One-Way Return Ticket

‘I am not going to print this!’

‘Why not?’

‘Nobody wants to read about floating bodies in a river next to their homes.’

‘This is what happened to their neighbors. Don’t you think they have the right to know the truth? Isn’t this what we were supposed to do here?’

‘We are telling all kinds of truths, just not these particularly gruesome and disgusting ones.’ 

Coward, I really wanted to scream it to his face.

‘Look, Emma, maybe you should consider writing for some other paper, becoming a P.I., or reporting from a war zone; it seems like death stories are the only ones you see around you.’ 

It was the fifth story he rejected in a row. I was fired for sure. That's how Thursday, November 12, 1981, began. Later that same day, someone stole my bag containing all my tapes, files, photos, and negatives—the evidence I needed for my next big story. My car was at the mechanic’s, and all my money was in my bag, leaving me without a cent, even for the bus. I had to walk all the way home through the snow and wind. Soaked and frozen to the bone, all I wanted was to put on my warm wool socks, drink a beer, eat some pizza, and fall asleep on my old couch while watching TV. But this day was not about to be done playing with me. So, for the cherry on top of my shitty day, Kassi took my favorite wooly socks without asking. Again!

With her, I often resisted being an investigator; instead, I tried to be a friend and respected her privacy until now. I kicked the door to her room furiously, ready to turn this place upside down, but what I found on the floor immediately made me forget about my misery. I stood there, confused and speechless, for what felt like a long time. Something bad had happened. Something very bad had happened. It was the only thought going through my head over and over again.

Kassie’s bottle was broken into a hundred pieces. It was her most important possession, though I don’t know why. She never told me, and I never asked—which is unlike me. I am curious and nosy, and I usually don’t have moral limits stopping me from snooping. Still, in this case, I respected her boundaries but only because I was, to be honest, a little freaked out and a bit scared as she could get totally obsessed and be like a wild animal ready to bite my head off if I as much as look at the bottle. Kassi was always extremely careful not to break it; she had forbidden me to touch it. I couldn’t figure out why she never hid it in the drawer or wrapped it up so it would be safe. This shot glass-sized bottle with a cork glued on the top and a piece of thread wrapped a few times around the neck was standing almost on the edge of her bedside table. It seemed strange to care for something with such passion and yet risking to be so easily destroyed. And it finally happened. I didn’t know if Kassi had already seen this, but I knew I had to find her. I ran to the park, where she went every time she was sad, scared, or angry, or all at once. I slowed down when I saw her sitting under the tree.

‘There you are!’ I yelled, ‘Are you ok?’ she didn’t react. 

‘Listen, something happened.’ I continued, but she was sitting there without moving. Without breathing. 

I didn’t panic, scream, or run for help. I checked for a pulse, but her body was already stiffening and getting cold. I didn’t find any signs of physical abuse—no blood, no wounds, no struggle; she was like she had just sat there and fallen asleep. Could she have been here since yesterday? Her coat, shoes, and bag were gone this morning, so I assumed she had already left for work. I couldn’t do anything for her anymore. I searched her coat. To be honest, I saw a story here, a mystery to be solved. My instinct kicked in, and I was as cold emotionally as she was physically at that moment. Now that I think about it, it had to be the reason why it was so easy not to cry or hold her hand one last time but instead to inspect her body and clothes. Finding a clue was all I could think about. And I did; I found a four-day-old train ticket. I didn’t think much of it at first, but as I looked closely at the date and time on the ticket—Monday, 8th November, 8:00 am, returning the same day—I remembered that day.

I remember it well because our book club was meeting for the first time in our apartment. Kassie was excited to host it, but she didn’t show up. When she finally came back in the middle of the night, she said something about bumping into an old friend and losing track of time reminiscing. I know when people lie, everyone and everything on my path and around me is a part of my training, exercise, and test of how good I am at my job. And I am good; I know when people are lying before they even start to speak. And the ticket was telling a true story of where she really was that day.

I couldn’t stay too long with her; for one, somebody could have seen me, and two, if I stayed any longer, I would not have been able to hold inside all that was coming to the surface: the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness. My friend was dead, but I had trained myself well to postpone feeling anything when faced with a tragedy so I could follow the clues and do my job. I left her sleeping there in my favorite wooly socks, sticking out from her worn heavy boots. I took the train to the same place she had traveled that Monday. It was a short ride. I knew exactly where I was going and who I would visit.

‘Hello. Are you Kassi's grandmother?’

‘Yes, and who are you?’

‘I am her roommate, Emma.’

‘Oh, yes. But what are you doing here, so late?’

‘Kassi is dead.’ I just said it. Quickly, without hesitation.

‘Yes, I know.’ She answered calmly with a hollow look in her eyes.

‘You know?! What do you mean you know? How?!’ I lost my cool. 

I had been carrying this terrible loss with me today, and finally, I could share it with somebody. I didn’t have to pretend anymore, and I didn’t have to behave like nothing had happened anymore. I could feel it again. But I couldn’t allow myself to show it yet; my work wasn’t over yet.

‘Come in. I will explain,’ she said, gently taking my arm and pulling me inside. I could tell she was sad but not upset. She seemed like her time of grieving had passed a long time ago, as if Kassie had been dead for eight years, not eight hours. She invited me into her kitchen and started to make tea. She didn’t ask if I wanted or even liked tea—which I do—she just knew.

The house had—well, there is only one word to describe it—a witchy vibe. It was nothing too obvious, but the decorations were consciously chosen to give visitors this exact impression, to let them know this is a magical, mystical, and spiritual place. Kassie’s grandmother herself immediately made me feel curious about who she was. There was something about her smile, the way she looked at me as if she already knew me—like she knew things about me that I didn’t even know—but with kindness, understanding, and acceptance.

‘Sit down, and please call me Zoe,’ she said. 

‘I will tell you about Kassie’s death. But I need to warn you it may not be easy to understand. You will probably not believe one word I tell you, at least not today. Maybe someday, or maybe never. But this is the truth, and I think you deserve to know it, even if you are not ready to hear it. You were her friend, and you are part of her story as much as she is part of yours.

First, to see the bigger picture and understand anything that happens in our lives, you need to know this…’ When she said it, she looked deep into my eyes as if I really should pay attention now. My job required me to have an open mind; I had seen many unexplained things and read many cases of—let’s call it—weird stuff, but what she was about to tell me was a completely new level of weird.

‘…All of us are spiritual beings, souls, experiencing life in human form on this planet. We have been here many times and will return to this or a different version of Earth many times again.’

‘Are you talking about past lives, like a reincarnation?’

‘Simply put, yes.’

‘How simply?’

Zoe smiled like she tried to say my dear child, you have no idea, but she didn’t. She took a sip of tea and continued. 

’As we are souls, we also have soul mates, soul friends, soul family, and soul tribes with whom we often travel together and experience life together. Sometimes, we ask our soul mates to be our loving family members, and sometimes, we ask them to be abusive and hurt us.’

‘Why would we want to ask them to hurt us?!’

‘So we can learn—among many other things—acceptance, self-love, and how to grow as souls.’

‘So we make all sorts of plans together, like where we will be born, who our family will be, and what we want to experience and learn. We often don’t remember these plans because life would be boring and predictable if we knew what would always happen, and we definitely wouldn’t learn anything. Not many people remember their past lives, but some people do. They know who their soulmates are and if they are with them here and now. And Kassie remembered her every life. She saw the big picture; this was her gift, but it was a gift that came with the price of knowing things about her other ‘selves’ she wouldn’t always want to know, knowing all the good but also the bad things that happened to her and what she did to others. Knowing what choices she made.”

‘Are there ways to remember our past lives?’

‘Yes. Hypnosis is one way for those who stay too firmly grounded on Earth almost their entire life, like yourself. Unless you are too afraid of losing control…’ She winked at me.

Suddenly, I felt anxious. And after all that tea, I really had to pee. The bathroom was cozy, filled with Hindu and Tibetan statues, crystals, and scented candles. The smell in there made me calm again. As I’m writing it down in my journal, it feels almost like a dream, like all this didn’t really happen. I returned to the kitchen. Zoe was holding her teacup in both hands and looking at the tea. When I sat down, she continued.

‘Kassie was able to connect with the spirit world easily. She also saw and understood her life and her death in this lifetime and learned about her next life, where her soulmate will be born again soon—here on Earth. But he will be born in a country torn by war. She knew she needed to be there, to be born there before him. She understood she must find him there before he gets killed. And that’s all I know.’ 

Zoe got up from her squeaky chair and lit a candle on the windowsill. She stood there for a while. I didn’t want to disturb her, but I was getting impatient and wanted to know more. Finally, I moved my chair to make a noise and woke her from the trance.

‘Kassie needed to die here so part of her soul could enter her new body there,’ Zoe explained. ‘You see, we have many lives simultaneously, but some of them are more gifted than others, and she needs this energy, this life’s gift, its essence, to carry over to that particularly new life, which I believe will be challenging one. I don’t know how her energy will manifest or what shape or form it will transform into, but I know it will be powerful enough to endure whatever awaits her.’

I sat there, scribbling as fast as I could, not even understanding what I was writing. And yet, I understood all of it perfectly. I don’t know why or how. I like my facts to be verifiable, concrete, and tangible, but what she said didn’t sound to me like fiction. Even if I couldn’t touch or explain it, I felt it. Zoe didn’t try to convince me to believe anything she was saying; I don’t think she even cared because everything was as it was for her. It is what it is because it is as it is.

‘Now, you are probably wondering what the big deal was about the little bottle?" Zoe said.

I had almost forgotten all about it. 

‘Yes, what is so special about it?’

‘Kassie didn’t know the exact day he would be born again,’ Zoe explained. ‘The spirit realms don’t always give us clear messages, and even those with the gift sometimes have trouble translating them. But she needed to be on time, not to arrive too late and find him dead. So, she spent countless hours going to the astral realms to connect with her soul friend and ask him to give her a sign. The bottle was his sign for her—whenever it breaks, it’s time for her to go. That’s why the bottle needed to be in a place where it would not break on its own but would be easy to do so when needed. It didn’t have to be by forces from a different world; it simply could have been Kassie breaking it by accident. And as I hope you’ve already learned, there are no accidents.’

She looked at me when she said it as if to make sure I understood and remembered.

‘Kassi came to me that Monday morning asking if I could help her to travel to another side. And I trust you will keep this information to yourself as long as I'm alive?’

‘Yes, of course.’ I responded without hesitation. 

She nodded with gratitude. 

Zoe walked me to the door, and as I was about to leave, she said with urgency in her voice, like it was the last thing she would ever say to me. If I only remembered one thing from my visit, I had to remember that.

‘The web of present, past, and future lives is too vast and complex for a human mind to understand, so don’t try to use logic to untangle it. But whatever you feel and know to be true, whoever you are, wherever you are now in your life - you planned to be exactly where you are and who you are. So live your present life and don’t spend too much time in the memories of the past lives.’

…

I couldn’t enter Kassie's room for the next few days. And when I finally did, I dropped to my knees, crying suddenly so hard—like somebody had just taken everything and everyone from me and left me nowhere far away from home. I was crying like a little girl who had been left alone, and her only friend—an old, dirty, patched teddy bear—was ripped from her hands and brutally destroyed in front of her. Her only friend was killed, and she was all alone. All she had was him, and now he was gone too. 

I felt so much sadness, so much pain, and so much loss in that one tiny moment. My heart was breaking inside me. I felt all that I had not been able to feel for so long. I felt all that I had suppressed and pushed to the back of my mind—to that forgotten, dark, and cold place where I had abandoned this little girl. And now she was coming back to me.

"I am sorry!" I cried uncontrollably in front of her.

"I am so sorry!" I looked at her. She wasn’t scared, sad, or angry. She took my hand and said to me with so much love in her voice—a love I never knew was possible to feel—“You are not alone.”

I didn’t understand how or why I was seeing this. Why here? Why now? All that had happened just seconds before I saw my favorite wooly socks neatly folded on Kassie's bed…

My friend is dead. I will never see her again. We will never laugh or cry together watching cheesy romantic films. We will never make the delivery guy uncomfortable by acting weird and crazy. I will never tease her again for putting honey on pepperoni jalapeño pizza; now, this is the only way I eat it. My new workmates tease me about the same thing, and I gently smile every time they do.

I finally caught up with myself and my past, which I didn’t want to remember, and I knew she was here to help me feel it all. I now know our paths crossed for a reason, and I guess we planned it all together before coming into these lives. Kassie’s story is safely hidden; nobody will ever read it as long as I’m alive.