Matchsticks

Dear Sissy,

“It has been a very long time since I last saw you, little brother. Where have you been?”

“Well, the regular stuff, you know.” I reply shrugging my shoulders “What’s up with you, sissy?”  I ask her further trying to make this situation less intense than it already is.

“It has been the same for me too,” she says. It is difficult to imagine anything new coming up when you are us.

We are the soul bearers; we bear the souls of all that lives on this planet. She is 'The Giver'. She bears the new souls, the pure ones, the ones that are given to the new members of the party. And I am 'The Ripper'. I bear the used souls, the exhausted ones, the tired ones, the ones that are taken away from the members leaving after their stay on this planet.

Do not confuse us for ‘The God of Death’ and ‘The Goddess of Life’, we are only responsible for the souls’ business and related duties. Sissy is responsible for filing the souls with innocence and love, making them as good as new and to distribute them across the globe. I am responsible to give them a few minutes after they have left their bodies so that they get one last look at their lives before saying goodbye to everything and then I take them away with me to erase all of their emotional experiences.

Once they lose all their experiences, they are all the same, the souls. They are all happy because they don’t feel the pain they were feeling earlier, the pain that comes from dying and leaving their loved ones alone, but they are also aware of the enormous void because they do not know what they are happy about. We have a few days between taking up a soul and giving it to someone else. Being kept away from a body for too long destroys the soul, a fate too ugly for such beautiful things.

A friend of mine, the Messenger, manages the transfer these empty souls from me to her, so I don’t see much of my sister. It is difficult to contain the energy of two soul bearers at the same place and time, so we avoid it as much as we can. Whenever we do meet, it is due to work, which is not very often. It is absolutely essential that we are together only when there is someone dying and someone coming to life together. It is when an infant struggle for its new life and wins; and its mother fights for the baby and loses her own life in the process. We know the outcome of the chaos, the suffering and the pain of the lady. We watch her scream her lungs out and everyone near her run about all over the place like lunatics doing anything they can for the mother and her child. And we wait to get the job done. We witness all of it, together, spending quality family time in silence. She hates me for what I do, ruins her aesthetic miracle of birth, she says or rather announces that with her deafening silence.

“I heard you had been busy,” she says breaking the silence. She is usually very quiet when working with me, but she is talking today.

“Yes, I was. It has been difficult and busy for me. War is difficult for everyone for that matter. You weren’t handling it very well yourself.”

“Those were crazy times for both of us. It’s gone for good.” she sighs. After a long pause, she whispers to herself, “It’s a little girl.”

“You said something?” I ask doubtfully scratching my hair.

“I said it's a little girl coming tonight.” She repeats. We both are silent again. Maybe we are perfect opposites of each other but we are alike in one respect, we are truly awful at starting conversations. We stand side by side, silent, and hope that the other one says something.

The screams of the woman are getting unbearable, I hope the baby comes soon. Sissy goes over to the screaming woman and gives the soul to her bulged out belly. The baby should be out any minute now. With one final roar from the mother which is broken by a fairly soft cry that sounds like a giggle, a tiny baby girl is born. She is beautiful. I can’t help smiling. Everyone is happy; of the two lives that were to be saved tonight, one is safe and in perfect health.