Two Souls A Day

Submitted into Contest #27 in response to: Write a short story that ends with a twist.... view prompt

1 comment

Mystery

I felt the warmth at my back while I slept and knew that he was there. It felt as though he had always been there and that he always would be. It had been years since we had slept apart and years more that we had been a part of each other’s lives. We had never promised ‘till death do us part as both of us knew that without the other the grave of the second would barely hesitate. We kept secrets from others, but not from each other, even when we both wished we had. We were told we were truly made for each other. Soulmate was a word we heard directed towards us more than we even heard in the theater. If they knew why we were the way we were, they would be hesitant to even be in the same room with us, but as it were, we were loved by anyone we wanted to love us. We had practice at that. 

I sat up and I felt the shift that told me in his sleep his body was protesting my absence from his side. He would forgive me. He always did, just as I always forgave him. I walked to the bathroom and looked into the sink while my right hand reached into the mirror. I felt the other hand, like water and glass, like fire and like fatality. I retracted my hand and brought what the other hand had brought to me down to my line of sight. It was a gun. I sighed, it wasn’t a favorite, but it wasn’t the worst thing I could have been handed. I looked at the clock, two minutes before sunrise. The gun was placed where it sat more naturally in my left hand, and before I let myself feel anything but sure, I brought it beneath my chin, and pulled.

Two minutes after sunrise, I felt my body laid back into the bed, and the warmth was at my back again. Arms went around me, pulling me closer, and I heard the other half of my soul whisper to me, “ I love you, it’s okay.” 

Work was wonderful as always. I was a psychiatrist having specialized in schizophrenia at my clinic, and so my client base was varied and interesting. I had other specialists in my building as well for a few other issues, and we were the only clinic for miles around with beds for a 72 hour hold. My coworkers were handpicked by me, and I was a harsh critic. Everyone worked hard and believed in what they were doing. The clinic was well known throughout the state for being the best and we always worked at max capacity. We were able to pretty rapidly expand the building and the workforce within it, so our max held out as best it could against the growing commands of society. I had five minutes between each client, and the one who was leaving was just checking in with me that their medication levels seemed to be working for them, so I had a few minutes be breathe instead of short handing notes to be flushed out later. I realized my thumb was worrying a small groove on the underside of my chin and dropped it with enough force for there to be a sting when it hit the desk in front of me. If I thought about it, it would only continue to stay there. 

I remembered having to wear scarves and bracelets everyday to hide what I had to do every morning. I couldn’t let the pain just fade then. I worried about it all day, for days, with not only my thoughts but with my hands, and with his hands, until I learned the proof went away as soon as I let it.  It took years to forget about some of the things the hand had given me to use, but luckily those were usually easier to hide from everyone but the one person who understood completely.

 At my lunch break I drove home to let our cat inside and to see my other half. He does graphic design, and when we have children he watches them too, but we had decided to wait awhile before adopting again. It was easier when we didn’t have to keep secrets in our own house. He met me with a kiss as full of love as it had been the first time. My hands went to his hair, tousling it while pulling back from the kiss. We didn’t talk much, but then, we didn’t have to. We could almost read each other’s minds at this point, and when your love language is only truly spoken by two, it seems odd to share it where the rest of the world can hear. He made lunch and I cleaned up behind him, keeping to our strengths. Our cat at the time was on my lap while we ate, sleepily pawing for scraps but content with scratches between the ears. 

Saying goodbye is always harder in the winter, with the midday sun already fading, I know I won’t see him again until the moon had once again replaced the sun. The hug was hard to break, though neither of us cried much anymore. My face buried in his chest I could almost hear his heart trying to prepare itself. A soft alarm in my pocket made me step away and I looked into his eyes. My thumb traced his jaw and I filled my voice with truth, “ I love you, it’s okay.” 

My office doesn’t have a window, an instruction I was firm on, and one the contractors of my building tried to talk me out of five different times. I held firm, and so had he when he was helping me with cosmetic details. I didn’t want to see the sunset any more than he wanted to see the sunrise. We had had to fight much harder to get a bedroom without a window. I looked down at my watch. It was already done. I only had two clients left, and I forced myself to smile through them before gathering my things and pressing the gas just a little further down than appropriate to get home. Years to get used to this and I still wasn’t ready. 

He was in the bed, his breathing regular, and I gave the both of us a few more moments of peace by letting him sleep as I looked him over. We had decided awhile ago to try not to ask unless there was no avoiding the curiosity of the scars. I turned him onto his back and traced the lines of his face with my eyes; no scars. I gently took his head in my hands and tilted first to the left and then to the right. Nothing, I ran my hands down, the trembling in my hands calmed from practice, to his wrists. The left scar was clean, and I knew it would heal first. He hadn’t felt that one, but, as my fingertip touched the zigzag on the right wrist, I know he had started to think and feel about what was happening before he had passed out. I pressed my lips to the scar and kissed it, not that he would ever know. It had been a selfish act anyway. It was always so much worse when the hand passed something that required multiple steps. So much more room for error. I kissed his forehead and thought of sunshine, and sleepy trusting eyes opened a moment later. 

Evenings are spent usually with books and tv and each other’s company. Our cat sat behind us on the couch, purring and content. We almost always had at least one animal with us. They tended to keep us more positive and keep us from going back on our promises. A dog or a cat will never understand why you didn’t come home to play with them, or why you didn’t wake up when they licked your face or purred for food. At about two in the morning, typical for us, one of us got up and headed to bed, knowing the other was right behind. Our bodies folded into each other as the bed settled. We had learned exactly where our two puzzle pieces fit together perfectly, and a painter might even say it was beautiful to see the way we slept next to each other. We knew it was that we knew where we belonged and wanted every minute to be in that space. 

At about four in the morning I felt myself start to wake up, groggy and unsure, until I heard him. He was crying, something we only did freely when we slept. I knew he was remembering the price we paid, and the gift we were living every day. The price of love some would say, the price of happiness. I knew his nightmares would be different from my own. We had different endings every day and they left different internal scars, ones that I hoped to heal in others with my work in the day. I watched, tears sitting in my own eyes, but from sadness at him hurting or my inability to look away from him even long enough to blink I couldn’t be sure. I wouldn’t wake him. That would be worse for both of us, but when I saw it start, I had to force myself off the bed to keep myself from trying to help. This wasn’t the typical reliving of his every sunset, this was the first one he first missed.

...

We had loved each other for so long, but still we were both broken on the inside. Another person cannot be the magical glue to your internal shattered glass, and the sooner we learned that and learned to just hand each other pieces they had missed while cleaning up themselves, the easier it got. We were living suicidal ideation, and the morning that I woke up and saw myself laying in his arms with cool blue lips, I thought that I had finally done it and I wasn’t going to be able to remember how. 

I remember crying that morning, two minutes before sunrise, as the wind whispered that it hadn’t been my lack of strength that had taken me, but something that almost any person could have happen. My body, sick in ways explained my science, had just given up. The wind tousled my hair and asked if I wanted to go home. I thought of home, but it wasn’t with my family and friends, it wasn’t with my past. My home was in that bed, and he was going to wake up in two minutes to watch the sunrise with me. 

“Anything to go home.” I whispered. The wind picked the words up and whipped them around me, spinning me until I was in front of a mirror. It whispered for me to look into it and all would be explained. I was chosen, as some are, to take death away.

I looked into the eyes of my soulmate in that mirror, his neck with a noose around it, and he held one out to me. I took it. He was the first one I saved. When I felt the warmth against my back and glanced at the clock, I realized it was two minutes after sunrise. He felt my body stir, shaking, probably for the first time in hours, and he wrapped his arms around me, “ I love you, it’s okay.”

I stopped looking the the mirror after a few days. I couldn’t stand to see who I would be saving, seeing if I had saved them before. I just knew that I got to go home and they lived as long as I took whatever they handed to me and used it before sunrise. 

It took five years for him to notice that I wasn’t aging. When I told him, he nodded. He heard me every morning, waking up to something he couldn’t explain. He knew I would tell him when I was ready. When I told him, he got up with me the next morning. I made him swear to not touch me or look into the mirror, and I knew he would never break that trust with me. 

It was a spring evening when I got the call. He had swerved to avoid hitting a little girl with his car. The little girl was fine, not even a scratch, and his official cause of death would be announced to me in a few hours after I identified the body. He told me the wind came to him, and asked him if he was ready to go home. He said home was when his arms were around me and we were laughing. He asked the wind how he could possibly go home without me. The wind spun him to a mirror two minutes before sunset. It whispered for him to look. He told me he saw me there holding out a glass filled with something out to him. He drank it and as I walked up to his body to confirm it was him, he opened his eyes, two minutes after sunset. He was shaking so hard the paramedics were sure it was shock, but with one look I knew. I took his hand, “I love you, it’s okay.” 

...

I taught him to never look in the mirror, and I made sure to never ask. The two of us had saved two people a day from taking their own lives for the last twenty-six years. We would never age, or die naturally, but the wind had been sure to tell us that we would never be able to save each other again. The only way we could die was by taking our own lives without the aid of a mirror. We had been temped a few times each, until we remembered what waited for us on the other side. We could only go home with each other, and until that day came when we decided together to move on, we would make sure that others went home. 

The only time we had to relive past savings involuntarily, is when we had nightmares. They didn’t come often, but if it was of the day the wind came to us, our skin would temporarily let us see the scars of every time we had saved someone. Our necks and wrists and heads and mouths so twisted with scars and pain it was hard to believe we would have once chosen that for ourselves. I forced myself to lay back down next to him as his nightmare shifted back to something much less painful and filled with truth. 

...

Two minutes before sunrise, I sat up, and felt him sit up with me. We both knew that this one was different. I looked at him, “I love you, it’s okay.” It doesn’t matter which one of us said it. I walked to the mirror and looked into it. The first time in years, and it didn’t feel as though I had a choice. It was like looking into a different version of the past where I didn’t have him. The crying was faded into the past, and the shaking was almost powered by fury and determination. While eyes searched the surface in the front of the mirror for what to use, I searched the face. Something was different about this one. I felt the wind again, a light suggestion at my brain, and as I realized how this was different, you finally looked at me.

“ Are you ready to go home?” I asked, and reached my hand out to you. Your lip trembled while you thought of the word home, and whatever you found there allowed you to continue to meet my gaze.

“ Not yet.” and I nodded and lowered my hand.  



February 02, 2020 03:26

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

1 comment

Helen VanTol
22:06 Feb 12, 2020

Interesting concept, and very sad. I like the way you talk about depression and suicide without actually doing so. Though provoking.

Reply

Show 0 replies

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in the Reedsy Book Editor. 100% free.