Good Grief #2
Esther leans over to rub his back, her chest lurching in sympathy.
Even when Lucy was upset, the worst Esther had ever felt was mild heartburn she couldn’t explain.
Poor Angel has had the worst experience out of anyone they’d interviewed in the two years since Lucy found her way back from Esther’s dimension.
“I know,” he shakes his head. “Sorry, Mom’s just…
” He smiles tightly at Lucy and Esther. “You know. I just wish she’d understand I’m not trying to get rid of her.
I’m trying to give her her life back, so I can have my life back.
I wish for once, she’d listen, instead of being so defensive all the time. ”
“You’re going through something incredibly difficult and complicated, that most people never even dream of experiencing, and you’ve been dealing with it alone, your whole life.
” Lucy pauses, dropping the professor cadence in favor of a more stilted and hesitant manner—her at-home voice, Esther always calls it.
“And you know, you’re my brother, and I want you to be happy. ”
“And you’re my friend,” Esther adds. “Despite what your mom is probably saying about us caring more about the study than you. We’re family now, and that is far more important to me than any research. Okay?”
Angel nods, his eyes watering the way they always do, when he remembers Esther and Lucy love him. “I know. But we can’t stop. I need…I need to know what it’s like, to just be me. For once.”
“Before we unpack that,” Lucy huffs, her eyes clouded with emotion that Esther can’t decipher.
All three turn their attention to the two therapists, still sitting in silence.
“How are you two doing? Any questions? Thoughts? Do you believe us that our parents are interdimensional anomalies tied to Angel’s consciousness, or at least willing to accept that they’re haunting him? ”
Silence fills the room as Michelle and Gordon exchange a loaded look.
“The way I see it,” Gordon finally says carefully.
“You’re either pranking us, and my granddaughter is going to show me a video of me looking like a fool on the internet in a few days.
Or, this is some elaborate scheme you’d put together for your own entertainment.
The third option is that this is real, or at least you believe it’s real.
Regardless, I am willing to see it though.
” He turns to Michelle. “You may have a different opinion.”
“No, I’m already invested in whatever the hell this is. Just as long as we can debrief together as we write our notes up,” Michelle is staring at Angel as she talks, but her eyes flick to Gordon just in time to catch his nod. “Perfect. Can you tell us more about what we just heard?”
“That’s Mother dearest,” Angel replies bitterly.
He sighs as he sinks back in his chair. “Mom, please, they can’t hear you.
You’re only hurting me by yelling like this.
Can you please let me listen to this conversation?
” He rubs his chest. “Yes, of course I love you. I’m not mad.
It just hurts to have you this angry. Thank you for understanding. ”
“In the most simple explanation,” Lucy begins, her gaze flicking to Angel as he rests his eyes.
“Our parents separated when we were small, and Dad stopped coming around. Mom told us he’d died, which she must have assumed to be the case.
Turns out, Dad’s consciousness became trapped in Angel’s when he was just a baby, and he has been there since.
And unfortunately, when Angel was in quarantine with the Pox a few years ago, Mom joined him there.
So he has his parents, who are bitter exes, one of whom is not the most mentally stable person, forced to coexist within his consciousness. ”
“And the complicated explanation?” Michelle asks.
“When people are…incredibly lonely,” Lucy frowns.
Esther takes her hand. “They long for companionship with the people they love most. For most people, the dreams we have of those we care for are one-sided, a way for us to cope with missing someone. But when those people miss each other, the boundaries between dreams and reality thin, and we experience those dreams together. Most people would never notice the difference, and assume it’s just a normal dream, or perhaps are only mildly aware they are lucid dreaming.
Our bodies stay in reality, an anchor for our consciousness as it goes to a separate plane of this dreamworld. ”
Esther smiles sadly. Sometimes she misses the dreamworld, and the many lovely times she and Lucy had there.
The waterfloat, and their cloud companion.
The instant gratification of whatever they desired at their fingertips the second it came to mind.
But neither of them have found themselves there again.
They haven’t needed to, not when they have their real, living wife sleeping next to them.
“But sometimes, we can cross over into each other’s lives.
” Lucy squeezes her hand with a smile, as if sensing what Esther is thinking.
“The basis for this hypothesis is just our own experience, but I believe our consciousness becomes connected with the other person’s body, instead of our own, and our physical presence is pulled into the dream plane as an anchor.
Most people assume they’ve died, due to our cultural preconceptions of what a ghost is. ” Lucy shoots Esther a warning look.
Too late. Esther is already wearing a smirk to silently tease her wife, the world renowned expert in death and metaphysics, for assuming she was a ghost and never questioning it once. Just like the theosophists and esoterists from her seminars.
“And for the living Tie, the other person simply disappears and is usually presumed dead,” Lucy continues, her professor cadence as soothing and lovely as ever.
“Most of the time, the consciousness eventually lets go of their Tie, their Tie lets go of them, and the anomaly disappears entirely into nothingness.
That is still an underresearched area, of course. Where they go is not known.
“The working hypothesis is that if both the Tie and the anomaly wish for the anomaly to return to their own life, while the Tie has access to the dreamscape, the anomaly can return to the dream. Their body is then returned to our plane of existence, which we’ve been calling real life.
Though it stands to reason that all planes are real, and everyone is alive the whole time, but for ease of understanding, we’ve been calling it real life. ”
“And does this happen often?” Gordon asks. “An…anomoly returning to real life?”
Lucy shakes her head. “So far, I’m the only one we’ve met.
But if I can do it, it’s possible. The conundrum is that many anomalies are struggling with depression or other mental illnesses, or they may have developed extreme codependency with their ties, or both.
I was definitely in the both camp, before and after Esther and I established communication.
” Lucy’s smile at Esther is gentle, with only a trace of the sadness that has always lingered in Lucy’s face.
“So far, all of the folks we’ve successfully made contact with are unwilling to come back.
I’m hoping they change their minds now that they can communicate with their Ties. ”
Esther squeezes her hand, knowing Lucy is thinking of the one conversation she and Syd had with Harriet, who was so at peace about moving on; she was just waiting for Syd to be ready too.
While Syd was shocked, to say the least, they had accepted Harriet’s loss decades ago.
After some processing, they made the compassionate choice to let their mom go, and that was that.
They’d never made contact with Harriet again, though Syd has been invaluable in their research.
Lucy smiles gratefully at her, thumb caressing the wedding band on Esther’s finger.
“I think our Dad would make a great candidate, because he knows he’s not dead, and he considers himself ‘trapped’ in Angel’s consciousness.
At least, he did at the time I spoke to him last, when I was still Tied to Esther.
The trouble is, Angel has no memory of him, so I don’t know how we’d open the path back to the dream plane. ”