Northwind After The Fall

©Angela Veneziano 2014

      The Law of Conservation of Energy: This state's that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. However, energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another. The total energy of an isolated system does not change.

       "We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love...and then we return home." 

                                                                                          X

       Prologue:
       
      "Are you ready darling?"

      "I'm ready, Santino."

     "I hope she'll be satisfied. Bring her home when it's all over."

      "I will. See you soon, my love!"

Chapter 1:

I would write the date in this journal before every entry if the dates even mattered to me. I haven't aged fast enough for the years to matter much to me anymore. They blur. I guess my father's parting gift to me before I set off on a journey he just couldn't understand my desire to undertake was secretly ensuring my mortal longevity...not immortality...My brush with the horrors of fighting ovarian cancer ten years ago taught me that my imminent-and-ever-ready-to-force-a-homecoming death was as real for me as for any other human being on this planet. 

      But, the difference between me and other humans is that I'm not exactly human...I didn't start out that way. This means I was never born a baby, never was I a child, I never had the whole budding breasts and first period drama, no growing pains, no awkward teen years, no pimples or braces...no. I was physically the human equivalent of around nineteen years of age when I "fell".

      It's been over eight hundred and fifty years and I look about thirty-four. Obviously, longevity (Nice trick, Father. Kind of cheating, dontcha think?) has made it harder to remain incognito. I've made it a habit of keeping track of the years purely to avoid staying in any one place too long, lest I arouse suspicion. Eventually, people would know or would recognize you and would begin to wonder why you don't seem to be ageing... So, I do count decades but the years sneak up on me. What year is it now? 2014? Astounding how time both drags _and_ flies when stuck in one of these rotting, disease attracting, time bombs of flesh and mucous! 

      I came to live in Northwind about four years ago. I still don't know too many people so I can go mostly unnoticed except at my job or with the only neighbor I've struck up a polite acquaintanceship with.

      I never give any back story and nobody ever asks. People are often so wrapped up in their own lives they barely bother to notice details about people around them. My usual spiel is that I'm, " new in town", and had, "...travelled quite a bit in my youth.". That's usually as far as details about me ever went in most interactions. That was good enough for me because indeed it is mostly true and I despise lying even when I know it's for the greater good. Me and my double life.

      These days I'm a simple Costco cashier in Northwind, so nobody would ever suspect that I was different from the rest of the average people they meet from day to day. Nobody realizes that I'm ancient. They don't know that before this whole experiment in human experience I'd been in the thick of the family business, a business humans never learn about until the moment preceeding death...

      My clan in the Angelic Realm is called Admatha. I guess you could say that's our family name. We belong to...well, _they_ (I quit, so technically I'm not one of them anymore.) belong to a specialist corp of angels in "the afterlife", "the other realm", "the great beyond", "nirvana", "Valhalla", or whatever you'd prefer to call it. The bluntest explanation is to say we're angels of death. We preside over the bringing of souls to that which comes after living in human form. I was an angel of death but I'm not one any longer. 

      My father had seemed perplexed by my desire to do this. It was no secret that he was pretty disappointed about my decision to try this human experiment. It's just so "unsafe" here on earth! I don't even mean physically dangerous, which it is...But, our human bodies and limited senses are so very weak, leaving us so constantly vulnerable...probably the reason why we are so unimaginably cruel to one another so often. Humans love to psychically damage each other through negativity. It's hard to stay in a good mood when danger is constantly coming at you from all sides from the moment you first coalesce into a collection of embryonic cells until your very last breath of life.

      Humans are generally one of the most miserable of all species. Self awareness is not our friend when it comes to these matters of always having something to complain about at every given moment. Even when we're not enjoying complaining about our own misery, we're more than happy to spread it around to others. That's one of those sayings, right?

"Misery loves company."

      Totally true. Lesson learned. Now, what more have the next thousand years or so got to teach this former angel, once curious, now mostly just bored? Uh oh, here I go, spreading my own misery around, "Misery loves company." .

Damn! Sorry.

      I try so hard not to play into that behavioral trait but it's so tempting sometimes...a natural consequence of having fallen for the human condition, I guess. But, I still do resist participating in anything which could cause others harm. No religion is necessary to know in your core that it is wrong to knowingly or willingly participate in causing harm to others. That is simply common sense goodness, no training or holy books required to know this as basic lesson number one in life as a human. Do no harm.

      So, I gave up on my angelic duties and the immortality for the opportunity to spend one lifetime feeling what humans feel, experiencing mortal life, and learning what these beings our whole existence centers around  teaching and guiding are truly like. I just wanted so very much to be one! I'd thought maybe walking through life as a future corpse might give a former immortal such as myself better insight into the life lessons we're supposed to make sure they get to experience. Also, let's face it, I want to understand what "The Source" thinks is so special about this species of beings that we angels work so hard at helping them to improve and evolve...to what end?

      I'm now well over 850 years old and I still am not quite sure if I will ever know the answer to that but I had been curious and too impatient to let my soul be guided to a mature, waiting, embryo to fill with my light. I didn't actually bother waiting for reincarnation, going human from scratch (babyhood, toddlerhood, ect.), I simply had my angelic form made mortal and "fell" here.

      They once called me something which meant, "seeker of truth", my former name, Margana, it became my surname when I took human form. Although, in the first century I was here, just Margana had been enough and nobody had asked if it was my first or last name. But, after a while, during my time in Europe back a few centuries ago, I did let people assume my first name was Christina, then Tabatha, even though I never felt entirely at home with the name.

      When I moved to the new world in 1898 I'd gotten bored with the name Tabatha and was looking for a fresh start. I literally opened a book with names in it and pointed...Larcwide. Alright, so, now I'm Larcwide, Larcwide Margana, Larc to those who know me well. I guess I thought I'd start keeping a journal to feel as if I have someone I can be honest with about myself and the nature of my existence. After so many centuries of loneliness in this way, a journal might be a good way for me to finally talk freely about my life, to keep from forgetting who I am and where I came from, and, well, to stay sane.

      I've lived far too long. It's left me tired, a little jaded, bored. It makes me angry at myself, frustrated for wasting what so many humans with average lifespans would view as a magical gift. Lately, I've been squandering the gift of longevity, I know. I'm sorry. Would it help my defence to excuse myself with the cliche, "I'm only human."? 

      It's been so long and my body is just inching close to middle age now. At this rate I might go insane before old age takes me. That's no joke, it's a very real concern I have. How will I endure another near thousand or so years? I read Anne Rice books about her vampires going mad after so many millennia and think, "That could happen. That could happen to me." It may be fiction, the cause of those Anne Rice based revelations, but...I get a little frightened when I contemplate the future. 

      One day at a time. Ten years ahead is as far as I ever think anymore. Reminiscing feels surreal. I've been married three times, you know. I have no momentoes of my long gone husbands...They who never truly knew me, and I have no way to look back on them because they all lived and died before cameras were even invented. But, this line of thinking is bad for me. I've already digressed too much.

      I've lived for so long that when I think back on all I've been through and all I've seen I feel both the grand wonder of humanity on earth plane and a kind of melancholic pity for those who spend their fleeting lifetimes wasting away digging in diamond mines, fleeing gunfire and bombs and living in rubble, or on stranger's brief, selfish "charitable" favors, sold into human trafficking where your life is to become someone else's receptacle for lust mingled with filth and hate, or working someone else's fields, nights spent passed out on the floor somewhere, too tired to dream...Too many humans live this way and the irony of it is that these are often the people who appreciate and feel gratitude for the survival of every single miserable day they exist. No time for boredom. No energy wasted on complaints. Surviving on a crumb and not even thinking to moan about not getting the sandwich it fell from keeps humans humble enough to be aware of how quickly that crumb can disappear and leave you with nothing but a rumbling hot stone of pain for a belly instead.

      So, I won't complain. If humans can be so noble in the face of suffering, I can shut up and keep going because, after all, I asked to be human. I wanted to come down here and experience. I'm getting all the experience I could have ever dreamed of and more.

Tuesday, November 11th, 2014

      I knew where Houdini was and he was fine but I was frustrated anyway because he always seemed to pull this escaping act on me on mornings I was running late for work! It was already 7:15 and I prefer to be on the road already before then. If I left at that point, forget about Houdini, just go, I could be at the school by 7:45, with luck and if traffic was not too horrible. The kids would be arriving from around 8. I needed time to work on the monthly report on my newest challenge student, little Brody Lee Tailor, a mostly non-verbal, limited physical contact, no eye contact, autistic child of just six years of age. Locked inside his own mind, he is, yet I sense a great potential in this boy.

      Brody is a child who is difficult not to mull over, always disturbing my consciousness, tugging at threads on the edges of my mind, a puzzle I am determined to work out. I have a sense he needs more from me than just simply teaching, but what?

      True, Brody has no father figure in his life, but my role is supposed to be as his teacher. I'm not the kind of guy who sleazes over his students just to drool over their moms... That would be wrong and very unprofessional. Anyway, I've met Brody's mom, definitely not my type. First of all, she's too young. And, she's too needy, too broken. I'm not into complicated projects for love affairs. I have my own issues to sort out, thank you. I'm not her type either.

      I don't have substance issues, such as drinking. I don't drink. I've never touched a drop. Growing up with an alcoholic dad who thought weekends were a time to unwind with a few six packs, baseball on tv, and a few good slugs at the wife and kids, had made me dedicated from quite a young age to trying my damnedest to grow into the exact opposite sort of guy as dear old dad had been. Jennifer Brody, little Brody's mom, she would have gone more for my dad than me. I've noticed the men in her life tend to have such problems, often to the detriment of the poor kid. Plus, I'm employed, I work. I work hard too. Jennifer Brody's usual parade of fools were unemployed or, at best, on some form of fraudulent disability or other.

      Still, I wanted to do something special for that boy. He needed a bit of a mental or emotional push but not too much too quickly or else we could lose the child to his own inner-whatever, irrevocably. We must be very careful in drawing Brody out of himself. I'm determined to try my best.

      ...But, my report wasn't yet finished and the extra fifteen minutes or so I'd hoped to have toward working on it were so quickly disappearing ...like my cat, Houdini, formerly Henry; however, since he so frequently escapes my apartment only to always end up found napping cozily at the old lady down the hall's place of residence, he'd earned his name change. I knew that, as much as I should just go get him and bring him back to my apartment before heading off to work, I was already running late and Houdini was most likely perfectly safe and happy down the hall at widow Maria Cappello' s place. Maybe leaving him there's not such a bad idea.

      "At least they'll keep each other company while I'm at school." I rationalized, skipping two steps at a time as I ran down the stairs to the car parked on the street, which looked more like a junkyard heap than a working vehicle. Hey, whatever, my black 1989 Cordoba worked...mostly. That's more important than expensive good looks. Teachers can't really afford flashy cars.

      ...So, I was speeding just a little bit. The radio deejay was rattling on about frost and a coming snowstorm. Yeah, I hadn't even noticed but at that moment it occurred to me that it did feel quite chilly today. Even with the smelly car heater sputtering away I could see my breath, since the interior of the car was still nearly matching the temperature of the air outside. Late Fall, early Winter, whatever you'd call this time of year, it was clear that snow would be coming soon.

      The guy on the radio said it was 7:30 am and I felt myself start to sweat despite the cold.
      "Shit!", I muttered.

      My body desperately longed for a stupid cancer stick but I placated the urge by shoving a piece of ridiculous nicotine gum into my mouth instead. Ok, maybe I had a little problem with one substance in my recent past but cigarettes, though disgusting and expensive, are still legal. Nonetheless, I was in the process of weaning off of them.

      Traffic was a slow crawl. I was running late. I barely listened to the Wham song playing far too boisterous and peppy for this morning's thoughts, "Wake Me Up Before You Go,Go..." and I just wanted to GO! I was running late. Brody's report would not be done on time. Jennifer Brody was awaiting my guidance in her special needs son's educational life and I was going to have to make them wait. Brody deserved so much better than this...

      ...That's all.
That was what I'd been thinking.

      But, now I'm outside the heap of my car, what had been car...a freshly twisted-up wreck of metal exploding in flames as the semi-truck which had apparently slammed into my car also ignites. 

      "I wanna hit that hiiiigh..."

      ...I can still hear the radio within that mess crooning on obliviously. This doesn't even feel real. How am I noticing all of these details? Am I not hurt? I look on at the accident scene, not sure how this is so...

      ...I stand back, watching in disbelief  and horror as the flames engulf both vehicles. Traffic has stopped. People are trying unsuccessfully to put out the fire. Police and fire trucks come. 

      "How am I standing here? I'm not even scratched." I wonder, looking down at myself...No wounds. Not even dirt on my clothes. This seems odd. I don't remember crawling out of the car to get to this spot.

       And, as it goes all dark and I think I might be passing out, I see snowflakes falling all around this accident scene, melting like vanishing magic, as they land on the road. Snowflakes, all around me, but as I open my mouth I notice I don't see my own breath...and all goes black...