A Hundred Lifetimes

Four

Scared was not the word I would use. Shocked, surprised, sure, but frightened, no. Having lived for more than a century, I’ve learned that there wasn’t much to be scared of. Ghosts surely weren’t real—or if they were, they never bothered me one bit—and humans were the ones to look out for. But then again, with the knowledge that I’d only wake up in a different body, I was more than confident to die. I don’t really find the hassle of shapeshifting to be smooth and easy, but hey, if you’re shot during war—like I had been once upon a time—then changing forms was the more preferable option.

So, when I found that someone was standing behind me in the close confines of a washroom, my heart did jump a hundred miles upward, but I wasn’t necessarily fearing for my life. My first instinct was to turn around and say a panicked “Oh my, I’m so sorry,” even though I was technically the first one in the washroom, but my voice disappeared when I saw his face.

His face was so familiar but it took me a few seconds to place him. Maybe it was because his wavy brown hair wasn’t confined in a cap, but fell in every direction as if they hadn’t been brushed after a long night of sleep, yet the dark circles accentuated by his pale skin signified that he probably didn’t get much rest. Was he this pale when I saw him before? I wondered. His tired, brown eyes almost looked like amber in the way the light was hitting them, and they stared into mine with utter disbelief. But even though he looked sick and crazy, standing there by the door in just a royal blue robe, socks and slippers, the first word that came to mind was: beautiful.

The man from the grocery store stood there, staring at me with his jaw lax and eyes wide, as if I was the one who intruded.

“You,” he whispered so softly, weakly lifting his hand and pointing at me. That was when it hit me again: he was the man from the grocery store! The one who had the photo of the lady whose body I’d shifted into; and there I stood in front of him, like a replica of her. No wonder his expression was like that. “Clara,” he said with such longing, that his eyes were moistening. He took a step forward and I took a step back, but I only hit the sink behind me.

“I, uh,” I stammered. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, especially when he took another step towards me and gently cupped my cheek with a cold hand. The smell of gardenias lightly swept through the air, and I don’t know if it was that, or the way his fingers trembled when he touched my face, or how he looked at me with such hurt in his eyes, but something inside my head just lit up and I said, “Dorian?” as if I knew him.

That seemed to do it. His face lit up and now he held my face with both his hands. They were freezing, I thought. Has he been out in the cold all this time? I wondered.

“Yes,” he nodded, “it is me, Clara. I can’t—I can’t believe it’s really you, my love.” He pulled my head to his cold, hard chest, and I realized that the smell of flowers was coming from him. “I thought I was going crazy,” he sighed into my hair, pulling me even tighter. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t even put a word in, because I was still stunned at how I just somehow knew his name. “I thought I was going crazy when I saw you. But you’re dead, or were you not?” He pulled away to scan my face, a guilty expression in his as he held me by my shoulders. “I blamed myself all these years. For more than a century, I’ve missed you, thinking you’re never to return, but here you are. Here you are in the flesh, like you haven’t aged a day. Like me,” he said with a confused but delighted smile.

Nothing he said made sense, and I knew that at some point, I’d have to tell him that I wasn’t actually his Clara. I gently pushed his hands off my shoulders, perplexing him further. “Dorian. Master Dorian, right?” I asked, just then realizing that it was probably common sense that I knew his name. Clarissa and Mary had implied that he was at the mansion and that he was sick. Although from how they talked about him, they made him seem like a sick, old man, and not a beautiful but still sickly, young man.

I placed both my hands on his shoulders, careful not to touch the exposed skin on his chest, or anywhere that might make him think I’m being friendly with him. Gently, I pushed and he was too stunned that he just let himself take a step backward. “I’m not Clara,” I said, deadly serious as I looked up into his eyes. “I’m not,” I emphasized every word, but it didn’t seem like he was listening anymore. His attention was suddenly elsewhere, as if something made it snap.

At first, I thought he was looking at my hand because it was touching him, but then he suddenly held it carefully with both hands and smelled it. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and I was unsure if that was a question or a statement. I pulled my hand back and looked at it. There was just a small smudge of blood, that it was almost unnoticeable. How this Dorian person looked at it as if it was so obvious, I didn’t know.

“Clara, your blood,” he said, as if in a trance as he closed the space between us again. On instinct, I tried to push him away, not caring this time where I touched him. I just had a feeling that I had to get away.

“Um, Dorian, sir?” I panicked, but he wouldn’t budge. Instead, he took my injured hand and put it close to his mouth. For a second, I was afraid of what perverted thing he’d do with it, but he just smelled it. His eyelids fluttered and he bit his lower lip, as if he were smelling steak after not eating for a week, and he was trying hard not to take a bite. If he was acting weird before, he was acting even weirder now, and the hunger in his eyes when he looked at my neck was enough to trigger a panic button in my head.

I was about to try to push him away again, but he held onto my wrists tightly and pinned them behind my back. He was much closer now, and I could feel the coolness of his body through his robe. “This isn’t funny—” I began to say as I struggled, but it was no use. It was as if his eyes were blank—as if all reason was thrown out and he was acting on pure instinct. Like an animal.

Dorian bent his head down and hungrily trailed down the side of my face with his nose, to take a whiff of… me. I tried to move my legs and my arms—anything to fight back—but either he was exceptionally strong or this body was very weak. I strained against his hold as I felt his breath on my neck. His soft, cold lips touched my skin, causing me to shiver under him.

Again, I was not one to be scared, no. I have encountered almost every kind of person in the planet. I have lived more than a dozen lives for more than a hundred years, and so far, no accident nor any human has successfully killed me. But when I felt Dorian open his mouth and something sharp touched my skin, fear crept into me for the first time in a long time.

He was not human. Or at least, he seemed to be a really crazy one.

Just before anything sharp could pierce through my skin, Dorian was suddenly yanked away from me. Quite literally dragged back. I stood there, breathing heavily as I quickly tried to feel my neck for wounds or blood. Thankfully, there were none.

“Oh no, you don’t!” I heard Mary say, and when I looked up, there she was in the hallway with one knee on Dorian’s chest and both her hands pinning his wrists beside himself on the floor, while a worried-looking Clarissa stood next to Mary, holding something out of my sight. Dorian snarled like an animal, and tried to fight Mary’s hold on him. “No!” he screamed. He was starting to become slightly successful with raising his arms off the floor, when Clarissa bent down in front of him and said, “I’m so sorry, sir” before shoving a small transparent bag of red liquid onto his lips. Just as he opened his mouth, I caught a glimpse of his teeth before he desperately bit into the bag and drank its contents.

I scrambled out of the washroom, my hands and knees shaking, and began to run. Anywhere, I thought. Anywhere but here.

“Damn it, Dorian, look what you did—Shay! Wait! Come back!” I heard Mary angrily yell after me, but I went wherever it was my feet could take me. I turned left and right, ran down what seemed like an endless maze of corridors, unable to find the exit. Finally, I saw a wall with black-out curtains. Just at the end of the way was a door that was bigger and had more intricate woodwork than the others. Thinking it would lead to the main hall, I ran towards it and pushed the door open without hesitation. Quickly, I found the light switch on the wall.

To my disappointment, the door did not lead to an exit. Instead, it was a majestic room occupying two floors. All around were tall cases of books—old books that looked at least half a century old. On the floor were display tables of what seemed like antiquated items—old telephones, jewelries, maps, weapons. And on the walls next to large pane windows were paintings of classic and modern artists—some of which I personally knew to be priced for millions.

A museum? I wondered. A museum inside a mansion?

But that wasn’t where the surprise stopped, for when I looked ahead of me, displayed there at the middle of the wall for all to see, was a large painting that was bigger than the size of a person. It was displayed there as if everything in the room centered around it. As if it was the most valuable piece of art inside, even when literal diamonds were just a few feet away encased in glass. But no, whoever curated this museum seemed to think that this was the most important thing of all: A painting of me.