Psychopomp

“The summation of our existence are the memories we forge. Stills of moments worth remembrance, of times in the past that will never return. Share them, sing of them, recall them often so they never fade.”

Excerpt, Of Soma and Psyche

Teachings of the Ichorians

There was happiness and joy. How she danced with Cornelia in her apartment, arms interlocked, legs kicking, their sweet voices singing so carefree and loud, how she laughed with her mother as they flung food at each other in her mother’s kitchen, all such genuine moments of light. If only all her memories stood as this, yet he had not time nor desire to proceed through them all. Only those that stood dark and tainted with fate.

Norma sits upon the floor of her apartment, all lights dimmed out. Only the kaleidoscopic spectrum from the outside district bursts through the windows to keep her from dark. Its reflection on the tears of her face imbue them as sparkling polychromatic streams upon her reddened skin. Her hand trembles like a tuning fork and her submerged eyes blankly stare at the Death Box before her.

Two timid knocks rap on the door.

Norma weakly pushes herself up, and partially hides behind the door as she opens it.

There Cornelia stands in her modest yellow dress. Concern overcomes her face as she enters, “Norma? What’s wrong? What happened?” She grabs Norma’s forearms.

She can’t bring her eyes to her friend’s, and answers at first with shaky, short breaths. More and more into Cornelia she leans.

“Hey, hey,” Cornelia tries to calm as she wraps her arms now around Norma’s body. “Talk to me, Norma.” She guides them to a couch nearby and guides her friend into its cushions.

Still staring down at her exposed knees that she tries to cover with her pleated skirt, Norma finally musters words, “Cornelia….” She says the name as if for strength.

Her friend kneels by her, grabs her wrist, “What is it, Norma?”

“The box…it’s…it’s fake.”

Breathlessness comes over Cornelia, and she squeezes Norma’s wrist tighter, “How…how do you know?”

“…The Carver told me…,” she wipes her face.

“I…I’m so sorry, Norma,” Cornelia hugs her, “I’m so sorry.” She knows not what else to say.

Norma’s sobs ease away, and an emptiness pervades her now, “What…what the hell do I with it now? What the hell do I do?” her face suddenly loosens, tight brows release the eyes to sullen openness, “I’m so stupid.”

“No,” Cornelia lowers herself back to eye level with Norma and pleads for contact, “No, you’re not. The person who gave it to you…can you tell them? Did they know?”

“I can’t!” Norma shakes her head, whipping tears about, “I can’t…. What if…what if I sell it? It must be worth something. I could help mother…get us all away from this horrid place.”

“No, don’t. That’s not a good idea, Norma. Don’t tell a soul.” So helpless, useless Cornelia feels as her search for words gives her nothing. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it in doubt again and again before finally trying something, “Tell me something positive…. That opportunity you got, the person you met, how is that going?”

Nothing. Not a word does she answer, staring only down. “Did you…,” she begins, “Did you bring the pharmas?”

Please look at me, Cornelia thinks as she sighs and stares at her friend, “I did but…what of the Numerta I gave you before? Won’t that help?”

“I want something stronger. I need it, please. I can’t take this,” Norma’s face tightens, more tears drip from her delicate chin, and her hand trembles.

Watching how her hand shakes so violently, Cornelia grabs it with both of her own and pulls her to the open spot of the floor before lowering her down. She flicks on the nearby radio, welcoming the soft melody of an acoustic guitar and vocalist into the room. Then she turns back to Norma and nestles herself against her on the ground.

From her purse she pulls small blue-white pills, “Stay with me after you take this, okay?” She pulls Norma’s chin up so their eyes can finally meet. “Hold my hand, and don’t let go.”

Together, they ingest the pill and then lie on the floor, staring at the ceiling where colors of lights dance and flash. Their fingers tightly interlace in a promise to not let go, and Norma pushes herself against Cornelia as much as she can.

Clamor rings now with people all around, bustling about in dance and chatter in this dim, modest bar. For the first time she could remember, she did not stand out from the crowd. Like other plebeian girls, she clads herself in drab colored clothes, a knee length day dress that buttoned up the middle from the waist up, a white-dotted blue with white collar and cuffs. A glass of whiskey dutifully kisses her lips while her eyes fix upon one of the TVs lodged above the bar, a moving black and white showing to the world men and women dancing.

Slight trembles inhabit her hand, yet the affection of the glass it holds keeps it docile.

“Miss,” the bartender stops in front of her, “do you want another?”

She only nods, avoiding his eyes, watches as a full glass joins the crowd of empty ones before her.

“Let me get some of that, too,” says a man that takes the seat next to her, his voice as smooth and styled as his appearance. Slicked back oak hair crops the top of his head, showing off the shaved sides with a clean-shaven sun-touched face. Not a wrinkle disgraced his silk white button up shirt encased in a black silk vest, and not once do his olive-green eyes look at her. “Whew,” he exclaims after sipping his glass.

In silence they sit next to each other, both just watching the television intently before the man speaks again, “Meredith Trachtenberg found herself a serviceable outlet, it seems. She actually has a talent for it, too.” Whether the words were for himself or tangentially directed at her, she didn’t know, but Norma says nothing to him. “Even the patricians need distractions from misery.”

“Miss Meredith is escaping misery?” the statement piqued her enough to ask. Meredith Trachtenberg, after all, was a famous patrician known to be so happy and carefree.

“Oh, absolutely,” he answers with gentle suave, though still does not look at her, “I understand she detests her life. Married to a man she despises, loves another who won’t have her,” he takes another sip, “feels no control in her life.”

“You’re a liar. How do you know all this?” Norma glances at him, his handsome face that now only has eyes for Miss Trachtenberg.

“For all you know, I could be, but mark my words, miss,” his musclebound finger points at the screen, “Miss Trachtenberg will give up on life within a week. She’s all smiles and laughs now, dancing, but look at her eyes. What do you see?”

Norma does so as a closeup of Meredith’s face appears on the TV, lips pulling back into cheeks to show white teeth, yet the eyes lack light. They sit dark and hollow, the will behind them faded to black.

“I take it you see what I speak of,” the man says as he finishes his glass and pushes himself up. He throws silver paper bills upon the bar, “This should cover however much more you wish to drown your sorrows with. I need someplace more comfortable to sit.” He finally glances at her and nods his head before walking away.

She watches him curiously as he makes way to an empty booth tucked into a lantern lit corner of the bar. A window sits adjacent, veins of rainwater pulsating across its pane. Norma looks back at the TV, at Miss Trachtenberg whose eyes are all she can see now. So talented, so beautiful…so miserable. She sees it so clearly now, in this woman’s eyes a reflection of her own. Finishing the last of the glass to stifle welling tears, Norma rises and walks to the man’s booth.

“Do you think death preferable to misery?” She asks, sitting opposite of him, leaning against the window.

Their gazes fixate together, “I think people should be able to choose for themselves how long they wish to endure misery. It’s all life amounts to in the end, isn’t it? An unfortunate damnation for us children of the Ichorians, one I presume you’ve recently discovered and has brought you here, to seek escape at the bottom of many glasses.”

“You could tell? So easily?”

“I’ve seen you about the district, dressed more like Miss Trachtenberg than you are now. You may blend in more now, but the energy you discharge is palpable, like a hot spring steaming in the cold.”

“Oh,” she says with deflation, “so you approached me because…what? You think me vulnerable enough to bed?”

The man chuckles, “No, I have no interest in your body, miss. I’m sensitive to energies and sympathize with plights of suffering. Most don’t know how to cope.”

Norma rubs her arms as she closes her body more and more, “And Miss Trachtenberg is one of them?”

“She was. From what I’ve heard, she’s found a means to escape.”

Words flee from the thoughts in her mind. She looks down at the table, tracing the cracks in its wood before looking back up, “D…death? She will kill herself?”

“Not quite,” he says quietly, “You are familiar with the scriptures, yes? The Tenets of Death that bind all of us mortal children in this world, I trust?”

“I…I am.”

“What is death?”

“The…The Long Sleep.”

“Yes, the Sleep we all abide until our body’s ashes are Delivered on the Stygian. What fate, then, awaits those who choose death by their own hand?” His fingertip skates in circles atop the table.

“They…lie Dormant…the bottom of any waitlists, just above the dishonored and disgraced.”

“Yes. They trade one torment for another, one possibly worse than life. Little hope to walk Beyond. And the natural dead?”

“Dormancy…waitlist…they will wait years….” She looks out the window, stares at a vein of water undulating against the glass.

“Unless you’re a patrician and can produce the capital to procure an Ashwood. Otherwise, yes, years of Dormancy after already many years of merciless life.” His finger halts, and his hand prostrates flat onto the table. “And murder?”

Norma does not answer immediately. Uncertainty…fear grip her insides and her heart assumes her throat.

“A Psychopomp will take you,” he says, “Have you Delivered without delay. Quicker than most patricians get after their deaths.”

“So…so Miss Trachtenberg will be…?” She finds she cannot say the word, as if the mere utterance from her will slither through the din and into every ear in the bar.

“From my understanding, yes. She decided it to be her fate.”

“Wh-wh-why? Why would she? Why…give up?” her eyes broaden like deep blue moons against a white sky. Her every sentence chased by bated breaths.

“I’ve been told she dedicated herself entirely to a dream to find it wanted nothing to do with her,” he leans forward, diving deeper into her eyes, “Gave every bit of her mind and body to its pursuit to only receive cruelty. She’s been made a puppet, and her every appearance,” he motions back to the TV, “is at the behest of a puppet master. Her end is her choice, hers alone.”

She swallows her heart, feels it crash into her gut, “But…but why….,” still she cannot give the word breath, “why not do it herself?” A stupid question, she knew as soon as she asked it.

“No, it must be murder,” he answers resolutely, “the compound of sudden, intense emotion to tether a soul to an area. That,” his finger taps the table, “is what draws Psychopomps, that will ultimately be the vessel for her Deliverance. See, the Psychopomps must. Not just for the sake of her, but for all yet alive in this city. To preserve the little bit of habitable space we have in this city. They won’t stop until they succeed. There is no greater assurance for Deliverance.” He smirks as he leans back.

“What…what of the pain? Won’t she feel great pain?”

“She will,” he concedes, “that’s unavoidable, but a day or so of pain to be free of this world’s chains and back with the Ichorians. A small price to pay to her, I imagine.”

Her fingers dig into the cushion of the seat, “Does she know it’s coming? That within a week she will….”

“She can’t know. It must come to her as a surprise.”

“How did she come to discover such a thing?”

“There are people out there, like me, who understand how it feels to suffer for no reason other than we were born into this world. We all know there is a world Beyond, where the Ichorians welcome their children with only tranquility and peace.”

She fights against racing breaths, “A…and you know these people?”

“I do,” he confirms.

The fall of wringing water into the bucket resounds in this quiet room. Strips of timid yellow light do little to ward away the dark that invades from outside, while the nurses marching back and forth in the halls outside the room add little life. Only the color of the purple and yellow flowers she brought bestow any color, and she keeps them next to the bed. When the rag is rid of what water it can, Norma tenderly rubs it along her mother’s body.

“You’ve been crying,” her mother observes, scrutinizing the eyes they share. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, mama,” she replies in her demure, sweet voice.

“Something with Cornelia, then? You stopped by there before you came here, you told me.”

She soaks the rag and wrings it again, “No. It really is nothing. Please, let’s not talk about it.” And she continues bathing her mother in quiet before disrupting it, “How are you? Are things…as okay as they can be here?”

“I suppose so,” reflects her mother, “I can’t do much of my own or on my own, but I’m here, still alive.”

Norma finishes her last cleanse, then puts the bucket and rag away before taking the seat next to the bed. “Mama…how do you do it? How do you keep going?”

Her mother looks at the ceiling as she mines for an answer. She turns to look at her daughter when one finally comes, “For the longest time, it’s all I knew how to do. Just repeat day after day to live another. But when I met your father…when we had you,” memories sparkle in her eyes and brings her a smile, “Everything changed. Every moment from that point forward was for you, to see you grow, give you happiness, and the happiness you gave me….”

“But…but what about now?” She tries so hard to restrain the building reservoir around her eyes, “The terrible daughter that I’ve been…I haven’t come here to see you as much as I should.”

“It’s okay,” her mother assures so sincerely, reaching out a feeble hand that her daughter does not hesitate to take, “Your always here with me in my mind. As a little girl with dreams. Now you’re so grown and beautiful, working so hard and pursuing your goals. However much I must endure to see you one more time, to possibly share in your accomplishments…I will do so gladly.”

Norma’s dams crumble, and she squeezes her mother with a tightness that seeks fusion, so they may never part, “I’ve failed, mama. I have no accomplishments, no one to love me as dad did us.”

Her mother clasps her with every last vestige of strength, cradles her face in her hands and delves into Norma’s drowning eyes, “Baby, you only fail if you quit. Gods, you’re still so young, so divinely beautiful. I know you. You will not quit until you get what you want and can get any man you want. One that will be good to you, appreciate you, Norma.”

Their foreheads touch as they hold each other, Norma’s mind cracking with her heart into pieces. Each piece glints and captures her, shuffling themselves about in a chaotic pile actively resisting her exhausted efforts to make sense of them all.

She slams the door behind her…pounds it with the back of her head in exasperation. The man wasn’t there, nowhere to be found at all in this district. Any moment, he told her, could be her last. They will constantly watch her and calculate the right moment. It could be today, tomorrow, one week…two. She will not know until her heart and mind seize in existential crisis. The deadbolt clicks with her turn, and Norma runs deeper into her room, as far as she can, away and away until the door to the horrid outside world is out of sight.

Back and forth, she paces, rubbing her arms, running her fingers through her hair, thinking and thinking and thinking, yet each thought chugs like a dying locomotive, its smoke clouding before her eyes. No number. No means to contact him at all. Hours and hours she waited at that bar, again and again she walked the district, searched every tier and store. Nothing. An apparition dismissed from this world.

Norma retreats into the corner next to her bed, grasping at the hollow sense of security of being in an enclosed space, out of sight. She quickly swallows some Numerta and Trovnia then clasps her knees to her bosom as her hand begins to quiver.

Should I call Cornelia…ask her to come over? What if it isn’t tonight? Or the next? If I cling to her every night…I could put her in danger…. No. No. No. She shakes her head, whipping tears from her face as she squeezes herself tighter. I…I could call the Peacekeepers…tell them I think someone is trying to kill me, but if nothing happens then…. And what will I tell them when they ask me why I think that…. I…I’m so stupid. I brought this on myself. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

For hours Norma hides herself here, mind spinning with a centrifugal force that bleeds energy and leaves her head teetering up and down at the precipice of sleep. When finally she falls, it’s through an endless dark caught in what feels a mere second of time.

Knock, knock, knock.

Suddenly she’s back into the light, head snapping up and heart racing off the line. She covers her mouth and freezes in place, even breath stays still. Noise of life all around her continues apathetic, with colliding music and chatter, and her room spins in her vision with its colors popping and swirling.

Knock, knock, knock.

Each pound upon the door yields an echo in her heart. One beat…two, three.

Just go away, please, she begs in her mind. I’m not ready. I’m not ready.

She hears the door rock in its frame, the handle jiggle and clank…then a cumbersome metal click. Her heart drops, squeezing the air from her lungs.

Hinges groan, the chatter of the hall ushers in before a slow shut and click exile the noise back out.

Norma clasps her mouth and nose tight as she shakily lies upon the floor and slides under her bed. She can hear someone breathing from around the corner…a dragging, heavy huff…huff…huff.

The floor announces the person’s every movement…lamenting their approach with weeping creaks. Dirty, disintegrating shoes come into sight, and she watches as they move and bring the hunting breaths closer and closer to the bed. Around her bed, they walk, slow and studious. Pills rattle with taunting shakes. Knees descend to the floor, and a face now stares at her own, the pills rattling in crude hands.