Hereafter

Hereafter: Part III The Soul Stitchers, Chapter 42

42

THE ROAR OF ALL THE SEWING machines was deafening. We materialized in a seldom-used storeroom adjacent to the main floor of the sweatshop. Windows gave us visual access to what was going on in there. I needed to know, to feel what the children were going through, so I came back as a homeless 12-year-old girl, dressed in a tattered gray dress, worn coat and shoes, and shivering from the onset of winter and lack of adequate nutrition.

Antonio was middle-aged, smartly dressed in business clothes, suite, tie, and sporting polished shoes. He would soon assume the role of a banker as one of a group of investors who owned the six-story turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century building housing a number of businesses.

The plan was for me to end up toiling away in the sweatshop while Antonio would be in a position to hopefully influence the owner to change his ways.

Being Masters, we now had these sassy superpowers, for example though we were standing in full view of everyone on the sweatshop floor, no one could see us until we flip a slick mental switch to let them. The other thing we could do is overshadow someone, that is, merge with their soul for a time.

In that state the person looks the same, but we are there to share both body and soul. Their free will isn’t compromised, but we get to use their physical presence and personality, and any professional skills, to carry out our mission. As a banker and homeless child we would have the key elements to enter the sweatshop owner’s world to first observe, then, devise a strategy to help restore a better balance both to his soul and therefore the lives of his enslaved laborers.

“Are you sure no one can see us?” I asked again, leery about walking out onto the shop floor with everyone there.

Antonio was leading the way through the only exit from the room we were in. I had a hold of his smartly tailored overcoat sleeve, resisting his pull.

“How many times do I have to tell you, just conjure up a drop-down dialog box in your mind with two choices—visible or invisible and pick invisible,” he less-than-patiently chided once again.

When I decided to materialize as a 12-year-old girl, not only did that mean I was physically a child, but my mental state, by nature fearful and insecure, was also fragile and underdeveloped. Regardless of my apprehensions, Antonio, much taller and stronger, simply took my hand and along for the ride I went right into midst of all the controlled chaos.

“What if we bump into someone, won’t they know something’s fishy?” I hissed at Antonio while pulling back quickly to avoid a worker pushing a cart full of replacement spools of thread.

“Same thing, just add Feel or Don’t Feel to the drop-down menu and pick Don’t Feel,” he hissed, looking down at my four-foot diminutive frame and wondering why, by this time, I wasn’t sorting these simple problems out on my own.

A quick compliant fix and I proceeded without the paranoia of being found out.

We were not in blood-and-bone bodies, nor were we in our glorified heavenly bodies, but these dense matter transformation forms felt just like a normal Earth body. Apparently, wherever one’s spirit and consciousness is there will also be all the expectations of such a body—touch, sight, sound, smell, and sensing gravity.

Moving among the girls, the first thing I noticed was that their little bodies were covered in layers of embedded grime as they were not allowed to bathe regularly. One near me grimaced in pain after trying to move her leg to stretch out. Looking down I could see the source of the sting—a perpetual open wound around her ankle where a old iron shackle had her chained to the floor, and secured by long rusted bolts.