True Stories of a Fictional Life

Words Fall Like Rain Pt. II

Leah

There is a moment in life, or maybe two, where you decide your fate.

It happens when you least expect it, I think. Can be done in a blink of an eye, when you're not expecting anything really of consequence to happen.

But it changes you. It binds you to a fate that maybe if you'd known more, been paying attention more, you would have chosen differently. You would have walked away, or said yes, or done the opposite of whatever it was you did to grant you a fate that you did not want.

Mine came when I was reading a book.

It wasn't a rare book. It wasn't a book in a language I couldn't decipher. It wasn't hidden in ruins or in a coffin, like the kind you see in movies. It wasn't even locked away behind a gatekeeper.

It was a book I found in the college library.

I don't know why I didn't tell Noemie about this.

Well, that's not exactly true. I didn't think that it mattered. It was a book, another book on death rituals. It was for a school project. It wasn't anything that she'd really be interested in.

She would have listened, sure. She's my best friend. But she wouldn't have understood.

I have the book now, here, in my hands. It's not very old, from the 1970s. It's got a red cover, leather binding — Noemie would hate that, she's vegan — with fading gold leaf on the spine. It had a book flap, once, I think, but it was gone when I got my hands on it.

The History of Death Rituals in the Western Hemisphere by Dr Jane Rios Domingo, PhD.

It didn't exactly scream "Don't Read Me" from the title.

I read the whole book, cover to cover. It was for school, so I had to. It was a textbook on the various rituals that preceded and succeeded death, from the dawn of written history to now. It wasn't a large book, smaller than a Harry Potter novel, but it took me at least a week to get through it the first time.

I took notes and everything — I've burned them all now. No one will ever see those notes, or this book, again. Not after I'm done writing this down.

I don't know what it was that started everything. It was the book, for sure, but I can't pinpoint a page or anything where everything changed. There weren't any rituals, really, from what I could tell; at least, none written out like in a Book of Shadows. I didn't chant anything out loud or try to summon anything.

I know the dangers of that. I'm well aware of what can happen.

So when everything started, I was confused.

— — — —

It started small, with the whispers waking me up. I always sleep with my windows open because like every other city girl, the sound of traffic puts me right out. The beeps of cars backing up and drunks singing their way home are like the chimes of a lullaby to me.

But over all of that, the sounds of the drunks caroling home and the trash pickup early Monday mornings, I could hear the whispers.

At first, it was just my name, low and sweet. It'd wake me up; that's a feat in and of itself, because as Noemie will say after I'm gone, I slept like a rock. But it was there.

It wasn't at any specific time of night. I recorded all the times, and it ranged from as early as midnight to as late as 5:37 in the morning, before the dawn rose. It didn't linger long after I woke, maybe a few seconds, but it was always just loud enough in a whisper for me to hear it.