Suspended - Part XV
“Suspended” is a fictional story about a New York family — husband, wife and college-aged son — who’ve become disconnected from one another and lost their sense of purpose until a beautiful young woman who claims she’s a hands-on-healer enters their lives and shakes everything up.
THIS IS PART 15 of a FIFTEEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15
Image: Olya Kobruseva
In the early hours of the morning Fee tiptoed into Danny's room. She was ghostly in loose white yoga clothes. Her pale hair flowed around her shoulders. She bent over him. “You're going to be fine,” she whispered. Her sweet smell woke him along with her voice.
“Huh?”
She pressed a palm against his forehead, where his third eye was supposed to be, let it rest there for a moment. Heat trickled into him. He felt it like honey, like the finest mist of rain, like melting butter, like fog clearing out of his brain. He didn't know how much time passed before she removed her hand and floated from the room, cloud-like in her white clothes. It was a scene he thought he dreamed. In the morning he barely remembered it. But when he got up and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth he saw that the futon had been transformed back into a couch. Fee's sheets were in the laundry basket. Her candles were gone, along with everything else that spoke of her: teapot, hairbrush, sandals, scent of roses, amber, jade.
In the kitchen his parents talked in low voices and drank coffee. When he walked in they looked up at him with silly expressions on their faces. He felt a silly expression erupt on his own face. A blush that seeped across his neck as if he'd discovered something he wasn't quite supposed to know. On the stove the kettle hummed. He made himself a cup of tea and sat down with them. It all seemed so obvious now, the state of sleeplessness and despair, the dislocation, the terror of being crushed beneath his childish worries that led him to copy a phrase from a book that led him right here to this moment of healing and happiness.
Cover Image: Cottonbro (Pexels)