Hereafter

Hereafter: Part III The Soul Stitchers, Chapter 45

45

I TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY TO pull away from Autumn so I could speak with Antonio. He’d spent most of the day watching over us like a guardian angel after gathering the information he’d need to carry on the second phase of our Master Plan.Where, you might ask, was Autumn’s original guardian angel, the one who would normally have been at her side from birth? That was another change when the Kingdom Age ended. All the angels were pulled back to heaven.

Separating from Autumn’s soul went more smoothly as a technical matter, but I was soon once again gripped in a feeling of absolute emptiness—like opening the front door of the home you’ve lived in all your life and there’s nothing and no one inside. You can’t wrap your mind around what you’re experiencing, but it is what it is—instead of the warm, inviting, secure, loved and loving feeling you normally felt at home—a void.

Antonio could sense my distress and knew to keep our discussion brief.

“What should I call you . . . Fallon or Autumn?” he quipped, trying to lighten the burden of distress I was carrying like a weighty cast iron ball and chain.

“Don’t be silly, it’s me . . . Fallon. Look, I know I’m a mess but I can see this is the price we pay for accepting our roles in this sweatshop passion play we agreed to act in.”

I’d materialized in front of Antonio as a glorified body, a clone of Autumn’s. Decked out in Egoor’s sweatshop finest, the uniform that was already starting to smell from the perspiration of a grueling day’s labor, it broke his heart to see me. His sorrow quickly turned to anger.

“I hate this . . . I hate seeing you suffer along with all these others, and it’s within our power to simply release them all right now!”

Antonio pulled me close and began to sob. Not sure what to do, I just let him cry, teardrops falling like a steady summer rain. I was feeling my own agony, but not about the sweatshop—it was the depression that set in whenever I wasn’t in Autumn’s soul space. Knowing there was nothing Antonio could do, I didn’t bring it up but rather simply used my distress as an excuse to move our business along.

“Look . . . clearly this is a terrible situation, but you know we can’t just take over,” I felt I had to remind Antonio under the circumstances.

Tears that flow from a glorified body are really strange. You can see them at first, but as soon as they start running down your cheek they begin to transform into what I can only describe as diamonds, then, diamond dust glitter and begin to scatter light like a million miniature prisms.

When the sobbing subsided, he backed away from our embrace so we could talk.

“I’m upset about this as well, but it’s different for me. When I’m with Autumn I can’t tell where she leaves off and I begin. So much of her life has been about simple survival that she hasn’t had much time or energy to realize just how unhappy she is now. Anyway I’m pretty much settled into my role here. You’ve got your freedom. Have you decided what you’re going to do first to try and get Egoor’s attention?” I pressed, genuinely interested in what I asked him, but it was more about my eagerness to get back to Autumn.

Having that important question posed helped him calm his emotions. After a couple of controlled breaths he was able to answer me.

“Yes . . . I was thinking it’s all about getting Egoor to that recognize Autumn is his daughter so it’s my job to see that he leaves that office to spend time out in the shop to do more supervising.”

“I get it . . . he’ll be walking around and perhaps notice Autumn’s birthmark or see the resemblance to her mother, his former lover, in her face. Okay, sounds good, but how do you plan to get him out here?”