I was dreaming. The strange sort of dream that was all at once so real you believe it to be true, and so fantastic it seems impossible. The colors were muted and dull like a watercolor painting that had been intentionally washed out. As often happens in dreams, everything around me was familiar though a piece of my mind argued that it couldn’t be.
The bed linens were a pastel yellow cotton, soft to the touch and warm against my skin. A heavy pile of blankets lay over me; not so heavy as to frighten me, more like the comforting weight of a full body hug. I smiled at the thought.
The light through the window threw shadows about the room, but I could make out the bureau in the corner with the lace doily my grandmother made in honor of my birth, adorning the top below the mirror. Pictures of my husband and me through the years clustered around the lacy oval. A vase of drooping daisies, their petals edged with brown, took center-stage. The lamp on the nightstand beside the bed was an antique, also from my grandmother, the glass long gone to purple, the bubble shade etched with flowers that seemed to dance upon the ceiling when I turned it on each night.
A sigh escaped me. The kind that indicates contentment. Even the sight of my gnarled, old hands smoothing the wrinkles in the bedspread gave me a feeling of elation about my life.
The sigh, however, alerted someone nearby that I was awake. The sound of their slippers sliding along the hardwood floor as they scurried to my bedside set my teeth on edge.
“Pick up your feet,” I said harshly. “You’ll scratch the flooring.” My voice sounded sharp and creaky to my ears, like nails on a chalkboard. I wanted to take the words back, remain silent in this room, but it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Leigh said, carefully lowering herself onto the edge of the bed. A barely audible hiss escaped her, as though the effort were painful.
I knew she was Leigh, my daughter, just as I knew this was a dream. I had no daughter, no husband to produce one. No heirlooms placed around my home. This was not my life.
My eyes sank closed again, Leigh’s voice followed me into darkness.
“Mom. Mom, can you hear me?” I felt her give me a shake, but the dream was changing. I was leaving her behind. “Mom! Mom, wake up. Mom…”
Leigh’s voice changed, became more youthful and higher pitched. This new voice spoke my name.
“Celeste,” she said. “Celeste, darling, wake up.”
I awoke with a start, feeling disoriented and wobbly. Opening my eyes, I cast my gaze about me in search of a familiar object to give me a clue as to where I was. I found it in a pair of blue-gray eyes framed by a curtain of white-blonde hair. A smile curved the woman’s lips. I smiled in return.
“Vicki,” I breathed.
“There you are,” she said, her soft southern accent almost imperceptible. “Let’s move into the shade, the sun is starting to get hot.” Vicki held out her hand to me and I slid mine into it. I marveled at the strength of the slender fingers, the coolness of her skin, and the softness of her palm where it touched mine.
Together we walked to the shade of a tree and sank onto a pair of oversized lounge chairs. Air puffed out from the cushion, encasing me momentarily in a hot hug. I waved it away. The shade was cooler but still quite warm.
Through the branches of the tree, I could see the yellow ball of a sun in the cloudless blue sky. It looked odd up there, more like still-life than real life. I looked away.
Around us, people relaxed in similar chairs, arranged in jumbles on a square of AstroTurf hemmed in by the sidewalks. Chattering together like chimps in a tree, their words lost to me as I listened. Children played on a play-set behind us, their whoops and giggles rising as they climbed the wooden steps and ramps to the top. Their voices sliding back down as they rode the curving slide to the ground.
A variety of shops encased the square. Restaurants and coffee shops inter-mingled with toy stores and lingerie boutiques, and in the center of it all, bubbled an oversized fountain. Water pulsed, shot, and sprayed into the air from dozens of nozzles that swiveled and moved in time to the music drifting over unseen speakers. It was all quite beautiful, but I felt unsettled. Something was wrong here. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Vicki leaned closer to me, resting her head on my shoulder. “They’re playing our song,” she said softly. Louis Armstrong sang “What a Wonderful World” while the fountain shot water is time to the music. It was the first song we’d danced to as a couple, so many years past it felt like a lifetime ago.
Tenderly, I stroked her long tresses, marveling at the silky softness against the smooth skin of my hands. I’d had hair the same color once, a long time ago, before an unfortunate case of lice in elementary school had driven my father to shave my head. It grew back jet black. That would have been the early sixties.
“What year is it?” I whispered to her. Knowing how crazy the question sounded, I kept my voice low. If they lice incident was in the sixties, and I was – what, eleven? I should be the old lady in the bed, not this me. Young and in love. I felt Vicki’s body stiffen beside me.
For a disconcerting moment, the world around me faded. The colors became gray, my hands wrinkled before my eyes, and my head thumped as a memory pressed into the foreground of my mind. I danced in a white dress, looking into the eyes of a tall, dark-haired man. Looking into his eyes, I felt dizzy with love for him. My soulmate. My husband. In a flash it was gone. Once again I sat looking at the fountain, the world drenched in color. Startled, I looked at my hands expecting to see the gnarled, twisted flesh of the old woman. Instead, my hand were smooth and unlined.
“Does it matter?” Vicki asked, her eyes searching mine.
There was something else in her eyes, too. Fear? Was she frightened? I frowned at the thought.
“We’re here, darling,” she said with conviction. “Together. Does it matter when it happened? How it happened?” It was her voice, but it was a half syllable off from her lip movements. I jerked away from her, confusion clouding my mind. Her lips continued to move, but I could no longer hear her. Instead, from far away, I heard Leigh
“Mom! Mom! Please don’t go.”
I could hear her sobbing. Around me everything had stopped, frozen in time. Frightened, I turned my eyes to Vicki. I found my fear echoed in her eyes.
“Vicki,” I said, gripping her fingers. “What’s happening?” There was no reply. Still as a statue, her toothy smile more of a frightening grimace, only her eyes moved and twitched beneath her lashes. Swirling in her head, back and forth. I wasn’t sure if she was going mad or if she was trying to tell me something.
Leigh’s voice rose and echoed around me, tugging at me like an insistent child, begging me to return. I could hear it rising through the motionless jets of water, ringing through the branches of the trees, pressing down on me from the cloudless sky. It came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, growing louder, expanding, encircling me in it’s grip. My head began to throb with the sound of it. Pressing my fingers to my temples, I closed my eyes against the invisible onslaught. For a beat there was silence.
“Mom, please,” Leigh said, her volume normal now. Grief and despair hung heavy in the room, matching the guilt and remorse in my heart.
I groaned, setting off another course of desperate pleas from Leigh. Movement was difficult, but I managed to flap a hand in her direction and pry my eyelids open.
“I’m here, Leigh,” I croaked. “I’m here.”
“Oh, Mom,” Leigh burst into tears. She brought my hand to her cheek, rubbing against it as she cried. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m going, Leigh. This old body is giving out.”
“You’re not that old, Mom,” Leigh insisted. “You’re barely in your seventies. People are living into their nineties these days. You still have twenty good years ahead of you.”
I gave her a smile and treated her to my best Indiana Jones imitation. “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” I quoted.
Though she smiled through her tears, I could tell she was not amused. I couldn’t blame her, it was a terrible imitation.
“The doctor will be here soon,” she said, releasing my hand so she could wipe away her tears.
“Honey, the doctor can’t help me.” I was feeling tired again. My thoughts returned to Vicki and, not for the first time, I wondered which time-line was my real life and which my imagination. If this were the truth, why were there gaping holes in my memory? Why did this feel less real than Vicki? If it weren’t for the way Leigh’s voice had engulfed me, freezing my beloved Vicki, calling me back here, I would have gone on believing this reality was the dream. Now I entertained the possibility of the opposite.
“I can’t remember him.” The words came out soft as a sigh. I hadn’t intended to say them, but they slipped between my lips before I knew they were there. Leigh looked at me with sad eyes.
“I know, Mom,” she said, sniffing. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. The doctor said the new medication should help.”
What was happening to me? I wanted to know, but a rap at the door interrupted my thoughts, scattering them to the far corners of my mind, leaving me with the feeling I was missing something important.
“Just a minute,” Leigh called out. Reaching into the drawer of the night stand, she removed two medical masks. The first one she looped over my ears, settling it over my mouth and nose. I shook my head and moved to pull it off, but she stopped me. “You need to leave it on,” she said sternly, as she settled the second mask over her own face.
I hated the mask. It was so uncomfortable and it made it hard for me to breathe. Claustrophobia began to set in. My breathing became harder and faster, though I tried to breathe normally. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. The air I did take in was hot since most of it was just sitting there in the cup of the mask, waiting for me to breathe it in again over and over.
Leigh let the doctor into the room. Earl, my son-in-law, stood in the doorway, a grim look on his face. His mask clung tight to his face. The elastic looped over his sizable ears was too small, pulling them forward.
The doctor also wore a mask, this one bright white and moved gracefully as he spoke. What had I expected? It was his job, the mask part of his uniform, of course he wore it like a second skin. The small lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled down at me.
“How are you feeling today, Mrs. Sommerall?” He asked.
“Fine,” I said, making an effort to speak distinctly. My words remained muffled in the mask. “For a woman on her death bed.”
“Now, now, none of that,” he said, taking up my wrist to check my pulse. “Pulse is a bit rapid. Have we had some excitement today?”
“It’s the mask,” I mumbled. “It blocks my breathing.”
“Nonsense,” the doctor said. “They proved that was false. The masks do not hinder the breathing. It’s all in your head. If you think you can breathe fine, you can breathe fine. Now let’s have a listen to those lungs.”
Leigh helped me struggle into a seated position, giving the doctor access to my back. He listened to my heart and lungs, thumped along my spine, and felt the glands in my neck. Leigh helped me lie back against the pillows once he’d finished.
“Your lungs sound a bit congested. Have you been tested for the virus?”
“Not since father died two months ago,” Leigh offered. “But, we’ve been in quarantine all this time. Only you and GHI have been allowed past the front doors. I’m quite certain the virus could not have gotten in.”
“You can never be too sure,” the doctor said, solemnly. “That is why the masks are mandatory. You have been wearing them?”
“Yes, doctor,” Leigh said stiffly. “We are law-abiding citizens.”
“Of course,” the doctor said.
Like so many other things in this life, I had forgotten about the GHI, Governmental Health Inspectors, until Leigh mentioned them. Even then the memory was vague. Different men and women clomping through the house every other day dressed in full body haz-mat suits. Their voices, coming through the speaker set into the face-plate, sounded robotic and emotionless. I shivered at the thought of them.
“Frank!”I whispered to myself, the memory taking hold in my mind. “My husband’s name was Frank.”Leigh looked at me sadly.
I sighed. It was a relief to remember. Maybe I wasn’t going crazy in my old age.
Our house had been under the watch of the GHI since the death of my husband to the yet unnamed virus that had attacked our community. My Frank was one of twelve-hundred that had died in the first wave. Somehow, Leigh, Earl, and I had neither tested positive nor even become ill. Yet, we remained under guard. Quarantined until the government was sure we were no longer a threat to our community. I wondered idly about how the other families were fairing. The curiosity passed quickly. My energy was ebbing.
“I want you all tested again. Mucus and blood to be sure. This virus is very tricky.” The doctor began to unload his medical bag onto the small nightstand. “I think your mother should be transported to the hospital for further observation.”
“No!” I struggled to sit up. “It isn’t the virus. It’s the pack a day for fifty plus years that has my lungs laboring.” I was feeling angry now. I turned to Leigh. “Don’t let him, Leigh. It will only drain your account and I’ll die anyway. I’m old. Let me die in peace.” Exhausted, I flopped back against the pillows, breathing hard behind my mask.
“Well,” the doctor said, “we’ll do the virus tests and go from there.”
There was no point in arguing, he’d do what he wanted
Leigh took the doctor by the arm and guided him a few steps from my bedside. “I’m worried about Mom’s memory,” she said quietly, though I heard every word. There was nothing wrong with my hearing. “Each time she wakes it takes longer for her to recognize where she is or who we are.”
I wasn’t listening anymore. My eyes slid closed. From somewhere far away, I could hear Vicki. My mind was muddled and confused. I wanted to return to Vicki beside the fountain, where life was peaceful.
But, Leigh needed me, if for no other reason than to keep the doctor from forcing us all into a hospital somewhere. People checked in, but they rarely checked out. Alive anyway. My life was draining away; I’d rather it ran empty in my own home.
As before, once my eyes slid shut, their voices faded and Vicki’s took over. When I opened my them, I was sitting beside her again. I drew in a deliciously deep breath.
“I don’t smoke here,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“Of course not,” Vicki answered as if it had been a question. “You abhor cigarettes. Nasty little cancer sticks. They kill more people than I care to think about. Why would a person wish to clog up their lungs that way?”
“Good question,” I said, taking in another breath, this one heavy with the scent of lilacs. I smiled.
Behind us, the children laughed and played. Before us, the fountain danced and burbled. All around the square, people talked and laughed, held hands, hugged each other, and shopped like it was just anthor day. It suddenly occurred to me what was wrong with what I saw.
“Where are the masks?” I asked, gazing about me, studying each face.
“What masks?” Vicki replied as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She did know. I could tell by the way her body stiffened when I asked the question.
“The masks,” I said, a little more heat in my tone than I intended. I raised my hand to my face in demonstration, feeling the lines around my own nose as I did so. Stunned, I traced the lines. How, if I am only spirit here, could I still feel the mask lines on my face? How was it possible?
“Darling,” Vicki said, cupping my face in her hands. “We dispensed with those long ago. You need not worry about such trivialities here. We are as we were intended to be.”
“I’m so confused,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. A thumping pain was growing there. I hoped to relieve the pressure before it became too intense.
“Don’t close your eyes,” she said urgently. Her voiced dropped to a whisper. “You’ll be lost to me.”
I eyed her carefully. “Can you answer my questions?”
Dropping her hands into her lap, she dipped her head and said, “I can try.” Resignation sounded in her voice.
“How did I get here? Where is here? Why do I keep flipping back and forth?” Once I started asking questions, they seemed to flow from my mouth like water through a sieve. “Which is real? Which is the dream? Are you really here? Or just a figment of my imagination?” I would have gone on, but she stopped me by placing a cool finger against my lips.
“There is so much, I don’t know where to start.” Her lips trembled. The tip of her tongue slid along them briefly then was gone. A habit I remembered from our time together.
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
“You left me,” she clutched tightly at my arm for a moment before releasing it and dropping her hands into her lap. There they writhed together, fingers intertwining, like a nest of snakes ready to strike. I don’t know why I saw them that way.
She went on, “I never recovered, not really. You were my one true love. I needed to find a way to fix it, and I did!” Her face gleamed with triumph. “I found a way to punch through the binds of time, extend the threads, and draw you to me once more. Only here are we safely together. Here we have no worries, no sickness, no fear, no end.”
“How?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter!” She said fiercely. “It’s done. All you have to do is choose it. Choose me.”
Leigh’s voice called to me. It surrounded me as if I were hearing it through hidden speakers.
“Mom! Don’t leave me!”
I could hear the grief and fear in her voice.
Then another voice joined hers. The voice of the doctor. “There’s nothing more we can do,” he said.
“She needs me,” I whispered.
“There’s nothing you can do for her,” Vicki said harshly. “That body is dying. You’d be lucky to last an hour.”
Another sound reached my ears. Faint at first, but growing louder. A snip, snip like the sound of scissor blades opening and closing.
“What the hell is that?” I bolted to my feet, spinning in a circle in search of the origin of that sound.
“Time is up!” Vicki grabbed hold of my arms, stopping me in mid-turn. The fear she said didn’t exist , sounded in her voice. “You must choose, Celeste. Now. Quickly! Before the tether is cut. If you return to that body, you will die. You’ll be gone for good. If you stay here, we can be together. Your life can go on. We can be happy.”
The sound was louder now. I covered my ears in an attempt to drown it out, but it seemed to be as loud inside my head as outside it. What could I do? How could I choose? I knew nothing of this strange place. Home I knew. If I died, was there not Heaven? Wasn’t there a paradise where my husband stood waiting for me? There were reasons Vicki and I went our separate ways. I just couldn’t think of them with so much noise tearing at my brain.
I closed my eyes.
For a moment, I felt Vicki tearing at my arms, trying to keep me with her. Then nothing. Only silence reached my ears. My eyes fluttered open. I saw nothing but darkness. Next to my ear came the quiet snipping of scissors. This time, I could hear it cutting through fabric. Then I was floating, melting, dissolving away. I let go. Eyes tightly shut, I waited for what would come next. Fear welded my lids shut, the darkness weighing heavily upon me.
Was it too late to choose? If I chose now, would I suddenly appear again? How could I choose between a new life with Vicki and forever with Frank in Paradise? Were my parents there? Would Leigh one day join me? The unknown kept me stationary, unsure and unable to reconcile my desire for a new life and my wish to die. It had been a long life full of joy and trials. I was ready to move on, but to where? I wanted to cry, but there were no tears; to wail, but I had no voice. From somewhere, I heard one word echoing around me, so quietly I almost missed.
Choose, it whispered over and over. Choose.
But, I could not choose.
Emptiness settled in.
I grew numb…
… Drifting further from myself…
… Nothingness…
Choose.