help!” Cali cried out.
***
“I’m dead,” Alexia said out loud. It was true, she felt the rightness without understanding it. She sat on the floor and stared at the wall of her kitchen. “Funny, it feels an awful lot like being alive.”
She looked around her home. The place she lived. She went to work every day. She washed her laundry, ate food, and went to the grocery store.
“Dead people don’t do that. Do they?”
She stayed on the floor for what seemed like an eternity before she had any desire to move. She got the feeling Leland knew what had happened.
Standing, Alexia decided to go to Tom’s Diner. He would be there, or he wouldn’t, but at least she would be doing something. When she found him, she would get the truth.
Leland could be dead too, Alexia realized. They could all just be ghosts who refused to move on with their lives. Or deaths.
Something nagged at Alexia’s brain, trying to push its way in. She knew something, but couldn’t quite wrap her brain around it.
As she walked under her familiar shade tree, the finality of everything hit her. The finality of death.
Tears formed in her eyes, but she wasn’t sad. Furious that she was hanging around with no idea why, she watched as the sky darkened and opened up. Rain and lightning danced all around her. A fierce wind picked up and she was almost pleased that the weather was as mad as she was.
Alexia’s rage dissipated almost as fast as it had invaded her. The rawness of her emotions left her sore and tired.
Still standing in front of her house, she looked down at her keys. Why do I have to drive now that I’m dead? Why can’t I just teleport? For a second, she laughed. “Teleport. That would be crazy.”
Shaking her head, she walked to her car and took a deep breath. She drove to Tom’s, mulling over the fact that she was dead, and yet, she went to work every day. As if being dead wasn’t bad enough, she still worked as a waitress.
“And I guess all that worrying about my future was a waste of time.” She took a shaky breath. All she’d wanted was to grow up. Finish school with Cali. Get a job she didn’t hate.
Live. She had wanted to live.
She parked in the lot of the diner and stared at the building. It looked the same as always.
The misting rain greeted her as she stepped out of her car. The sun brightened for only a second, and as it dimmed, Leland stood in front of her. He glowed, but not blindingly so.
“Why are you here, Alexia?” Leland asked in a calm voice.
“Why are you here? How did you know where to find me?” Alexia kept her distance.
“I knew you would come,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I need help. Answers,” Alexia responded after a pause.
“With what?”
“I think—” She looked from Leland to the ground and back to Leland. “Am I dead?” Deciding to cut to the chase.
“Yes.” He furrowed his eyebrows.
“I’m rotting in a box!”
Wind rushed around them. Leland looked up, focusing on the clouds, as the gusts tossed his hair.
“You are, in that world. Here, you are you.” He looked back into her eyes. His voice was soothing, almost reassuring.
Almost.
Alexia’s emotions were on a rollercoaster and she’d completely stopped trying to control them.
“I saw my accident,” she screamed. “I saw it from my window!” She took a breath and closed her eyes. “Why are you here? I’m dead. Why join me? Where are we? Purgatory? Hell?” Alexia refused to believe she was in any kind of heaven if she still had to work every day.
“You are in your Ether. After you passed, I couldn’t see you. It was odd, especially with our history. You never came back. When I found you, you were lost. I came to get you.”
“History?” Alexia remembered the dreams that Leland had told her were past lives.
“You don’t remember?” Leland wrapped his hand around Alexia’s and she felt comfort in him.
“I remember dying.”
“Nothing else?”
“What else?”
Sighing, Leland pulled away so he could look into her eyes. “Memories take some time to come back. That is why we move to Ethers first. It’s been too long though. You should remember by now.”
“Who are you?” Alexia closed her eyes, fighting tears. She pulled away from Leland and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“I’m yours,” he said. “We’re family.”
Alexia knew he wasn’t lying; she just didn’t understand.
“Okay.” Forming her question, Alexia paused and looked at her hands. “So, you showed up, what, after my accident? I never woke up and went back to work. I never moved out of that apartment with Cali.”
Leland watched her but said nothing. Alexia’s mind was reeling. Nothing since her accident was real. She’d died that night, the rest had been, well, Alexia wasn’t sure what, but it hadn’t been real.
Turning away, Alexia thought about what it all meant. The longer she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt about the entire thing. She existed; she felt, thought, had friends, and a life. She’d been nineteen. It wasn’t fair. Anger rose in her, and she spun back to Leland.
A memory hit Alexia like a ton of bricks. The accident, crawling out the passenger’s seat, the pain. She remembered waking up. She remembered everything since.
“Only that didn’t happen,” she said out loud. She looked up at the questioning look on Leland’s face. “Because I’m dead.”
“Yes, you are. Something about this place is keeping you from moving forward. You’ve already been here so long.” His sweet smooth voice was completely reasonable, but Alexia wasn’t ready to accept it all, not yet.
“Where is here? Where am I?”
“You’re in an Ether. Your Ether. You made it. It’s not the world where you came from, where you were Alexia. It’s not our realm. This is an in-between. It’s temporary.”
“An Ether?”
“When you die, you create one. It’s just a new dimension, a temporary one to help you remember and move on to the Cetteri,” Leland answered.
“The what?”
“Earth is our home when we’re human. The Ce
tteri is our home when we’re Essence.”
“This makes no sense. Shouldn’t I have remembered dying before today?” Alexia threw her hands up. As if to emphasize her words, a boom of thunder sounded from the sky.
“Alexia, you always remembered dying. You just blocked your mind from telling you the truth. Your mind has been trying to tell you since it happened.”
“I already knew? I feel like I would have done things differently, had I known. Maybe stop going to work every day? Clearly, paying my bills was the least of my worries.” Alexia’s emotions, constantly in flux since she realized the truth, veered somewhere close to giddy.
“One would think.” Leland let out a laugh.
“This is insane!” she yelled, storming off. “You’re saying none of this is real?”
He caught up to her, grabbing her by the hand. She shook him off, but turned to face him again. “It is real. It’s just not Earth. You designed it to mimic your life. All your friends, everyone here, they are all real. Though, they aren’t really here.”
“I created all this?”
He nodded. “Yeah. You created this existence, your home, and your friends. It’s a construct to help remember everything.”
“You’re saying I could have created whatever kind of world I wanted, and I created this? I could have had a zombie apocalypse or been a famous singer, and I’m a waitress at Tom’s?”
“Sure,” he said after a pause. “Some Ethers are like that, but it’s just a quick transitional space so most are not much different than the lives they led.”
“Well, that’s boring.”
Another thunderclap boomed in the distance.
“Your Ether is, sort of, just layered on top of your old life. It’s a different dimension, but yours is unusually close to Earth’s dimension.”
“So?”
“So, people seem more real here. They evolve and change in a way that normal projections in an Ether wouldn’t. But not perfectly. I’m guessing those you’re closest to have changed the least, like Cali.”
Alexia’s blood went cold. “How do you know Cali?”
He laughed. “She’s family. Of course I know her.” He took her hands in his. “Think about it, has she changed recently?”
“Sure. She—” Alexia paused. “No, wait. The blue streaks.”
“What?”
“One weekend right before the accident we dyed our hair. I did purple streaks and she did blue.”
“Okay.” He shrugged.
“She still has blue hair. Mine grew out like three weeks after we did it, but hers is still blue. But we aren’t going to school anymore and we moved out of the apartment we shared.” Alexia searched for any other changes but drew a blank.
“Where does Cali live now?” Leland asked.
“She lives...” Alexia faltered. She leaned against a tree. “I don’t even remember the last time I saw her. I mean, I remember bits, but not the whole thing. She was at my house on my birthday. She’s probably still in college.”
“She isn’t,” Leland said softly. “She tried for another semester, but she’s had a really hard time.”
Alexia looked down and felt her stomach drop. She imagined how she would feel if Cali died.
“You’re haunting her.” Leland laid her hand on Alexia’s shoulder. “I didn’t even know you two could do it, but you can reach through to each other. She’s never really been able to let you go. You need to leave here. You both need to move on.”
“Haunting her?”
He lifted his hand like he wanted to hold Alexia’s but quickly dropped it. “These people aren’t real, at least not in the way they were when you were alive. Your memories are wearing out.”
Alexia blinked hard. “You talk like I have been forever. You’ve only been here like a week.”
Leland looked surprised. “Alexia, I’ve been here for over a year. You kept coming close to understanding and then you would shy away from the truth.”
“What? I have been here before, talking to you, knowing I am dead, and then, what? Going back to my job as a waitress? How many times have I figured this out?” Alexia was in disbelief.
“You’ve never admitted you were dead. You’ve never recognized me. But I knew you would eventually.”
“Because I love you.” Alexia looked at Leland and blushed. “Loved,” she hastily corrected. “In a past life or something. Right?” Alexia pushed off the tree and straightened. “How long have I been here?”
“Almost five years,” Leland said.
“Five?” No sooner had the words left her mouth when everything went dark. The world around her lit up in flashes like a strobe light had been turned on. A deep cracking sound came from Alexia’s chest. Had she felt anything to accompany the sound, she would have sworn her bones were breaking.
Closing her eyes to block out her surroundings did nothing to stop the flashing. The view changed. No longer was she seeing Leland standing on the path, as he had been. People started flashing into the blinks of light. The split-seconds of movement let on that these weren’t frozen moments. Her life literally flashed before her eyes. But it wasn’t Alexia’s life.
In one scene, Cali looked her way. Blink. A young girl, maybe ten, with tangled dark hair and vibrant green eyes picked a flower, oblivious to Alexia. Blink. A light brunette with curly flowing hair danced with a tall, strangely dressed, yet handsome man. Blink. A girl, probably about Alexia’s age with light blonde braided hair wearing a vintage swimsuit, jumped off a high rock into a lake. Blink.
The quick scenes playing before her eyes felt like memories. Each of them felt familiar, as did each person in the memories. They were not people or memories from Alexia’s life though, except the first glimpse of Cali. These were someone else’s memories. They were familiar, but they were not hers.
Blink. Alexia saw Leland, but an old-fashioned version of him wearing glasses and with a long scar running down his face. He was pushing some kind of ancient-looking farming equipment. Blink. A man in a pinstriped suit glaring at something Alexia couldn’t see. Blink. A Chinese man holding hands with two small children, all singing as they walked toward her.
Hundreds of different people in short, choppy moments flashed before her. All familiar. The string of girls that flashed after Cali all had reminded Alexia of Cali somehow. She knew the connection wasn’t an accident. They were all connected to her and each other, even if she didn’t know how.
As abruptly as they started, the flashes stopped and Alexia was enveloped in darkness again. Light faded in and she stood next to a rocky building. Dropped inside someone’s head, she felt another mind next to her own. The other knew the place. Her home.
Footsteps behind her made her jump. She spun to face whoever was out with her.
“What are you doing?” his voice was soft. He only sounded like that when he spoke to her.
She struggled for words but couldn’t find any and settled on a shrug. The anger flared in his eyes. It was gone in an instant. Brief enough that she could pretend it had never been there.
But it had.
The leaders had finally decided. She would marry this man. Alexia recognized the conflict in her mind.
The match probably made sense to the elders. He was wild and angry, but she knew him. He was her friend. She was his only friend. The only person he’d ever connected with. He loved her and she could calm him when he was lost or angry. And she loved him.
But not the right way.
And now that she knew she had to marry him; her gut told her she had to run.
She locked eyes with him.
Alexia felt sheer terror. Puzzle Pieces in her mind were trying to fall into place, but Alexia couldn’t figure it out. Something was still missing. Or perhaps the terror was just stopping her logical thinking. The other woman, she wasn’t scared. Alexia lost herself to that mind.
She wasn’t scared but she wanted out.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she finally said.
“I thought you w
ere running off.” His voice was soft. He wrapped his hands around her wrists. Too tight.
“You’re hurting me.”
“You’re mine. The leaders decided.” He squeezed her wrists tighter. “Mine. I’ve earned this.”
“You’re hurting me.” Her voice broke.
He dropped her wrists. “Go back to sleep. You shouldn’t be out here.”
She nodded but before retreating to her home, he grabbed her once more.
“This is for you.” He thrust something into her hand.
A yellow stone sparkled in the moonlight. Before she could examine it or say anything else, he stomped back to his own rocky house. He stood in the doorway and turned to watch her. She cowered away from the menacing glare and crept back to her home.
He’d be watching tonight. She had to stay.
But not forever.
She sat on the furs of her bed and examined his gift. A necklace. Beads in various shades of amber, and in the middle, one large stone. In the low light, it looked to be a dark, saffron yellow. His favorite color.
Her stomach clenched.
Alexia pulled away.
There was no sound, no light, no one. Alexia tried to reach out and find something to hold onto but found herself unable to move. It was so dark, when she lost consciousness, she hardly noticed.
Chapter Ten
“Cali?” The voice swirled around her like a feather trapped in a churning breeze. “Cali?”
Her eyes resisted attempts to open them; one opened hardly a crack, feeling glued shut. She recognized the voice, but Dustin was only a blur. Her mouth felt like sandpaper and she could taste the dirt. The sidewalk was cool beneath her.
“What the hell happened to you?” Dustin knelt beside her. “I thought you were out with Stacy. Why are you here?” His hands gently touched her face.
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