The Punishment

It is through the whims of those surrounding us that we become prey to our greatest fears. The greatest fear of her life was to never move on, to always be stagnant, never moving forward or getting better. Perhaps it was fate itself that let her succumb to the whims of others, and fall to rest upon her greatest fear.  

She’d been a slight veil in the world for a long period now. She was on the bridge between life and death, the in-between that she’d been so afraid of for all of her mortal life. Beyond the veil always ahead of her, was a bright place, filled with music and light and happiness, behind her, was her life.

Darkness, terror, and humanity.

Most days, the veil was so vivid in the life behind her, that she couldn’t feel the other side. Some days, she was so close to the other side, that she spent her entire day clawing her way through the air, the bridge of darkness which was her immortal life, and spent the following days unmoving, unable to go on with the misery she was living.

When bored, one finds things to obsess over.

Over the last century, she’d found many to cling to.

One was a slight young man with wiry glasses and a stutter. He’d been a student in the early 1920s, with a brown tweed jacket he always wore, for he was too poor to wear anything else of quality. He’d studied the language of the gods, and spent his nights under the warm lights of the library, repeating words in an ancient tongue. When he graduated she didn’t see him for a very long time, until he came back, wearing a different brown tweed, with longer hair and wrinkles, with a slight limp, and he taught the students until his death, which came suddenly. The man with the tweed had always known of her presence but never saw her until he lay dying, which he turned to her, and grabbed her hand, his blue eyes piercing into her black, and they slowly shut with contentment. She held his hand as the last breaths left the old tweed man, and watched as they carried him to his grave.

Another was a young ambitious girl with undeniable beauty but a touch of madness. She was there when the man in tweed taught, but the two’s paths never crossed, as their watcher made sure of it. She was afraid that they would rely on each other more than the comfort of the one watching them. The girl talked to her when she was mad, sad, happy, and depressed. Her blonde hair always shined in the lamplight of her small dorm room, leaves and plants scattered around the floor, crushed and damp, for she was a studier of the sciences of Earth. Despite her beauty, she was not charismatic, and the others read her madness, the glimmer behind her eye when she looked at them, and avoided her at all costs. When she left, there was a gaping hole in her friend’s heart, she missed her loud companion who kept her company, and the girl with the blonde hair never came back, but the whispers of professors of her fate, an early death of suicide, they said behind their hands, was learned not long after she was gone.

At the turn of the century, yet another intriguing soul came into her life. She called her the girl with the midnight soul. The girl was tall with a face that wasn’t beautiful, but entrancing. She had skin that was smooth as a baby’s and warm as the sun, with looks to years of being outdoors. She had an aura around her, and many people were drawn to her like moths to a light. Rarely did she ever speak, and when she did, the words she spoke had meaning, a place in the universe. The girl with the midnight soul looked at her watcher whenever she walked by a mirror, and nodded her head in acknowledgment every time she passed. When the girl was alone she was a furious, maddening person, who used the arts as her escape. Midnights were spent oil painting at the small table provided by the college, paintings of great intrigue and beauty that only could be the window into her soul. Eventually, like all of the watcher’s intrigues, the girl with the midnight soul left too, whispering goodbye as she turned off the light to her room, nodding in the direction of the mirror, a soft smile on her face. And like that, she turned away.

All of the watcher’s intrigues had a special place in her memories. She liked to think about their times together, as friends. She sometimes roamed the halls she too once walked, dreaming that she could be given a second chance, not as the watcher but as Victoria.

Sometimes when the watcher closed her eyes she could see the memories of her short life. The face that matched her own that her mother wore, beautiful pale skin with deep black hair, the Italian nose her mother hated so, that Victoria prided. She thought fondly of the memories of her mother holding her, rocking her to sleep, or brushing her fingers through her hair when Victoria was sad.  

How she longed to see her mother.

When her mother died and it was time for Victoria to find a husband and settle down, a horrible thought occurred to her, “don’t ever be stagnant.” So she applied to the college an hour away, in the small Maine town of Goldstern, and hoped to get out of the future that lay ahead if she wasn’t accepted.

Soon after her acceptance letter, and going to school, college became everything to Victoria. It gave her a life that wasn’t ordinary. It gave her purpose. Her professors never shut down her questions, and she could talk freely as an intellect. She became friends with other intelligent minds, and they spent weekends drinking coffee and talking of the wonders of the world.  

It all changed when she met Harrison Dreger.  

Harrison was charismatic, handsome, and smart. He came from a family with ties to the first American settlers, and unimaginable wealth. He wore expensive clothes and vacationed in Europe over summer vacations. He spoke with an air of confidence and walked with purpose.  

She still remembered when she was introduced to his rowdy friends. Rambocous, arrogant, rich, they shouted in the halls and were late to their classes, and skipped weeks at a time to take boating trips along the shores. Harrison himself was a different man when he was with his darling friends.

After a night in New York with a group of rich fools, Victoria had given up on her hope for Harrison to settle and be a good man. In her third year of college, a year after the New York trip, Harrison had come to her room, panting, soaking with water.

“Harrison?” She’d asked, looking at his wet clothes and messy hair, and how he gripped his heart, gasping for air. When he at last came to breath, he’d stood straight, and walked to her, taking her hands into his gloved strong ones.

“Victoria, I have wished you to return to me for one year, and so I come back to beg of you to take me back.”

And like the fool she was, she did.  

The fateful night replayed every time she closed her eyes. She was 21 years old and engaged to Harrison, in the last semester of her third year, and hopelessly in love. After a long night at the local bar, they walked home, his arm around her shoulder, Victoria leaning into his warmth. Slightly tipsy, her brain didn't register the shove that pushed her to the ground, and the sound of a crack on the cool cement. As she lay bleeding, she watched as one man with oily hair held a gun up to Harrison's ear, hissing at him.

“More than a hundred thousand.”

“Cheat.”

“Lying son of a bitch.”

There was a crack in the night air, like a whip, and Harrison crumpled to the ground, his body crashing next to Victoria. The man ran away, leaving them together on the ground, dying.

Warm blood had pooled around Victoria's head, warming her. She used all her strength to feel the body next to her and grab the hand of Harrison. It was cold. She listened to the panting man next to her, and when silence fell, she knew that he had died. The night air was cool, and she was so tired. So tired. She shut her eyes, and fell asleep on the cool sidewalk, hoping that it was all a bad dream.

The ghastly story of her life was written everywhere in the college when she’d woken on the warm Persian carpet on the floor of her bedroom the morning after. She’d thought she’d dreamed until she’d glanced into a mirror. The only reflection was the bed and books strewn around her floor.

She watched as they carried the bodies of Victoria and Harrison into the college, and the carriages that took the bodies away, never to be seen again. She was at the vigil that was held in honor of two honorary students, murdered. She read over the shoulders of the students reading the papers the following weeks, asking questions about the mystery of the deaths of two students at a small college in Maine. 

It was then that the watcher realized her punishment for her foolishness. She was stuck in the in-between of life and death because she’d allowed herself to fall whim to others. She’d allowed her life to fall apart.

So she did the only thing she could think to do.

She began to watch.