Entry J1: The Talisman

Death is the great equalizer. No matter how much humans have done or think they have done, a human life is much more valuable than most things that are achieved within a life. Still, so many believe they should have a say in whether they get to live or die. To believe that some act has earned them such a privilege.

Rose was one of those individuals. At the doorstep of a gimmicky magic shop, she cursed her poor judgment under her breath. Not long ago, she would have ridiculed anyone stupid enough to be willingly scammed like this.

She blamed her previous night of insomnia. It was her mistake to tell her friends and family that she could manage and shoot down any suggestions of staying with her.

That night, lying on the king-sized bed alone in the drowning silence. The twin pillows were torturous; choosing one would leave the other obviously empty. It wasn’t enough for her to keep all their framed pictures facing down, because the snow globe he bought her last Christmas still sat on the nightstand. She didn’t have to look at it, but her eyes wouldn’t listen.

Tears dangled at the edges of her eyelids, but none could come out. She wanted to be strong. Adrian would have wanted her to be strong. But her mind kept wavering, and her struggle for strength had gripped her wakefulness throughout the night.

But she had been living by herself for a month already, ever since that fateful stormy day. She couldn’t explain why she suddenly felt so empty that day, merely after a symbolic ceremony that didn’t change anything.

And that string of rumination had left her in that den of sophistry, where Halloween props and handmade disasters were advertised as the real deal.

The hooded woman greeted Rose from a dark corner, though it was bright enough for Rose to notice the uncut price tag attached to the phony cloak. Rose was barely aware when she explained her situation to the fraudster and begged for help. At this point, she didn’t even know whether she believed the woman could help.

The fraudster said something profound but incomprehensible, then she went to the back of the shop, making a show of opening a locked cabinet, to get out a generic-looking paper talisman, with pretentious symbols drawn on.

“Get an enchanted doll of your husband. Place this on its head, and your husband’s spirit will come back to you, at a cost,” the fraudster said.

Rose was prepared to pay anything. “What is the cost?”

“A thousand dollars, including the enchantment service and the doll.”

Rose reached for her wallet faster than she ever had in her life.

***

From that day onwards, Rose had replaced the snow globe with the enchanted doll on her bedside. The satin texture of the doll made it difficult to stick the talisman on, so Rose often had to reattach the fallen talisman as soon as she woke up. It felt so tedious and pointless, and several times Rose had to suppress her urge to trash her thousand-dollar purchase violently. Though, at the very least, she could fall asleep with her gaze on the doll.

If someone asked her outright, she would still reply instantly that she didn’t believe in all this spiritual mumbo jumbo. That was partly true; she had never expected anything to happen.

But after that one momentous weekend, her answer would have been different. While pushing through the crowd on a commercial street, she spotted a familiar face.

“Adrian?”

That set of hazel hair, those rich maroon eyes, that manly jawline; the shape of his torso that had shared her bed for so many years. But there was no sign of recognition upon hearing that name. The man continued on his way as usual.

Rose couldn’t let this chance pass. She squeezed through the crowd, kept yelling his name like a corrupted audio, until she was close enough to grab his sturdy shoulder.

The man flinched at the touch, but at least he finally looked at her. Her relief didn’t last long, because the words out of his mouth were devastating: “Do I know you?”

“Adrian, what are you talking about? It’s me, Rose.”

“Sorry. You have the wrong person.”

A chilling sense of panic gripped her heart. She had to say something. “Can I get you dinner?”

Despite the sudden invitation, he said yes.

***

Dinner was served with a spaghetti of awkward silences. The man, Darian, only agreed to dinner because Rose was hot, and a part of Rose knew it as well. But all she could say was, “Hey. Isn’t Darian an anagram of Adrian?”

She brought up memories she had with Adrian, hoping for some resonance, but was only met with unwilling nods.

“And that was the time I almost had a heat stroke at the water park, and how his sloppy French kiss saved me.”

“Can you excuse me for a second? I need to use the washroom,” Darian concocted this excuse to leave the conversation (more like a hostage situation), and of course, he never came back again.

She paid their bill, but with nothing to show for it. When she got home, she found that the talisman had slipped onto the floor again.

***

Doubling the effort still wouldn’t yield enough to bargain for a foregone life, but Rose continued committing more of herself. She found Darian on Facebook, after the grueling process of investigating each profile to find the one that best matched the ghost of her husband. What convinced her the most was the profile picture, though shot at a weird angle, still recognizable to her right away, because what wife wouldn’t know her husband’s face inside out?

The more she found out about this man, the more she felt her husband coming back to her. Most of Darian’s profile was set to private, but she could still see his birthday, exactly 100 days after her husband’s; the university he graduated from, her husband also considered applying to; and his sedan, the same brand as her husband’s childhood family SUV.

She messaged him: “Hi. Sorry for everything.”

Radio silence.

The whole ordeal had started to occupy Rose’s mind even at work, almost sending out emails with outrageous typos (one was from “dear” to “dead”). She had to see Darian again; she had to make sure that her husband’s spirit was really in his body.

In her absentminded Monday state, she had shoved the doll and the talisman into her purse this morning. Useful, actually, because that was a tool that might help her bring her husband back.

Darian’s workplace was clearly listed on his LinkedIn page. Rose’s heart blazed up, as she didn’t know how to feel about this new goal. She simultaneously wanted to approach and avoid him. This ambivalence was entirely irrelevant; as soon as she got off work, her legs moved on their own, sending Rose towards the office Darian was working at.

About halfway to the destination, a sight stopped her in her tracks. She swore she had seen her husband turning the corner. Her movement swerved on its own, chasing after the mirage.

She just popped her head around to the next street in time to catch the doppelgänger stepping into the bar. There was a hint of relief in her breath as she reaffirmed that what she saw wasn’t an illusion, and so, she had really found a better target to pursue.

If she had paid more attention, she would have realized that the man she saw had a rounder face, a sharper nose, and free earlobes as opposed to her husband’s attached ones. All she had going for her was the man’s sweater; it looked the same as the one she had knitted for him just last year.

She didn’t forget to double-check the doll in her bag before getting into the bar. The talisman had slipped off again. That wouldn’t do for her, as she needed all the help she could get to catch her husband’s spirit.

The place was blasted with deafening music and messy chatter. On her first sweep, she couldn’t find the face she sought. The drinks kept dancing at the edge of her vision, so eventually, she gave in and went for a Bloody Mary. After all, she was here already. Might as well sink herself in alcoholic bliss.

Rose’s mind was blank until the drink came for her, but even then, she couldn’t enjoy it for long.

“Hi there, beautiful. Are you alone?”

She knew the voice was addressing her, but she didn’t care enough to even look up.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Rose felt a force gripping her shoulder. Acting dumb was no longer an option. She glanced at the man intruding on her personal space. It wasn’t her husband. That was all the description she cared about.

“I’m married.” She wanted to show him her wedding ring, but then she remembered she had thrown it into some corner of her apartment during one of her mental breakdowns.

“Bullshit. What married woman would drink alone in this place?”

Rose’s arm moved without warning, grabbing her glass and splashing her drink at the man. His fate was well-deserved, but his response after that wasn’t. He should have left it alone, but instead, he punched Rose in the face. It was a clearly overblown reaction. An unreasonable act that must be rebalanced later to conserve the order.

The acute pain was strangely comforting to Rose; maybe it was because of the alcohol… or something else. She could feel liquid leaking out of her nose. And she let herself stagger backwards, falling butt-first onto the sticky floor. The man wanted to get another hit in, but the other patrons held him back. With her drifting in the chaos, Rose’s jumbled mind spurred her to retreat, ignoring the helping hands offered by onlookers.

She was outside again; the night breeze mocked her up and personal. Her hair was messed up from the impact, and she could still feel the stream of blood running from her nostrils. After a quick wash with her water bottle, traces of dried clots remained. Rose made sure to zoom in on her phone’s selfie mode to check. She wanted to find flaws.

The night was in full swing, but Rose showed no signs of going home. Instead, she wobbled to a bus stop and hopped onto a specific bus. It was like instinct, a homing pigeon flying home. With only two transfers, she had arrived.

Her destination was a bridge away. On that elevated platform, she gazed downward at the road, where occasional cars darted mercilessly by, not acknowledging her existence in any way. The scene was akin to a siren’s call to her; she couldn’t look away.

Those vehicles go by so quickly. It would be over so quickly. These were some of the thoughts flashing by in her head at an even faster speed than the cars.

But her bleak contemplation wasn’t allowed to persist for long, as the passing wind called her attention back to her target. It was a call of her name, in a voice sounding strikingly similar to her late husband. She had no idea if it was all her imagination or if the gust of air had really taken on such a persona.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to her but her destination. Even the distraction at the bridge had receded into the background. She was sure nothing could stop her…

There it stood, the gate and the wall, a barrier shielding the outside world from the ghosts within. It was a quarantine zone that contained the grim aura of death and forgetting.

A guard station oversaw the gate, the sole beacon to attract moths in the all-consuming night. Climbing the gates was out of the question. She dragged herself around the barricade of the deceased, drooping with every step, close to collapsing. It wasn’t because of fatigue, but her body just seemed to get heavier.

And she found what she was searching for… a patch of vines dangling from the top of the wall. Reluctantly, after minutes of hesitation and plain staring, she got to climbing. But she had never been athletic. The whole stunt ended with an embarrassing tumble on the ground.

Numb, she lay on the crushed weeds. Limp and not able to move a muscle. She thought the dead must have sapped her strength. She checked her bag again, taking the doll out. And… needless to say, the talisman was nowhere to be seen. In fact, in scouring her bag, there was no trace of the talisman at all.

She didn’t even know what to feel. There was too much added to her cocktail of emotions, bubbling and reacting with each other. All she could do was break into laughter.

“They told me to keep the talisman on its forehead, but… but it keeps falling off!” Her laugh devolved into crying in the end.

“Adrian… Come back, please. You… you deserve to live. Not me. I… I killed you… I dragged you outside when you didn’t want to. It was all me. All because I want to experience that stupid storm. I should’ve died. I should’ve died for my fucking stupidity!”

After that, only incoherent babble floated out of her mouth. Soon, she dozed off to sleep without meaning to.

***

“Miss. Are you all right?”

Rose was woken up by a gentle tap on her shoulder. She was greeted by a crouching, shadowy figure, backlit by the sun. Nothing about the man before her looked like her late husband at all. Not his voice. Not his height. Not the shape of his head and shoulders. But she didn’t care. Her husband’s spirit might have entered this person.

And so, she had to apologize. She had to beg her husband for forgiveness, for the grave sin that she believed she had committed.

She couldn’t get the words out. They were trapped in her throat, clinging to the inner walls of her larynx. Jagged breathing and grinding of her lips were all she could manage.

The figure smiled. Even though Rose couldn’t see it clearly, she could feel it.

“I’m sure that for whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.” He said in a polite voice. It was only something generic a person would say to another. But of the various templates of comfort he could have chosen, this particular sentence ended up being said.

In what Rose thought was a pathetic display, her tears started to flow again. Rose wanted to be strong. She had told herself that Adrian would have wanted her to be strong. But she wasn’t strong. She wasn’t even smart enough to stay home during a storm.

At that moment, a leak formed within her to allow the built-up pressure to escape. It was like the machinery within her snapped into place, and finally, the war raging inside her had come to a truce.

“I… I… wanted to… visit someone…”

The figure stood up, and from the new angle, Rose could finally make out the security guard uniform on the man.

“The gates are open. Do you want me to show you where?” the guard asked, offering his hand.

Rose already knew where the front gate was, but she took his hand regardless, and with that, he helped her stand back up.

The graves in the cemetery were ordered in neat lanes, emphasizing how unimportant each death was, only a fragment in a systematic arrangement. Adrian’s grave was among them, hard to find even with his name carved onto the headstone.

Rose stared at the name. The letters that her husband had been reduced to. Reduced, but still kept part of his essence. She opened her mouth naturally. This time, words flowed out without hesitation.

“Thank you.”

She mustered a smile. Content that she was able to say it without a new tear down her cheek.

And that was all she had to say. Because for the other thousands of sentences, she already had the chance to say it to him when he was alive.

This was the final piece of their story. Someday later, she would change her mind and wail again, but today, at the very present, she was able to accept it.

“Oh no. I’m going to be late for work!” Luckily, she had the inspiration to check the time. She might still make it.

Before she left, she placed the “enchanted” doll on the grave, leaning against the headstone. With the talisman gone, she didn’t need the doll anymore. It didn’t matter to her at all, even if she knew the doll would become a stray German Shepherd’s chew toy.

When Rose passed the bridge again to get to the bus stop, she didn’t pay the road below her any mind, too busy estimating her time of arrival at her office.

***

Her husband didn’t deserve to die from her stupidity. Just as no human can deserve eternal life, most also don’t deserve immediate death. That was why I had to rebalance the unjust scales by keeping her alive just a while longer. She had no right to say otherwise. I would make sure of it.