Nine Lives Before God

BEFORE THE ARRIVAL of oneness, there existed nothingness. Or so it seems to me. You may disagree, but that is because you do not know any better. That is all right, for I am here to tell you what I know. Let’s see then… where to begin? You would think we would start from the beginning, but there is no such thing—only the here and now. And in this sprawling void of all that never was, an atom within an atom within an atom infinitely split its innards apart to reveal the face of God—giving way to an incomprehensible, dream-like state that transcended all forms of being and becoming.

All that remained was all that is; dispersing into nothingness, the grandiose of the universe itself. It would be a lonely existence if God had the capacity to feel an emotion as harrowing as this. Instead, the all-knowing, all-seeing being divulged itself into innumerable beings across all planes. A new genesis took place in the cosmos, inviting a young soul into the ether—accompanied by boundless others of its kind. They had but one purpose: to experience their being in its entirety before their eventual return to God. And so, wormholes collapsed to make space for life, death gave way to (re)birth, and a fault line in full bloom emerged as a home for some eight billion souls. 

I have been here before, both in the long yesterday and the long tomorrow. And here I am once again, in the long today, on a rather interesting life path for my soul this time. It seems that my spirit resume did not have enough experience to be ticketed a one-way route back to God, and since I no longer wished to bear the weight of a burdensome human existence, I chose to become one with nine lives. An extraordinary feat, to say the least. You would understand if you knew my soul. But you do not—not yet anyway. 

On our return, you will know mine, as I will know yours. Until then, ascend with me.  

From what I have learned, a common rite of passage for the human condition is a stark disconnection from its essence. Most of these souls spend their days in meaningless drudgery, blaming a higher power for their misery. Well, that is also quite all right! For they will remain in the hollows of their soul prison (as I have done, many times before… or was it in the now? Doesn’t matter, it is all one) until they choose differently—repeating the same mistakes, partaking in the same lessons, and desperately chasing the same idle greed that would bring them right back to where they started. Over and over and over again; in differing forms, in various bodies, in seemingly unrelated journeys. 

One way or the other, it all connects, and it all continues—for the energy that accounts for existence cannot be destroyed. Of course, there are some exceptions to this fate; those who understand the game and free themselves from the burdens of worldly desires tend to rise with their spirits to higher planes. Not an easy task in the slightest, but doable nonetheless. In fact, as we speak, a most interesting (and my personal favorite) anomaly has just taken her place in front of a computer screen. 

⚚

BENEATH

Lana is seated on the wooden floor of her tiny bedroom; her legs crossed, a cigarette clamped between her lips as she exhales the smoke out of her nose, and her unruly dark hair tightly wrapped into a braid to keep it from sticking out. It sticks out, anyway. The woman is visibly tired, and while her weakening body is barely holding itself up, she ignores the ache in her bones and the stinging in her bloodshot eyes from both the smoke and the blinding blue light of the screen as she continues to click and clack across the broken keyboard violently. 

A soul in distress? No, a human in a rabbit hole. 

Tonight, she hopes to finally find the answers to her burning questions on the internet. Knowing, despite all her efforts, that it is probably not the right place to search. But she has thrown caution to the wind and seems entirely determined to finish the task at hand. It sears through her brain like a sizzling arrow marked in red, sirens raging throughout her mind’s necropolis. 

As she carries on, the walls of her room start to close in on her, becoming smaller and increasingly more difficult to breathe in. Hurriedly, and with much desperation, Lana stubs the cigarette on an ashtray that resembles a nipple and returns to her screen. A second later, she sniffs her fingertips and makes a repulsive face at them. Give it a minute. She will repeat it until the smell has numbed entirely and will only stop once the scent is buried in her nostrils. What a fascinating creation of the Lord.

On the other end of her room—barely a foot away—a fat ginger tabby named Tanker is splayed on his back atop the rickety bed. I rather like my body this time; it is more agile and responsive than the ones I had before. Unbothered by my human mother’s erratic behavior over the last few weeks, I sleep peacefully and look forward to my last meal of the night when the automatic feeder is set to go off. In my half-sleep, I tend to adjust my position on the blanket frequently, moving from one side to another. 

Allow me a minute, I must reach across this flabby stomach to clean my deflated balls. You would not believe the wonders of this tuna breath that makes me smell like cotton candy and fresh laundry! Lana assumes that when I look up at her between licks, with seemingly no coherent thoughts behind my eyes, I am disregarding the distress she is in. Well… I am. But her presence makes me feel safe enough to ignore the trials and tribulations of human lives. I have done that one too many times; let me return to my bath for now. 

“Aha!” The woman exclaims, her eyes lighting up as she blinks them swiftly to keep them from watering. “Got’chu,” she whispers into the air as she closes one pop-up ad after another. No busty babes in the area for her tonight, just a few pills. 

A website appears on the screen. It reads, “realpsychiatrists.online.com/help-dreams.” She wages yet another war with her cursor to reach the form hidden beneath a sea of advertisements. A loading symbol appears before her, spiraling repeatedly in a clockwise circle as the text above it bobs up and down, while her restlessness reaches new levels of discord. 

Connecting you to a doctor. Please wait. 

An automated voice blares from the speaker, and she shudders at the sound before closing in towards the screen to decipher whether it is real or not. 

“Hi! Welcome to our free and legal website. What symptoms are you experiencing today?” 

“Fucking AI losers,” Lana mutters under her breath as she types out her message to the robot. 

Disturbing dreams for over three weeks, no answers for their symbolism—neither in my mind, nor on the web. Make them stop. 

She stares at the three dots dancing within the box and feels a sense of nausea creeping through her marrow. Another second in front of this godforsaken device, and she will certainly throw up her dumpling and Coke dinner. 

“Certainly. All you have to do is select one from the following: Clonazepam, Belsomra, Eszopiclone, Zimovane.”

At this, she falls into a sort of trance with her thoughts. To trust, or not to trust? What was her other option? She did not wish to step out to fetch an over-the-counter pill from the pharmacy. No doubt, they would outright refuse her for anything stronger than melatonin or Benadryl without a prescription, and she could not stand the thought of returning to the therapist’s office after months of progress with herself. All at once, the crushing weight of shame and anguish collapsed on her shoulders. Time was running out, and a dreadful night’s sleep was catching up with her body at an exasperating speed. With a long and defeated sigh, Lana types out her response. 

Deliver the strongest pill to 24 Fiker Street. ASAP! 

She hits the enter button and receives a thumbs-up emoticon in return. Exhausted and entirely overcome by her anxiety of yet another odd, destabilizing dream, she falls back on the hard floor and zones out at the non-existent patterns on the ceiling. Black, blue, yellow, and green. Concentric circles and eight-point stars tumble into one another, wiggly lines, and wobbly rectangles call out her name in the deafening silence of the room. 

As if saved by the bell, or rather by the feeding station, I hop off the bed and make my way towards my midnight snack. Lana props herself up on her elbow and reaches out to touch my tail. I turn around and squeak in return. As per the general laws of my species, I am not meant to like this, but I really do. Lucky for me that there are no evident retributions in the feline world for doing things you are not “supposed to.” It is more instinctual than intellectual—yet another reason for my affection towards this life. While it has not been easy, I have managed to narrowly escape the human tendencies of judgment and bigotry. It’s a different thing that I was subjected to it anyway, what with all the neglect and abuse of animals on the streets and in dumping grounds. But I am here now, and that is enough. 

There exists a rather strange and undying relation between the two of us, marked by compassion, solitude, and unconditional presence. From time to time, it still surprises her that we can understand one another without exchanging words from a common language. I assure you, I am rather chatty, but she does not understand the depth of my meow. Yet, it is as if an invisible thread tethers us together. I remember when I chose her in the long yesterday. But she does not. 

“No dreams tonight, Tank.” She says to me, and I ignore her, for I am overcome by an insatiable need to stuff my face with freeze-dried chicken hearts. When I do not respond, she wills herself to get off the floor and looks around her room in a disheartened stupor; books she loaned from the store she works at spread messily throughout the space, the colorful canopy above her bed hanging out from one corner, a litter of dust bunnies scampering under her shelves. She makes a mental note to take care of this mess the following morning. 

With nothing else to do, her brain quickly plummets into a disarrayed loop of thoughts. If the pills didn’t work, what sort of dream would she have tonight? Would it be another vivid instance of falling from a cliff and nosediving into the ocean? Only for her to drown in her mind and wake up gasping for air? Or would she see the palace of the dead again? With its blood-stained floors and wallpaper peeling from mold? Her spine withers at the thought of being chased by a faceless figure again, its presence haunting her senses. Worse yet would be to see memories of her dead mother’s life, ones that she herself could not recall. 

Above all, Lana fears that these dreams remind her of her loneliness in this world; a feeling that clings to her like tar, a feeling that she desperately tries to scrub off herself with an iron wool she has made out of evasion and apathy. Almost instantly, she ignores her previous mental note and begins leafing through her research papers, arranging them in categorized files on her desk. 

Pages within endless pages filled with discourse on death and the afterlife. Perhaps it is this obsession with the idea of dying that is teetering her towards the deep ends of insanity, reflected only in her dreams (so far). Who knew what would come next? Would she lose her mind and, consequently, herself in this conquest? She could not say. Instead, she sweeps these thoughts into inventory and picks up a dust rag to wipe the surfaces: the crumbling nightstands, the lamp, the disintegrating drawers. 

And then a pause. 

A photo frame that stops her in her tracks every time she looks at it: two women sitting alongside one another on a picnic blanket by the beach with a range of chips and sandwiches neatly stacked in front of them. A few blurred faces and figures surround them in the background, each soul renewed anew. Lana believes that her melancholy will kill her someday, and from what she knows thus far, it would not be so bad, for she would get to see her sister once again. But then she looks down at her beloved Tanker, as I rub my face against her calves and leap up to her knees to be held. All thoughts of death dissipate. Purpose achieved—for now. She picks me up, with some effort, I might add, and gently caresses the frame with her fingers. 

They no longer smell of cigarettes. 

When the doorbell finally rings, she rushes out of her room in bounds and leaps to grab the package from the deliveryman. Instead, she is met by a gush of wind outside her doorstep that makes the hair on her neck stand up, and a small packet left at the threshold. A cold plunge of relief washes over her heart as she tears it apart with her teeth and locks the door before heading into the kitchenette. 

Once back inside the safe walls of her room, she takes a breath and lightly pets her companion in this life, curled up into a loaf beside her. Throwing two pills into her mouth, she chases them down her throat with a large swig of stale beer and slips beneath her blanket, extending her arm to scratch a purring kitty’s chin. Minutes later, she is dead asleep and knows only the sweet ecstasy of nothingness. 

⚚ 

BETWEEN

When Lana wakes up next, she feels a strange lightness in her limbs that she can not explain. The lights in her room are switched off, and yet the walls seem to be covered in a dark blue hue. She assumes it to be from the streetlight creeping in through the window, and sits up on her bed as she glances over at the cat huddled up into a shrimp beneath the sheets. How long did she sleep? She couldn’t tell. Time appears to be moving rather languidly around her. Still, content with the dreamless sleep she had just managed, she places her feet on the ground and takes a moment to steady herself before she starts working again. 

Something is odd—misplaced somehow. She looks around the room with a discerning eye, but everything is just as she had left it a few hours ago. All but one thing. A strange glow embraces the portrait on the shelf, shedding embers of gold and silver onto the wall it backs. As she steps closer, her eyebrows bunch up in confusion, and her head begins to pulsate. The picture has transformed entirely; the two women looked as if they had aged a decade, a glimpse into a future that could never be theirs. The longer she stares at it, the stronger the throbbing in her head becomes. 

A mere instant later, a deep bellowing hum encompasses the room she is standing in, as if a fleet of fighter jets were passing overhead. Lana instinctively runs towards the window and sticks her head out to see what curse was befalling the world now. Seeing nothing except an unusually desolate street, she pulls back and realizes that the window is shut closed. Strange through and through. Another horror awaited her when she turned around. There she is, lying peacefully in her bed. 

“Oh my god, did those pills kill me?” Lana thinks to herself as she stands above her body. Inching closer to her own face, she looks for signs of life in what she considers a pathetically meek body. She is terrified out of her senses, her knees shaking at the sight of what she believes to be her corpse. I have no choice but to agree with her here; the irony of an inflated ego is that it makes you believe that you are invincible. It is only when you look at yourself as an outsider that you see how truly weak you are. 

“This is just a dream,” she finally says, taking a breath of ease at the sight of her chest rising and falling. Well, this is my cue. With a small purr, I stretch my limbs out and get up to greet her. “Tanky! Can you see me?” 

Of course I can see you! I want to say, but I hold my tongue and lightly step on her chest to form a near-perfect loaf. Without my trying, her scent and calmness in her deep sleep are enough to jumpstart the engine of my purrs. As for Lana, she seems to be disappointed by my inaction on this plane. But shortly after, it dawns upon her that she is free to do as she pleases in this dream; to roam the streets at night without fear—a privilege that is only accorded to men of this world—and free to fly and fall from the sky like a God. 

She knows where she is headed tonight. 

It takes her only the liberty of a single thought for her to levitate above the house, watching the lined homes grow smaller as the streets stretched farther back. A few towns over, she sees a gloomy beach drenched under a moonlit sky as she courses through the dense clouds with ease. When her feet finally touch the soft sand, she is filled with a range of differing emotions all at once—grief melts into love, which blends into sadness, which in turn fuses into nostalgia. She thinks of her sister again, hoping that she will somehow appear here. Just once, that is all she wanted; to hear the sound of her laughter bouncing off the walls of a room, to smell the sweet scent of lavender in her hair, to map the coordinates of her face so she could remember it once again. 

When all else fails, Lana sinks into the sand and watches the waves lap by the shore, comforted by the shapes and figures of dark water washing into lighter blues. It is only when she sees a looming figure in the distance that she gets up again. The sight of the beach changes almost instantly, eerie and unsettling yet akin to the same energy she has always associated with this place. Much to her disappointment, it is not her sister. 

“Who are you?” Lana questions the woman walking towards her, wide-eyed and frizzy-haired. Her defenses curl and climb around her body like vines, leaving room only for fear. “What are you doing in my dream?” She manages to ask again.

“I could ask you the same thing!” Visibly agitated, the lady runs her fingers through her greying hair and scans her surroundings with an almost scrutinizing eye. “Wait,” she starts, holding Lana’s chin and turning it one side, then another. “You look familiar.” 

Before she can make sense of this odd character, she feels herself getting pulled this way and that. In a blinding flash, she is underwater, surrounded only by the solitary depths of the ocean. Blues upon dark blues, stretching into an infernal vastness. As she struggles to catch her breath, heaving and plowing through billows of misty water, she feels a hand coiled around her wrist and flinches at its touch. 

“What are you afraid of?” The woman probes again as she pulls her out of the abyss. 

⚚

BEYOND

Once on a thundering night, amidst her preoccupation with a new study, Lana spoke out loud to nobody. Except, I was listening. “Sleep is a small death,” she had said. A terrifying notion, really—for those who do not know the pleasure of dying. An act that is, perhaps, simpler and more liberating than life itself. To tell you the truth, my mortal body knows only the certainty of physical reality and is more than willing to go to surprising lengths to keep it so, cowering and trembling at the thought of the obscure.

It’s unfortunate, really. I have found the best things in the unknown. But, I suppose there is some relief in knowing that when I rise from the suffering of the beneath, I am no longer tied down by my flesh and bones. You have been here, too, as all souls have. Each time you are driven up the walls by the magnitude of worldly chaos, you shut your eyes and head down the windy spires of sleep. It is here, in the beyond, that your soul discovers some respite from the physical world. 

Getting here is easy, let me show you how: it is as if you are passing (steady now, only passing, not away) through a membrane rather than crossing a distance. One moment, as you lie there resting, dense with the residue of being. Another, within a subtle detachment from your body, as easy as breath itself. Impossibly clear and true; an unfolding of darkness that reveals itself as depth rather than absence. Edges distort and loosen, revelations appear like facets turning in a single piece of glass, not a place but a state of being. 

Simple enough, right? 

Splendid! I shall see you there. 

Every night and sometimes during mid-day naps, Lana and I arrive at the beyond together. It is like clockwork, an involuntary pull that keeps me at her side—no complaints there. I know, now, why I love to sleep so much in this life. Here I am once again, rising and rising. She is always happy to see me, as am I, for we are no longer bound by the tyrannic constraints of language. In this expansive state between time and reality, discomfort eases without effort, and yet, she seems to be lost in thought. 

“Aren’t you glad to be here, my friend?” I ask, no words necessary for me to reach her here. On this plane, the currency of understanding is infinite, as are we—rich in the purest sense. Tonight, a desert sea stretches before us, and a breeze flows through us in wisps of colorful orbs as we walk along eternal plains of sweeping dust and sand.

“Always,” Lana responds, in truth but with part hesitation.

“It does not seem that way.” I step closer, hoping to warm her with some consolation. She does not need it, but is yet to know otherwise.

“I suppose I expected more from the material world. It is so lonely and drab!” I was expecting this. I think I’ve said something similar before, but there is no need for her to know that. “I feel as if I am chained to a body that has no ambition.” She remarks, visibly frustrated. “It was fun for a while when my sister was there, but now…” 

“It is painful.” Ah, the trite of a young soul!

“Yes. Unbearably so! Is this how all my lives will be?” I see that she is small now, almost as though she were shrinking within herself.

“It will be, if you do not learn.” 

“Then teach me!” I do not like it when Lana begs; it feels like our roles have reversed. 

“I cannot.” It’s true. “It is for you to learn.” Also true.

“Doesn’t matter to you, anyway.” She pouts like a small child, flaring her nostrils in disappointment, hoping that I might give in. “You will leave when I die.” She finally remembers. That was our agreement, or rather a binding soul contract; I would guide her in this life, so I may finally return, or possibly get promoted as a spiritual master if this did not work. 

“Do you feel guided then?” I tease her, but she remains dissatisfied. I must offer more. The scene begins to shift in blurs, and a towering mountain range appears in the distance. I walk with her through the dark canyons, glimmering with flickers of orange and red, as she stares at the marvels of this land. 

“Where are we going?” She asks with wonder.

“Nowhere in particular,” I respond, reveling in the ether of timelessness. 

“Do you realize something?” Another question.

“What’s that?”

“If you have lived so many lives, there is a possibility that you have also been me.” She says with a hint of pride.

“That is possible, yes.” 

“So you know the answers.”

“I know some of the answers.” I correct her. She walks on ahead and blends into the walls of the looming canyon, popping out in intervals to see if I am still around. I am. 

“You understand what you’re meant to do in this life, yes?”

“I am supposed to help people, but I don’t understand how I can get myself to do that when all this mind thinks about is death!”

“Hm… Perhaps you are missing something there.”

“A doctor, then?” She contemplates the idea for a brief moment, toying with it the same way I do with a mouse. She turns to me and says instead, “My body can’t handle the sight of blood, though.” 

“Of the mind?” I offer. 

“Sure, when I can understand my own.” She shrugs my suggestion off the same way she does her bra. I cannot think of anything to suggest for her mind when my own consists of two brain cells that I seem to be sharing with the rest of the orange tabbies in the world. 

“Never mind. How about the spirit?” 

A brief lull. “I’m listening.” 

“I knew someone, once. I cannot for the life of me remember who it was, but that was one whacky soul! Always on the hunt for something new to learn, with a will smouldered out of steel. In my longest life, she was my mortal enemy, but I learned the most from her.”

“Your point being?” Impatient brat.

“The point is, you will learn from unlikely sources. Lean into the death thing, if it’s such a compulsion for your mind, I’m sure it’s leading you where you are meant to be.”

“Do you really think so?”

“It is what I know.”

“I wish I could remember this when I woke up,” She says with a small sigh at the sight of a billion dawning suns, bright and blazing in their sublime intensity. She will be waking up soon, and I will follow her like a tail. I wish to disagree with what she has just said, but I don’t wish to answer another question. In time, she will realize why the mind cannot understand in words what the soul feels in its essence.

“You remember it all. All you have to do is awaken it.” I reply with a hint of affection I cannot hide. 

“How?” God damn it. 

⚚

BECOMING

It is close to noon now. Lana shifts in her sleep as she pulls me closer in her arms, placing soft kisses on the back of my ears as I purr in chirps. I slip out of her embrace and sniff her face with an intent I cannot understand. Her scent is a constant reminder of the safety of belonging. I wonder, is this where I am destined to be and remain? The thought dissipates as quickly as it arrives, vanishing into the air at the sound of dried-chicken kernels tumbling out of the feeder. I make my escape. 

Shortly after Lana finally awakens, I find her staring at the canopy above in a dissociative daze. She shuffles through the crumpled sheets for a few minutes before she finally makes her way to me. As if being commandeered by her reverie, she picks me up in a swift motion and places me on top of her shoulder. I love this—not only because this is a part of our daily routine but because I can watch the room expand from this height and see the world as she does.

“That was a weird dream, Tank.” She begins, as is her habit, to tell me tales from the previous night. I listen curiously as she places me on her lap every morning while she pisses, revealing all that she remembers and what she makes of it. Then, while she is brushing her teeth and fixing her raggedy hair, she commences her usual analysis of every symbol that appeared in her dream as she tries to tie them together to form some semblance of a meaning. 

“Well, what do you think?” She turns to me and laughs.

I imagine who the woman was, but only for a moment, as I am currently being distracted by a rat scurrying through the floorboards. I slip my paws through the slit in an attempt to claw the lousy creature before running across the width of the house as low growls and hisses flee from my lips. Meanwhile, Lana prepares our breakfast with her first (of many) cigarette of the day: a platter of chicken liver and quail egg for me and a plate of turkey slices, sausages, and bread for her. We eat together by the window sill while she reads her book and I watch the birds in the trees. 

Around mid-afternoon, Lana prepares to leave for the bookstore where she works. Since neither of us can stand to be apart for even a minute, I accompany her to the small shop at the far end of town every day. It would be rather depressing to be left all alone for hours on end. Fortunately, I get to spend my time sniffing and inspecting the new-old volumes that arrive each morning, checking the greasy corners for mice, and finding hidden shelves to sleep in while she tends to the (few) customers that arrive throughout the day. Mostly, she spends her time reading, dusting, and categorizing. 

With a vest on my back and a leash in her hand, we step outside in the cold air and leisurely walk through the pine tree-laden streets. As always, a gloomy overcast follows our every move. This never gets old—the crisp scent of fallen leaves, the small streams and livid rivers under the bridge swollen from constant rain, and the sound of waterfalls descending in the distance. I am almost always tempted to rid myself of the leash and chase the insects buried in the wet soil, but I am also afraid of losing her. 

By the time we reach the bookstore, I am tired and wish to take a nap. A bell jingles as we enter, and the owner is standing by the cashier next to the door. This never happens. When I look around the small room, I notice that much has changed overnight. There are cartons stacked above one another, empty shelves, and a plethora of dusty books splayed across the floor, waiting to be picked up and put back in their place. The heavier ones remain where they are, as if in resistance.

“What’s going on, Patty?” Lana turns to the old woman, who looks at her with a sad smile. I’d always liked her because she smelled like chamomile and gave me a treat every time she saw me. 

“Oh, my dear child,” Patty is moved to tears as she comes to embrace her. “I’m closing the store. My son has decided it would be better for me to move somewhere sunnier. You know, creaking bones and all?” As she says this, Lana struggles to find her balance. She can feel the blood draining out of her limbs as her heart beats furiously against her chest. This is the only place of solace for her; it is also where she found me, dumpster diving in the dark alley behind the shop.

“No… No, that can’t be. I’ll take care of it for you. This is your life’s work!” Lana’s voice breaks when she speaks, and she hopelessly clings to the woman in her arms, binding and bribing her so she wouldn’t leave.

“He sold it without asking me,” Patty says with a sigh. It was, after all, in his name. “I am so sorry. I know how much this meant to you.” Without realizing, a hot stream of tears drips down Lana’s face, and she quickly wipes her face so Patty wouldn’t notice. We all did. 

“I understand.” She responds, her voice barely audible. The morbid silence weighs her down, making it unbearable to stay any longer. In a feeble attempt to lighten the environment, I rub my body against their legs, and the old woman bends down to pick me up with what seems like the last of her strength. She kisses my cheeks, and I begin to purr, hoping to break apart the knot that has settled at the bottom of their stomachs. 

They spend the rest of the day carefully packing the books, and Lana is told that she may take all the ones that intrigue her since there is no longer any use for them. This breaks their hearts a bit more. When we finally leave, a dusky sky awaits us outside, and she can no longer situate the vessel of life between her ribs. She feels empty, and I can tell she wants to scream. Instead, we take a long, unfamiliar route back home. 

All around, the world is drenched in a dismal blue, and the streets line up with glowing orbs of light. Further up ahead, a sign from the neighboring diner begins to flicker, and a shutter snaps closed behind us. She is woefully silent on our walk, but a storm of thoughts is brewing in her mind. Meanwhile, I watch the clouds roll in and startle at the sound of a thunder clap in the distance. 

As we reach the end of the road that leads into the forest, I have an unexplainable urge to sniff the wooden signpost at the side of the gravel path. Lana stops to read the posters buried within one another, each of them displayed in vain to draw the eyes of passersby. It is only when her gaze falls on a tattered piece of paper that she feels disoriented in her own body. It seems to be holding her in place, somehow cementing her feet to the ground as she reads the text on it. 

PART-TIME WORKER REQUIRED

1904, Mapel Street

That’s all it says. She unpins it from the board and looks at it for a second before shoving it into her pocket. We walk on ahead, strolling through the darkening forest in the midst of hooting owls and chittering crickets. She still seems distracted when I look up at her from time to time. It is as if the piece of paper was burning within her pocket, for she kept fiddling with it unknowingly. Something coiled and twisted within her gut, pulling her toward a feeling she could not put into words. 

“Tank,” Lana says to me as she stops. “I don’t know why, but I think we need to go here,” the paper is in her hand again. When I look again, I find her entirely restless; Her eyes search for something she can’t find. I respond with a meow, entirely content to be led by her intuition. We walk back over the bridge, guided only by a quiet insistence in her chest. Now and then, we arrive at dead ends, circle the same street, and she pauses to breathe deeply, waiting for further navigation from an internal system that she does not know how to trust. 

After what feels like ages, we finally arrive at Maple Street. The pebbled road thins into a narrow path, swallowed by weeds and roots. The air here feels thinner and oddly still; the few streetlamps flicker incessantly. The numbers on the houses, where they exist at all, make little sense: skipping forward, doubling back, some hanging back, and others carved faintly into wood. Further ahead, we come across a small house tucked between two overgrown hedges. The sign is barely legible, its paint is worn thin, and the windows are clouded with dust from the inside. No lights spill out, yet something about it feels occupied. 

Lana slows to a stop. She knows this is the place. She lights up a cigarette and paces back and forth, trying to decide whether to go in. While she does so, I sniff the wild daisies growing around the fence and play with the waddling stems, my hunger rising in its intensity. “Okay, let’s go,” she says as she sniffs her fingers and leads me to the porch. 

Lana rings the doorbell but hears no sound. Once, twice, thrice. Nothing. I stand on my hind legs and scratch against the splintering wood of the door to help her. After a few minutes, she figures that there is nobody inside and that the old poster misled her. She curses herself for thinking it could lead her somewhere and turns around to head back home. Finally, I think to myself—salivating at the thought of my next meal. Much to my dismay, this relief is short-lived, for the door swings open to reveal a stout woman standing at the threshold. The hair on my back stands up at the sight of her grey-white frizzy hair. It was all too familiar. What was this energy I was picking up on? I could not place it.

“Are you crazy? Who rings a bell that many times?” The woman questions Lana with a crazed look in her eyes. When her gaze falls on me, I hiss at her. She hisses back. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think anybody was inside.” 

“What do you want?” The woman crosses her arms, looking at the two of us as if we were two minuscule beings she has placed under a microscope in her mind. Her eyes keep shifting between the two of us. 

“I’m here for the job,” Lana responds, pulling the paper out of her pocket. 

“It’s not available. Go back.” Oh, thank god. I could finally eat now.

“No, please. I really need this.” Lana started, stepping up on the porch again to face her. When her eyes fall on the house-turned-store behind, the woman shifts to cover the view. I could see some shelves lined up with old books and jars filled with dried herbs. Curious to see more, I try to slip inside, but Lana pulls me back by the leash. “Look, I know this sounds insane, but I think I’m supposed to be here.”

“Well, that’s too bad…” Her train of thought slows and comes to a halt as she speaks, and her face contorts when she looks at Lana again, more closely this time—as if trying to situate her from a memory. “I didn’t think you would come here so soon.” 

Hearing this, Lana’s heartbeat quickens, and she feels out of place somehow. Outside her body, outside this realm, drifting somewhere far, far away. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she is sweating, and she can feel the fear drying her mouth from the inside. It would have been better to taste blood, but this is something else entirely. A recognition. She wanted to run away from this feeling, back to her bed, back to her pills, back to her dreamless sleep. 

“I saw you in my dream,” Lana speaks to herself, her head falling toward her feet that seem to have forgotten how to walk. I look up at her and watch the life drain out of her eyes, replaced by something rather unsettling. She is here, but she isn’t. An empty void of loss tugs at her like an open wound that keeps oozing. 

“Yes. Now come inside. It’s going to rain.” The woman pulls her inside and seats her on the sofa. Lana lets go of the leash, and I walk away from her to explore the room. It feels smaller than it should and deeper than it looks. The air within is thick with lavender, sage, thyme, and a heavy undercurrent of dust. I sneeze repeatedly. The woman disappears in the back, and Lana is left alone with her thoughts—spinning and churning out of control. 

When the woman returns, she holds in her hands a tray with a kettle, two cups, and a plate of shredded chicken. I start to speak in long and tense meows, the hunger within me rampaging against my stomach. I climb it before she has even set it down, waiting eagerly for anything that might suffice. “Here you go,” she says as she attempts to pet me. I move away. I do not like her. I am yet to know why. Yet, I cannot resist the plate in front of me and hungrily chomp and gulp. 

“What is this?” Lana is fiddling with her hands as she speaks. “How can this be?” Her compulsion drives her to pluck and pull at her cuticles. She cannot stop.  

“We’ll get to that. But first, your name.”

“Lana.” 

“Dorothy.” They scan each other’s faces, a violent surge of unspoken words between them. “You saw me in your dream. As did I.” 

“How?” A small, erratic voice being chased by wolves.

“I was led there.”

“By who?” They wade closer now, the pack is hunting for blood tonight. 

“Your sister.” The first bite, sweet and ripe. She rips the skin off her thumb. Drip, drip, drip. How can she run away from this now? She can feel her throat closing in on itself, a ball of hair in her stomach, her fists coiling inwards till they turn white. Her breath becomes shallow and uneven, and the edges of the room begin to fray—threads of something unseen pulling loose from the corners of her vision. For a moment, she is certain she is about to wake up, that this is just another cruel dream. 

Get up. She wills herself, tugging at her skin till her nails are slick with blood. 

“No,” it slips out of her, thin and brittle. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Dorothy repeats curiously, as if weighing the word on the scale of her tongue. “Is that what you think happens?” 

“I buried her,” Lana says, more so in an attempt to anchor herself than to argue. “I was there. This can't be. You’re crazy!” She is rambling now. The air has changed entirely. I look at the silence straining in the space between them. I can feel the sickness in her energy as she tries to confine herself to what she knows, in the comfort of what she can most clearly understand. 

“If that were so, you wouldn’t be here.” 

“What are you saying?” 

“I can communicate with her. As I can with others of her kind.” Dorothy stretches her arm out and places a gentle hand on hers. Lana stops pinching at her skin. Why was her sister speaking to this woman and not her? Had she not spent the last two years trying to reach her? Why did it feel as if she was leaving her again, even though she had already left?

“You mean the dead?” 

“What makes you think death is the end of life?” 

“Everything I have read and known says so.”

“Ah, yes. Hearsay.” Dorothy picks up the kettle and pours the piping tea into the small cups. Lightning strikes outside, and I am overwhelmed by my curious nature to sniff every piece of oddly placed trinket in the room; jars, dried flowers, stacks of papers, decks of cards, dusty crystals. Then, the larger items, chair legs, the side of the sofa, and the desk. Carefully, I move towards Dorothy’s chubby feet and smell her toes. I do not know this woman, yet I cannot shake the feeling that I have met her somewhere before. 

Was it now or back then? 

Life has an amusing way of confronting you with what you try to escape. One often meets one's destiny on the road he took to avoid it, so how could I have ever thought that I would not meet this soul again? In this life or the next. 

Beside me, I can see the cogs turning in Lana’s head. She is making sense of something she cannot possibly rationalize. If this woman could speak to the dead, what the hell had she been up to all this time? Could she also become clairvoyant? Or was it just a privilege accorded to a select few? If she became better, would her sister want to meet her again? 

“Let me work for you.” Lana pleads, a request and a threat alike. The bleeding has stopped.

⚚

BEING

In the weeks that followed, a quiet rhythm took over Lana’s life—one she didn’t think herself capable of holding. The sleeping pills grew stale in her drawers, and we tread the streets crowded with trees and streams again. Being and becoming, unlearning and relearning.

It did not take her long to learn the quiet choreography of Dorothy’s house: cleaning, sweeping, inventory-keeping, repeating. She poured herself whole into each mundane task. Mornings usually began with dusting the shelves of old books and labelled jars, then a careful recording of the herbs growing in the backyard, sorting through candle stubs, and placing teacups and yellowing letters in stacks of bundles categorized by names of the departed in their designated places. 

She would sweep the floors before the first visitor arrived, brew mint and lavender tea, and prepare simple meals that simmered on the stove while rain tapped softly at the windows. In the evenings, she sat just beyond the doorway of the séance room as I slept in her lap. With an attentive ear, she would make sense of Dorothy’s meditative voice and listen to the trembling ache in the voices of those who came searching for just one more word from the ones they loved. Slowly, and painstakingly so, purpose ceased to feel like something distant and grand; instead, it revealed itself through intention, stillness, and the sacred repetition of care. 

Needless to say,  wherever Lana went, I followed—as was always my way—curling beneath the chair as she read, supervising her cooking from the counter with great authority, and glaring suspiciously at Dorothy whenever she accused me of stealing chicken from the chopping board, which, to be fair, I had only done twice. Perhaps three times. Okay, four. Our arrangement was a peculiar sort of fondness: she called me a freeloading orange menace, and I returned the courtesy by knocking over her card decks whenever she grew too smug. 

In time, and under Dorothy’s watchful eye, what began as silent observation turned into careful participation. Lana became a regressionist almost by instinct, discovering that grief, love, and remembrance often shared the same path. Some came searching for mothers, lovers, children, along with others who arrived burdened by fears they could not name, only to leave with fragments of another life that clung to them like the scent of wet dirt after rain. And here she remained, finding pieces of her sister within herself and more visibly so, in the spirit world. 

Five years later, upon Dorothy’s death, the crumbling house passed into Lana’s keeping, and with her presence, its fate changed entirely. What had once felt like a morbid slaughterhouse of old sorrow and stale dust softened into a quiet, colorful home of the dead. Sunlight spilled through washed windows onto painted walls, wildflowers crowded the sills, and every room carried the low hum of candles, books, herbs, and memories. I, of course, claimed the warmed corners as my own and followed her as faithfully as breath itself, for there was no place that she could go that was not also mine.  

It’s funny. I had always believed that this life was a passage, a brief and woeful detour before my return to God; a task to complete, a soul to guide, a threshold to cross. Yet, as I watch her now—moving gently through rooms filled with the living and the dead alike, her laughing threading through grief as if it had always known the way—I find myself unsure. I have known the vastness that awaits me on the other side, and still, there is something here that feels no less infinite.

Perhaps I was wrong. Or perhaps, I am only beginning to understand.

What if this is what we were always meant to return to? Not a place beyond, or a formless whole—but this: connection disguised as oneness. 

And if that is true, I am no longer in a hurry to leave.