The human life, in Greek mythology, was told to have four pairs of hands and feet. Due to Zeus' fear of his own head, thinking that these beings could someday covet his crown, he split them in half. The myth expressed how humans have to find their other piece to be whole again. But what if their other half was not human, at all?
"She's breathing!" Yvette heard a voice as if it was echoing around her ears. The darkness was still there, but that void did not seem the same as what she had just felt. She somehow felt more...human. She felt merely like a spirit a while ago.
She felt her chest moving rhythmically along a human weight. A faint pump from her heart as she tried to figure what it was. But she couldn't possibly do that with her eyes completely shut. No matter how hard she lift her lids up, her lashes remained glued together.
What's going on? What is...happening?
She felt like she was banging on a glass door, yelping out loud with no one hearing anything. Nothing was happening no matter how hard she was trying.
Eventually, she just gave up. If there was nothing happening, then nothing was bound to happen at all.
Am I in the purgatory?
Well, she was immediately taken aback that thought when she was pulled out of her imaginary. Where she was, scorched her almost til death as if she was to hell. It was killing her. After she had just awoken from that vision, Yvette couldn't fully grasp another reality after.
"Yvette! Yvette!" It was her sister's voice. She scoffed to herself. She's still nagging even when I'm dead.
"Yvette, wake up!" Lorelai called out loud, the sound just seemed to keep bouncing on and off from Yvette's eardrums. "Put more pressure into your palms, McKinney!"
The voice of Sister McKinney grunted. "I'm trying...don't you put pressure on me! I'm trying hard for the same person who mocked the Lord!"
Lorelai sighed. "Yvette! Yvette! You have to wake up!"
The nun kempt pumping her palms against Yvette's chest harder. Her eyebrows almost protruding together. Sister McKinney bit her lips, getting a little frustrated by the situation. There should be no way a sinner like this should die in the convent, she thought.
"You gotta wake up, Yvette or I'd have the devils coming after you..." She threatened. Yvette felt her heart dangle a bit, hopping up against the walls of her ribs. Her eyes grew wide, gasping for air, and gagging all the water which she had drunk when she was in the verge of her drowning.
"Yvette! Oh, praise the Lord!" Lorelai exclaimed, claiming Yvette to her chest, embracing her tightly. "I thought..."
A rough, relieved sigh departed from Lorelai's lips. Sister McKinney shook her head, evenly displaying disappointment and relief across her apertures. Perhaps she was disappointed about the fact that Yvette did not listen to her, at all. But relieved to have seen Lorelai relieved.
"Where's the young boy?" Yvette mentioned. Lorelai went blank immediately wondering what she meant. "What boy?"
"The boy!" she pressed, and withdrew once she realized the hike of her voice. "I mean...there was a boy here. He was the one who told me that the priest was drowning."
"But-" Lorelai paused. Confused, she glanced to the other nun. They both shook their heads expressing their lack of knowledge about what Yvette meant.
Lorelai caressed Yvette's head a small smile crept to her face. "Yvette there was no boy here."
"But you could see wet marks of his little feet beside the pool." She pointed to nothing.
"Yvette there was nothing and no one when we got here," Lorelai calmly explained. Her sister must be hysterical and in deep trauma after the experience. She had almost launched her foot toward Johnny's gate and that was her biggest fear.
"I swear I saw him! He even said that God was a human!"
Sister McKinney scoffed. "Whoever that kid was, he still need to learn about God."
"Oh, shut up, McKinney," Lorelai shushed. She did not ask for this lady to be around just to vie humbling people. Yes, she had deep knowledge about the church and the Supreme, but Lorelai knew that having learned of everything gives you right to be blasphemous over nothing.
"Are you sure you saw a boy, Yvette?" Lorelai softly voiced.
"I was certain. He was just there!"
Lorelai let her palm run above Yvette's head. "Can you tell me what he looked like?"
Yvette immediately came to a realization. There was no way to describe the child in a realistic light, she thought.
"He..." she stammered. "He was on a polo shirt...err...he had tiny hands and feet...He was not tall enough for the pool...I- I don't know."
Lorelai patted her back. "Deep breath, Yvette. Deep breath."
"He did not look like anything." Her face was sorrowful for no reason. The salty tears started filling up the corners of both her eyes.
"What do you mean?" Sister McKinney furrowed her brows. "He did not look like anything."
Her eyes rolled from Lorelai to Sister McKinney's again and again. "Lorie..."
"Yes?"
Yvette clasped Lorelai's arm tightly. "He- He did not have a face. I couldn't remember...it was pitch black..."
Her eyeballs shook disastrously. Yvette was no person to have shallow eyes but before she could have possibly known, tears prepped to fall down her cheeks. The acerbic glint from her eyes was replaced by a sorrowful plea. No, she can't be. It can't be.
"We have to get you out here first, Yvette."
Yvette nodded hysterically, she was stuck in a wide-eyed expression, fear shook her usually smug expression.
—
"You will have to consult with Father Conrado every week. I was told that the child you saw may not be a human, despite being harmless at first, things may go unprecedented after. I want you to comply with that." Lorelai placed her rainbow-colored coffee cup on the glass table in that small living room. Yvette was sitting unfazed, somewhat still a little confused with the situation.
"I didn't know what happened to me, but I think I saw something...someone," she mumbled underneath her own voice.
"Yes? Are you saying something?" Lorelai leaned her ear to her.
"Ah. No, I was just talking to myself."
Yvette stood out of nowhere, footing closer to her sister who was watching Sister McKinney walk around with a few flower pots in the yard.
"There was a strange sign that grew from here," Yvette brought up to her sister, Lorelai. She seemed a little snapped out from her dazed off self just from a while ago. The twin's face contorted into worry frantically reacting to her sequence.
"Where?" Yvette immediately raised the right side of her shirt showing her skinny, slender waist. Lorelai kept her eyes close to the surface of her sister's skin observing the mark which seemed to be ink permeating on the tenderness of her flesh. "It's like a bruise — even a tattoo. Are you sure it's not a tattoo you forgot you had?"
Yvette clicked her tongue shrugging off Lorelai's idea. "If it were, it would've hurt."
"So much for talking devils." Sister McKinney nodded her head in disapproval, Yvette rolling her eyes. "She must've have been heard by someone from the pool. I told you devils don't take your word lightly."
It all sounded as if it was some mere sarcasm, but Yvette started to receive the nun's words than push it off like she normally would. She responded to McKinney's ire jest with the same sarcasm she always had growing up. "I thought going inside your monastery could get my sins purged?"
"You wish," Sister McKinney spoke chewing on peeled apples with her hands clenching on to extra pieces. "I wish devils live in apples so you'd be full of them, you devil-talking celibate!"
Sister McKinney slyly smiled, walking away from the situation. Lorelai speculated Yvette's body during the commotion. "You would need some cleansing spell from Father Arnaud, this may become temporary if not fended off. You should also start praying and do some meditation with me to help weaken whatever came after you."
Yvette groaned, bashfully unwilling to do as she was told. "Are you pushing me to be a nun, too?"
"No, but if you were just careful with your words and stop speaking your mind, this something wouldn't have caught on to you." Lorelai rubbed her temple in disbelief, mimicking the reactions when humans feel tension on their forehead when under pressure. "And you did not just speak that way once, but thrice! Oh, how could the Lord forgive you."
"You even jumped into the pool when you were clearly told not to," Lorelai rolled off the words on her tongue.
Yvette once again shrugged. "I doubt the devil was doing it for harm's sake."
Lorelai looked confused at her sister's carelessness toward such matter. It could've been serious but she could only keep clinging to her sarcasm as if it's the last thing that would save her in the universe. Yvette's eyes wondered around pulling away from Lorelai, her eyes toward the kitchen counter where a bunch of grapes and apples stood inside a white basket. There were still apple skins peeled left above just beside the basket which Sister McKinney failed to clean after.
"She could've just cleaned this." Slowly, a cold, chilly wind blew behind her neck causing chills on her body. She could have only shrugged it off as she tried to fend off the feeling by brushing both her arms with her hot, sweaty palms. A looming shadow began to be chased by her sights, glued toward the staircase although there was no one in the room moving, not even the rays of light could explain how the shadow was pitch black despite being against the bulb.
"Fuck, speak of the devil," she cursed under her already fast paced breathing.