by Timothy Boyd
When he sighed in response, a feeling of guilt flooded over me. I was acting unnecessarily bitchy when he was only trying to do what I paid him to do.
I attempted to correct my actions by engaging him in some harmless small talk. “Why is it always so dark in here?”
“You told me you prefer the night.”
“It’s easier to write at night.”
“And how’s that going?”
That sneak always found a way to turn the conversation back to me. I suppose I should give credit where credit is due – he knew how to do his job.
After a dreadful minute of silence, he finally leaned back in his chair, a slight hint of irritation to his voice. “Why are you here, Melissa?”
Something about his bluntness took me by surprise, and I looked at him, my brow furrowing. I appreciated that he’d suddenly decided to cut through the therapist bullshit and lay his cards on the table. Or maybe his silent, staring wife in her flowery sundress compelled me to finally plant a seed of truth.
“Something’s wrong with me,” I divulged.
“I know what’s wrong with you,” came his matter-of-fact reply.
Again with the bluntness. I jolted from the couch and sat upright. “You do?”
“I’ve known since our first session, but telling you isn’t going to help you deal with it.” He tossed his pencil onto his desk with abandon. “You’d just go home, look it up on the Internet, and come back here next week telling me all the things you think I want to hear.”
This guy knew me better than I thought he did. But as I sat on the couch, my eyes darting around aimlessly, searching for the best response to his disarming honesty, I decided it was time to stop watching from the sidelines as life passed by. I had nowhere else to go but up, so I relented and threw my own cards on the table with his.
Let the game begin.
“I’m different now…” I hesitated, my brain still searching for meaningful words.
He leaned forward in his chair, listening intently.
“…since the accident.”
This is it, Melissa. All in.
“I see things, now.” I paused but then clarified, “People. I think they need help, but… it’s like they can’t ask for it.”
Dr. Abner scribbled quickly on his notepad. “And you didn’t feel this way before the accident?”
I shook my head in reply because my throat was dry and clenched, and I knew my voice would quaver if I spoke.
“What do you think would happen if you tried to help one of these people?”
“I…” my voice trembled. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “I don’t really know how.”
He carefully placed his pencil on the desk and folded his hands. “How do you feel about that?”
My gaze was pulled to his wife, sitting quietly in the chair in the corner. “Helpless,” I finally said. I felt the tide begin to rise within my body, and tears threatened to spill forth from my eyes. “I feel helpless.”
The doctor nodded at my admission, and after a moment, he offered, “Would you do something for me?”
I wiped the moisture from my eyes before it had the chance to streak down my cheeks.
“The next time you come across one of these people, try to help them. No matter how small. A smile… a hug… a dollar. And next week, you can let me know how it went.”
I was willing to try, of course, but I knew it would be easier said than done. I glanced one last time at Mrs. Abner in the corner, her sad expression permeating the room. “Tell me about your wife,” I said.
Dr. Abner sat up in his chair, startled by the random question. “My wife…” His gaze fell to a framed photo on his desk, and a smile crossed his lips. “Vibrant. Stunning. Caring.”
The woman in the chair grinned broadly, and she placed her delicate hand over her heart.
“And understanding,” he nodded. “Always willing to listen. The light of my life, quite honestly.”
I considered him briefly before asking, “How did she die?”
* * *
As I mentioned before, in my twenty-six years of life (and my one minute of death), strife has not been unknown to me. The path to adulthood certainly wasn’t paved very smoothly. But now, since the accident, my name’s coincidence is just too unsettling. It’s as if I never fully came back from death, like I’m trapped somewhere between two harsh worlds, where I’m forever forced to interact with both the living and the deceased.
I haven’t told anyone, because I’d prefer to remain out of an institution. The dead can’t talk, so I’m usually able to ignore them when I see them. But every now and then, there’s one that gets under my skin that I can’t seem to shake.
Like the one who was standing on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, staring at me intensely.
He was barely five feet tall, brown shaggy hair that hung down into his deep hazel eyes, twelve – maybe thirteen – years old. Besides the creep factor of having the spirits of dead people follow me around, I wanted this particular boy to leave me alone, because I felt an incredible sadness at the idea of the death of a child. I wondered frequently what had happened to his parents. Were they still alive? Was the boy an orphan? Did he have anyone at all in this world that missed him?
I exited my quaint apartment building on the quiet, tree-lined street, the curb on both sides filled with parked cars, a light dusting of snow falling from the gloomy morning sky. With my petite, girlish figure wrapped in my black felt jacket and white scarf, my hands stuffed in my deep pockets to keep warm from the crisp attack by the biting December winds, I walked quickly down the sidewalk, headed to the train station, ignoring the dead boy as I usually did.
I endured the forty-five minute subway ride in the over-packed train car, dozens of other pedestrians standing in fluffy winter coats, constantly bumping into one another as the train rocked to and fro. After finally emerging above ground once more, I was thrown into the hustle and bustle of downtown rush hour. Horns honked unnecessarily, and a sea of pedestrians ebbed and flowed down the sidewalks, not even bothering to acknowledge one another.
I smiled at the homeless man selling gossip rags on the busy street corner. I nodded politely to the traffic cop as she blew her whistle and halted oncoming cars with her white-gloved hand. But as I saw the guy huddled in a blanket in the alley, I slowed a bit, melancholy overtaking me, even though I knew he could not feel the cold.
I knew this, because I’d seen him every morning on my way to work for the past year. Always just as huddled. Always just as despondent.
Always just as dead.
Despite my warm coat and fuzzy scarf, I shivered. I continued through downtown as the winter gloom blanketing the steel and concrete jungle gave way to a lighter shade of gray as the morning became fuller. Early rising tourists also clogged the intersections, pointing at landmarks and taking photos of overelaborate storefront window decorations that embraced the holiday season.
An old woman stood, wearing a light cardigan and leaning heavily on a cane, staring longingly at a particular decorative scene displayed in a department store window. Two mannequins decked in leisure clothes lovingly trimmed a tree together next to the fireplace. Pedestrians passed through the old woman’s incorporeal form, none the wiser to the presence of the dead. I grew immensely sad for her, imagining that she saw her former self and her lost lover within the two frozen faces of the smiling plastic people, wistfully wishing for a time that no longer existed.
I made a point to step around her, even though no one else did, and I continued through the mindless mob of rush hour commuters.
It’s ironic that I enjoy living in a big city so much, considering my introverted existence. With my brother away at college and both of my parents having moved south when my father lost his job, I didn’t really socialize with many people outside of water cooler small talk while at the office.
People sometimes ask what I do, and I want to say, “I’m a writer,” because that’s where my passions l
ie – further proof of my introversion. But the truth is that since my accident, I’ve been fairly passionless. When I sit down at my desk with a goal in mind, I barely get three words typed before I swap over to my web browser or decide my cat needs to be brushed immediately.
So, I begin to tell them about my day job by saying, “I work for an investment firm,” and then the conversation quickly steers away from my life, because they realize how unremarkable I truly am.
I glanced over my shoulder and noticed the dead boy from earlier. He continued to follow me, having the luxury of ignoring pedestrian lights and walking straight through traffic. Sometimes it can be tricky to spot the dead among the living, but solid objects passing through their bodies without causing them harm is always a dead giveaway.
No pun intended.
They also have no reflections, as far as I can tell, but it’s when I get close to them that their lifelessness becomes apparent. It’s difficult to describe with words, but something in their eyes is… different. Maybe the color is just a little duller, the white just a little grayer, the bags under their eyelids just a little darker. It unsettles me, so I prefer to keep my distance.
“Ma’am?”
When the woman spoke, I blinked and realized I had been standing at the curb, staring ahead at nothing, my arms clutched tightly across my chest, hugging myself. A little startled, my head snapped in the direction of the voice, and my eyes came to rest on a woman of average height, although there was nothing average about her. Her shoulder-length black hair framed her smooth caramel-skinned face, and she held a cup of coffee in one hand, a golden police detective’s badge clipped to the waistline of her pressed pantsuit. She exuded an aura of authority that commanded a sincere respect.
As this officer stood in the bitter morning cold, looking at me expectantly with a kind-yet-concerned expression, I felt inexplicably drawn to her. My nerves became frazzled, and I fought to hold back a deluge of emotion.
“You going to cross?” she asked, one eyebrow raised, motioning toward the walkway with her steaming beverage.
I looked up and saw that the traffic signal had shifted from red to green, and surrounding pedestrians were pushing past me, in a hurry to get to nowhere.
There he was.
Now standing at the other side of the street was the spectral boy, looking at me with pleading eyes. I shivered and no longer wanted to cross.
I turned back to the police detective. “Sorry, I was…” I made a twirling motion with my index finger next to my head, “…you know… just thinking.” I felt the sting of tears peek out from the bottoms of my eyelids as I fought to keep them repressed.
The cop smirked softly. “Well, maybe you can stop to think when you’re not in the middle of a crosswalk.”
I sheepishly smiled and nodded. “Right, sorry.” A single tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away, stepping off of the sidewalk and onto the asphalt of the white-striped pedestrian lane before any more embarrassment could befall me.
“Hey,” she called to me, her hand grabbing my arm, carefully turning me back toward her, her tender eyes filled with worry. “You all right?”
Not really, ma’am. Today is the one-year anniversary of when I almost died in a horrible car accident in which I was responsible for the death of a man in the other car, and now I can see the ghosts of the dead wandering around the city, including a little boy who follows me everywhere, but he can’t talk to tell me why, and I’m just so sad all the time now.
“Mmhmm,” I managed, an unconvincing grin plastered to my face. If it weren’t for the subsequent tear that rolled out before I could wipe it away, she might have bought the ruse.
The detective kept hold of my arm and looked around cautiously. I assume she was making sure a predator of some sort wasn’t pursuing me. “Do you need me to call someone for you?” she asked, the absolute sincerity of her concern making me feel even worse.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, managing to delicately free my arm from her grasp. “Really. It’s just been… one of those mornings.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as she searched my face for signs of dishonesty before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small business card, handing it to me. “Here. If you need help or anything, you call me.”
I looked down at the simple white card: Detective Carla Bailey. As I slipped it into my pants pocket, I did my best to remove the anguish from my face. “Thank you, Detective, but I’m really fine.”
Bailey smiled half-heartedly, clearly not believing a word I said, and she nodded. “Ok.”
I walked briskly across the street, trying to ignore the tragedy of the dead boy’s current existence, and I continued on my way to work.
As I approached my monstrous office building within the heart of downtown, I reached out for the door handle and froze. My hand backed away a few inches, and I stood there staring at my own visage in the glass. Even though I could not see him, I knew the boy was right behind me, his dead pleading eyes yearning for me to turn around and… well, I wasn’t really sure what he wanted.
But as I stared at my thin reflection, my blonde hair wispy in the frigid morning air, I saw an empty shell of the woman I once was. It reminded me of the dozens of deceased that cross my path each day, and I wondered if it would have been better to have died in the accident.
I took a deep breath, a small foggy plume escaping my dry lips. I slowly spun around and saw the boy, not far away, a deep sorrow reflected within his dull eyes. He did not move. He did not try to speak. He stared.
As our eyes truly locked for the first time, a mysterious force compelled me to utter, “I’m sorry.” Without knowing why, I cried. Either an inconsolable heartache for the boy or a pathetic pity party for myself, I stood in front of my office and sobbed, my puffy face buried within my gloved hands.
After I finally pulled myself together, I realized the dead boy was still staring at me, pedestrians passing through him. Something about that made me angry, and I wanted to scream at them for violating his space. But they didn’t know any better.
“Hey, Melissa,” a woman called out.
I glanced over my shoulder to see a co-worker holding open the door for me.
“The quarterly’s in five minutes. You coming?”
“Be right there.”
I turned back to the boy, unsure of what else to do, so I took a deep breath and nodded at him. When I turned around to head in to work, panic filled his face, and he reached his hand out to me, begging for me to stay.
I froze again, waiting for more, my own eyes just as wide as his.
He slowly lowered his arm, turned, and began walking away.
My heart pounded, and my breath caught in my seized throat. Was I supposed to follow him? I felt that an invisible force was pulling me to him, my soul already following the boy while my body remained.
One of the biggest office meetings of the year began in less than five minutes; I figured I could pursue these irrational ghostly adventures after work.
But what if the boy – this sad ghost of a person that I had seen nearly every day for the past year – was leaving forever, walking away from the answers I hadn’t thought I wanted?
Once again, I was torn between the living and the dead.
Perdition’s Path
II
The dead boy continued down the sidewalk, moving farther away from what could be my only chance at answers. I looked through the glass doors leading into my office building, observed the obedient employees waiting patiently at the bank of elevators at the far end of the marbled lobby, and I imagined them walking to their cubicles illuminated by dreary fluorescent overhead lights.
Missing the meeting would likely mean my termination, but as I watched my co-workers enter into that soul-sucking life, I felt my own spirit following after the shaggy-haired child. Spreadsheets and phone calls would fill my day if I entered, and my passions would remain squelched.
“Wait!” I called out to the kid, run
ning away from my stable life at the firm, entering into a world of irrational madness and adventure. He turned a corner up ahead as I weaved in and out of rush hour pedestrians.
I collided with an older man, almost knocking him off his feet.
“Watch it, bitch!” I heard him yell rudely as I continued.
My heart pounded in my chest as I gasped to intake the freezing air into my abused lungs. Even though the boy only walked, he maintained a large lead on me. After all, he didn’t have to dodge the mobs of people wrapped in scarves and coats and briefcases.
My body rattled with panic at the thought that I would not catch up to him. On the street corner ahead, a man dressed as Santa Claus rang a small golden bell asking for monetary donations for his tiny red bin. With each piercing clang of that bell, my brain shook in my skull, throbbing at my temples, the swirling nausea building within my stomach and threatening to push itself up through my body.
The boy continued, never looking back. He turned corners and walked through busses, never stopping to check for traffic. Onward he pressed, as if testing my commitment to follow him.
I foolishly dashed into the street in an attempt to gain some ground. A searing screech filled the air as a yellow taxicab slammed on its brakes and skidded to a halt, its horn blaring. I could hear the muffled obscenities coming from the foreign driver within, but I pushed forward, weaving around speeding cars, a cacophony of horns echoing between the surrounding skyscrapers.
And then I got hit.
By the time I realized I had been struck, I was rolling up onto the frosted hood, smacking into the windshield as the driver quickly hit his brakes, sending me soaring forward and scraping across the black slush-covered pavement.
A second later, my world was engulfed in blackness.
* * *
My eyes flutter open. Potent ammonia permeates my aura. My senses are twisted; I see the beeping, taste the harsh light, and smell the cork ceiling slats. Suddenly, excruciating pain surges through my body and my senses are realigned once more. I am numb and have little control of my pained muscles. I am in a hospital bed, an intravenous tube sending droplets of clear liquid into a large vein in my arm.