The Celestial Gate by Avital Dicker (red white royal blue txt) 📗

silent for a long time and then excused himself to go to the bathroom. Amalia waited and waited, but he never came back.

Anise

Anise smiled at the sight of the blonde clerk opposite her who couldn’t stop sneezing. She had two noses and noisily blew them both.

Something has to be done about these clerks; the situation is getting more ridiculous with each incarnation, thought Anise, and sank, amused, into the soft chair.

She closed her eyes, dimly hearing the familiar speech that was repeated over and over again every time she was back here. The same old explanation on having to choose one of three families, with a half-hour slot to observe each of them before making a decision. “Half an hour per family,” said the runny-nosed blonde. Nothing ever changes here, thought Anise. She wondered where Yam and Mor were right now and what she’d have to do to find them. She remembered entire lifetimes that had been wasted on Earth when they failed to find one another.

This time she promised herself she wouldn’t forget or give up. This time, once and for all, she would find a way to break the endless, pointless cycle. Time and time again, she’d been emptied of all knowledge before going down to the confused humanity below, while in the here and now she had all the knowledge of the universe at her fingertips. She just couldn’t understand God. So much suffering could have been prevented.

This time she would find them, Yam and Mor, and she’d find God too. She sure had an awful lot to say to Him.

He was probably so busy that he hadn’t even noticed that the system wasn’t working. But she’d find a way to meet Him and explain to Him that things had to change.

Anise shuddered as she remembered her last reincarnation. She’d been born into a poor family in Thailand that sold her for a few pennies. At fourteen, she was already married off to a forty-year-old man who used to beat her mercilessly.

One day, he broke her nose and shoulder. Luckily for her, that day he forgot to lock the door as he normally did. After he left the house, some neighbors called an ambulance, which took her to the hospital.

Through the ambulance window, she watched the distraught faces of the neighbors who’d found her fading into the distance. She knew her face was swollen and covered in blood but she didn’t feel any pain. She was just so happy to get away from her violent husband who had imprisoned her for years. After the doctors treated and bandaged her, she took advantage of the first opportunity that came her way and, while the nurses were occupied, ran away from the emergency room.

Unfortunately, it turned out that life outside on the bustling streets of Bangkok was not much better.

Anise shook off the unpleasant memory of her last journey. It had been brief. At the age of twenty-six, after years on the streets and the beatings, poverty, and drug abuse there, she’d decided she’d had enough and attempted suicide.

Toward the very end, she finally met Mor in the form of her attending doctor at the hospital. For the first time in her life, someone treated her kindly and, for that one single moment, she was happy. Only, it had come too late. She had gone through too much already and didn’t want to go on living. That time around, Yam was nowhere to be found.

Anise promised herself she would not forget. This time, she’d find a way to remember. She could never understand why up here everything was clear and available, but as soon as she was back down on Earth she forgot everything. What’s the point of going through so many lifetimes just trying to remember what she already knows here and now? she wondered. It’s not just stupid, she thought, it’s cruel.

The blonde cloud next to her was sneezing incessantly. Anise tried to ignore her and focus instead on imprinting the memory of Yam and Mor in her soul. They were part of her. The best part.

A series of forceful sneezes interrupted her thoughts again. She smiled at the sight of the blonde with two runny noses and the confetti of used tissues covering the floor and pushed the button in front of her. The scene darkened and then lit up again.

Anise was straining her eyes, trying to see through the heavy fog that lay like a blanket on the thickly growing trees, when the silhouette of a woman dashed past her, just a few inches away. The woman looked frightened.

The woman ran down a narrow path, then veered aside to continue running through the dense forest. Anise saw her silhouette now and then moving among the thick branches.

She could hear someone breathing heavily in the dark. A hulking man suddenly burst through the trees and stopped within inches of Anise. His demeanor was intimidating and Anise winced even though she knew he couldn’t see her.

The man’s eyes swept the forest form side to side in search of the woman. For a moment Anise was relieved, thinking that the woman had managed to shake him off and escape. She breathed a sigh of relief, but then heard someone thump, followed by a cry of pain.

The woman had stumbled over a tree root. The man grinned with satisfaction and slowly started making his way to the helpless woman, like a hunter approaching his prey.

Anise held her breath and looked in horror at the face of the woman lying on the ground. No. She didn’t want to see even one more second. She pushed the button as hard as she could and only when the scene disappeared was she able to breathe again.

“You should have waited to see what happened between them. Things aren’t always what they seem,” scolded the blonde in a schoolteacher’s voice, blowing her pug noses.

Anise, still shaken from the violent scene, didn’t respond. This time, even the big brown mole that sat on the