Going Lucid (7 page)

With
that, the beast fell unconscious and Julius jumped off its back. Malakha
hesitantly approached him and the unconscious bird.

“What
did you do to it?”

Julius
didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “Are you always this hardheaded?”

“Yes,”
Malakha admitted. “But this time not necessarily on purpose.”

Julius
sighed, looking past Malakha and into the distance. Before she could follow his
gaze to see what he was looking at, he looked back at her and said, “We’ve got
to get you out of here.”

Malakha
rolled her eyes. “I told you—“

“I know
what you told me. And I’m going to try to help you,” Julius said. “Let’s assume
that this works the same way it would work if someone from Hell made a
connection through a crack in the divide. Technically, this is just a temporary
form for you. Your real body is back across the divide, so somewhere in that
head of yours, you should have some awareness of your world. Can you sense it?”

Malakha
pressed her lips together and tried to tune out the noises of the wasteland.
There wasn’t much noise to begin with, only the soft whines of the bird. She
waited for a while, to see if she could sense anything happening in her world.
After a while she shook her head.

“It’s
not working.”

“Try
again. And find something to focus on and see if you hear background noise or
something.”

Malakha
sighed. The only thing there was for her to focus on was Julius’ breathing.
Well there was also the bird’s whining, but it annoyed her and broke her focus
more than anything. As she focused on the soft barely perceptible sound of
Julius inhaling and exhaling she began to hear the background noise. It
reminded her a little of being in the farmer’s market back home. It was very
loud, but after many visits she had learned to ignore it, made it part of the
scenery and atmosphere that she could overlook because it just was. Then she
heard Sabrina’s voice.

“Malakha!
Malakha! Malak, she’s not waking up. I knew
we shouldn’t have let her take that stupid drug!”

“Sabrina?”
Malakha muttered trying to focus even more on the voice.

“Who?”
Julius asked.

Malakha
didn’t answer him, only focused even more on the voice until it became clearer
and sounded less dreamy. In the process, Julius’ voice, which had been clear at
first, began to muffle and sound surreal. Then the world began to blur again,
and Malakha saw her own world beginning to appear on top of Hell until finally,
her world took over completely and she was back in the van, blinking wearily at
Sabrina and Malak, both of whom had been trying to shake her awake.

Sabrina
wrapped her arms around her and let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank
God you’re okay,” she said and then pulled away. “What happened?”

Malakha
blinked, looking at herself to find that she was back in her school uniform,
and Julius’ trench coat was gone. She then looked back up at Malak and Sabrina

“I went
to Hell.”

Malak
and Sabrina both reared back like they had been slapped.

“Say
that again?” Malak asked.

“I went
to Hell,” Malakha repeated, not quite able to believe it herself.

“Hell?”
Sabrina asked slowly. “Malakha, you don’t believe there’s a Hell.”

“No,”
Malakha said. “I said I don’t believe it’s a place you go when you die. I
didn’t die. I went to Hell.”

Malakha
then looked at her right hand, which was clutching something smooth and cool.
She held out her fist to Malak and Sabrina and then opened it to reveal the silver
pocketknife Julius had given her, the knife that hadn’t been in her hand when
she first went under.

“What’s
that?” Malak asked.

“I
brought it with me from Hell,” Malakha replied.

All three
of them were silent, not knowing what to say as they stared at the only proof
Malakha had that she had indeed traveled to another world and hadn’t had some
strange dream.

Finally,
it was Malak who said, “Well this gives entirely new meaning to going to Hell
and back.”

Chapter
Seven

Sadist

Malakha
was really going to have to take some time out of her schedule to call her
grandfather so that she could beg and plead to him to convince her parents that
she didn’t need these “confessions” sessions. At this point, nothing anyone
said was going to make her believe in any kind of religion or God for that
matter. Couldn’t she still be a good person without all that? Regardless, she
wasn’t being as difficult with the priest today, settling on short simple answers
so that they would move along through the session.

“Tell
me Malakha, is there a particular reason why you feel so strongly against
religion?
An event in your past that may have skewed your
perception?”

Malakha
rolled her eyes at that. Why couldn’t people just understand that there wasn’t
a reason that she didn’t believe in any of this stuff? There was no trauma that
made her a cynic or a disbeliever in the good of the world and God’s grace or
whatever they wanted her to believe. She just didn’t. But they would never
accept that answer. There had to be a reason.

“Malakha.”

Malakha
groaned and shifted in her chair. “I keep telling you! I keep telling everyone!
Nothing traumatic happened to me in my past! I was never lacking love or care
or the things I needed. No one ever tried to hurt me. The most traumatic thing
that ever happened to me was Eliza attacking me yesterday, which has done
nothing to change my stance any further to the left or right on what I believe
in by the way. I just don’t believe in any of it!”

Malakha
exhaled sharply before sitting back in her chair. She hadn’t meant to explode
like that, but she had better things to do than repeat the same answers to the
same questions over and over again.

“I
think you’re a little frustrated Malakha.”

“What
gave that away?” Malakha asked crossing her arms.

“You’ve
had a tiring and traumatic weekend. Why don’t we cut it short today?”

Malakha
dramatically stood up while saying, “Finally.” Then she rushed out the room and
headed for the dining hall where lunch was taking place.

Malak
was once again sitting at her and Sabrina’s table, but again the nuns said
nothing. In fact, unlike last week, the nuns were hardly paying attention to
Malak. Malakha guessed it was because he was hunched over a book.

“So,”
Malakha began as she sat at the table, not even thinking about going to get any
lunch, “Did you all find anything?”

“Only
that this stupid pocketknife is really sharp,” Sabrina said taking out the
silver blade to illustrate, careful to keep it out the view of any nuns that
might be paying attention. Then she showed her left thumb, the top of which was
wrapped in a band-aid.

“Nothing besides that?”
Malakha asked.

“There’s
nothing Malakha,” Malak said closing the book he had been reading.
“Nothing that we have access to anyway.”

“Have
you tried Google yet?” Malakha asked.

“Not
yet. It’s kind of hard to use a computer during classes without getting
caught,” Malak said.

Malakha
reached in her book bag and pulled out something smooth, thin, and black. She
handed it to Malak and said, “Use my Kindle. The teachers usually don’t see
that if you sit it on top of an open book.”

Malak
looked at the tablet and then slid it into his book bag before the nuns noticed
she had given it to him.

“Hopefully
I’ll have something by dinner,” said Malak.

Sabrina,
who was still inspecting the knife said, “You know one of the monks or the nuns
might know something.”

“I
thought about that, but which one of them in their right mind is going to tell
me about something like that without strapping my butt down in a chair to be
exorcised,” Malakha replied.

“You
don’t have to tell them that your soul travelled somewhere, and you met some
hot guy that told you it was Hell.”

Malak
rolled his eyes in obvious annoyance. “Do you have to keep emphasizing that
this Julius guy was hot?”

“Yes,”
Sabrina replied. “Do you know how rare it is for Malakha to admit to something
like that? It takes someone extremely good looking guy to cause even a blip on
her radar!”

Malak
grinned at Malakha and asked, “Am I on your radar?”

Malakha
shrugged.
“Wouldn’t know.
I’ve never seen you out your
uniform.”

“Yes
you have,” Malak said dryly. “Recently you have. At the rave and when we were
playing football and you stormed onto the field to talk to me?”

“Forgive
me for being traumatized about going to Hell for the first time and hearing
laughter,” Malakha deadpanned.

Sabrina
rolled her eyes and said, “My point is that you don’t have to tell anyone you
went to hell. Tell them you were just curious or something.”

Malakha
gave her best friend a wry look. “Me?
Curious?
About
something that seemingly has to do with religion? Have you forgotten that I
usually run in the other direction if I can avoid stuff like that?”

“Yeah,
but you could say you were forced to,” Sabrina replied.

“Forced?”

“Yeah.
You could say it’s related to your punishment, with
the exorcisms or something. No one would think that’s too odd, especially if
you went with that air of wanting to know so that you can prove someone wrong
like you do in class,” Sabrina added.

Malakha
looked at Sabrina and then gasped.
“Exorcisms!”

With
that, she stood up and put her book bag on her shoulder.

“Where
are you going?”

“I know
who I can ask.”

Sabrina
looked puzzled, while Malak only sighed as though he had long grown used to
Malakha’s sometimes impulsive and unpredictable behavior.

“Who?”
Sabrina asked.

“John!”

“But
you haven’t eaten anything.”

“I had
breakfast. I won’t die.”

“We
have a class in thirty minutes!”

“It’s
math. I have the highest grade point average in the class.”

“You
have the highest grade point average in your math class?” Malak asked.

“Yeah.
You just see if you can find anything on Google.
We’ll talk at dinner!”

Malakha then
rushed out the dining hall, headed to the other side of the east part of the
gothic building to where the church was.

******

The
hallway that connected the school to the church on the other side wasn’t a path
she took often; only during the required services on Sunday and sometimes she
didn’t go to those. As she turned the corner to enter the hallway though, she
ran into someone coming out the hall. That someone was Brother Micha. Malakha
rolled her eyes, head falling back in frustration because there was no way he
wasn’t going to hinder her from seeing John.

“Malakha,”
he
said,
a frown on his face. “What are you doing
here?”

“Going
to see a friend,” Malakha replied.

“A friend?”

“One of the monks.
Brother John.”

“Aren’t
you supposed to be in class?”

“It’s
important.”

“Then
maybe I can help.”

“I
doubt it,” Malakha said trying to walk past him, but he grabbed her shoulder to
stay her.

“Try
me.”

Malakha
sighed. The longer she argued with Brother Micha, the more time she lost and
she really wanted to see if John knew anything about the hell she had visited,
the hell that wasn’t a pit of burning fire but a barren wasteland.

“I was
going to ask something about the exorcism,” Malakha gave.

“Oh?”
Brother Micha asked, looked pleasantly surprised by her admission.

“Yeah.
I… I was doing a little research and was just
wondering where exactly the demons came from, the ones that possess people.”

Brother
Micha smiled a little. “I would think the answer to that is obvious Malakha.”

“Yeah.
Okay. So let’s suppose they do come from ‘Hell’. How
is it that they can come here into our plane to possess people, but we can’t go
into their plane and possess
them.
Doesn’t
make any sense to me.”

“Because it’s a different plane of existence where the physical
body cannot dwell; one where only spirit can cross over into, which is why no
living person has ever been to Hell or Heaven.”

Malakha
resisted the urge to outright laugh at him. If only he knew how wrong he was.

“Is
there a way besides dying that a person could cross the realms and maybe still
be alive?” Malakha asked.

Brother
Micha gave her a weird look, and Malakha hoped that he didn’t think she was a
witch or something trying to meet with Satan, her master, while at the same
time remaining in the physical world.

“Unless
you know of a way that one can detach their soul from their body, no.”

Malakha
stopped walking at that, turning all the way to Brother Micha. “Then how else
does one sell their soul to the devil?”

“People
like that aren’t truly alive. They’re just puppets then. On the outside, they
look human, like our friends, our family, but they’re not,” Brother Micha said
simply.

“Puppets,”
Malakha muttered to herself, her mind going back to what Julius told her about
possession. How it wasn’t as much possession as it was guiding a host through
the power of suggestive words through a crack in the invisible divide between
their worlds.

“Does
that help?” Brother Micha asked.

“Yes,”
Malakha said though internally she wasn’t sure. It kind of made sense if she
thought about it in the way Julius had explained it to her, but none of it
still explained how she was able to cross the divide into Hell and be alive at
the same time. She was still missing something.

“Good.
Then I’ll escort you to class.”

Malakha
held in a groan, but decided that it wasn’t worth getting into trouble again to
still go talk to John anyway. So she resigned herself to being escorted to
class by Brother Micha. She arrived exactly a minute before class started and
opted to sit in the back row. As the teacher began the lesson and turned to the
board to explain a concept to them, Malakha wished she hadn’t given her Kindle
to Malak to use. She was only half paying attention, day dreaming really, when
she noticed Sabrina in the second row turn to look at her while the teacher
wasn’t looking. She was making movements with her thumb, like she was dialing a
phone number or something.

Malakha
furrowed her eyebrows and then looked down at her bag that was sitting on the
floor. She slipped her hand in the side pocket and held the phone in her lap,
careful to appear like she was following along with the teacher in her book.

I
thought you weren’t coming to class
.

Malakha
looked back to the front of the class to make sure the teacher still wasn’t
paying attention before sending back,
Micha caught me. He tried to help.

Oh
,
came
Sabrina’s reply.

Malakha
looked up, pretending to nod in understanding or agreement as the teacher
turned back around to look at the class. When the man looked back down at his
math book, she replied,
He wasn’t any help.

Sabrina
replied so quickly that Malakha didn’t even see her send the text.

So
what now?

Malakha’s
fingers hovered over the keypad of the phone for a while. She wasn’t exactly
sure what came now and began to text Sabrina as much. She was halfway through
texting “Idk” when she heard the laughter. It was faint at first, like someone
was trying to contain their amusement. Then it got louder, like the person no
longer cared about restraining it anymore. The phone lit up a second later.

What?
Sabrina replied and Malakha saw that she had accidently sent the text with
one character.

Malakha
didn’t answer, more focused on the laughter and where it was coming from. The
phone lit up in her hands again

You’ve
got that look on your face.

Malakha
guessed it was that spooked look Sabrina kept talking about.

It’s
laughing again. I need to get out of here.

Malakha
didn’t wait for a reply, instead beginning to roll her left shoulder back and
then forward and making a hissing sound as she did so. It wasn’t loud, but in
combination with her fidgeting, the teacher noticed.

“Is
something wrong?” he asked looking at her.

Malakha
rubbed her shoulder, trying to give the teacher the best fake look of
discomfort she could without seeming dramatic.

“I’m
not sure. It’s my shoulder. The doctor said I might feel some pain, but not
like this and my pain medicine is in my room,” Malakha said.

“Your shoulder?”

“I had
a… little altercation yesterday,” Malakha said and the teacher seemed to
realize what she was talking about.

“You’re
dismissed to go to the infirmary then,” the teacher said.

“No. I
just need my pain medicine. It’s in my room.”

The
teacher nodded and Malakha stood up, trying to appear like she was struggling
to figure out a way to carry her bag and massage her shoulder at the same time.

“Sabrina.
Would you help her?”

Sabrina
nodded to the teacher, gathering her things. Then she went to where Malakha was
and picked up her backpack. Malakha led the way out the room and when they were
far enough away from class, Sabrina looked at her.

“Your
shoulder doesn’t really hurt,” the redhead said and then added in uncertainty,
“Does it?”