Astral Echoes of Dreaded Pasts...

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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!

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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.

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“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?”

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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.

But there was nothing. Not in this landscape, nor in his dark smiling face which I saw yet couldn't truly see. I needed to know who or what he was, and there seemed to be no help in the astral dimension.

I tried again to unsee the whole thing, but my third eye didn't budge. My mind told me I was missing something, but I had no time to think any deeply about it.

"Can you?"

I concentrated again on the mortal face still staring hopefully at me. Mr. Xioin's eyes was in contrast less clear to my third eye, though him I could clearly see.

"I need you to tell me about your past." I said, avoiding the repeated question. "What was your childhood like? "

He shivered again as he mentally dug into his past, and I had a feeling he was about to peel open rather unhealed wounds.

"I was an orphan as a child." he began. "I grew up in foster homes around the country. I was... " He pauses and placed his face in his hands. "There is really nothing important from my childhood. Please just help me."

The astral landscape drifts in front of me again, my third eye trying to take back a frontal place in my vision. Again, with it came that feeling that I missed something. I pushed it away.

"Go on Mr. Xioin. Anything you say is important."

"Well, I was taken to this particular foster home when I was twelve." he continued. "There was where I learnt to become the business man that I am. My foster parents were..."

His voice faded as my third eye became active again. I saw through him into his past, and his life in various foster homes sped through my eyes like a playback of an old movie. Soundless and surreal, in a way reminding me of when I first discovered my third...

I spin around suddenly and look back at the bedside cabinet, my three eyes struggling to see over each other. Then with a deep non-physical pain I knew that I had cured Mr. Xioin. I didn't even bother to look back at him as I left the room, neither did I when I left the building.

Back in the sticky red foe leather of the tuktuk seat, in the middle of five lanes of traffic, I again cursed the gift of the third eye. I should have recognized that tapestry any day with my earthly vision. That was what I buried him in.

For it had been him all the while. Mr.Xioin was just a means to an end, me. There was no real demon, no possessed soul, no real book on the bedroom cabinet... It was him all along...

I switched my vision to my third eye again knowing what I would see...

My long dead father smiled back at me. He held my third eye captive...

THE END?

#SladenSpeaks

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Written for @f3nix's Finish The Story Contest , hosted by the great @bananafish.

Now I do not know if this is a good read, and I didn't even count the words. Been quite sick lately and my sometimes bad sometimes good phone isn't helping matters. Anyway, just try to enjoy....

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