Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : YoungAdult

Kundalini and Garrett entered the small, lone coffee shop simultaneously but from different entrances. They looked at one another and Garrett blushed, seeing the young woman in her raw glory but Kundalini didn’t seem bothered by his nudity.

Confusion was upon his face as he watched her take a seat. Sitting near her with one barstool in between them, he laid his forearms on the countertop and leaned forward. Kundalini kept her hands in her lap, paying no attention to the man.

“I’m-” he paused. His mind drew a blank as he tried to remember his name. “Hmph…”

Kundalini looked at him but only for a mere second before a young woman approached them from the opposing side of the counter.

“Hello, my name is Ellanor and I’ll be serving you for now. Is there anything I can get you?”

Kundalini’s head moved side to side as she didn’t utter a single word. Garrett, however, smiled and raised his hand up. “I’ll take a black coffee. Do you have any food here?”

“Sure,” Ellanor smiled. “I’m not sure what good it will do you, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

Pouring the coffee into a white cup, Ellanor turned and as she placed it in front of Garrett she explained. “You ask out of habit, not out of need. There’s no need for food in here. You don’t get hungry.”

He raised a brow and smirked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She said there is no need to have hunger when there are more important things to understand and learn. Maybe later on in your time you’ll have the need for hunger, but not now.” Ellanor leaned against the counter behind her. Her own bare bottom cold for the slight moment and warming just as quick. “Before you ask who ‘She’ is just know you’ll meet Her soon.”

“Jeez, you’re a nut job, too? I just put away this lady who-”

“I’m aware of what you’ve done, sir. I’m aware of what everyone has done when they come through here. Sadly, you two are the first two in a long time. So I need a bit of help figuring you out.” Her eyes turned toward Kundalini. “I can’t read you, Ms.”

Kundalini didn’t budge. The look on her face was almost emotionless but her eyes were glazed with her tears.

“Oh, honey, you remember it?”

Kundalini’s eyes closed and she nodded in silence. Ellanor gave the young woman a few napkins and turned back to Garrett. “You don’t look like you remember. I wonder what you’ll be doing.”

“What?”

“Not Death… no… that position is filled already.”

“Excuse me?”

“Time?” Ellanor’s eyes  squinted as she studied the man’s physique. “Maybe you’ll be-”

“That’s enough Ella.” A feminine, seductive voice came from the entrance Garrett walked through. “He’ll be what we call… temptation. Or some people call it Devil.”

Garrett’s eyes opened wide but not out of shock. He came to the realization that he was in the wrong place. That he was surrounded by the crazies his friend Allan warned him about.

“I gotta go. Thanks for the coffee.” He stepped back and as he reached where he had come through, his hand searched for the knob. It wasn’t there anymore. In its place was an old frame with a news clipping in it.

“Garrett,” the mystery woman stood and fixed her red dress, “may you read the paper, please?”

“What happened to the-”

“Read the paper, Garrett.”

The man turned, reading to himself first and then reading aloud. “Officer Garrett Otega Truman served four years as a Sayreville, New Jersey policeman. He was a good man and an even better leader…”

The others listened in while the former officer read his own obituary. Afterwards, he turned around and looked to them. “Is this some sick joke? What the hell is-”

“You woke up in the middle of winter. Everyone believes you died in a fire and that you died chasing an elderly lady through the woods. Tell me, Garrett, what was the last thing you remember? Before the freezing cold and nakedness?”


He stayed quiet, not answering the question but searching for it in his own mind. The woman in red turned to Kundalini. “What about you, beautiful? Do you remember what happened before waking up?”

Kundalini nodded. She hadn’t moved so much but Ellanor still studied her. “I remember bits and pieces. Small parts. Edgard. Ubuntu. There was even a little girl, but…”

Ellanor stood up straight. “But what?”

“But she wasn’t a child.” The young woman looked at the woman in red. “You… you were there. I saw you.”

The woman nodded faintly. “As you get to be around me, you’ll see more and more of your memories.”

“Excuse me,” Garrett interrupted. “I hate to break up this weird festival of-”

“A festival!” Kundalini stood up and searched for the doors but the woman in red placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I have to find-”

“You won’t find her.”

“But we both-”

“She didn’t see me.”

“But this is Heaven. Isn’t it?”

Ellanor looked down and uncrossed her arms. “Sweetie, Heaven doesn’t exist. This is another dimension. Whoever you’re looking for saw someone (or something) else.”

Garrett rolled his eyes in the background as the women before him discussed what he didn’t understand. “I hate to be a bother, but I’m a little confused. Who the hell are all of you and where am I? I know I’m not dead. I’m here, staring all of you in the eyes. Where the hell am I?”

The woman in red stood up and nodded. “You’re no longer living in the dimension your soul chose. Instead, you’re here. With me. In a brand new dimension that needs to be put together. Ellanor, here, she’s my wife. Kundalini, she is like you. Except when she died, she died knowing there was more than the average world out there. Out of the many Grim Reapers out to get her, she saw me.”

The man looked displeased with the answer he was given. “So you’re the Grim Reaper?”

“Not ‘the’ Grim Reaper. I am ‘a’ Grim Reaper. We collect souls and we start various dimensions for the lost souls in some places. Sadly, you didn’t have a choice. That’s why we didn’t meet beforehand. I apologize for that.”

Ellanor and Kundalini watched Garrett’s disbelief. He sighed and sat in a booth against the darkened window in the front of the coffee shop.

“So why can’t I remember how I died? If I’m dead or soul or whatever you want to call it, where is God? Why doesn’t He tell me himself? Why send a Reaper? Why even send me here in a damn coffee shop? And the fuck are we naked?”

Ellanor spoke up before the woman in red. “You can’t remember how you died because you were marked.” The word ‘marked’ repeated in his head like a broken record as she continued. “Death is not an end and in our dimension we see it that way. There is no such thing as an end, just an alternate direction. God, God doesn’t actually exist in the way we thought, either.”

Garrett shook his head. “We’re not about to have a religious debate.”

“You would lose. There is nothing to debate, Garrett. There is no God. Just us.” She pointed to the four of them. “We are the creators and destroyers of everything in existence. The only thing we didn’t create is the beginning.”

Kundalini’s attention went to the woman in red as the two spoke.

“As for sending the Grim Reapers, they pick and choose the souls they want to begin the next realms and those dimensions within it.”

“Realms and dimensions are the same thing, you twit.” The woman in red gave a soft smile.

“Speak ill of my companion and I will, in fact, lock your soul away.”

“Whatever. My statement still stands.”

Kundalini then spoke to Garrett to correct him. “Realms hold dimensions the way space holds the Earth.”

He rolled his eyes. “And why a coffee shop? Why not some place in the clouds or in hell?”

“People don’t always know they’re dead.” Ellanor sighed. “Coffee, cigarettes, food, other pass times… they calm their bodies down just enough for the person to not harm us. It slowly opens their mind without harming them.” She laughed a little. “I first got here and Eve showed me the way back.”

“Eve?”

The woman in red raised her hand. “That’d be me.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m the one the Bible mentions. The ones you humans believe gave some guy named Adam an apple.”

“Well that’s the truth.”

“Guys just want an excuse in why they put in half the effort. There are plenty of male humans with Adam’s apples that are just as awake as women. Do you really think it ends there?”

“Well… someone’s a bit pissy.”

Ellanor giggled and Eve sighed. She stood and held her hands out to both Kundalini and Garrett. “There is a journey ahead of you both. You’re going to be the good,” she looked to Kunda, “and the bad.” She looked toward Garrett who scowled.

“Why do I have to be bad?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” She took hold of Kundalini’s hand and waited for Garrett to join. He was hesitant, but eventually he did take her hand.

“Let me guess… we get magick powers?”

“Not exactly. You’re still a child.”

Ellanor smiled. “I love this part.”

Garrett and Kundalini looked around and within that blink of an eye, both of them were looking up to the woman in red. The innocence running through their minds.

Eve looked toward Ellanor. “We’re waiting for one more. They will be unstable. Prepare for them.”

“Them?”

Eve nodded. “Multiple genders.”

“Is this...?”

“It is.”

Ellanor smiled wide, running into the back and squealing. The now children were holding tightly onto Eve’s hands and watched as a door appeared before them. As they walked through, they felt the warmth and the fruity breeze that flowed by them.

The sun was comfortable and the huge garden was full of life. The coffee shop door closed behind them and Eve knelt down to the children’s level.

“Today, you play. Tomorrow, we learn.”