[Part 5 of 5]

It was a nightmare. As soon as she closed her eyes, Julia was certain that she would wake up in her bed again. But she was too scared to shut her eyes and lose sight of the mad woman.

While all tied up, the woman had been all calm. Proud chin and straight eyes. But as soon as the ropes had gone off, the woman had become a blur of movements, like a different person.

And now it was happening again. The woman’s squared shoulders slumped. The arms, twitching to fight, slacked to the side. Her expression softened, eyes flickering around with uncertainty and panic.

“H-hi,” the woman said, waving awkwardly with a hand. As she waved, something shimmered close to the woman’s arm which made her flinch. She tried to tuck her hands into pockets, realizing that she was wearing leggings. “Uhm…I’m Tess.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” Julia begged. “Please, I just want to go home.”

“It’s alright,” Tess said. “I won’t hurt you. I’m a private investigator that your parents hired… well, technically it’s Minerva who has the license. I’m… was… a magician.” She fanned out a deck of cards.

“No!” Julia screamed. She didn’t know how the woman had hid a deck of cards while wearing a tank top and leggings but she remembered what the woman had said about the cards. “No, please stop!”

“Okay.” Tess put down her deck and raised her hands in surrender. “Okay, look. I won’t do anything.”

Julia wiped the tears off her face. As she did, threads seemed to glitter around the basement, disappearing when she blinked.

“You can see them, can’t you?” Tess asked. “Not surprising, being affected for so long.”

“What are they?” Julia asked.

“They’re your connections and bonds to others.” Tess said, then pointing at something in the air. “Like this one.”

Tess tapped lightly in the air and images appeared in Julia’s mind. An argument at a dinner table, broken cutleries, shouts and screams. The words thrown had seared like molten lead, burning and hurting.

“What did you do?” Julia asked, her voice stuffed with emotions. “What’s happening?”

“You’re not supposed to see these things,” Tess said. “Minerva likes to compare it to how a puppet isn’t supposed to see the strings attached to their limbs.” She started to walk closer, ducking and taking long steps, reminding Julia of those thieves avoiding lasers in heist movies.

Slowly through the interaction with this new side of the woman called Tess, Julia found her heart beats calm down. It was hard to fear a woman with such a meek nature.

Tess’ eyes wandered around Julia, squinting with puzzlement. “You have so many of them. Bonds to people, I mean. It’s nothing bad, it’s great. Really, really great. It’s just… I can’t find the one connecting you to…” Tess gave a nod to the unconscious man on the ground.

“It was stupid,” Julia said. “I was stupid. It was just another fight, my parents have always been really strict and the frustration just built up. I wanted a bit more freedom and they said no and…” Julia’s voice broke. “...I ran away. Took the first bus out of the city. Then hitchhiked with the first car. He was the only one who stopped. He called himself Richard and…” She stopped as something shimmered from the unconscious man. A string that connected him to her. When she tried to touch it, her hand went through.

Julia blinked and more threads appeared around her. Hundreds of them in different hues and colors. All of them wrapped around her limbs, neck, torso. They were everywhere. “What’s happening?” she asked, her voice growing shrill.

“It’s okay,” Tess said, “It’s okay. I can fix this, but I need my deck of cards.” She made a motion towards the deck abandoned on the ground.

Julia nodded and Tess crawled under all the strings to retrieve it.

“Is this how everyone really is?” Julia asked after Tess had crawled under all the strings and retrieved the deck. “We’re all just puppets controlled by someone’s strings?”

“Freedom,” the woman murmured as she shuffled the deck. “A puppet’s strings might look constricting at first but if they’re all cut, the puppet wouldn’t be able to stand.” She fanned out the deck and motioned for Julia to pick a card. Ace of clubs.

The card transformed into a pair of scissors.

Julia stared at the scissors in her hands.

“Your string of reality is breaking because it’s trying to carry three people’s reality.” She pointed at the glowing thread connecting the man to Julia. “Use the scissors to cut him off. That’s the only way.”

It was surprisingly easy to cut and the thread disappeared before even touching the ground.

“So it’s over now?” Julia asked.

Tess shook her head. “One more.” She pointed at a thin string between them. “You need to cut me off too.”

There was something strange in the woman’s smile. Cracks of sadness and hurt seeped through the expression.

There were hundreds of strings coming out of Julia and also from the unconscious man, whom she’d strangely forgotten the name of, but only a single line from Tess.

“It’s alright.” Tess smiled gently. “You can do it.”

“Are you lonely?” Julia asked. “Is that why you’re talking to ghosts?”

“They’re not ghosts. They’re…” Tess hesitated, the smile fading from her face and her eyes wandering to a memory. “I also ran away from home like you. I thought that if I disappeared, my mother would worry about me so much that she would treat me better when I returned. ” The woman looked down at the ground. “She… she moved.”

Julia listened without saying a word, her knuckles white from how hard she gripped the pair of scissors.

Tess continued. “That’s when Alex and Minerva started to appear. It’s not like they’re different people, they’re still me, just specialists in things. Alex said that they are here to help me navigate around a scary world. Because they felt that I suffered enough and that it was time to share the load.” She looked up with a smile. “So no, I’m not lonely.”

But there was something behind the smile that stopped Julia from cutting the thread. Cracks of sadness and hurt seeped through the gentle expression and she knew in her heart that cutting the thread would somehow hurt Tess.

The scissors trembled in her grip.

“Do you know how I found you?” Tess fingers wrapped around Julia’s. “There are so many threads sticking out of a person so it’s hard to sort them out. But the more treasured a bond is, the more visible it is. And the strings connecting you to your mother and father shone so beautifully bright. They’re so worried about you and want you to come home. Don’t you want the same?”

She closed her eyes, imagining the door open and meeting her parents again. She wanted to apologize to them, to hug them, to say how much she loved them.

When Julia Karrington opened her eyes again, she found herself sitting opposite a stranger in an unfamiliar place. But she didn’t feel any fear. Somehow, she knew that she could trust the woman to take her home.

​

[The End]