Soulseer ✔️ *COMPLETE*

Chapter Six

When I was 15, my dad came home early from work one day. I greeted him with the usual enthusiasm of a teen towards their parent, which is to say none at all. I had just escaped from another day of torture at school, grabbed a snack and was beelining for my room where I intended to read and lurk online until someone called me for dinner. It was normal for me not to make eye contact. Easier to not see the things I wasn't supposed to be able to see if I never looked directly at anyone. Most people naturally keep their souls above waist height - even Fivers. So keeping your focus close to the ground is usually a safe bet.

But when Dad walked in the door as I crossed the hall, he didn't try to stop me. Not for a hug or even a hello. He let me walk right past him as he stood frozen. It was weird enough that I stopped and turned back and - breaking protocol - looked right at him.

His soul was like a three day old bruise: dark blues and blacks, mottled with purple and red and a few patches of a sickly yellow-green swirling at the edges like scum on a pond. I didn't have to see the stunned look on his face to know that something was horribly wrong.

It took several seconds for Dad's eyes to focus on me rather than something miles past my shoulder.

"It's my pancreas," he said.

I had a blaze of confusion. My knowledge of the pancreas was just sufficient to recognize it as something in the body: a little, not terribly important, organ. But that was enough to remind me of bits of my parents' recent breakfast conversations that I'd mostly tuned out: my dad mentioning the doctor's appointment he'd finally made after weeks of back pain that "painkillers didn't touch". The blood tests and x-ray that had been ordered.

"What's up with your pancreas?" I asked. But he didn't seem to hear me.

"And now my liver. Where's your mother?"

There aren't many things that jump organ to organ. Understanding fired the alarm bells in my head.

"It's your back though," I insisted, the first glimmers of outrage making my voice loud and harsh. "You said it was your back that hurt." As though he had lied about the pain, deliberately misled me. Then, as now, it was always anger that grabbed the reins first and rode hard.

What did organs have to do with back pain?

It must have been the volume of my voice. My mother was suddenly there, the cold compress held tightly to her forehead.

There was a brief moment - a tableau that has been etched in my mind - my mother standing on one side of the front hall, my father just inside the doorway and me completing the triangle on the other side of the hall. We were frozen in perfect balance, all staring at the space between us, held in a stasis between violent emotions.

"She said three months," he gasped.

Then he stumbled forwards, arms out to pull us both in. And my whole life tipped over.

+++

When I come to, I make the mistake of sitting up.

Very. Bad. Idea.

The world spins and bounces around me and I dry heave for a while before falling back on my side. I stay like that, curled up in the fetal position, eyes closed, soul dialled down for several long, ragged breaths.

Voices all around me. Maggie calmly but loudly giving directions. Sorren and Cody engaged in a hushed but urgent conversation. Crying. Lots of crying.

I crack my left eye open. I'm still at the club. But the scene is dramatically different. The house lights are on illuminating an empty stage and deserted tables. There's no music. No crowds. No pint glasses clunking.