Better Biting Down

There was a change in me. Regardless of whether I wanted to admit it, I felt it so deep down in my soul, scrounging on the life left in my arteries and foraging for the blood that pumped through my body and spilled right into my heart. That was the kind of change it was: graphic. In a perpetual state of should-haves, would-haves, do-nots, cannots, never-dids, and what-ifs, I was lost. And being so lost brought me here. Here is a place far, far away, and while this sounds like the beginning of some inviting, enchanted fairytale, it most certainly is not. Here is a dark, eternal poem. Here is a somber funeral hymn. Here is a desolate landscape in the background of a portrait hanging on some cracked wall, its foreboding texture caked with uneven crackles of plaster and stains from some other time.

It was a Monday night, and nothing good ever really takes place on a Monday. It was a quiet city sidewalk. It was perpendicular to a dark alley. There was not a soul in sight, and the only light that guided my way was a single flickering overhead lamp on some old brick building that towered over everything else on the block. That light, although dim and flickering, was somehow enough. It cascaded down the brick—etched with some kind of old business logo that I couldn’t quite discern—and it poured pallidly down the sidewalk and out onto the street. It dissipated there in the center of the road, and I anticipated that the only time the light would ever catch in that area was if a car were to pass by at 30-some, maybe even slower.

I reached the brick building, the etching still ominously obscure, and I turned ninety degrees on my heels until I faced forward. There, a single door with cracked ivory paint and a small glass window stood. I knocked three times as opposed to turning the handle, and I waited. A woman, probably my age, came to the other side of the door. Probably in her thirties. Probably young enough to still be making the same mistakes over and over again. Probably old enough to know better than to keep doing so. I related. As she cracked the door open cautiously, I noticed the silver-toned jewelry that crawled up her wrists and covered her slender fingers.

“Can I help you?”

“Jenny? I have an appointment. I’m here for a reading,” I said.

“Elise,” she said, the whites of her eyes appearing as she searched for my name. “Elise, come, come. Welcome, welcome.” I wondered for a moment if she’d repeat everything twice. But no matter. “Quickly, quickly,” she continued, offering me her hand. I followed her into the parlor of the towering brick building, and she quietly shut the door behind us. She led me down a long, winding corridor, a walk that wandered on until we reached a small room at the back of the first floor. “Sit, sit,” she said, gesturing to a rickety, old chair. It was mustard yellow, its hue drastically dampened by its age. It creaked as I sat. “Tell me what brings you in.”

“Um,” I said, my tone soft and hesitant, but in my nervousness, I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Isn’t that your job? Aren’t you supposed to know?”

“You’re troubled,” she said. I thought for a moment that maybe she’d repeat it. She didn’t. Instead, she flipped her long, dark hair dismissively and gazed down at my hands while she took a seat in the equally old chair across from me. “Your aura is very dark. You’re concerned about a difficult decision you have to make. At the same time, you’re worried that you’ll wait far too long to make that decision, and you worry about what might happen if you don’t act soon.”

“Accurate,” I said with a shrug. “You got that just now?”

“I got that when I grabbed your hand,” she said.

“I’m looking for answers.”

“I’m not sure that you’ll find them here,” she said, shaking her head with a lasting disappointment in her eyes. “But I’ll give you what I can.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“A reading. That’s why you came,” she reminded me.

“Yeah. Could I trouble you for a glass of water? Long drive.”

“Of course, of course,” she said, getting up and heading for the small kitchen area. She grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and began filling them with water from the tap. I could hardly focus on anything but the sound of the slightly leaky faucet and its continued, steady drip once she shut it off.

“How long have you been in this building?”

“A few years now,” she said. She was fiddling with her silver-toned jewelry and running her long, slender fingers through her dark hair, sorting through the formation of each curl and adjusting it in whichever way she saw fit.

“Pretty old. Isn’t it?” I asked.

“It is.”

She returned to the table, took a seat across from me, and slid one of the glasses over to my side. She sucked hers down in silence, and I took a sip or two or maybe even three of mine as she started speaking.

“Elise, Elise,” she said. I watched her hands flutter atop the table until her fingers met mine, and she laced them together quickly and closed her eyes. “I see, I see.” Here we go again, I thought. More doubles. “Very troubled. You’re trying to let go of something, but you just can’t. You need to understand that there is no reason to hang on.”

“No reason?” I asked. “That’s a little forward of you.”

“It turns out that way sometimes. I’m sure you’d prefer it didn’t.”

“No, no,” I said, finding myself trying out the doubles to see how they felt falling from my lips. I wasn’t so sure I liked them yet; maybe another try was in order in the near future. She could probably see that, if she really could do what she had advertised.

“A healer,” she continued. “You’re seeking healing and guidance.”

“That’s part of why I’m here, yes.”

“A healer,” she said. There was the double. “You’ll go on a journey to find someone who will heal you.”

“A doctor?” I asked, smirking a little as I watched her thick lashes flutter, her eyes remaining shut through her observations.

“Not a doctor. Someone who will heal you from the inside.”

“I think you’re just describing a different medical profession now. A therapist, maybe,” I said with a simple shrug.

“A healer,” she insisted. That was the third time, an outlier in her apparent routine of repetition. “From the inside out. Someone will take a look at who you are inside and see right past that decision you’re struggling to make. That person will guide you to where you need to be.”

“You’re kind of speaking in riddles,” I said, scrunching my brows and freckled cheeks while I watched her closed, shimmer-covered eyelids as she searched for additional answers.

“You’ll transform from dark to light.”

“Are you calling me dark?” I asked.

“That is your path. Someone will transform you from dark to light. Someone will see a light inside of you and pull it right out,” she said.

“So, a therapist,” I teased bluntly.

“A healer,” she said, correcting me once more.

“Fine. A healer.”

“There is just one thing—oh,” she said, her voice fading into a faltering whisper.

“What?” I asked because now she had piqued my curiosity. In fact, I even closed my eyes with her because I was becoming more invested in what she had to say. Maybe she really could see my future.

“Oh, you’ll find love,” she whispered.

“Love?” I asked, a little surprised.

“You’ll find love, and you’ll make your difficult decision. I’m just… having a hard time… seeing the order of things,” she said, her voice slowing gradually. “I can see that you’ll never go back.”

“Never go back? Home, you mean?” I asked.

“It appears that way. I’m still… still trying to see… the order,” she continued, “the order… of the decision and the… the love.”

“Hey,” I said, my eyes opening immediately. “Hey, Jenny.” Her hands, shaky and a little cold, started to let loose of their hold on mine. “Jenny, are you okay?”

I saw that something was very wrong with her—that her beautiful, shimmer-covered eyes were rolling back in her head as they fluttered open, that her body had started to slump over in her chair. I panicked, darting from my chair to the door and screaming down the hall for help, not knowing just how empty the building may have been. With shaking hands, I went to pull my phone from my bag, by which time she had collapsed to the floor. And, with sweaty, anxious fingers, I dialed 911 frantically, by which time—

“911. What’s your emergency?”

“She’s dead. Shit.”

“Ma’am?”

“Um.”

“Ma’am, where are you?”

“I’m in the brick building on Clayton and Fifth, and a woman just… passed away.”

I hung up the phone and sat crisscrossed on the floor next to Jenny. My phone dropped from my hand while my lips parted and trembled. I’d never met this woman before tonight, of course, but she had passed so suddenly—right in front of me, no less—and I was freaking out. I grabbed her hand in mine and held it tightly, despite the fact that it felt uncomfortable to do so. Moments passed as I attempted to get over the initial shock of it. Time lapsed and folded in on itself through moments I just didn’t want to consider, moments I didn’t care to remember or ever think of again. And when that shock passed, and when I heard sirens off in the distance, I wondered if she had seen it coming somewhere off in the distance. I wondered if she knew that she’d pass.

Jenny, a locally renowned palm reader, hadn’t actually read my palm in the first place. She had used some kind of intuitive notion from the feeling of my palms and fingers and hands; she hadn’t observed or studied the physical markings on the insides of my palms. Maybe she hadn’t been a palm reader but a seer of sorts, a fortuneteller. Regardless, it seemed strange that she hadn’t been able to predict her own death. Maybe it didn’t work that way. Maybe she could only see the fate of others. Then again, it seemed that she was having a difficult time seeing mine.

“I’m sorry, Jenny,” I whispered, biting down on my trembling bottom lip.

I wasn’t sure what else I should say. I was in shock. Never in my life had I watched someone die—until now.

When the sound of sirens approached and became so close that they were within reach, I pulled myself from the floor and walked down the corridor. Opening the door covered with cracked paint, I led the authorities back to her place and explained what happened to the best of my ability. That was it.

But that wasn’t just it. When they were gone, and when Jenny was gone—really, truly—I only became more upset.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

A quick little gasp left my lips, mostly due to the fact that I could have sworn I’d been alone, the sirens fading from din into soft sound in the distance. When I turned around, I saw a man standing there at the cracked-paint door. I approached him cautiously as I answered.

“I’m fine, I just—”

“—You’re shaking,” he said, observing me curiously with light eyes, the only thing that somehow caught the dim glow of the overhead lamp on the brick building. “Come on.”

And just like that, he took me by the hand and led me inside and back down the long corridor once more. Up a few flights of stairs, maybe too many to count, he stopped at another door with cracked paint; this one contained no small window. It was solid from top to bottom, and he opened it without a key and motioned to lead me inside.

“I’m not really comfortable—”

“—Come on. I’ll fix you a cup of coffee,” he offered.

“Coffee? This late at night?” I asked.

“The night is a song that only gets better the longer it plays.”