Felicite Found (19 page)

Past Remembered

Félicité was released from the hospital a couple hours after Pierre cruelly demanded never to see her again. Unsure of what to do, Hélène had asked Madame Rose if she knew any place where Félicité could go for the time being. Graciously, Madame Rose offered to take the young girl in for the evening. She planned on chatting with a friend of hers who needed a live-in maid.

Later that night, it was settled; Félicité had employment with one of Madame Rose’s friends, an older woman named Margaret Richard. The following morning, Madame Rose would take Félicité to Margaret’s home where she could start a new life.

After arriving at Madame Rose’s and taking all of her clothing from the Rousseaux’s flat, Félicité settled into a chair and did nothing else for the rest of the day. She could barely lift her arms up, let alone blink away her trickles of tears. Madame Rose couldn’t get her to eat or even talk for that matter. She appreciated the love that the sweet woman offered, but Félicité was adamant she didn’t deserve anything good for the rest of her life. She had been a monster. That excluded her from being loved ever again.

The things she had remembered
had
happened, even if it was implausible, beyond impossible. Her mind raced through everything: the dreams, how she felt on top of
Le Tour Eiffel
, Anton de Rousseaux’s journal, and what she had remembered while under hypnosis. It all felt ingrained in her bones, her skin, and her mind—soul even; that’s if she even had a soul anymore. Sifting through the horrible, tainted mess of her past, she thought about the dream with the red balloon.

Distinctly, she saw the cute, little boy with dark hair and chubby cheeks running through a park with the balloon tied to his wrist. A woman . . . Félicité gasped out loud. Luckily, Madame Rose had gone to the market to pick up some food for dinner and wouldn’t be concerned about her sudden outburst. The woman was Hélène Rousseaux, but only younger, and the boy was her son, Pierre.

She started to reminisce about how she had felt back then. Immediately, intense pressure of bitterness and anger flooded her entire body like an avalanche of snow. Fifteen years ago, the object of her rage was just a little boy—her Pierre, well, not anymore.

At that time, she wanted nothing more than to do to him as she had to the previous Rousseaux heirs. She would force death upon him many years from then when he had a son of his own. At that point, the wicked pattern would start all over again. It would add to her sweet revenge to torment him and offer her more power over the Rousseaux blood running through his veins.

She wondered what she could do in order to start her reign of terror over the little boy. After Hélène had drawn a face on the balloon, and it was named Stephane by the boy Pierre, Félicité stared at it, remembering the homeless man stabbing Stephane multiple times. A feeling of lightness—joy—engulfed her bodiless being. She smiled, glaring at the red balloon. If she could have spit at it, she certainly would have.

The color of the balloon intrigued her. She cocked her head to the side and took in the sight, blinking slowly. The last time she had seen Stephane Rousseaux, he had that same color dripping from his wounds. She longed to bathe in that color with the knowledge that she had caused it to spill from another Rousseaux heir. And this little boy would never know the man she had killed. He
had
to know she was there to bring the same pain and, ultimately, death upon him.

She plotted out what to do to interrupt his euphoric state as she listened to the conversation
between the boy and his mom.

“Oh, do you think he likes his balloon?” the young Pierre asked, gazing at the balloon bobbing up and down in the air.

“Yes, he loves his balloon very much.”

“Good, because I like balloon a lot.” He sickeningly hugged it and slobbered a wet kiss on its side. “It good balloon, Stephane.”

Shattering his little world, Félicité extended her arms out and rammed them into him. Over the years, she had honed in her skill of making things move in the real world. The boy crashed to the pebble-covered pathway. Little Pierre burst in tears and whimpers. Blood rushed in a line of crimson from his nose.

Then she made the balloon explode with a deafening pop. The drawn on face disappeared into a deflated rubbery pile of nothing. The link to the little boy’s father fell, destroyed. Pierre’s happiness now diminished.

Unseen, she knelt beside little Pierre and whispered for the first time in his ear.

You will end up just like your father—dead.

“Mom, did you hear that?” the boy said. His head twisted back and forth, searching the garden. His mom attempted to wipe the blood off his nose with her handkerchief, but it only smeared down his chin.

“Hear what?” she asked, her eyes focusing on her son.

“The voice, it said I will end up like papa. I’m scared, Mama.”

Hélène scanned the area around her, jaw tight. She yelled with a deadly tone, “Don’t you dare! I swear if you do anything to my son, you will regret it. I promise you that.”

The power of Hélène’s words penetrated straight through Félicité’s spirit as if bolts of lightning had struck her. Stumbling from the mother and son, she sprinted away like a horse gone wild. It wasn’t until she reached
Pont Neuf
that she skidding to a stop. She crumpled to the cobblestones where her life had come to an early end.

Mere words had torturous power over her. The words of a mother’s love for her son made Félicité reflect on the countless years that had made up her past. A sudden pang of regret filled her. Her decision not to go to heaven and everything she had done made her want to throw up, but she didn’t have that luxurious option. Her decision was made in order to make Anton de Rousseaux pay for his evil toward her, Claire, and his brother, Martin. When she saw the bright light ushering her to heaven, she decided to stay in the dark. Choosing to be trapped in the unseen void between heaven and earth—mortality and immortality—was her portal to seek out her revenge.

Desire for revenge upon Anton de Rousseaux was stronger than her want of the peace that would be allotted her in heaven. She could care less about peace; she wanted him to pay. And he would pay if it were the last thing she ever did.

She drove him mad over the next two years, haunting him to death. Félicité would repeat her own name hundreds, thousands of times in his ears. He screamed for mercy, but no mercy would come. He hardly slept, hardly ate, and hardly left the confines of his study. Gradually, with her constant haunting, she obtained the epitome of her revenge.

She whispered in his ear,
do
y
ou want to get away from me? Then die the death I died.
Little did he know, death would offer him absolutely no peace.

After he hanged himself from
Pont Neuf
, and his evil spirit rose from his limp body, Félicité brushed up to his side and circled him, her eyes shooting knives into his ethereal being. “Now you know
exactly
what you put me through,” she said with pride in her accomplishment.

“At least I will be free of you now,” he screamed.

He took a step toward her and puffed his chest out as though he was still able to intimidate her. His eyes grew coal black, red outlining the pupil. Flames licked his soul until he started to burn. The agony pictured on his face was sublime to Félicité. The sweetest part of her revenge: to see him cast down to hell. Forever.

“What is happening?” he cried. His soul smelled of singed hair.

“My
pet
, you get to go to HELL!” she shrieked in triumph. Her hand clasped in front of her, an accomplished grin filled her emaciated face. “Where you will have absolutely
no
peace. You will beg for me in seconds.”

“Félicité, no,” he begged. “Help me.”

“I would not help you even if I could do that. The dark master will love
you
as his new
toy. I do not envy you. At. All.” After condescendingly speaking those words, he sizzled out of sight in a puff of smoke left lingering in the air. The last expression she saw on his face was pure, terrorized agony.

Even with the terrible demise of Anton, her desire for revenge wasn’t quenched. It only added fuel to her bitter fire. She resolved that any subsequent male heir of the Rousseaux family would pay because Anton’s corrupted blood flowed in their veins. Soon after the birth of the next born son, another timely death of a Rousseaux heir would take place. Luckily for her, only sons were born. That made her vengeance all the more sweet.

Félicité watched each one of them go into the heavenly light after their deaths. She expected them to follow their forefather to hell; that wasn’t the case, though. Not feeling these men deserved the peace offered in the light, she made her plots more horrific in order to make them pay for their crimes against her. If the Rousseaux’s were let into the light, at least they would live in a nightmarish hell as mortals before they would achieve such a lofty afterlife.

With the thought of
her
crimes against the Rousseaux family, her mind drifted to Pierre Rousseaux. In a swift few minutes, she relived the next fifteen years of his life—her ghostly life—since his father had died.

The weight of living in her own personal hell clawed at her, ripped away at her until she was nothing but an empty shell. Occasionally, during this agonizing time, she would visit Pierre. Watching the way he generously treated his mother brought tears to her eyes. He was nothing like Anton. Where Anton was cruel, Pierre shed love. Where Anton was full of pride, Pierre was humble. One was the pitch dark of night and the other was the bright, noonday sun. 

Thinking of Pierre and his good-natured ways brought a stabbing ache into her heart. She desired to go back in time and see the good in the other Rousseaux heirs. The hundreds of years of shattered hearts and lives could have been avoided.

It took Pierre to help her realize this, and that made her
spiral even farther into her endless pit of despair. If she could have killed herself, she would have to end the torture that attacked her every second of the day. Every ounce of the misery that caved in on her existence she knew she deserved ten-fold. And the more time she spent around Pierre, the harder it was for her to be separated from him. She hadn’t felt these kinds of emotions in so many years. It tested her to the point of insanity to decipher these foreign feelings.

On Pierre’s seventeenth birthday, Félicité watched as a small group of family and friends praised him for his life and the goodness he had always shown them. At that time, the strength of her feelings was as deep as the ocean and undeniable. She had fallen in love with the present Rousseaux heir.

Over the hundreds of years of her afterlife, her heart had hardened into a solid rock, letting nothing in or out. Love was something she could vaguely remember. She had loved her father and Claire, but love for them seemed different. Her feelings for Pierre were unquenchable and often times unbearable—a sweet longing lathered with tenderness that constantly consumed her thoughts.

A couple times she had whispered her feelings of adoration to Pierre, but he shook the thoughts off as though he were crazy. It was useless. Félicité found herself stuck in a void between heaven and hell without any way out. And she was madly in love with the boy she once thought she wanted to kill: a Rousseaux heir.

Last Dream

That evening, Félicité slept and remembered everything else.

Félicité had to escape this in between world, somehow. She ached to be freed from the existence she now loathed. And with a yearning desire, she had to be with Pierre more than anything else. She decided prayer might be her only option. Well before dawn, she knelt on a grassy hill on the outskirts of Paris, praying to whoever could release her from her personal hell—a debilitating disease eating away at her soul one fiber at a time.

After what felt like a century, a light appeared before her, making her cover her eyes as not to
be blinded by the intense rays as bright as the noon day sun.

After she acclimated to the new sense of illumination, a man emerged. She knelt at his feet and sobbed. “I have done unthinkable things to good people. I am so sorry for what I have done.” She tugged at his white trousers. “There is no way I can ever make things right. I do not deserve forgiveness, but I beg you take me away from this hell.”

The man placed his hand on her shoulder and asked her to stand. An instant rush of warmth enveloped her darkened soul. She never wanted the feeling to leave. She stood, being pulled into his bosom.

“Félicité, you will have a second chance at the life that was stolen from you.”

She backed away to look him in his eyes and recognized him. “Papa, is that you?” Tears misted her eyes; she rubbed them away as not to muddle her vision.

Her father cupped her cheek with his large hand. He responded with a gentle voice. “Félicité, my daughter. I have missed you so much. I am so sorry for placing you with the de Rousseaux family.” His face crumpled into a frown. “But I have felt sorrow over your decision more than anything.”

Félicité let her face fall into her papa’s palm, and her lip quivered uncontrollably. Stabbing shame saturated her to the core because she had disappointed her father—the one thing she had never wanted to do. But, his eyes penetrated her with peace and the purest love. Pride for her decision to escape the life she had dug for herself overcame any disappointment the man may have felt for her.

In the midst of her racing thoughts that she didn’t deserve a second chance, he spoke as though reading her mind. “Félicité, I know you think you do not deserve a second chance at life, but you do.” He took her by the shoulders, gazing like an angel into her eyes. “You will be given a second chance; however, you must right your wrongs against the de Rousseaux family. Do you understand?”

“I failed you miserably once. I will not fail you again, Papa.” She fought the burning heat rising in her throat while proclaiming her promise.

“Dearest Félicité.” A trickle of tears rolled down his cheeks. “You must forgive yourself as well.”

“No, not after what I have done.” She moaned and fell to the ground in a heap, shivers prickling at her intangible skin.

Her father knelt beside her and brushed her hair out of her tear-stained face. “You can and will. I have faith that all will turn out well. Pierre . . .” Her father saying that particular name made flutters spread throughout her stomach. “I know you love him. This will be difficult for him but never lose faith that he may forgive you.”

“Why would he ever want to forgive me after what I have done? Papa, I made someone kill his father.” She snuggled into his lap, sighing in relief of being there again.

“He has a pure heart, he may find it in his heart to overlook these sins and embrace you regardless.”

“
May
?”

“I say ‘
may’
because he has a choice. He can choose you or not, that is his right.” His words were true. Pierre had the right to make his own choice. She only hoped he would choose her over bitterness. Take it from her, being bitter only led to misery.

He lifted her chin, looking at her with his stunning gaze. “I love you and am so pleased you have finally chosen the path of light.” He lifted her up until they both stood face-to-face. “You must return to the place where you died,
Pont Neuf
, and jump.”

“Jump?” She blinked several times, unsure if she heard correctly.

“Yes, jump off the bridge. I know it sounds strange, but it is the only way.” He continued in a serious tone, “Félicité, when you live again you will not remember anything of your first life, your death, or your deeds while here in the darkness. Little by little, through dreams and visions I will send you, you will remember all that happened in your past. I assure you it will hurt a great deal, but you must make things right in any way you can.”

Félicité thought of Pierre and wondered if she would ever see him again.

“You wonder about Pierre, right?”

“Yes.” Her mind drifted for a second to his handsome face that did resemble Anton’s, but Pierre’s shone welcoming and kind.

“He will save you,” he said.

She leaned her head to the side as her eyebrows pinched together. How could Pierre save
her
of all people?

“You will begin to feel for him as you do now only more deeply. I reiterate it will be difficult for him once he understands your past. But, remember there is always hope. Now, dear, you must get there before the sun rises. Otherwise, you will not get your second chance. Go, my daughter. Go!” He said this and then he was gone; scenery left where he had been.