Death Angel

Chapter 32: The Test

As if on cue, the visions began to flood my mind. They came unbidden, but not unwelcome.

Like the curtain lifting to the opening act of a grandiose play, colors swirled and shifted, their ever-changing hues affecting my emotions. I ran hot and cold at the same time, feeling angry, sad, happy, lonely. I wept, and I laughed, and then cried a little more.

The colors continued to shift; amber flames giving way to crimson blood.

They took me back to the day I died.

A blinding flurry of faces and tears and familiar haunts; the argument with Daniel just before the point at which I was pushed off the second floor balcony. I felt the panicked fear in the pit of my stomach once more, a harbinger of the sudden realization that there was nothing I could do to alter my fate.  Like the faded sepia of an old photograph, the scene of my demise was colored oddly in crimson, everything in the scene turned blood-red.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.

“This was the turning point. Where it all started for you, Vanessa.”

“This was the point at which my life was turned upside down,” I responded.

“It was the moment at which your life ended,” my sisters corrected me.

“Yes, the moment my life ended,” I agreed.

“What did you feel back then?”

“Anger, regret, sadness. Everything.” I was beginning to recall the pain I felt again.

“What emotion was strongest, dear sister?””

“Anger,” I had said, but stopped myself. “No... regret.”

“And what was it that you regretted?”

“Leaving this earth, leaving my Daniel.”

“And you loved him so, this Daniel?”

“Loved him enough to come back to this earth in this cursed form,” I responded. The tears fell slowly at first, hot against my cheeks as I tasted the bitter sweetness of it all. I was surprised I could still taste. I struggled to stifle the lumps in my throat.

“You paid dearly for this,” came the response.

The vision shifted. The moment I saw where I was, I felt a painful knot in my stomach.

“Please, anything but this,” I pleaded to my sisters.

The funeral parlor was packed that day. The smell of incense hung in the air like damp clothes, a sobering reminder of the significance of the event. Everyone wore suits, mostly dark ones, and although the mood was decidedly somber, I felt oddly at peace. I wanted to cry, but part of me didn’t want to show it.

I stood around the edges of the chapel’s greeting area, staring again and again at the photographs that had been hung on the walls - scenes of my father and I as he was alive. One of them stood out in my mind in particular – the one where we were out to sea. If you stared long enough into it, you could make out the gathering storm clouds in the background, a rather ominous sign. I‘d almost forgotten that event where it not for the current circumstances.

“Why you look lovely dear,” a voice said behind me. I whirled around to see my grandmother.

“Where it any other occasion, I would have complimented you far more,” she said, a smile in her eyes. “That is a very lovely satin bow.”

I forced a smile. “Thanks, grandma.”

My grandmother stared at me for a long time. She appeared to be lost in thought. “This too shall pass, young Vanessa,” she said, taking her hand and gently touching my cheek. The smell of old perfume clung to her.