World War S 1-2

Chapter 6

Julie dragged herself along to the shower. She stripped her clothes off along the way, scattering them on the floor. The sharp, bright line of the rising sun struck through the window, cutting through the half-light. The light stroked her hip, playing with the lace as her panties slid down her thigh. She finally reached the shower stall, pushing the knob down to release the water. The heat infiltrated and relaxed her rigid neck muscles. With the circular movements of her finger, she tried to massage the nasty node that had been collecting all the stress of the day, swelling deep inside. She indulged in a daydream about a long holiday, but it could only be a fantasy in this new world order, in the realm of the spirits, radiating fear and promising a world without a future. There’s only this shower stall left, and the flat surrounded by the walls, my only shelter in this unstable world, she thought.

She didn’t have any apocalyptic concepts yet. She couldn’t imagine that the world would collapse into its own grave. Nevertheless, those oppressive images flooding in from the news dragged her down with the public nightmare of the end of the world. She was influenced—even as a rational and optimistic woman. Nobody could escape it, only those who still believed that humankind would be able to stop at the edge of the inferno. She wanted to believe that humanity could save itself.

Big task for the world, she thought, when a contour of a face appeared on the other side of the steamed-up window. Julie screamed and leaned back to the tile, frightened.

“Are you insane?” she shouted to Keith, her boyfriend, who had sneaked as silently as possible through the flat to scare her. “You’re gonna kill me one day.”

“I’m not gonna kill you, but …” Keith didn’t continue, he stepped into the shower and kissed her vehemently, “… I’ll eat you!”

Julie was at first pleased with this pampering. Keith normally left for work at this time, and since they didn’t live together, he stopped by for a quick kiss. Of course, sometime he didn’t stop after one kiss—But who could resist a handsome guy like him? thought Julie. He also treated her right, he didn’t bust down the door with his love, he was always good about giving her some space so that their personalities could connect, so that their relationship was more than just the physical. But some days they could not resist their instincts and they slept together. Then they’d try to slow down a bit, because Julie was worried about the uncertainty of their world—at least that was what Keith always said. She could not express what exactly disturbed her, but she felt something slowly making itself master over her whenever Keith showed up at her place. She realized it wasn’t the comfortable and devoted feeling she’d felt at the beginning of their relationship.

“Stop it, enough,” she said pushing Keith away. “I’m dead tired.”

“Nooo …” whispered Keith, kneeling down in front of her. He started to kiss her thigh, moving slowly upward.

“Yes. Would you leave me now?”

The man stood up, disappointed, and stopped arguing. He stepped out of the shower, walking naked and wet through the living room.

“You should at least dry yourself!” shouted Julie, angry now. How can a psychiatrist behave like this? It was true, that love made people mad, but it was already more than ordinary love.

Julie slipped into her robe and stormed after Keith. He stood in the middle of the kitchen pouring himself a cup of coffee, totally naked. From his skin, water dribbled down onto Julie’s clothes scattered around the floor.

“You’re an i***t!” she said, picking up her clothes. She realized that Keith’s clothes were mixed with hers, so Keith had slipped out of his clothes the same way.

“Why should I be? Because I’ve been hunting you with my love for months?”

“No. Because I said I need more time.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know …” she looked at him desperately.

“Because the world doesn’t wait for you. Life goes on, and I’m getting older. There are other women who would be more than happy to marry me, but I don’t want them. There’s nobody like you.”

Julie smiled. “Really?”

“I swear on my life,” Keith promised, lifting his hand. As he moved closer, Julie suddenly felt her desire rising. She might put her tiredness aside …

She walked slowly to Keith and started to stroke him when she felt that unexplainable, repulsive feeling again. Her hands were burning when she touched him.

“All right,” she said finally. “You won’t have to wait much longer.”

“You sure?”

“Completely sure. But go now. I’ll have Mr. and Mrs. Wens this afternoon, so I need all of my energy.”

Keith formed a cross with his finger.

“Holy moly, if there is still a God in this fallen world, please save us from them! That woman is the embodiment of evil.”

“Neither of them are healthy, it’s true.”

“That woman is bipolar or schizoid.”

“She isn’t schizoid. Surely she’s a narcissist. But she might have some bipolar attributes. What do you have for today?”

Keith’s face clouded. He took the towel from Julie—the one she’d used to dry her hair—and explained, clearly upset, “I don’t know what’s happening, but things are not going in the right direction. I’m not getting anywhere with my patients.”

“Send them to me …”

“That’s not funny,” Keith’s eyes flashed. “You’re a psychologist, I’m a psychiatrist. You believe in speech therapy, I believe in hypnosis.”

“And which one isn’t working?”

“I have no clue what’s wrong, but there is total silence at the regression sessions with my patients.”

“What do you mean?” asked Julie. She suddenly brightened at the professional problem, especially this one, which was about the subconscious. In the process of hypnosis, the patients stepped through the barrier of the conscious mind and descended into a deeper state, the subconscious, where, according to the theories, memories of previous events were stored. Freud held the view that this was the playground of the instinctive self. The conscious self, the mind, was the one that controlled the interests of the instinctive self and brought balance to the self.

Julie didn’t like to play with the subconscious. She found that place too dangerous, so she didn’t support Keith in his deep research. He had started to conduct age-regression hypnosis a year ago, when he led the patients back to their moment of birth, back to the womb. Then he made a brave move; he went even further back in time, before conception, into the place called Bardo by the Buddhists in the context of reincarnation. This was the place where the spirit waited before the body was allocated to it. From there, he went deeper into the superconscious state, where he led his patients back to their previous life. Keith was always enthusiastic when he talked about his séances, but Julie didn’t share his feelings. She felt bizarrely repelled by the idea.

Maybe that’s where the repulsive feeling comes from when he’s here, Julie thought. But why? He only wants to know the origin of the soul, as I do. I just use different, scientific methods to prove it. What’s the difference between us?

“And it’s not working. The regression just doesn’t work. None of my patients move deeper from the consciousness level. The subconscious is simply closed for us to enter. All the past lives have disappeared.”

“Hm …” said Julie. She had never wanted to fiddle with the subconscious, so this fact didn’t shake her much.

“Is that all you can say?” asked Keith astounded.

“Why? What did you expect? You know very well what my opinion is about this. God gave us consciousness to protect us.”

“What? How long have you been so zealous?”

“Sorry, I’ve been flooded by my grandmother’s religious teachings today, but I don’t know why.”

“Well, it sure fits our topic,” said Keith and stroked Julie’s hair. “The subconscious has fallen silent now, but I’m sure that everything will get back to normal soon, and we can continue to study the mystery of the soul.”

Julie leaned her head on Keith’s shoulder, and she brooded over their future. What can I do with these madly strong feelings, slowly increasing to pure disgust?

“I’m going to sleep. Mrs. Wens will be ruthless, I can feel it.”

“All right. We’ll talk tonight.”

Julie went back to her bedroom, and, for the first time in her life, she locked the door. She even covered her head with the duvet and tried to retire as deeply into her shell as she could.

She tried to think about something beautiful.

Suddenly there was the picture of her grandmother when she used to braid Julie’s hair. She had such silky hands. They rocked her into a sweet dream.

*

Sue could hardly get out of the taxi when it stopped in her driveway. Her inner struggles had incarnated into physical pain. There was no driver with a prepaid car anymore, coming at the airport to pick her up, like in the past five, highly rated series.

She had been kicked off. Or to be more precise; they had terminated her contract.

First she had raged. She had beaten the inside of the caravan to bits. She didn’t care when they told her—after two guards had held her down—that she would have to pay for the damage.

Then she’d turned catatonic. Sue didn’t speak to anybody on the plane, didn’t drink, and didn’t talk at all until they landed. She submerged herself into the backseat of the taxi. She tried to be invisible.

Now, arriving at the house, every one of her muscles and bones were in pain. She had been subdued by an entirely new feeling; the strong spiritual forces that ruled over her soul were eating her flesh.

Sue had lived in peace with the spiritual world for many years. She made her real contract not with the TV producers, but with the invisibles. Her objective in life was to remove the cloak of obscurity from the people’s eye, which was dropped down by God to hide his secrets—the world was not as it seemed, not only tangible, there was much more than that.

In the beginning, she used the usual séance accessories: a small table, tarot cards, and Ouija board, but as things advanced she didn’t need them anymore. Sue, the famous fortune-teller, the great-granddaughter of Salome was accepted by the spiritual world.

From that time, there was not a single moment when she couldn’t connect to the other side. The spirits could use her as a channel anywhere and anytime.

Her family slowly got used to her abilities. She made her older son nervous when she stopped people out of the blue, delivering messages to perfect strangers from their deceased loved ones. Soon she became famous; first she held séances for free for those who wanted to contact the other side, but later she charged a small fee for channelling.

This happened at the time of the Spiritual Boom, in the early 2020s. That was what the media called the years when you could find fortune-tellers and mediums on every corner of the City of Angels. It coincided with the outbreak of the latest years of the depression, for the umpteenth time in the last decade. The people wanted a handhold to climb out of the chaos, and they couldn’t find it in the visible reality, so they drifted toward spiritualism.

Sue’s popularity had soared; she took her great-grandmother’s name and formed her new stage name—Salome Sue Richardson. Her audience filled community houses first, then the big conference centres were soon packed. When the spirits wanted more, she outgrew these places and held shows in crowded sports stadiums. Her family moved into a new house and hired helpers to run the shows. They started a Mediumistic School where she accepted apprentices. Hundreds of people wanted to learn how to wake up the Channel-organ, or third eye, in the right cerebral hemisphere, where the scientists had found significant activity with clairvoyant persons.