Death's Captive: Will she escape eternal confinement?

Chapter 6

I close my eyes and everything fades to black. When I open my eyes I'm in the car park out the front of the hospital. I'm standing in a pool of light, one of the many security lights that illuminate the gardens and pathways to the staff car park. There are a dozen or so cars waiting here in the semi-darkness, but I can't see any people. I close my eyes once more and search the area for my calling; it's faint, dropping on and off my internal radar, but it begins to pull me towards a small weather-beaten blue car with subtle hints of rust. I peer through the windows and see piles of food wrappers and papers littering the front dashboard. In the backseat, in addition to bundles of clothing, is a small toddler strapped into a car seat and sleeping peacefully. I grimace at what I see in the front seat – a thin young woman wearing a distressed pair of jeans and a black singlet has a makeshift tourniquet around her upper arm and a drowsy expression on her face. With marks up her arms and a needle close by I can barely see her chest rise and fall. I know she's breathing because her slumped head is against the window and her breath is fogging up the glass slightly with every depressed breath she manages to take. As I watch, the fog patch grows smaller and smaller until it finally ceases entirely. I reach through the glass pane and into her chest pulling from it a loud screeching soul that looks to be made of shattered glass.

"Am I dead?" She grabs my shoulders and shakes me desperately.

"Ye... ye...yes," I manage to say, thrown off guard by never having been approached by a soul in such a state.

"Yes! Yes! Finally it's over." The woman starts to sob, though I'm unsure whether these are tears of sadness or joy.

"Gr... um... great." I'm so confused. I don't want to offend the recently deceased.

Though the soul is shattered, it has a faint gold aura around it.

"Am I broken?"

"Yes," I reply.

The soul seems distressed and looks at her hands, assessing the damage "Oh no," she mutters. "It'll take lifetimes to repair what's been done."

While I had seen 'broken' souls before, most had looked like a fracture in glass, and the majority didn't seem to mind, while others hadn't noticed these imperfections at all. This woman seems more self-aware than any other I've met. I don't know what creates these fractures, but they seem to occur often in war veterans and concentration camp survivors. Maybe trauma, pain and suffering leads to these fractures? I've seen some souls with barely visible cracks – a fixed seam in their soul where their wounds had healed. I've never seen any damage as extensive as in this woman's soul, which surprises me since her soul seems so young.

The golden soul touches her stomach, "I'm pregnant, well at least she was."

"You don't see yourself as her?" I grab the opportunity to speak with an entity that seems self-aware. Maybe I'll get some answers about what's going on?

"No. Every day she abused her body, and every day I'd scream in agony as another fracture was made." The soul looks back at her lifeless body. "I think the baby's soul is the only thing holding me together. New life."

A bright light appears and out steps a tall slender woman, she seems to be in her early 40s, and wears jeans and a plaid shirt.

"Mum?" the golden soul says, as tears well up in her eyes.

The older woman smiles and holds out her arms.

The shattered golden soul walks straight into the woman's arms and the woman encompasses her. "I'm sorry I left you so soon. I watched you and saw everything you endured. It wasn't supposed to be like that. I thought he was a good man, someone who'd take care of my children."

"It's not your fault. He was good in the beginning and then it all started going wrong. Look what's happened to me Mum! I'm broken." The golden soul cries as she holds tight to her mother.

"It's all right, the baby will protect you from shattering. You'll fuse with it and hopefully begin again after spending some time on the other side."

The light brightens, like when mercury is set on fire, then blazes and disappears in an instant. Inside the car the toddler wakes and begins to scream, as if it knew its mother was gone from this plane.

I walk away from the scene towards the hospital. Dr Reeves and Nicole are making their way to the car park, trailed by another nurse finishing her shift. It won't be long before someone finds the toddler. A car has already backed out of its space, with Reeves in the driver's seat and Nicole beside him. Behind me I hear a woman shouting for help, and a man runs through me towards her and the weather-beaten rust bucket.