Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #22

Astral Echoes

Rain bounces off the frying pan streets, dowsing the city’s mid-morning swelter. Bangkok on a Monday screams its frenetic cadence into my sleep-stained head as I leave my apartment for the breakfast of kings. A hastily wolfed helping of Khao Neow Moo Ping and I’m on my way. This meeting is important for my continued livelihood. A prominent business man is convinced he’s beset by demons. 'Fung shui gone wrong', the words of his PA echo in my memory as I hail a tuk tuk and jump in.

“Sa wat dee”. I greet the driver as I scramble into the cramped cabin.

It is advisable to enter your tuk tuk promptly as the never ending stream of scooters can sweep you out and away at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen a tuk tuk's door taken off by one of these suicidal bikers before now.

“Sathon Nuea road please.” Pulling off into traffic, I find myself staring into the frantic smog choked kaleidoscope that is Bangkok. Five lanes of traffic jostle for position as scooters whiz between them, reckless of traffic lights, wobbling with giggling teenage passengers stacked three apiece. The salt-singed smell of frying shrimp and coconut oil mingles with diesel fumes as I sit back into the sticky red foe leather and consider what I know about this particular clients Astral footprint!

A room bathed in a dull indigo with a bed by the wall pulsing with ethereal light. A book sits half open on the bedside cabinet, pages twitching in the gentle flow of my aura. Light envelops this scene, green through to red as my aura shifts with the pulse of the indigo ether. I drift over the open book, a single word jumps out of the page like a lightning bolt ‘FATHER’. It seems to echo in my mind like a scream. I glance to my left and my adversary is still moving through the treacle I’ve set in front of him. I still can’t tell whether he’s human! The impossibly wide smile, desperate and hollow speaks to me of one possessed. A soul lost in the astral, then found by one of Them.

BANG, I spin as the wardrobe door slams open and closed over and over. The noise echoes through me as an icy wind spills from the flapping doors. The indigo glow subsides to a dull shimmer as the room darkens and I turn back to my advisory.

He is there right before me. Mouth impossibly wide the teeth icicles and his breath covers me in the stagnant smell of the swamp as my bones numb and my knees give way. I choke as my breath sticks in my throat and the scene fades to night.

“What are the symptoms Mr Xioin?" His pallid face twitches as I stare into sunken eyes, unblinking, pupils wide. "How do these daemons manifest?”

“The night is where they reside. Between dream and waking. Sometimes I wake from a dream only to be enveloped by a strange light. After, I walk in the wakening world, around my apartment and... everything is enlivened." He breathes in short gasps as he talks. "It’s as if everything has a soul, the lamp, my leather chair even the books call out there stories, words that wash through me like fire." His head dips and rests in the palm of his hands. "There is no rest”

“Go on...” I lower my voice as I watch his body shivering in the pain of memory.

“Then there are the dreams that seem to be reflections of my life. I'm working at the company, except it’s like I’m looking over my own shoulder as someone else performs my daily routine. I’m convinced I’m awake until I actually wake and it feels as if I’ve never slept at all." He stares into my eyes, pupils contracting back to a normal size for the first time since I’ve been here. "Can you help me?”

My heart strains against my chest as I struggle to close my third eye, a dull ache in the center of my forehead. He smiles like a clown, an open wound across his face, mocking me. White mists swirl around us as a landscape forms in the astral firmament, his mind superimposing a tapestry in the space between dimensions. I look around searching for any clue to his nature. Any clue that will help me to defeat him.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/es/fantasmas-gespenter-spooky-horror-almas--572038/

continuation of astral Echoes.

But I know that more than a clue I have to look inside me I know there is the answer to all this situation that overwhelms me, everything around me turns and turns, like whirlwind and is the mocking spirit that with its sinister laughter, and Penetrating gaze, grinding his teeth as he rumbles throughout the room, I scream loudly that you want from me I have done something, that you are angry, in that moment he stops and prostrates before me putting his long hands bony and cold; whispering in your ear, your soul is mine and belongs to me !, and I have come to claim what is mine, with the stench of its breath to the death, that penetrates all the nauseating air, fainting in their hands.

As the hours pass he reacts and manages to see around him an endless number of spirits that pierce him and feel how they weaken him, he does not know what to do, if he asks God to recover his soul, and he remembers when he was a teenager to have played with his friends. childhood the "OUIJA" and having spoken with a spirit of death and this offered a cure to his "FATHER" of cancer in exchange for his soul and this in his immature and for the love of his father agreed. The days passed and his father miraculously had an improvement that the doctors could not explain.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/es/banner-encabezado-vela-ojo-1081008/

In a corner of the cold room, the light goes down, the red eyes of the spirit of death that comes to reclaim what belongs to him, makes a loud noise, causing his heart to freeze and his palpitations diminish, with a low voice between the teeth loose a few words. What can I do to recover my soul? This one answers, it is soul for soul! and you gave yours for your father's and it's time to comply. he is trembling with fear and at the same time with some suspicion, he tells him and if I get you another soul, the devil lets out a laugh of his and answers him; It can not be any random soul it has to be from someone important to you; or at this moment your father and you die, without more options, the only way out is to offer the soul of his best friend "kiotto", he goes in search of him, he knows that his daughter is recorded in the hospital by a disease called leukemia .

Image source:https://pixabay.com/es/muerte-oscuro-negro-horror-cuervo-2577486/

He finds Kiotto in the waiting room and confesses that there is an exit for his daughter to heal and save her; he answers and the doctors do not give him hope and tell me to take him home to die with us in our house and not here in the hospital, it is in its terminal phase. Do not worry, my friend, I have the solution for you. Accompany me. I'm going to introduce you to someone of great power who can make your daughter's luck change.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/go/?t=image-list-shutterstock&id=31691326

They rush to his apartment, and he invokes the spirit of death and this frightened and kiotto, with a thousand unknowns in his head tells him what to do, his friend tells him do not worry everything will be fine thinking of himself and violating the code of friendship, in that moment the spirit of death appears and offers you that your daughter will be well and will be a successful woman in the future in exchange for your soul, this one desperate for the love of her daughter and for knowing that she stay with your mother a good woman, agree to donate your soul, and the spirit tells your daughter to be well from this moment and return in a year exactly for your soul and says, your friend is a traitor does not know how to meet a deal and for that reason he leaves with me at this moment the dealings with me are fulfilled literally and in that moment a thousand spirits seize him enveloping him and being dragged towards a black noise between cries and laments.

END.....

hello, thanks for supporting the reading of fiction, if you are interested in participating in this contest, you are cordially invited here I leave the direct link:

https://steemit.com/contest/@bananafish/finish-the-story-contest-week-22

#finishthestory / @bananafish / @f3nix