Souls Mates
Matthew Ryan Fischer
A month later, a different city, a different group of stories, but
they were all the same… Jeremiah had heard them all before, and he would hear them
all again. That’s how these support groups went, they were all alike. The same
repetition of events and the same people repeating them.
Until then she walked into the room. Late, but right on time.
Jeremiah reacted to her presence as soon as she arrived. He didn’t
know her, but he sure knew her. He
was sure of that. There was a certain style of confidence he recognized. She
carried herself with a strength and demeanor that only came from truly knowing
oneself – not like the other people in the room. The other people in the room
were desperate, weak, willing to believe anything, wanting to believe anything.
She didn’t act like that. She knew who she was and who she wanted to be. She
wasn’t there to whine and cry and pretend. She was there to watch the show.
Just like him. She, for all he knew, was exactly like him.
Jeremiah wanted to smile. He wanted to look right at her. To wink
at their shared secret. And he was pretty sure she would smile and wink right
back. But what if she didn’t? What if she wasn’t who he thought she was? What
if she hadn’t felt what he had felt? What if the smile she wore wasn’t any sort
of admission to him and him alone, but it was the smile she wore to let the
world around her know she was genuinely a happy person? That he wasn’t sure
about. That he couldn’t relate to. There was still that small chance that she
was absolutely nothing like him at all.
He was pretty sure she caught him looking her way. He looked down
and then across the room at the rest of the vacant baggage that filled the
room. He tried to stay calm. He had been in situations like this before. He
didn’t want to overplay his hand. He didn’t know what she knew. What she was
ready to know. He couldn’t speak first, for that could be disastrous. Maybe he
would seem like one of them, the others in the room, pretending, trying to be
something he wasn’t. That was a best case scenario. Worse would be the look of
pity or disdain, or perhaps mockery. She might think he was mad or pathetic or
dull. Seeming dull seemed far worse than seeming mad. Jeremiah had never
considered himself ordinary or average. He didn’t want others to start seeing
him that way either.
Jeremiah had always considered himself to be special. Ever since
he was a young boy and started to figure out about his past and his past lives.
He had always known he was special, but then life showed him the proof.
Jeremiah was a man that could see into the past of the people
around him. He could see who they were connected to and how. He could find a
lost soul or a missing link or a combination of spirits and specters. Jeremiah
was born as mostly one man, but he was able to see what he could become if he
put his mind to it. He could see the lost souls floating around after someone
died. Later, as he got older, he could collected those souls and put them to
good use.
Jeremiah had been busy building a better life. Not for himself. He
was building a better life for a future version of himself. He took a piece
here and a piece there and locked them away inside himself. All those little
bits of souls swimming about. It was like he was the sperm donor and he was the
egg. And judge, jury and executioner. He could take just what he wanted and
leave all the other parts behind. He wasn’t rebuilding a lost soul or a former
life. Jeremiah was making his own new world. Not that he’d get to enjoy
it. He was making plans for the future he would never know. Building the bricks
and mortar that would allow a future reincarnation to have all the advantages
and the race already half won. He would make a spiritual successor that was not
just the best he could be, but the best that anyone could be.
So Jeremiah went to these self-help group sorts of things. He was
on the lookout for any little part that could make him a better man.
Everyone in the room was there for a connection. They all believed
they were somebody in a former life, and they were there to find out just who
they were. Jeremiah could have told them which ones were wrong and which ones
were right. But most any of them didn’t have anything to offer him. Most didn’t
have what Jeremiah was looking for.
There were the “FLGS,” those with Former-Life Greatness Syndrome.
They were the ones that thought they were someone special in a past life. They
went to séances, mystics and Cassandras, hoping to find what their former
glories really were. Everybody always thought they were something special. No
one ever wanted to be one of the losers of history. Too bad for everyone in the
room. The math didn’t add up. Basically everyone in the history of mankind was
a loser. None of these people were the fraction of a fraction of a fraction.
But no one was going to tell them that. Especially not Jeremiah. It never did
any good anyway. No one believed him. No one wanted to hear him.
It didn’t help that Jeremiah was basically one of them. He had his
own plans to get out, but for now, he was basically part of their swirling mass
of plain and ordinary.
There were usually some that actually had something to say, with something
special inside them. Jeremiah could usually talk to them. They were more
comfortable in their own skin. They usually had a personality of some sort,
even if it wasn’t that good. But they were a step above the normal riffraff.
Most of them didn’t have anything real to offer though. Most of
them he called the Red Flags – shining bright, showing off to the world the
waste that was inside. He stayed away from them. They were the ones that had
nothing to offer the future. Putrid, rotten souls, that were broken and weak.
He could see them, waving about, calling out to him, begging to be noticed. Red
Flags. He knew to stay away. He knew to keep clear of them all.
The rest of the room was full of the hopeful, the dreamers, the
lost, and the never were. They had even less to offer Jeremiah than the Red
Flags. They were fresh and new, but their souls had nothing to them. They were
blank slates. And a blank slate wasn’t all that special, metaphysically
speaking. Most everybody was a blank slate. Jeremiah was still mostly a blank
slate, and he had past lives and was accumulating new soul fragments all the
time. But he was still mostly a blank slate. Blank slates didn’t mean innocence
or second chances or anything like that. They were just the empty. Jeremiah
didn’t waste his time teaching the empty how to be filled.
Every once in a while, on that rare occasion, on that special
night, there would be someone with something inside them, something that
Jeremiah could actually use. Those were rare nights though. This was a rare
night.
She entered the room late, entered the meeting late. She offered
no explanation or apology. She just sat down.
Later she spoke.
She knew a thing or two that she shouldn’t have known. She talked
about it like she had done it. Like she had really done it. Like she had been
there. She knew. She was in touch.
Jeremiah wasn’t in touch. He didn’t speak to his past. He didn’t
know who or what was floating around inside him from the past. All he knew was
how to identify in the present that there was something there, inside him,
inside others, and he was able to steal it for himself.
She could be interesting, he realized. She could be his filter.
She could be the greatest thing that ever happened to him.
After the meeting, Jeremiah had to talk to her. He had to find out
who was inside her, calling the shots. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was a
fragment of a soul he could use someday. Perhaps there was something else
entirely that was special about her.
“Who are you?”
She looked him up and down and smiled.
“My name is Mira.”
“Yes. But who are you really?”
Mira said nothing for a moment. She was letting him sweat. Letting
him wonder if he had gotten things wrong. Again.
“I know you know what I mean,” he insisted.
“You don’t seem as sure as you want to seem.”
“That. That right there. The way you talk about it. You know
exactly what I mean. So don’t mess with me.”
“If you know what you know, then you know that I can’t answer your
question as is. You know I’m not just me, just like I know you’re not just
you.”
Jeremiah smiled and nodded in agreement.
“So who were you? Do you even really know?”
“Maybe I’m nobody. Maybe I just like to make things up.”
“Nobody’s nobody. Besides, you wouldn’t be coming to these things
if you thought you were nobody.”
“Maybe I come for the free coffee and pleasant conversations.”
“You’re somebody. I can tell. You have something going for you.
You talk like you know. Like you really know. Everything you said... you’re
really in touch with yourself.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not...” he didn’t want to admit just how weak his connection was
to the past. It was a little bit embarrassing when face-to-face with someone
who knew so much. “Not like you apparently. You act like you were there.”
“I was there. Do you get flashbacks? I get flashbacks.”
“I don’t really work like that. I see it in others, see what they
have inside. See where it’s been and if it’s dirty. But I don’t know me. Not
like you know yours.”
“You were where you were too. You know it. You can. Even if you
don’t see it yet.”
“No, I’m not like that. You were someone. I’m someones – bits
and pieces from all over.”
“You’re new stew, simmering for the future? I like that. You
looked at me when I came in the room. Why? Was it like déjà vu? Do you think we
knew each other? From before?”
“I don’t think you and I knew each other...”
“But?”
“But I think maybe some small part of us knew the other small part
of the other. Hell, some small part of one of your souls might have been mixed
in with one of my previous souls.”
“Okay, you just flew off somewhere. I don’t know what any of that
means.”
“Did you think we were all just reincarnations? I’m an
amalgamation. Broken up little bits of souls handed down through the
generations, mixed and matched and blended into something new.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not arguing with you. I’m telling you what I know. My soul,
the majority of my soul, most of what’s inside this body – it’s going to die.
It’s nothing special. There’s nothing great about it and the energy won’t last
more than a few minutes before it begins to fade and slip away. Maybe a year if
it’s lucky. But the other five or six percent? That’s the stuff these support
group dreams are made of. I was born with a few fractions of scraps, leftover
little bits and pieces from some pretty great and powerful souls. And ever
since I knew I could, I’ve been going trying to find other little bits and
pieces to collect. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’m slowly refilling myself
with something that will last. And what I can’t use now, I’m tagging to watch
for again in a later life.”
“You sound a little bit insane.”
“Says the woman who believes in reincarnation, just not my
specific version of it. Tell me where the soul is? Are you religious? Do you
believe in it? I like to believe it is in our DNA. Somewhere in that part of
the codes we don’t understand. Like a side note. Can it transfer? Can other
people tap into it? Find it? Exploit it? What if the past power of some soul
were so great it shattered and split into a million pieces when the body died?
It flowed around and found new hosts. But now that great soul is divided. What
I do is identify them and bring the parts I want back together. I am crossing
the spiritual ethos and building a better me.”
“What could have been and always should be.”
“Sort of.”
“You’re very dramatic, you know that? You’re making your very own
soul mates. You’re like the Twin Flames.”
“I’m not aware of that.”
“For someone with so many mystical beliefs, I don’t think you’ve
read nearly enough. Plato had a theory about the sexes and how all of humanity was
basically looking for their twin flame – their other half. There were three
sexes – men combined with men, men combined with women, and women combined with
women. Then Zeus got pissy and split us all in half with a lightning bolt. So
now we’re all lonely and looking for our lost Twin Flame. The flames can leap
around, grow or go out. We try to rekindle them through sex or love, but what
we’re really looking for is our missing soul mate.”
“I’m not looking for a soul mate. I have many many souls.”
“And therefore you shall have many many mates. Not bad when you
think about it in those terms.”
“No, I guess not.”
“We are the Children of the Moon. The androgynous – men connected
with women. We were strong enough to challenge the gods and we will be again.
Once we rebuild.”
“In another life or two.”
“In another lifetime or two. Edgar Cayce thought—“
“Edgar Cayce?”
“Read. More. Cayce was a psychic and one of the things
he—“
“You listen to psychics?”
“Presidents listened to Cayce. You and I are both here
at this meeting. We both believe in the past. You can’t allow for the idea that
maybe, just maybe, one or two psychics actually knew what they were talking
about? Perhaps he was like us. Maybe he was soulfully full of soul too.”
“Alright. Maybe.”
“Basically he said a lot of what you’re saying. Souls
are reincarnated and instinctually seek out their other halves so they can be
whole someday. But where you’re talking DNA and fractions, he added a karmic
twist.”
“Well I’m definitely not doing good things.”
“Then perhaps you can never be whole or happy.”
“So you think your soul mate is just hanging out waiting to
reconnect with you because Zeus split you in half? And once you find him--”
“Or her.”
“Or her. You think then, you’ll finally be happy?”
“Why is my idea so farfetched? You’re the one talking about DNA
gene splices that will rebuild some lost life. You think myth is that
different? Maybe it was talking about the same thing but used different words.”
“I hate when people justify mystical paranoia of the past by
saying the only difference is the words.”
“That’s good to know, because I’m very concerned about what you do
and don’t approve of. So tell me what it is you do what you do? How are you
building a better you?”
“I can usually see soul fragments in another person. I can’t tell
who they are or what they’ve done, but I can see the valuable parts. It’s sort
of a tagging process. I see what I want, mark it, and take it if I can.”
“Yeah, but how does that work?”
“Weak people can’t hold on to what they don’t deserve. Sometimes
it’s a battle of willpower. Sometimes a little physical interaction helps. If
they’re too strong, too attached, I leave my mark. I think when we die, those
parts will come looking for my parts. And then future me reaps the benefits.”
“Some guys get all the luck.”
“They do. But that’s okay. I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing
this for my future. I’m okay with him having what I can’t.”
“And these meetings?”
“These meetings usually suck. It’s a little like scavenging.
Sometimes you get lucky and see something you want. Sometimes. Not often. Normally
I just get tired of hearing everyone’s nonsense and end up killing them all and
taking what I want.”
“You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
“Nah. Not yet. I thought maybe we could intermix our spirit DNA
some other way.”
“Jesus Christ, are you serious? Has that line ever worked?”
“Not yet. But that’s okay. I have plenty of lives left to try.”
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