They say that what we fear is part of how we died in our last past life. Well, if that’s the case, I wonder what happened to me because I can’t remember ever being afraid of anything. At least that’s how it was for most of my life. I wasn’t even scared of things I was “supposed” to fear as a kid. The dark never bothered me, spiders were cool, and I tried to catch a garden snake when I was 4 because I wanted to keep it as a pet. I’ve never been afraid of drowning, never scared of getting a cut, or had a fear of heights. I didn’t even mind public speaking in high school. I wasn’t afraid of rape, I wasn’t afraid of a fight, I knew I could handle myself and anyone who came my way. But there was one thing I never even considered a possible future fear: my soulmate. I wish I could say this is going to be a happy story full of love, and excitement, and mushy, gushy, lovey-dovey crap that you see in the movies or on a bookshelf covered in pictures of Fabio. But if that’s what you’re looking for, close this now and find something else to read. Are you still here? Alright…

Before I tell you about myself, there are a couple things you need to know about where I come from. One, we have superstitions for everything. You can’t stub your toe during a full moon on December 27 without it meaning something. Also, those “they” I mentioned earlier, are the stories you hear growing up around here. They’re the old wives tales that you kinda, sorta, don’t really put stock in, but you still watch out for anyway. The other thing to know is that those stories are obsessed with soulmates. I’ve heard so many versions of what’s supposed to happen that I don’t know which one to try to believe anymore. I have to say the most popular one by far is that when you and your soulmate are ready to meet you’ll both wake up in the others body and stay that way for 48 hours so you can learn enough to find each other. What no one ever bothered to mention was what happens if only one half of Team Soulmate is ready to meet the other.

I’ve never paid attention to relationships, never thought I needed one during my school years. It was nowhere near a priority, and therefore not in my view. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, I knew what I needed to do to make that happen, and I knew what I couldn’t afford: a distraction. I had offers, but no one was… worth it. There was never a spark that said “worth the risk” to me. No, I had time to find someone, I knew I had my life in front of me. Before I found love I needed to clear the path to the rest of my life. God, I thought I knew so much about my life. I thought I knew I had all the time in the world. All the time I needed, or wanted. I was so stupid, so arrogant, so ready to have my life the exact way I wanted it to be… preferably superstition free too. I’m not sure who is to blame for how things turned out, maybe telling you will help me figure this out too.

It all started the night before graduation. Tomorrow was the big day, I had my robes set out, steamed and hung up across the room from me. My cap was drying on the table, I had stayed up designing the Disney inspired studding and sparkling for days and the last parts of it came together that night. I lay in bed staring at the robes, thinking about what was going to happen now. I had my choice of graduate schools, some Masters, some straight to PhD, most well-funded from an aid standpoint. This was it, this was the closest to Heaven I’d been in my life at that point. It was almost 3 a.m. by the time I stopped daydreaming and turned over to find the nighttime version of my fantasies. I closed my eyes and quickly fell asleep.

When I “woke” up I wasn’t in my body. I was staring at the ceiling, but I wasn’t in my bed, I wasn’t even in a bed. I was floating with my face less than six inches away from the tiles. But they weren’t the ones in my apartment. I didn’t know them, they were plain, common, white tiles. The kind that go in schools and kids throw pencils up to stick them in the holes. I looked around when I noticed a beeping sound behind (or would it be under?) me. I turned around, it was a strange feeling, turning the way I did. I didn’t feel physical movement, I was simply, suddenly, facing the ground… facing myself. I could see myself lying below me, in a hospital bed. I was on a ventilator, a tube sticking out of my mouth and cords running everywhere on my body.

I looked on the wall, for any indication that this was some sort of messed up lucid dream. I’d read that you couldn’t read writing in a dream, and clocks just kept going without settling on a time. I hoped that was true, I wanted it to be true. It wasn’t true. The clock read 3:30 p.m., and there was a calendar on the wall too, it was graduation day. But I wasn’t at graduation, there was no gown, no cap, no degree, not even a shred of school colors to be seen. That’s when I noticed my mother was there. She wasn’t crying, but it looked like she had been. She was holding my hand, and I could tell she was praying. I didn’t know what had happened. I called out to her, tried to let her know I was there, but I had no voice. I tried to scream but no sound came out. I was alone, and I was mute. Questions kept flooding my mind, many, many, questions. “What happened?” “How did I get here?” “What’s going on?” “What am I supposed to do?”

As soon as I thought the last question I felt myself being whisked away from the room. In an instant I was somewhere else. Another place I had never been before, at least not physically. I knew it from photographs, post cards, broachers. It was one of my fallback schools, lower on the list than most, but one of the few that offered both masters and PhD. They weren’t well known for my area though, that was the main reason they were so low on the list. The campus was beautiful, I’ll give them that. Lush and rich, it said “Victorian novel countryside chateau” more than “American University.” They were actually my first choice in undergrad, but it seems they hadn’t been interested until I was a triple major getting out on time with Latin Letters and honors. The more I thought about what was happening and how much I had worked towards it, the angrier I became. There was no reason for this to be happening. I knew that what I saw in the hospital was myself in a coma, but I had been perfectly healthy just twelve hours ago when I had gone to sleep. Again I was trying to figure out what was so blasted important that I just had to be here, that I had to have my life interrupted. One again I felt myself moving without trying, this time slowly. I was floating over the grass, through trees, to a set of benches and tables. At one table sat two boys, grad students judging by their apparent age, but not too much older than me.

I recognized the one, Charlie I think his name was. I was friends with his younger brother in middle school. He was pale, with a splash of freckles across his nose and pale gold hair that hung in front of the thickly rimmed glasses that sat far down on his nose. If memory serves he had pale green eyes too, I couldn’t see them from my current vantage point. Everything was pale about him, eyes, hair, skin, even his voice. It had always been light and soft when he spoke about almost anything. I smiled, remembering the days when we would just sit around the neighborhood, trading Pokémon cards and waiting for the ice cream truck. He was playing chess with the other boy. This one I didn’t know, he was slightly older, and physically Charlie’s opposite. Olive skin, square jaw, black hair that was haphazardly combed out of his face. I moved again to get a better view of him. I was starting to get the hang of how to move myself, it was kind of like that “light as a feather, stiff as a board” game we played as kids. As soon as I moved I could see the rest of his face, mixed green and blue eyes set slightly wide apart, staring, unfocused, pointed over Charlie’s head. He had wide nose that was crinkled from a smile when I first saw it, his full lips parted, revealing an overbite with a gap between the front two teeth.

I moved to sit next to Charlie, feeling more comfortable with him. They were playing chess, and it looked like Charlie was losing. He was the one moving the pieces, his opponent giving him directions. They had just finished a turn when I sat down, it had moved to the blind boys play. He sat in silence for a moment, then gave Charlie his move. Something changed in his demeanor though, he had grown more serious and less concentrated on the game. It could have been boredom, he had Charlie's king fortressed off already and it was a matter of moves until checkmate. At least, I thought it was boredom. There I was again, thinking I knew everything.

The boys next turn was when I heard it, a voice next to my ear. “I can hear you, you know.”

I jumped, and looked around for whoever had said that. There was no one there except for me, Charlie, and the other player. I shook my head, the silence must have been driving me crazy.

“You aren’t crazy. I can’t see you but I can hear what you’re thinking. My name’s Damien, who are you?”

I tried to speak, to say “My name’s Lily.” But still no words would come out of my mouth.

He told Charlie his move, “Can’t speak, huh? Just think what you want to say, I’ll hear you.”

“Lily, my name’s Lily.”

“Nice to meet you Lily. How can I help you?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up…” I told him what happened, a shorter version of what you just read, but everything just the same. I ended with “I don’t know why I’m here and I don’t know what to do.”

Damien sighed, while I had been relating my story he had gotten checkmate. Charlie was packing up the board, while doing so he said “I need to study for my orals on Monday. Play again tomorrow?”

Damien nodded, “Yeah, something just came up for me anyway.”

With that they parted ways. Damien thought (said?) “Come with me.”

So I followed him. He found his way quite well, but then again I guess he had been living in the residence halls for a while. “Two years. I’ll have my masters in psychology next year, then on to... with any luck a PhD in parapsychology.”

We made it to his room. He left the lights off when we entered, and just sat down on his bed. I sat on the chair at the desk across from him. It was a very small room, but it was a single one at least. “Oh trust me,” he said “The privacy comes in handy when you lot show up.”

“How can you…?”

“Hear you? Beat me. My grandmother says it runs in the family. I just roll with it. You’re the first I’ve run into that says they’re still alive though.”

“If you can answer how or why that’d be great.”

“I see says the blind man… literally.” I scoffed at him, “Hey, I get my jokes in where I can. I wish I knew what to tell you, but the only thing this resembles is something my great-grandmother used to say.”

“How many grandmothers do you have?”

“None living. All with me at different points in my life.”

“Oh.” I felt embarrassed.

“Yeah. So what I was saying is that she used to tell me these bed time stories. Old tales about how soulmates met. I never believed them, but…”

“But what?”

“This sounds like you’re trying to meet your soulmate.”

“Great, where is he so I can get this over with?”

Damien got extremely quiet, and extremely awkward, and he blushed “Well…”

“Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“So why haven’t I gone back if we’ve met?”

“48 hours and/or eye contact are usually elements in the story.”

“And you’re blind. So eye contact is out. What happens after the timespan?”

“You go back to your body. The question is if you remember this or not.”

“Oh. So what now?”

“Good question. I guess I find you.”

“I’m playing hide and seek with a blind man.”

“And I’m playing with a ghost. Tell me everything you can and don’t spare any details, ok?”

“Ok.” For the first time in my life, I was scared. But I didn’t know what scared me more, the fact I didn’t know what was going to happen, or the fact the blind man sitting across from me was the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with and I wasn’t ready to meet him.