The excavators arrived lifting dust. The scream of men organizing labor. Nobody told them anything. Not even a sign of their turtle god. The bucket buried its metal claws in the soil and threw it in the largest part of the stream, a pond under an old bridge. The order was simple, fill half of the pond to enlarge the street. Chelids, fish, lizards, small rodents, insects, all pond life buried under human progress. The land was fertilized with sorrow and hatred.
*
She talked to ghosts; she was the last option. Usually her clientele tried first investigation, then religion, then tarot cards, a ghost whisperer was last on their list. But she knew not everything could be explained with forensics, cards or a sky god. The message was clear, in a city in the middle of nowhere, a road killed people. The same spot, always. The sender was a desperate mother that had lost her son. He had lost control of the car on that fatidic spot. The car was in perfect condition, her poor son, however, was beyond recognition. Closed casket.
Simone packed a small backpack for five days, ten panties and only one extra bra. She left her seaside town and fourteen long hours later, she was at the most unembellished city of the country. Square and rectangle shapes, gray palette, cars in the colors of black, white and sometimes silver. She feared even the ghosts had vanished from the plain town.
Before going to her small hotel room and meeting the sad mother, she decided to visit the road without any interference or the mother’s suggestion. A neutral assessment would help her before she tried contact. It was gray, the bridge was gray, the large sidewalk was also gray. The grass was short and burned from the heat.
A chelid tried to bite her foot, and she jumped. Simone, when concentrated, had trouble differentiating the reality of the living and the reality of the dead. “You are too late. What is done is done!” The angry chelid turned around and disappeared.
*
In her tiny hotel room, after speaking to the crying mother, she decided to sleep and go back just before sunrise, dead people were restless just before the sun peeked through, washing the night away. She brought a towel and a hat in her small bag. It was a long walk from her hotel, but most people who passed away were inside cars, she couldn’t risk being the next one. She had three cats, two dogs and an old mother waiting for her at home.
It was a party, she heard from afar. The living and the dead world overlapping, while the living world was boring, gray with a thin stream, the dead world was composed by a large pond with trees and humans throwing chelids into the water and fish jumping around.
“Why are you naked?” Simone asked a boy, after she noticed he was the same person from the picture she held tight.
“Why not? Are you new?”
“I am not dead, your mom sent me.”
“Tell her to come too! No bills, no cold or heat, no studying for finals, no nine to five, we are free!” The naked young man was sun kissed, with lush dark hair falling around his shoulders, no beard, he was still developing to a man. Indeed, the pond was a happier place.
Her job was done, easy, she could put the mother at ease, her kid was happy, naked, throwing animals inside the pond, and jumping too. She could go back home and scoop poop from the litter box and cook soggy pasta for her mother. But her body did not move, there was still a mystery to be solved. She laid the towel on the grass, wet with dew. The sun pushed the moon away and the pond party vanished.
Simone had still four days, she could not leave, she was bound by her contract. She slept during the day after eating instant noodles in her room. When the sun hid behind the horizon of the ugly city, she walked with her necklaces and silly bracelets jiggling around, getting caught in her fluffy pink sweater, pulling the threads she hid again with the temples of her glasses. She had a tuna sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of sparkling water.
She threw the towel on the floor, waiting for the party to begin, she knew they would appear during rush hour, while tired zombies zoned out behind the wheels, hoping to rest their bodies after a long day of work. She had her head turned to the stream and could not turn around in time. She saw the ghost shell of the angry chelid she met before, it was on the street and a car plunged right into the stream, the front half submersed.
After recovering from the initial shock, Simone ran to the stream without removing her shoes, but it was too late, the human, a woman, had her brain dripping out of her broken skull, dressed in office attire, her long black hair floating around her forehead all submersed in the stream.
“Don’t worry, I’m already here”. The woman spoke behind Simone and was received with a party. While the others convinced her to remove her clothes and untie her loose ponytail, Simone was speaking to paramedics and police. The worlds intersecting, the loud crying, phone calls, and the party, the woman tossing her ghost clothing near the car. “I was so stressed, I slept while driving, right? It was a difficult curve.”
“Poor humans, working to exhaustion, this is your home now.” The chelid welcomed her while the other humans danced around the woman with long black hair.
After the police collected her testimony and closed the area to remove the body and the car, she walked back to her hotel room. And her sleep was filled with chelid nightmares, stomping her, biting her Achilles tendons, tripping her, pushing her into the stream and drowning her. Dozens, hundreds and thousands of chelids pushing her down the stream, her body touching the sandy stream bed. Fish eating her fingers, humans trying to take her bracelets and untying her curly hair.
She woke up, the sun was already west, from her small window. She unbraided her hair before taking a shower and washed the algae and the blood from her legs. She brushed her teeth avoiding looking at the mirror. In the ghost-seeing community, mirrors could reveal your thoughts, angry dead could also pull you in, leaving the living shell of your body behind.
The contract said another three days. She stopped at the supermarket and bought all sorts fresh herbs, coarse salt and three green apples and walked to the buried pond. The skirt was loose around her small waist; she gulped sparkling water that bubbled inside her belly and made her burp. She could not appreciate the walk; the gray city was a uniform mass of squares and even the trees did not escape the unnatural shape.
The towel remained inside her purse. Simone would not sit down. She threw salt on the road and danced flinging the herbs around, deviating the incoming traffic, ignoring the honking and angry drivers telling her to fuck off the road. The road curve was protected. She took the three green apples from the plastic bag and cut them into eight slices each and placed them like flowers on the green part of sidewalk and waited.
“Do you think you can stop me!” The chelid tried to overthrow the apple barrier.
“Tell me what angers you, I might be able to help you.”
“What do you see, living human?”
“You are killing people to bring them to your pond.”
“I will show you.” Simone accepted the chelid’s offer and she stuck her hand inside the barrier. The chelid bit her middle finger and she was able to see it.
“I am sorry, I would never agree with it! I can try to retrieve your eggs. If I dig them out you will stop killing people? It wasn’t their fault…their moms are crying too.” Simone took a picture from the young man. “She is also sad”.
The chelid turned her body to the location of the eggs. Simone had only a spoon and a knife, the chelid waited for her to carefully make a hole and dig through stones and found eleven eggs, buried in their progress grave. “Can they come out? Can they join our pond?”
“If they were not ready by the time of the burying, they will not come out and join the dead.” Simone had them in her hand. “You have your children, the barrier will remain, you are still angry.”
Human and chelid reached an impasse. The party on the pond started, humans and animals playing in the crystalline pond, the rats on top of the humans. Simone did not know ghosts still made love, the shame and social constraints were left in the living world. She approached them, still with the eggs in her hands, eleven ex-babies. And sat with her feet inside the water of the dead world.
“How should uh… I proceed, with your babies, ma’am?” Simone showed the eggs awkwardly resting in both her hands.
“I know what to do.” The chelid touched Simone and she felt sleepy and laid down in the grass, still holding the dead eggs. The eggs regained color and their temperature rose, the babies moved inside and hatched with their tiny face coming out first. “That does it!”
The chelid hatchlings found the thin stream. The fish, plants and insects were enough for eleven of them. The mom chelid watched her babies.
Simone woke up and tried to move the apple barrier.
“Welcome to the pond! You don’t need all of it.” The young man pointed at her clothes.
“Can I keep my bracelets at least?”
