Immortal Souls: Phoenix Always

The Eerie Factor

David and Samantha drive my car home, after I assure them my need to walk and think is about Brynn and not about being adopted. But it's not about either of those things.

Wondering why I'm stuck in this cycle is nothing new. The thoughts are always in the back of my head. How did I end up like this? Am I the only one? If there are others, how do I find them? Why me? Will it ever stop? The questions never end, but they have been permanently shoved to the back of my mind for at least the last twenty bodies. What I can't remember is whether or not I ever tried to find the answers. I can't remember searching for them, but I can't remember not searching for them either. It's like a part of my memory is missing.

How could that happen?

In Jackson Square, I sit on a bench and stare up at a statue of Andrew Jackson atop a horse.

As newborn Phoenix Maison, I had waited eagerly to hear someone say where I was. I knew by the accents I was in America and likely in the southern part of the States, but I wanted to know exactly where, right down to the city. As someone who has experienced just about all there is to experience, not much can excite me anymore, so I depend on being born into a place I've never been to spice up my life—err, lives. This body was five days old when I heard David say the name of my new home, and it wasn't a chill of "Yay, somewhere new" that traveled down my tiny infant body.

It was right here in Jackson Square that my heart stopped beating nineteen years ago. I came to New Orleans in 1997 for Mardi Gras and never left. I couldn't even bring myself to return to my family for my birthday later that year. They meant little to me. So I died staring up at a statue of a man who once kept me as a house slave in Tennessee in the early 1800s. This is the first time I was born in the same place I died.

The car accident that killed Samantha's sister and sparked my early birth occurred on Decatur Street a quarter of a mile from the square. The drunk who crashed into her was a man my previous body had a one night stand with during Mardi Gras the year before.

Could it be a coincidence I have so many connections to my previous lives here? And why New Orleans?

Journey's text tone—a howling wolf because she's obsessed with the creatures—tears my attention away from Andrew Jackson.

Please tell me ur done eating. I'm bored!!!! Its Friday night and its ur birthday. Let's go out!!!!

I'm staying with my parents tonight, but we will go out tomorrow night for sure.

Hopefully no one from school sees me out here. I feel bad about lying to her, but I'm on a mission, and I can't carry it out if she's with me.

I head over to the art colony on the back side of the square, in front of the cathedral. I often refer to it as the Gypsy camp. It's full of artists from dusk till dawn and dawn till dusk. And homeless people, tourists, locals, and street musicians. It also has psychics. At least, people who claim to be psychics. I'm living proof reincarnation is real, so I believe that psychics could be real too. However, I don't believe someone would flaunt it so openly if they could truly see the past or future, predict events, or dissect a person's life with a deck of cards or by studying lines on palms. It's a huge responsibility that could endanger one's life, family, and happiness.

A true psychic would know that, maybe even be able to see it. So it's not the self-proclaimed psychics I'm searching for. I'm listening for chatter among them about someone who may be legit, and I might ask a question or two. A psychic is the only idea I have right now.

At ten o'clock on a Friday night, the French Quarter is in full swing and crowded. No one notices a petite redhead stalking about.

"Hey baby! Do the curtains match the drapes?"