This Now Reality

Narsid lay upon a rumpled morning bed with arms beside his body as if in a casket. His eyes rolled up and back in his head. He was thinking. The apex of time and high point of memories. The huge pear tree. An amorphous wispy green visage that charmed and beckoned. He had lived so many lifetimes chasing a green ghost. He sensed that time was drawing to a close now. He and the ghost needed to be together.

Narsid was just a man now, but he was also a woman immediately preceding this now reality. He was tracking his green light existences across time and space. He needed desperately to be in the green light existence because time was going to stop. That special life-time wanted him and he knew he needed it.

What was that reality of being one with the green light really like. He experienced it only in snatches and glimpses. The eerie visage made the initial contact at the beginning of their relationship. He had not known much about the thing when it first appeared. He was arguing with a farmer regarding taxes when he saw it the first time. That was so many lives before the current reality. Narsid watched from outside his body. He argued with a farmer while annotating a clay tablet. The two men stood beside a huge pear tree. Heavy golden fruit ready to fall. Narsid and the farmer talked about taxes owed. That is when he saw or thought he saw the wafting green specter. It danced just behind the broad trunk of the pear tree.

His concious being thought little of the green mist as he focused on annotating the clay tablet. A unique aspect of the ghostly visitor was that it enabled him to be fully engaged with the world, while trying to hear what the visage was saying. Actually it never seemed to speak. It prompted him somehow as if it were thinking aloud. It always was becoming a form that never seemed to achieve visual resolution.

He now understood the green light existence to be a part of his highest evolved self. In precisely what life-time that self first appeared was what he wanted to know. Narsid's suspicion was that their first meeting by the pear tree was the point of its origin. He wanted to go to that life-time to stay forever. If he was to join it, he must know with certainty in what life-time it had been born. He sensed that not getting back to that place would leave him searching empty space. A being forever lost.

He did not understand whether it was his bag of bones or the green light that possessed powers. The chase to be as one with his ghost had enriched his sensory apparatuses. One of them definitely had powers. In the recent past he carried on three existences simultaneously. He must be as one with the green light. It taunted him.

He could hardly believe it himself but he knew it to be accurate. He was now only Narsid Calvinson, small business person. The owner of Corner Cup Coffee. For the first 20 years of Narsid’s life he was also a woman named Sherilynn Chambers. He lived a joint existence with her. She was the same age but they lived in differing centuries. Some days (even weeks) his bag of bones was spending more time with the one than with the other.

Then Sherilynn died suddenly. Her death was fortuitous for Narsid, but he did not like thinking of it that way. She was hit by a fast moving automobile. Her carnal existence ceased being. A vicious car accident, at least that’s how the Daily Reporter described it. There were no witnesses beyond the parties immediately involved, and that included Narsid. Sherilynn had opened the driver side rear door. She leaned in to plop down a brown paper bag filled with groceries. She hardly heard the car approaching. Just like that she was erased from time.

Narsid wondered whether she ever saw the green light when he was not her. Certainly, she never saw it when he was her. He wondered whether the light beckoned and wooed her like it did him. Did it talk to her or communicate otherwise? Why then had she not been warned before the accident. 'Huuumph', he thought, it seemed so strange. Maybe that was the way things were supposed to be.

The fact that she was out of the picture worked in his favor. He gave his full attention to his studies once she was gone. He made several first rate business decisions after graduation. He chalked it up to good fortune. His personal ghost had appeared a week after Sherilynn was buried. Narsid’s attention was oddly divided whenever the whereabouts of his personal spector remained unknown. One would imagine things the other way around.

Narsid had learned to read the signs of the green light. He had known that something terrible, simply terrible, would happen to Sherilynn because the green light inhabited her body and blinked off and on like an aged neon sign. Whenever that light fully inhabited another bag of bones it meant danger. However, if the light formed an aurora around the body and remained constant, things would be fine. But if it sputtered and crackled, blinked full off and back on, then somebody was about to die. It was certain.

Narsid had experienced the blinking green light phenomenon in other life-times. It had happened to him when he was a builder of monolithic structures. His name was Rasphin when the green light fully inhabited his body the first time. In those times, Rasphin became fully aware of the green light. He talked to it and in return it guided and informed him. Not as in talking but a silent nudging. One evening something was different.

The green light which normally preceded him going from room to room was absent. Usually it was like a forward moving shadow that protected him. Day or night it was there. But that evening Rasphin noticed the green light was nowhere to be found. 'Huuumph', he thought, it seemed so strange. At just about that time his stomach tied itself into a painful hard knot that dropped him to the floor curling his knees to his chest. He struggled to his feet, then dragged and stumble his way to the pharmacy on the first floor of the building.

He made it downstairs and at first the green light was not present as he teetered at the counter. Then it was with him again suddenly. It was inside of him.

“Why are you doing this to me. I thought we were companions”. He groaned and fell to the floor.

The pharmacist stared at Rasphin. She opened her mouth wide and threw both hands upward cupping her cheeks. Other customers suddenly snapped to full attention while watching the man contorting on the floor.

"Who is he talking to"? An onlooker spoke aloud. Rasphin sprang to his feet as a jolt of electricity flexed his tortured limbs.

In the midst of pain he saw his full body aurora. It was lime green, light green and greenish yellow. He felt much better as he viewed it. The aurora was constant and he felt instantly better and well soothed. He obtained mint leaves and peppermint oil from the pharmacist for tea, then quickly moved away without meeting the gaze of anyone. The pain did not come back and he could see his green aurora holding steady all night. The constant green light was comforting beyond all things in the material world.

The next morning he tied on a single long white cloth, wrapping it around his body in the manner of his class of citizenry. Rasphin’s hand touched the door knob and the green light inhabited his body again. It threw him to the floor and twisted his innards into a painful fist.

“Nooooo, not this again". Tears wet his cheeks.

The light tightly bound inside of him for an hour before it released his guts and recast the soothing aurora. He could see the aurora and feel its calming presence. The pain subsided. He was starting to get the message. Each time he dared touch the horizontal door knob, he was tortured into submission and made to abandon the very idea. He remained in his rooms that entire day. By the next morning things seemed normal.

The builder carefully reached his hand to lightly touch the door knob. Nothing happened. He unlatched the door and left his rooms. The specter proceeded him. It anticipated his routes. When he arrived at the work site things were too quite.

“What is going on here", he asked some laborers.

As it turned out a man was killed that morning. A coworker who was a supervisor on Rasphin's crew was dead. Rasphin knew the fellow and he had liked him. Rasphin recalled that the green light had clung to the man two days before the accident. The light blinked on and off, it sputtered and fizzled. Rasphin had not seen the light do that until that time. The light had become emboldened, and it was now the boss. Rasphin was certain that if he had been at work that morning, it would be him that was dead.

In due course Rasphin left his lifetime as the monolithic monument builder. In his next life he could not find his protector. It took nearly 16 years in a new bag of bones to reconnect with what he knew to be his protector. It was during those life-times when he could not find the green light that he pursued it fervently. He went from one bag of bones and life-time to the next; often not completing because he was searching so frantically. Sometimes he would abruptly leave a body not sufficiently connected to the green ghost. He would leave such a body for increasingly longer durations while trying to find one that was better connected.

That is really what had happened to Sherilynn. He abandoned her. Narsid knew it. He did not like to think of it that way but that was the truth. The problem was he could never find the ghost when spending time in her. Little by little he grew apart from the life that was Sherilynn Chambers. Then the dear girl had that vicious car accident. A wave of icy cold air made him shake his shoulders shuddering.

Narsid lay on his sofa. The green light sat inside his left orbital eye socket. The apex of time and high point of memory. The huge pear tree. Its golden fruits. An amorphous wispy green visage. The green light of his existence charmed and beckoned. He thought that his life as Rasphin may have been the start of the relationship with his ghostly companion. He wanted to return to his life as Rasphin. Narsid’s protector beckoned to him. They were meant to be one for each other.

As he lay warming to his thoughts he was thrown to the parquet floor violently. He rolled onto his back as his guts twisted themselves into a painful tourniquet.

“Oh, God"! Narsid screamed.

Narsid sprang to his feet unwittingly as a jolt of electricity flexed his tortured limbs. He saw his full body aurora. It was lime green, light green and greenish yellow. He understood that to be a signal he would feel better soon. Something was wrong. The pain of his twisting guts continued. The green light sputtered and crackled. It blinked full off and back on. He knew absolutely that he was about to die. What he did not know was how he could be in so much pain and yet feel so damn good about it.