Gallimaufry

Samhain's Destiny

A year ago today, I met the love of my life.

A year ago today, I also died.

These two facts are not mutually exclusive.

The smell of autumn was in the air, chilly enough that I was wearing my favourite hoodie and a plaid scarf my mother had bought me on her trip to Scotland a few years before. It had just rained, making the streets slippery with wet leaves and frost early in the morning. The sun shone brilliantly, but being that it was the end of October, there was no heat to that golden glow.

She had ordered a pumpkin spice latte that came before my cold brew with pumpkin spice foam, topped with nutmeg and smoked salt. I usually never spoke to people in the morning, as my mind rarely started working until well after my second coffee. But for Kara and that radiant smile she had on her face when she took her first sip, I had made an exception.

We had walked in the same direction toward our respective jobs, which were in the same building a few blocks away. It felt like I had known her for years and I was building up the courage to ask for her number when I saw a tall, pale woman dressed in an impeccable suit, pitch black eyes staring straight at Kara.

I saw a resigned sadness in that expression, but a certainty that that woman's presence meant something. As Kara laughed through a story she was telling me, she stepped down off the sidewalk, her foot slipping on a wet, icy leaf. The momentum pitched her forward just as a car took the corner without stopping as it should.

As that sad, well-dressed woman began to cross the street toward us, I reached out and pulled Kara to safely. But my own feet slipped on another pile of cold, soggy leaves, pitching me into the street. My world erupted in pain and when my vision cleared, I was lying on the street like a broken doll, Kara rushing to do first aid on me, calling for help.

The sounds of the world, from the yelling people and approaching sirens were all muted, and all I could hear was her telling me I would be okay, asking me to hold on. The woman in the suit was standing over both of us, giving me a surprised look. Then she sighed, reached out her hand and I reached up to take it.

The woman's skin was cold but her grip was hard as she pulled me up. I barely had a chance to turn and see myself stop breathing on the ground as Kara started crying and yelling at me.

Needless to say, when I knocked on her door after sundown the next day, I had to fend off a lot of yelling and screaming before she would believe I wasn't a zombie. I couldn't blame her, though her wielding a giant Scottish claymore and trying to decapitate me was a bit stressful. Apparently Kara was my soulmate and the act of dying to save a life gives a person's spiritual essence enough staying power that I could choose to stick around.

And once a year, when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, my spiritual form would take on a physical one around her. Samhain, All Hallows Eve, Halloween, whatever you called it, I could be with her until the sun rose and the veil fell like an iron curtain.

Being dead was not like being alive, time moved differently and once that night had been over, I existed in an in between state, a purgatory that seemed like an eternity. During the other solstices, I could come back enough to see the world of the living, watching Kara move through her life throughout the year.

On Beltaine, she could see glimpses of me and hear my voice when I pushed myself to communicate, though it had drained my energy extensively. She told me she couldn't wait till Halloween to see me again and that thought kept me coming back to see her time and time again.

Purgatory isn't hell. I don't even know if hell exists, or if anything exists beyond what I am holding on to. That was not something that Death would tell me. But Purgatory wasn't heaven either, and the longer I stayed within it, the harder it was to remember why I was here. But as I move through the dark grey world filled with my past regrets and mistakes, I have begun to hear her voice, laughing and singing along to something I can not hear.