Devil's Soul

Chapter 5 (this is Chapter 5)

***This chapter is dedicated to jubejube77 for leaving me a nice comment on the last chapter and because she likes Nirvana (this will make sense later)!***

It would have been way too helpful to find a forum post that actually addressed my specific issue. We gave up on googling "how to stop my eyes from changing colors," after digging through forum discussions about why some people had eyes that seemed to shift between different shades of blue or from green to brown. While these cases were intriguing, they did not seem demonic in nature (but who really knows), and nobody wanted to stop their eyes from changing colors.

Instead, we began to widen our search to things like "how to control unconscious body functions." We encountered methods on how to control things like heart rate, the formation of goose bumps, and the experience of pain. The one method that all these things had in common was the practice of meditation. Meditation seemed to be the key to control.

Chung and Abhinav decided that I would take up meditation, apparently forgetting that I should be the one making decisions about what I do with my life. I didn't argue, though, because the plan was the best we had. What I did do was guilt trip them into agreeing to taking up meditation with me. After all, they had promised to be there for me.

It turns out that Abhinav had an uncle in the area that practiced yoga and meditation. He lived an hour drive west of Boston. None of us owned a car, so we split the price of a Zipcar and went to go see him after class on Monday.

His uncle lived alone, out in a small town that seemed to consist of mostly trees and a few houses. His house matched the quaint East Coast architecture of the neighborhood, but once he invited us inside, it was evident that he had emigrated from India. Hindu shrines and icons cluttered the house, and the smell of incense wafted through. His family room was unusual in that it did not have a couch or T.V. or much of anything in it. The center of the room was empty, aside from four yoga mats, and he explained that this was where we would be practicing yoga and meditating.

I used the Namaste to greet Abhinav's uncle, hoping that I wasn't offending him by using it wrong. I hadn't really been planning on using it, but when I saw how Indian-looking his house was, I suddenly felt the urge to engage with him on his cultural level. Abhinav had grown up in the U.S., so I had never felt this urge around him. I wanted to kick myself for not thinking to ask him about the proper etiquette to use with his uncle. "Thank you so much for having us, Mr. Bajaj," I said. I wondered if "Mr." was an appropriate title to use.

I was wearing my sunglasses, even though I couldn't currently see souls because I didn't want to accidentally expose my eye problem to Mr. Bajaj. We had agreed to not tell him (or anyone else, for that matter) that I had sold my soul to the Devil. He thought that we were here because we were curious college students that wanted to try something new and maybe learn to control pain while we were at it.

Mr. Bajaj wasted no time in instructing us to take our places on the mats.

He showed us how to do child's pose. Oh yeah, I liked this. Maybe I could take a nap? Nope. He didn't let us stay there for long before he made us move into downward dog. The pain! My sunglasses fell off my head, but it didn't really matter since Mr. Bajaj couldn't see my face from where he was and there was currently nothing to see.

Abhinav looked over at me. "How are you that flexible?!" he exclaimed.

I certainly didn't feel flexible. Keeping my heels on the ground hurt like hell. Then I realized that Abhinav couldn't even flatten his heels onto the ground. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead from the effort.

A thump sound from the other side of me grabbed my attention, and I turned my head to find that Chung had collapsed.

"These mats are slippery!" he declared.