Vicky's Encounter

“I am lost. Everything seems unbearable... or at least so it seems. I find myself wondering where it all went wrong. I am beginning to question if things were ever right in the first place. Maybe if I go back, and reflect, I might be able to find where truly my life became the thunder shits-storm it is today...”

These were the first words Vicky uttered after almost six hours of practically complete silence, with her occasional heavy breath being the only thing to break it.

Vicky had yet to realize this, but she is to walk a very dark path before she is to see any glimpse of light.

“I think it was last August that this all started- no... maybe... I think...

Oh Vicky, if you cannot tell when and where this even began, how are you ever to see the end of it...?”

Coming from across her apartment, where she had isolated herself from any other life form, arose a voice, sinister in nature, which shook Vicky to her core.

“Good luck with that, I suppose.”

As if all her limbs had been cut off, Vicky stood right where she was, more frightened than she had ever been before, unable to move, petrified, as if she had had an encounter with the rage of the raped woman of the temple of Minerva. Stone cold, her body. Her face, pale as the undead, yet her pupils, fully focused on the direction from which the voice came. They could not absorb any more light than they were at that moment.

“What is it,” the voice continued, “though we were all alone?”

Vicky’s angst only grew larger; the voice was as real as the hair on her head. All of her blood starts rushing to her head, as her mind was trying to make sense of what was transpiring at that current moment. A tsunami of thoughts conquered the entirety of her being, completely distracting her from what had been the only focus of her conscious self prior to it.

“Come now, don’t be shy,” the violent distortion of quiet continued, “we’ve know one another for quite some time now. It is only fair that we properly meet one another’s acquaintance. Besides, you have known me for quite some time now, even if you have chosen to ignore my existence.”

Fear still reigned Vicky’s body, but a new feeling found its place there too; a feeling ever so faint, yet with it carried a sense of familiarity. Do I really know whoever’s at the end of this voice, Vicky thought.

Ever so petrified, she started to make an effort to move her body towards the source of what her instincts identified as a threat. Her eyes would not move from the frame of the door from which the voice was coming. Vicky got up and really slowly started to move. Once she crossed the threshold of her bedroom’s entry she started looking around trying to identify the direction which her feet were to take further.

“There you go,” the voice started dictating her. “Keep walking.”

Vicky did as she was told, despite the fact that she felt she was walking towards her doom; as if she’d met Chiron and now was sailing down river Styx, she continued to follow the unknown. Something in her was signaling that this was something she is to do, that this encounter had been a long time coming, but she could not pinpoint out why. She made way towards the end of the hallway. As she was slowly moving past the paintings, leaving them behind, and with her shadow now covering them, a crimson-like feeling became the scent of all that was left behind.

“Almost there, Vicky, just keep on walking.”

The voice is coming from the bathroom, she whispered to herself, trying to find reassurance within that this was indeed something which she ought to be doing. She made way to the end of the hall, where the bathroom was. She could see that the light was on through the barely opened door; she did not remember leaving it on – she never left the bathroom light on. It was a habit she had built during her childhood. In order to save electricity, her father would always remind her to turn the light off. How she missed him; his kind and gentle voice, his warm hugs, his smile which always made her feel secure, free of worry. He was her hero, and he would keep being her hero to the end of times. The thought of her father gave Vicky the strength to further open the door.

She fully opened the bathroom door but to her surprise there was no one there. Great, she thought, now I am hearing imaginary voices – just great. Her body began to relax at a turtles pace. She took another look around the bathroom but still, nothing and no one was there.

“I’m probably just tired,” her voice spoke out loud, “I should just get to bed.”

“Go to bed? But you just got here, and haven’t even given me the chance to introduce myself.”

There it was again, that awful crack of a sound breaking right through time, making mere seconds everlasting.

“Come now, look in the mirror.”

Her heart rate increased once more. Her body started shivering more than it had ever before. Hopelessness was the only thing she was feeling – a feeling familiar to her only from the passing of her father in her late adolescence.

“Turn around, Vicky. Look in the mirror. Or are you going to turn away and not face what is too difficult just like you did at dad’s funeral?”

As if a dark knight had stabbed her in the back with a cursed sword, great pain took over the entirety of her Soul. Broken pieces of her heart from a different life had risen from the deep underground, pieces these which she had tried to burry in a place which no Soul could find – or so she had hoped with her dear life.

It had been 72 moons since her father had passed; it took more than half of those for Vicky to dig up the whole which was to carry anything remaining of his memory. Now it all came back, as if they had been buried alive, waiting for the opportune moment to come back to the land of the living, unalive.

“Oh poor Vicky, look at you. Thought we had escaped our past? Well, turn around and look into my eyes and you will see that your ‘salvation’ was a mere illusion, now broken to shreds, just like the rest of your Being.

Turn around Vicky, look at me!”

Against her will, Vicky’s body started to turn the other way; she no longer had control of her movement and any courage to fight against it was overshadowed by the sheer agonizing fear that had taken over her mind. There was nothing to do but face the source of her torment; Gjallarhorn echoed through the inner walls of Vicky’s Soul. In a matter of minutes, Vicky’s world had gone from a troublesome uncharted chaos to a bottomless inferno pit.

Her possessed body finalizes the 180 turn. At first, the sight before her eyes was just as before; the only one in the bathroom was Vicky, and the only thing she could see was her own reflection on the bathroom mirror. As her eyes could not find an immediate threat, her body started to calm down slowly, but still holding tension in her muscles just in case the need arose to fight or flight. Vicky could not tell why, but that very reflection seemed off for some reason. Maybe it is the overload of fear which has taken over my body which made it seem so, she thought.

She started to take a closer look in the mirror. Even though the bathroom light was on, her reflection seemed rather dark and shadowy. She was tracing her own movements in the reflection; first the hands, then her hair, her cheeks, her mouth and her eyes – something was off, esspecially with her eyes. She got closer to the mirror for better inspection; she was inches away from what appeared to be herself, but did not feel as such; it was in the eyes... they were not hers...

At that very moment, a sharp grim smile came from her reflection.

“Hello Vicky! It’s nice to finally meet you,” said that same voice which had been speaking to her all this time.

Eye’s open wide, goosebumps shivering all over, her body froze. This can’t be real, Vicky thought, it can’t be.

“Well, of course this isn’t real Vicky. This is a dream – a dream that you yourself have asked for. Oh, I suppose you’re wondering how I am able to read your thoughts. Well that is simple, Vicky: we are one and the same – I am but a reflection of your Being; I am You. And I am here because you’ve asked for me to be here, otherwise, why would I? And as you begin to slowly comprehend what is actually going on, I will tell you why you have asked of me to be here, why you, or rather, why our Soul has asked me to come and pay you a short visit.”

The voice was no longer in a frequency of distortion; it became her voice, Vicky’s voice. She still could not comprehend what was happening. One of close friends who had majored in psychology had explained to her once that dreams serve as messengers of what one’s Soul (one’s psyche in her words) want to tell the individual, but this was nothing like she could have imagined. No, this can’t be a dream, she thought, this is too real to be a dream.

“That all depends on how you perceive what is to be real, Vicky. One’s reality is not what reality might be, but rather what they think reality is. Let’s take our own experience as an example; you think of your life as a mess that seems impossible to manage, fix, or even maintain, and that is what has become of your ‘reality’, your life.”

Even though her gut told her that the voice was no longer a threat, fear still remained, and with how this whole experience started for Vicky, it was quite reasonable. She still distrusted her own reflection, even if she said this was just a dream and that she had come due to their Soul’s request – what the hell does that even mean?

Vicky was slowly coming back to her senses. She decided to wash her face with ice cold water from the sink to see if maybe that would wake her up, but her reflection was just watching over her as she did that without moving one bit. The reassurance that this was but a dream had helped calm her down quite a bit, as well as the washing of her face, even if that had been part of this incoherent dream. She put her head back up and there it was still, watching without mimic, constantly keeping her eyes on Vicky.

“You have yet to explain to me how it was our Soul, whatever that means, that has called you to come to me, and for what reason?”

“I had to wait for you to calm down for a little bit so you do not view me as this evil and demonic thing, as you did before. And now it seems that you have reached that point, so here it is: It is very clear that you are not satisfied with the way you are living your life, and it is also evident that you want for that to change. The only problem being; you are unaware of where to start or which direction to go with. For this reason, our Soul, your psyche, has called me forth; to give you a helping hand with what path to take in order to better your life.”

“Okay, I’ll bite, what direction should I take to better my life then?” said Vicky with her own voice taking a bit of a sinister overtone.

“Telling you which direction to take is the easy part: you have been your happiest and most fulfilled when you were a kid and you would get lost in your own world as you were drawing and painting; back when you were using your gift.”

Vicky interrupts her, “I haven’t drawn or painted anything for a very long time now, maybe since I started high school.”

“Yes, and then is precisely when things started to go downhill.”

“What do you mean? I was doing quite well up until...”

“Up until dad died?”

Vicky could not bring herself to mention her father. His loss was something that had taken a massive toll on her and she had yet to truly recover from it. Vicky had secretly – a secret she even kept from herself – known that it all started to go wrong even before her father died six years ago. However, she still could not comprehend what her reflection meant when she said that it all started when she stopped painting and drawing.

“You might think,” the reflection on the mirror continued, “that it all started with dad’s death, but in reality it started when you stopped committing to your true desire. And the reason why you think it all started when dad died is because, with his death, you lost his reassurance that what you were pursuing with your degree in marketing and your ‘real life’ job is what you got to go after. The truth of the matter is that dad did not know what is truly best for you, only you know that. But dad would support your endeavors because based on his perspective those were indeed the right things to do as one journeys through their life. But what he did not realize is that each and every one has their own path to walk and that one cannot walk that path based on what someone else’s path might have been. That can be a good guide of where and how to start, but it is not a step-by-step guide one is to follow for their own journey. One’s journey is their own, and it is for them to find where their path lies.

Such is the case for you too; you are the one who must figure out where your next undertaking is. Again, our Soul saw that you were having a bit of a hard time figuring that out, so She thought that it would be best to tell you exactly where to go.

The reason why you cannot find reasons to disagree with what I am telling you is because it is the Truth which lies deep within you; the Truth of our Soul. I am not here to tell you that what our dad did was wrong. As we both know he was the best father we could have asked for, and there is no doubt about it. However, with his loss, you’ve lost any sense of self-confidence you might have had, and the way to start regaining it is by going back to your roots, by getting back to what had built your self-confidence in the first place – and it was not dad with his encouraging words, even if that has helped quite a bit, but your own work that set the seeds for it. I am not telling you to quit your job either, or to leave your friends to pursue what you have decided long ago to call a ‘childlike dream’. Do not undermine your dream, do not undermine your talent. That is your gift to share with the world, and it is your job to figure out how you are to achieve that. I am here merely as a messenger, to let you know that you got that which you need to move forth within you; the courage, the confidence, the talent. These things did not leave you with dad’s death. You simply have to look within you. I am proof that these are true, or else I would not have been here to tell you this. I am the one who has been sent to you to bargain with you for the price of your Soul. If you wish to lose Her completely, keep walking the path which has been laid for you by others – even if ‘others’ includes dad. If you wish to find yourself and live the life your Soul desires, listen to the words I am speaking to you, and act upon them. In the end, I cannot live life for you; you have to do that on your own.

Remember the face I had on when you first saw me? Remember the feeling that face gave you? Those are all which you have to let go of; the pain of your father’s loss, the fear of the unknown, the angst of what the future holds. Give those things up. Start anew. And not because you have no other choice, because you do. But because that is what you choose; to walk your path in accordance with your Souls guidance.

Now, it is up to you: when you wake up, will you choose to keep going the way you have up until now, continuing to live a life of misery, or will you choose to walk alongside your Soul, striving for a life worth living?”