A Dead Soulmate

Chapter One

This story was inspired by TikTok user @ajayalive . Their story starts similar, but goes a different path, so definitely check them out if you want to see their story.
•••

Everyone has a soulmate. Your soulmate's injuries show up or bleed on your skin and if it's as bad as a broken bone or, god forbid, a fatal wound, you can feel the dull ache from it. If the wounds leave a scar on your soulmate, it won't leave anything permanent on your body. Most of the time, you learn about soulmates from your parents first, then they teach a small lesson about them in grade school. So we knew what most of our random, painless wounds were from from a young age.

My soulmate was injury prone since I was young. There'd always be some sort of bruise or scrape that'd appear on my knees or hands. One time my entire ankle and foot bruised up in fourth grade and I could feel the faint ache of the break. Scared my mother to death when she first saw it... she said "Amber! Oh honey what happened to your leg?! It's entirely bruised!"

When I got into middle school, the injuries stopped being accidents. There were bruises on my jaw, and my nose became bloody once in a while, and there were occasional black eyes. All I thought was that my soulmate got into fights. Hopefully they finished them. My freshman year of high-school, my nose started to gush blood during lunch. I went to the nurse, and my nose started to ache after a couple minutes. When I looked in the mirror, my grey-blue eyes had become bloodshot and black eyes started to form with the purple bruise on my nose. Great... they've gotten a broken nose and I've got a bruised up face for the rest of the day...

After that, my soulmate had to of gotten better at fighting because I only got a few bruises on my stomach or ribs occasionally. My mom worried they were abuse injuries, but that wasn't the case... I could just feel it. It was hard to explain. For some reason I knew that my soulmate was just a 'Punch to fix the problem' kind of person. I knew it in my gut. The bruises showed up throughout high school until my junior year, a guy sitting next to me in World History started to freak out and got up.

His name was James I think... he shot out of his chair and pointed at me, screaming "Oh my god! Oh my god! That's not okay! You're bleeding everywhere!" I looked down at my blue v-neck and see the red blooming in the fabric, blood seeping out and dripping on my jeans. I then felt the pain. It was a dull pang , different then the broken bones. I clutched my stomach and got up, panicked. Everyone was also standing, staring at me in horror and the teacher was calling someone on her phone, making her way to me. "Is it her soulmate?" "Oh god that's a lot of blood... I hope her soulmate is okay."

My breath became short and everything slowed. I rushed out of class into the bathroom, leaving drops of blood behind me. I don't remember if anyone tried to stop me. Not caring to go into a stall door shut I lift my shirt in the mirror to see three distinct wounds on my torso, the red liquid dripping from them. I started to rip wads of the thin, school paper towels to frantically stop the bleeding. I couldn't. It just kept coming and coming and coming. There was just red splattering the white porcelain sink, it looked like a crime scene. I kept on pressing the towels to my skin. Wiping, scrubbing. Nothing helped, it wouldn't help. They weren't my wounds.

What happened? Are they okay? Are they okay? Are they okay!? My mind was racing and I started to cry uncontrollably, and I heard the bathroom door open, my vision fogged as I started to breathe frantically. I don't remember much, but I know I woke up in my bed, my mom and dad sitting next to me, pitiful looks in there eyes.

"What happened?"

"You fainted." Was what my dad said.

"Why was I bleeding so much? My soulmate!" I shot out of bed and my mom grabbed my arm.

"Amber... those wounds were fatal. The nurse told us they looked like stab wounds before they stopped bleeding." She took a deep breath. "Your soulmate couldn't have survived that."

I broke. I screamed. I screamed so hard I lost my voice the next day. No. No they couldn't be dead! They have to be alive. I haven't even met them yet! I don't even know their name. Of course, a lot of people don't ever find their soulmate. But I always dreamed of finding them. My parents are soulmates. They said they just knew they were when they saw each-other.

I wanted that. But now, it was gone. I was lost. I went through grief for someone I haven't even met. I couldn't go to school. I would constantly check my body for any sign of life. Just a small scrape would do the trick. Just so I'd know. I would cry every night, having nightmares about that day. Having dreams that my soulmate had shown up at my door, saying "Hey, I'm alive."

I went on my computer, desperate, and looked up stabbings for that date. May 12. But only a few showed, and none of them matched the three stab wounds I had. That gave me a small hope for about a month that maybe they were still alive. But no other injuries showed. Not even a paper cut, and trust me, I checked every hour. My counselor told me a lot of murders happen undetected, and since my soulmate had a history for violence, they could've been involved in something dangerous. So I finally accepted the worst.

My soulmate had... died.

—-

It hurts when I think about it still. For the remainder of high school, people would look at me sadly and give me half assed pity smiles. Everyone knew. I was the girl who's soulmate got stabbed. I sat in the library during lunch. I stopped socializing for the rest of junior year, and I just floated through it. By senior year the grief passed, and I slowly opened up again. A lot of people looked at me differently. But I was able to go back to most of my friends who were waiting with open arms. There were a lot of "are you okay?"s and "Talk to me if you need to"s. But I was finally learning to get past it. I was ready to because I couldn't change the past.

When my best friend, Romelle, found her soulmate, I had to force a smile. It hurts to know I will never find mine. The way she found hers was so adorable too; she was late to class so she was rushing when she ran into someone and scraped her knee. While helping them pick up their books she noticed their knee was hurt too.

Her soulmate's name is Nathalie, a calm, docile type. She has medium length red hair and tired looking brown eyes. It evened out Romelle's hyper party girl attitude very well. Romelle had frizzy blonde hair and lightning green eyes, she always has some sort of bright clothing on, and she can't sit still for her life. If she's sitting through class, she's bouncing her leg or tapping her pencil. Romelle is quick as a whip and always has some sarcastic comment to any situation in her arsenal.

The reason I'm her friend is probably because of how patient I am. Her constant movement doesn't bother me and I'm not afraid to shut her down if she's being a bitch with that silver tongue of hers. She helped me cut and dye my hair in sophomore year. I have curly brown hair naturally. It's hard to maintain so we cut it to a pixie and helped me bleach and dye it blue. After that I cycled through red, pink, blue, then purple. I've stuck with purple ever since.

Romelle helped me through the grief when my soulmate died and we decided to live together. We added Nathalie to that roommate plan. We became a little trio and when we graduated, moved a few states over after getting accepted into the colleges we wanted. I applied to a local university, same with Nathalie. She wants to get a bachelor's degree so she can become a CPS worker. Apparently her home life was pretty bad and the system didn't help much. Romelle decided on a cosmetology school a few blocks away from our university because she wants to be a hair stylist. I think it's a good idea, she did help me with my hair after all.

I'm majoring in psychology. Nothing special. I just want to help people that has gone through the same as me. Having a soulmate die and not knowing who they were. I know how that hurts, so what better use for this knowledge then use it to sympathize with others. I know I'm not the only person who's been through it, but I sure as hell felt alone when it happened, and I don't want others to feel the same.

We moved into a small two bedroom apartment. The kitchen and living room is just one big room, and a small hallway branching off from it leading to the two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage closet at the end of it. Nathalie and Romelle share the larger room I get the smaller room to myself. We occasionally bicker about chores or something trivial, but our trio gets along well. We are just uni students trying to get by.

Life is okay.