Mystè

The water in front of him did not have a clear surface, but appeared cloudy, smooth, and tense, disturbed only by occasional swarms of mosquitoes. The air enveloped him with a strange heaviness.... damp, cold, dense, and filled with the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves. The nature in the swamps was unique, an obscure interplay of life and death. As so often, he just sat there... staring silently at the water and only later noticing that everything around him seemed to fall quiet. The frogs had fallen silent, the night birds flew away as if fleeing from something, and it seemed as if time had stopped. Romain felt a chill run down his spine, the hairs on his arm stood on end, and his neck even hurt, but it did not frighten him. A light breeze suddenly sounded like music, like a hum that wanted to form words. Romain closed his eyes, let the situation sink in, absorbed the song, and felt that it was energy that once belonged to a human being and had nestled in the barely visible movements of the water. He could make contact with lost souls... even see them, feel them. He could let them into his body, lend them his human shell, but he couldn't reach or touch this energy, this fragment of a past life that had been left behind. Yet it penetrated his mind and seemed to know that he was the only one who could fully understand it. Romain was used to absorbing the lamentations of the deceased, but he was not used to something entering him and lingering there, clinging to him. He was haunted by memories that were not his own.

At first, the water vibrated almost imperceptibly. Romain slowly opened his eyes, and at that very moment, the surface in front of him broke open. A movement could be seen beneath the murky layer. A fountain of fine bubbles rose, glittering in the pale light like shattered ice. The surface of the water stretched again, but this time it seemed as if something was pressing against it. He felt the pressure in his chest, as if the foreign energy was expanding and stealing the air he needed to breathe. He knew dead people, knew their voices, their cries for help, the monotonous whimpering of those who couldn't let go. But this was not lamentation..  it felt like compulsion, like something pulling at him. Another gush burst forth, and Romain suddenly saw a shadow in the streaks of water that resembled something human, but he knew that wasn't the case. Another fragment of the remembering energy, it could be nothing else, but before he was able to realize this, he was pulled forward and felt his clothes become heavier, soaked with swamp water, and water also entered his lungs.

The energy clung to him, hot and urgent, as if it wanted to pull him down to where it had originated. But he still felt no fear; he only seemed to realize at that moment that this something... not only wanted to be understood, it wanted to return, to manifest itself... to become something tangible, and Romain was to be the vessel for it, or at least the first step. The swirling shadow formed from emotions manifested in his mind and took shape. It kissed him, because his gift, which he often saw as a curse, opened spaces that no living person should or could enter..  it was the only way to communicate. Romain could have backed away, but the kiss did not feel like coercion, but like something familiar to him, something he secretly longed for and that gave him room to breathe again, even though his body threatened to drown. He knew that he had now become part of the whole, but he did not resist it, because he convinced himself that it did not take anything from him, but instead gave him something that filled his chest with warmth. It was a tragic feeling, far too sentimental, morbid romanticism that was difficult for him to understand, but which did not pose a threat at that moment.

When he woke up the next day, far away from the swamps, in one of the narrow, quiet alleys of New Orleans, he tried to convince himself that it had all been just a sentimental dream, a fleeting emotion that had gathered momentum and sparked visions. But deep down he knew that what had happened served a purpose, one he would have to follow at some point if he couldn't find a way to free himself from it.