Daddy?
Yes?
It is happening again, I can feel it.
Damn.
It will be okay this time Daddy. Don't worry.
Of course it will Darling.
He could see that she was putting on a brave face for his benefit even though just behind the large eyes that were fast welling with tears, the torture had already begun. maturity comes through experience and this little girl had experienced many lifetimes more than any other.
He started to speak and then stopped himself short. She looked at him but was already gone, eyes wide open but staring through him, as if he was a window and she was watching an explosion happen on the other side. There was nothing more to be done other than stare into her eyes and watch as her pupils dilated and constricted rapidly, a state of REM while awake.
He knows the moment it began, the first episode. He had been putting her to sleep and had just finished the bedtime book, Little Red Riding Hood. At first she had been scared of the big, bad wolf, but soon seemed to take strength from it, power from overcoming her fears. She tended to gravitate toward these kinds of stories, the darker type.
She was only four at the time and just as he kissed her nose as he did each night, she sat bolt upright and managed a panicked "Dadd-y!" before falling into the trance, staring through the invisible pane of glass that was her father, pupils strobing open and closed. He panicked and shook her but nothing would wake her and then, only seconds later her eyes cleared and she cried and would not stop.
He had tried to calm her, to ask her what had happened to get a clue to what was going on but, nothing until the crying abated into sobs and then, into silence. But she would not speak, just grabbed him with her head buried as deeply into his chest as she could force it. Until the phone rang and he instinctively flinched in a move to get it.
No Daddy. Don't. Don't Please.
She gripped him more tightly as he held her a moment more and the phone stopped its trill. And then, it rang again.
No Daddy, No.
I must. It could be your mother.
It is.
He looked at his daughter and her face was grey, sullen and her bright eyes were sunken and red from tears. But as much as he wanted to stay, he stood and walked to where the phone waited on the shelf and answered it.
"Umm, Mr Hughes?"
Speaking.
"Mr Hughes, there has been an accident.. your wife..."
He listened to what the officer spoke but as he did so, his eyes were on his daughter. Her arms were wrapped around her curled knees, her head shaking side to side slightly with tears streaming while she looked at him. He put down the phone.
I'm sorry Daddy, I'm Sorry...
His wife had been in a car accident, her body thrown and dragged down the road alive for what would have only been seconds, but must have felt an eternity. And while she was ripped apart by the unyielding surface of the road, her life flashed before her eyes, and all the important moments she had lived, all the memories that had ever been important enough to remember. Her first day of school, her first kiss, falling in love, the wedding, the birth of their daughter and her last kiss of him, her husband. It all flashed before her eyes. And their daughter saw it all through the pane of glass with the explosion on the other side.
Since that time when she was four, she had experienced the lives of others as they passed away many times and while at four she would be upset by what she saw, over time it became a part of her, a skill she learned to accept, even enjoy. These became her stories, real lives yet unlived by herself, a biographer of the soon dead.
Now ten years of age, she would tell her father the stories that people lived, times of pan and hardship and incredible beauty, so much sadness, but moments of pure joy all rolled into one life from start to finish. One life, and all of the relationships that had crossed its path.
The hardest part was the end of life, the death itself and while most passed softly away in their sleep, some were gripped and taken by the most terrible pains and violence and, the final moment was always captured, always of utmost clarity - fresh in the mind of the dying.
After Her eyes stopped twitching and focused to catch his own.
What did you see?
Daddy.
Yes?
There are monsters. And they are coming.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]