Light Storm

 

 

For a few moments I stood in a second floor hallway like an idiot, gaping at my phone screen and the mysterious texts.

Why did this stuff keep happening to me? My great-aunt Tillie once told me that tons of people have some serious hefty karmic debts to pay off. “But you don’t have to worry about that, B,” she said. “Your soul is as clean as any I’ve ever seen.”

Hate to break it to you, Tillie, but I ain’t that clean.

I smelled lavender. Looking up, a tall woman wearing glamorous sunglasses walked past me. She was strikingly pretty, and she looked sort of familiar. A wave of déjà vu hit me. I was ninety percent certain I had I seen this woman back home in Carver City.

She continued down the hall, then she opened a room door and went inside.

Before I knew it, I was standing at the same door. It didn’t lead to a patient’s room; it was the entrance to the hospital’s chapel. Above the door I read a painted quote: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. It was from some dead French guy named Teilhard de Chardin.

Opening the heavy wooden door, I stepped inside the chapel. Symbols for various religions hung on the walls. Seated in a mahogany chair, I saw the woman praying beside an altar filled with flickering candles. Taking a seat behind her, I said a prayer of my own for Mac.

Finishing my prayer in silence, I opened my eyes. The woman was gone. Where could she have gone to that quickly and quietly? She had left her sunglasses by the candles. Grabbing the glasses, I hurriedly pushed through the chapel door. “Ma’am, you forgot your…”

But the long hallway was empty. How could that be?

I went inside the chapel, just as beams of sunlight struck the stained glass window. The brilliant colored light blinded me. I shut my eyes, but I could see intense reds, oranges, yellows, blues, and greens swirling behind my lids.

“Hello,” a female voice whispered. “Do you need instructions or something? What do you think the sunglasses are for? Put ‘em on, professor, let’s go!”

Blinded by the light, I followed her instructions. I put on the sunglasses and opened my eyes.

“Whoa!” The room had changed.

Everything glowed as if it was alive and breathing. Even the sunlight was breathing.

The candles spouted flames two feet high.

The chairs and benches had turned into living trees, their branches growing sideways.

The carpet on the floor was a crystal blue lake I could dive into.

“Get ready, girlfriend,” the voice said. “I’m about to blow your mind!”