Ghost Touch: A ghost created my authentic personage
Ghost touch. Not on your screen, but on your skin. It chills your soul.
I once experienced ghostly ripples on my skin. Ghost bumps.
Glacial ooze seeped through my sensitive pores. Infused my blood flow with blizzards blown from Hades’ realm. It iced my heart, woe.
White cells puzzled, red globules fainted. My cilia roots, stunned, pitched millions of tiny red flags.
Angels, shine celestial light! Touch my cheek, hold my heart. I refused to sacrifice, for art, my bone and blood.
Not a ghost story
In my young-adult-still-living-with-parents’ galley den, I was writing a chapter in my first novel. Not a ghost story. But I wobbled inside an episode where I summoned, unaware, the dead.
Aunt Ana, a prop protagonist in my romance, played vivid enough. But she lacked depth. Was bi-dimensional, too flat. My Ana hungered for an authentic touch.
Despite her deep eye pupils and anthracite hair, the portrait ranked plain photograph. Not art.
Shade grading missed. The sepia tinge, then tones in sunshine or gloom. Reverie or chortling despondency. To authenticate the portrait, I needed that mix.
Fictional Ana walked, but her steps were inaudible. She laughed, but not sparkling enough. Her lips did not move when she spoke. Oh my, her mute caresses did not touch me, as balmy as they might be.
Those dark pupils did not slurp my eyesight. And her glinting irises sent me short distances. I envisioned her stare carrying me toward far-away realms of unknown stories instead.
My word painting needed bone scaffolding. Guts, flesh. A live model.
A sidereal touch
I raked my memory gallery. This neighbor, that borsht vendor? A grandma when younger? My mother in her elderly future? None suited my personage.
A breathing icon, though, from long ago, kept sending spent smiles. She signaled to me.
Aunt Helen? Oh, no.
Each time intuition flaunted her image, I gave it a berth. Until one torrid afternoon when, pressed by the drive to write, I had to decide. Ana played a key catalyst in that scene. So, eluding her hindered a smooth shuffling of the fictitious events.
I found the one. Who else but my mom’s aunt? Helen. She lurked—already breathed and walked inside my novel. Without my invite.
My spirits cringed, since she had long passed. But the writer within celebrated. So I accepted her sidereal touch.
After the eureka buzz, I got down to performing the miraculous transfer. From mundanity to art. To do so, I gatecrashed Aunt Helen’s heart.
Ghosting after a warm-fleshed touch
Curled on my couch, I shut myself off the present. To invoke her once warm-fleshed touch. I dismissed the heat waves flooding in through the gaped window. Blinded myself from the nearby sky. And played deaf to neighboring pigeons’ cry.
Unawares, I entered a dark tunnel. Urging my senses to crawl, swish—I took off. On a zippy ride.
A sliding medium telescoped immaterial tubes that narrowed, then enlarged. In consecutive shafts. Crushed or inflated, I fled, unaware of ascent or descent. Did I care? Oh, no. I raced. To reach Helen’s touch.
Senses numbed on purpose, I continued. Mad, unabashed. But no hint of Helen. Her light, when I saw it, would rekindle them.
I kneaded my brains. Squeezed remembrances. To no avail, though.
Naughty flickers interfered with my grim quest. Oh, my chamber’s recent reality. Yellow strokes on a painting, glistening teeth in a photo, a blue notebook on my lap. Shoo!
Latest bird cries or doors thumping plucked my eardrums. Hush!
I heard clanking crockery in the kitchen. Odor of frying onion wafted hither. Stinking fumes—Mom’s cooking. Then, antique rose whiffs. My mind stalled. Jasmine thickets swamped my vision. Oh, Helen’s garden. Her touch.
These elusive perfumes dragged me closer to my grandaunt’s bygone era on earth. Bewitched, I ghosted through the tenebrous medium.
Soon, the tunnel flipped vast plain. Inundated in an ocean of light, the plain then shrank. And I zoomed in … on Helen.
Ghost images
Her jet-black hair pulled sleek in a nape knot, Aunt rustled in her bright kitchenette. Spotless as ever. Feet shuffling, skirts swishing, she whisked to cook something, grumbling. One restless shoulder decrypted stirring in a pot.
Stew vapors wheedled my nostrils. Potato, zucchini, eggplant. Those essences melted. Then Helen’s torso yawed. Aha. She fretted away a darn gravy spot.
Phut. Aunt plumped the lid. Then she swiveled around.
My curious guts cringed, but left no impression on the housewife’s forehead. With a sigh, she plunked herself on a stool. Grabbed a last-resort-sized packet and lit a dull cigarette.
Carpathian tobacco, aw. But raw. Genuine. An authentic touch.
Spectral smoke coiled, soared, then looped hither. It entered my memory. Will the inaudible reek send me long distances? To Helen’s lived and unlived stories.
Ghost stories
Whoa! I faced a tableau. Illusory, but so vivid.
A girl, luciferous-eyed, tugs at her mom’s skirts. Drab cotton. As course as the pontoon where they stand, perched. The floating frame rubs its rust against the bank. Along the quay, Danube gloom. Farther away, moans a lugubrious barge boat. But, in a thin wink, I saw the misty harbor tableau sink.
Then, another image. It soared and spread.
Daisy glades. Sprinkled with poppy heads. Where eye irises hide and meet. A girl and a boy. Her irises glint alluring blackness while his emit celestial blue. Oh, God. Helen’s first love she rambled about over family meals.
I recalled my child’s thirst to decipher Aunt’s enthralling exuberance. My writer self, though, hungered for more. So my memory strived to wring lifeblood from the gallery scenes. To grind pith into elixirs.
But, in a brief lapse of focus, irony hit me. Ha. I was grinding … my teeth.
God, no! What if the portal closed? So, caring a hoot about tongue or tooth, I resumed my metaphysical race.
Next, I alighted on no—gloomy or bright—forlorn reel, though. But back in aged Helen’s kitchenette. In a shaft of shy light, she dragged on her cig. Her silence accompanied by lids mumbling on pots.
Soon, my peeping caught a tinge of disgrace. Shame on me. If only I played a mischievous spook. But no. I spied on forbidden ground. For word painting’s sake. Oh, a blasphemous spook.
Forgiveness, I begged. Yet, did not relinquish my sinful intent.
A touch from beyond
Helen’s wrinkled fingers squashed the cigarette. Then she raised her forehead. Her stare fixed me on the spot. As though I was not enough fixed in bed.
Blood froze instants in my veins. I gasped, but not air.
In a flash, I received ventilation. The least kind I needed—arctic.
Ice particles from a spooky universe’s north pole, materializing on my skin, not blown. Cut off from brain control, my pores shrank in puny defense. Too late, since occult winters dipped their needles in my soft and tough tissues.
I thanked my blocked lungs. Because, God, I dreaded inhaling a speck of that static blizzard. It compressed my physique and my reasoning.
In my brain, though, soon sprouted buds of wonder. Did my concentration open an arcane portal? To hell, woe. God warned me I trespassed heavenly thresholds?
Punished by the Supreme or stalked by Hades’ shadows. Which was worse? Whose touch terrified my marrow and guts?
My brain marrow hushed speculation when the standstill foregrounded an encompassing chill. So beyond bearing. It crushed my fear and will.
Beyond was coming for me. My cells panicked.
A goodbye touch
I envisioned my mother. Petite, pretty-eyed. Silent now. Or humming a hit. Ha. A daytime housewife who was wallowing in savory steams. From her hot meals.
But recalling the spark in her green irises empowered my guts. When needed, Mom turned hawk. My diaphragm steeled. And produced a monumental, beyond human, piston. It propelled my lungs into motion.
I hollered, I shrieked. I invoked my protector. Human. And supreme in this household. In this world.
With my sensors focused on the chamber holding our hearth’s matron, I hollered. Hallway, doors. And aw, too much concrete inside walls. Oh, God, help me!
I uttered the wonder word. “Mom!”
The chill jumped off me, startled. I scared the spirit out of it. Ha!
Thank God I experienced normal physics again. However frightening. As yes, the frigid current coiled around me, trembling. One shy tremble … touched my cheek.
A goodbye touch.
Then the window wings fluttered. The chill, tasting warmth from my skin, rushed out. Into the wide blue.
The ghost touch trailed behind, though. It infused authentic perfume into Ana. My personage.
Your Own Signature Shoes Are the Shoes You Die In
in Next WomanWhy Simple Works Better Today
in Next WomanThe Hidden Dangers of Perfection Overpowered
in Next WomanOriental glow in Darxination
in Viviana Ioan BooksA Simple Solution in a Hectic World: Tapping
in Next WomanNo Country for Normal Men. And Women
in Next Woman Romanian LifestyleTHE STREET
in Viviana Ioan BooksRo-mâh-nesc Lifestyle. Five Reasons Piţiponc People Magnetize
in Romanian LifestyleHow to Slim Smart Is a Slow Art
in Next WomanFour-Day Summer Treat to Get Back in Your Swimfit
in Next Woman