by Mehreen Ahmed
Depression held me in its brawny grip. Dizzy spells pinned me to bed like dried butterflies on a collector’s board. Passing in and out of reverie, I was in a waking sleep. Not sure how much of it was dream and how much a reality.
Then I saw my friend in my bedroom.
He said, “I’m leaving.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in hospital? Why are you in my bedroom at midnight?”
Like a spectre, he disappeared. I tried to get some sleep after that. But I kept on thinking of his illuminated shape in the dark. He looked perfectly healthy, and he smiled like a man of thirty. He was like this dream I had once about my father who had passed away some years now. It was a very strange dream.
I had dream’t that I was trying to lock these two sliding, security doors. But I couldn’t. I gave up and walked back.
I sat down on a sofa in the well-lit living-room. Just when I saw them, they stood outside the two doors. A coal tar of dark night, splattered across the space. The two men were standing here.
At the entrance of one door my father stood. He had two suitcases with him. He smiled and waited for my invitation to enter. He put his two suitcases down by his side on the ground. Too excited to see him, I smiled back. I rose from the sofa, to greet him.
Just when I saw the other. This one was a stranger. Perhaps my father’s companion, he also stood with his two suitcases at the door. His smiles were not as cordial as my father’s. They were playful and tentative, hovered on his lips.
My father looked stalky and slender in his long white shirt and white trousers. His companion, short and chubby. He wore an off-white shirt and long pants.
My father looked full-blooded, tight and fit, a young man in his early thirties; the stranger, also in his youth. Had they come over to visit to me? Perhaps, he and his companions were passing through; they dropped by.
They wanted to come in. But I didn’t invite them in. I stood resolutely rooted to the ground in the middle of the bright room, waiting to see what happened next. They waited, out in the dark, if I offered them food and drink.
They must have been knackered with exhaustion. They needed a rest. But I didn’t offer them any. I didn’t move; neither did they. They kept smiling and looking at me; two suitcases by the side.
Were they time traveling? Why? He looked exactly my age. My father was a citizen of a parallel universe. He had to be. Same with the companion; they may have accidentally slipped through a netted time rip. I felt ashamed of my behaviour that I didn’t invite them. They teetered at a brink of seamless fantasy and reality.
Yes, my father was in my space. He looked exactly the same age as me. The doors were open, but they didn’t force enter. Because they had become outsiders.
The next morning, I decided to pay a visit to my friend at the hospital. There was a strong wind. It whistled a dirge, as it swept the dry leaves of spring. I walked against the gust to get there. I had to find out that he was okay.
In the hospital building, I walked towards his cabin, I had the strangest premonition, “What if he actually was in my room, last night.”
As I came closer to his room, I saw him in bed from a distance. He had just turned over on his bed, facing me. He smiled as though he expected me. I lifted my arm and waved. He kept on looking at me in a really strange way. When I was finally at his bed side, he tried to sit. I helped him.
“Well, how are ye?”
“I’m back in my bed now, That’s a relief.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I saw my own body sleeping in this bed, last night.”
“Really? How is that possible?”
“Believe it or not, I was up there, hanging by the ceiling. I saw my whole life from there. It was as though I was in a fast moving train. And through the carriage window I could see myself, crawling, walking, schooling and now sleeping in this
bed.”
“Now that is very strange. Because, I saw you too, in my bedroom last night. You looked healthy, youthful, full of life.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did.”
“On that train, I also saw you, playing as children, getting old, decrepit. Life went so fast, in a flash.”
“I don’t really know what happened. Were you hallucinating?” I asked.
“The nurses said so. And then at one stage, I saw the white light, beckoning me to follow it.”
“What happened after that?”
“I nearly went after it. But the next moment, I was awake. Right here in bed. I saw nurses and doctors pouring over me. They told me I was clinically dead for a few minutes.”
“Clinically dead? What does that even mean? Either one is dead or not dead.”
“It means that I’d died for a few minutes.”
“Your soul or chemistry, whatever it is, was outside this vessel, that we call a body,” I said.
He nodded. And then the penny dropped for me. Human consciousness could survive outside the body, and roam freely.
Last night, an episode had occurred in the hospital, in this very room, but I saw him in my bedroom, a long away from the hospital.
“What now?” I asked.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested.
“In this gusty wind?”
We both looked out through the hospital window. Wavering winds blew in a clear blue sky. The nurses in white walked through the corridors. White walls.
“Are we still here?” I asked.
“Ephemera,” he replied.
Mehreen Ahmed is award winning, and internationally acclaimed author. Her books, received The Author Shout Reader Ready Awards, 2 Bronze Honourable Mention for Moirae and The Blotted Line. And 1 Silver Recommended Read for Jacaranda Blues. Her other book, The Pacifist, is “Drunken Druid The Editors’ Choice for June 2018″, and Jacaranda Blues,”The Best of Novels for 2017 – Family Novels of the Year ” by Novel Writing Festival. Her flash fiction, “The Portrait” chosen to be broadcast by Immortal Works, Flash Fiction Friday, 2018.
