John had transferred into many other mortals, but now he found himself unable to move. While he did nothing, there was still hope—hope that he could become mortal again. His next action—trying to inhabit his own body—could crush it forever. What if his body was as empty as the body of the brain-dead youth he had possessed? His brain was currently dormant, running with minimal activity since it was in a coma, but was that low-level of consciousness any better than being brain-dead? Wasn’t that the reason he was the way he was now, as good as dead? But what if the energy of his spirit could ignite some complex chemical chain reaction which would spread rapidly throughout his body and bring him hurtling back to the living? Could it really be that simple?
He decided that he had stood on the edge of the unknown long enough. He was ready to take this leap of faith.
Twenty-Nine
John moved toward his body. It looked annoyingly peaceful, showing no signs of the danger or stress he had been through. His hand passed through its chest without resistance. Disappointingly, he felt nothing new, nothing to suggest this possession would be any different to the others he’d tried. He took his hand out and sat on the edge of the bed, fighting to retain his diminishing hope. All he had to do now, to know for sure, was to lower himself backward and submerge into his former self. He summoned all the courage he had. He lay back, and slowly his spirit disappeared into his body.
He felt the seal envelop and connect. He waited. Then he waited some more. Nothing happened. There was no magic moment in which his spirit started to bind irreversibly with his mortal body and mind. In fact, he could still move in and out of the body just as he’d been able to in every other possession he had experienced. His brain was stuck in a recurring loop of memories, like a scratched vinyl record causing a gramophone needle to skip back to exactly the same part of a song. They were memories from the hours before the stabbing, when he had felt his connection with Jennifer at its most intense.
He lay useless in the body that had once been inseparable from his identity, watching the playback of events. Long minutes passed.
“Did you really think it would be that easy, John?”
He heard the voice as a spirit, immediately recognizing it as belonging to Nikki. Raising his head, he was shocked to see the dark nothingness of a void hovering to his left.
“Jesus, you’ve come to take me! Just like Santiago was taken! God no! Not now, when I’m so close!” John panicked and he got to his feet defensively. As if standing would offer him the ability to fight or, more likely, run from the light-absorbing apparition.
“Hmm, not so feisty now, are you, John? Does it help if I look like this?” The Void turned into Nikki as he remembered her, looking tough and attractive. “I’m guessing you prefer me like this,” she said. “Relax, I’m not taking you anywhere,” she added.
John nodded with relief. “I thought I could somehow rejoin my body and come out of this coma,” John admitted in a resigned tone.
“There is a chance, John, but you have to believe in, and do, what I say, no matter how counter-intuitive it might seem.”
John nodded.
“Listen carefully. You’re projecting an image of your human self because you cannot give up what you understand as being your identity on Earth. It will feel wrong, but in order to regain your body, you need to abandon your need to associate your identity with it…. Only then will you reveal your pure consciousness––your essence, your values, what truly makes you who you are. And only that pure consciousness can bind with your living, mortal self through every fiber and cell in your body. You have to let go, as much as you don’t want to. That is the only way, John.”
John pressed his lips together in a slight grimace.
“You will then have a short time to decide whether to be truly free and travel enlightened with all the knowledge of time and space, your potential being truly fulfilled, or…” She paused, clearly for dramatic effect. “Or whether you want to enslave yourself once more within your meat-robot of a body with all its limitations and be in a state of advancing decrepitude until it dies.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap and you won’t just send me out into the cosmos anyway?” John asked.
“You don’t. You have to trust that I have no interest in doing so. This information is my gift to you. Now it’s your choice. Choose wisely.”
Before he could say anything more, she disappeared in a flash, just as she had done before.
John stood there, hesitating to trust Nikki’s advice. If he somehow released his consciousness, he would become a Void, and could be taken from Earth forever by another Void in the same way Santiago was taken in the interview room of the police precinct. If he did nothing, he would be destined to continue wandering the Earth like he was now. He would be just an observer of mortal life, never again able to truly experience it and never to experience love like he had felt for Jennifer. How long could he accept only being able to observe her, the girl he had fallen so deeply in love with? He would be condemned to watch as she moved on to love someone else and grew old, until one day she would die and then, would she stay on Earth as a spirit? Probably not. She would have nothing to avenge, no injustice to
