Dear Ms. Freemond,
Though I would, under a different set of circumstances, properly introduce myself and oblige particular niceties, I believe the most appropriate starting point is to come right out and say it: I have been living with the consciousness of your ex-lover (she informed me that you ended your relationship with her prior to her untimely passing—is death untimely?—and, thus, considers herself your ex-lover), Jeanne Jacobsen.
Please don’t put down this letter, ma’am. It will prove to be of more importance to you than you can imagine.
Of course, I am a gargantuan fan of yours. Actually, there isn’t an album or song or duet you’ve released that I haven’t gotten my hands on somehow. I own everything you’ve ever done, even the seven-inch records you put out secretly under the pseudonym Mary Marie-Marie. Maybe this is why your former (ex-) lover Jeanne Jacobsen has decided to pursue me in order to speak to you. But why wouldn’t Jeanne speak directly to me? I’m sure you’re asking. Maybe I can speak to this. Maybe I can’t.
No doubt you’re wondering how all of this is even possible. I’ll tell you. In my youth, my mother, Dorothy Agnus Bradford, was a spiritual guide for many in our community. Our living room was never short on visitors seeking help from my mother. Travelers from other cities and states. Men. Women. The occasional runaway teenager. Sometimes they’d seek guidance for their future, other times closure on a traumatic past experience. Once, a ninety-eight-year-old man took the bus all the way down from Stockton to ask my mother if his wife had found their dog in the afterlife, and was she walking him regularly? I can’t remember the outcome, just that the old man gave me a peppermint on his way out. I swear to God that peppermint lasted days!
We practiced meditation at my home, my mother and me. This is not Zen or any other casual form of meditation. My mother called it meta-communicative meditation. It allows one’s consciousness to interact with those consciousnesses caught between the living and non-living planes of existence. Though a body dies, consciousness remains intact until it finds a reason (or is forced) to enter the non-living plane. Until then, it flaps about like a severed power line, shooting sparks into the air and affecting anyone else near it. If a person can train their own consciousness to search out lingering detached consciousnesses, they can interpret its sparks into messages or else calm its electrical output, allowing it safe passage to the plane of the non-living. As soon as I started to get the hang of this practice, my consciousness lit up like fireworks on the fourth of July. There were sparks everywhere! Mother taught me to communicate with detached consciousnesses, helping them pass, delivering messages. Although there was some resistance in the beginning (a severed consciousness can be stubborn), I developed a knack for meta-communicative meditation.
Despite all my experience practicing meta-communication, the situation with Jeanne is entirely new to me. Jeanne’s consciousness seems to have pieced itself back together. Imagine a disconnected power line fusing itself back together, then reconnecting to its original power source in an unnatural way, like telephone lines held together with duct tape or staples. The consciousness may not work exactly as it used to, but it will function to some degree (albeit the output it delivers may have unwanted consequences). Here’s what I’m trying to say: I believe Jeanne is attempting to strong-arm her way back onto the plane of the living.
In regard to how Jeanne and I crossed paths, I must confess it was not through the usual means of my seeking out communication with a non-living consciousness. In fact, I did not seek her out in any way. On the third Thursday of every month, I go on a nude hike up the mountain behind my home. As I live somewhat remotely, I very rarely find cause for concern about running into other hikers or day-cationers or what have you. My body and soul are free to roam the earth for as long as I need, to help refocus my energy on the natural and tangible so as not to become stuck in a transcendental state. I have done this for many years.
One Thursday this past August, I was urinating behind a large pine tree and heard a voice singing your song, “Death Chore.” While I would be so bold as to say I typically recognize your beautiful voice immediately on the radio or elsewhere, it took me a moment to identify the tune as yours. The voice—a woman’s—was singing an octave higher and in the key of D minor, not E minor as you originally sang (with the exception of your duet with Elton John in 1998 when you performed it in D-flat minor). I finished my business and poked my head around the tree to see where the song was coming from. I was unable to locate the voice I heard. So, I continued with my hike. The breeze on my ass was a gentle reminder, a humble reminder, that I was indeed human and still part of the tangible world. Communing with lost consciousnesses can have negative side effects on the living, like confusion, depression, nausea. Being grounded in the tangible is the only cure for the aforementioned. Sometimes there is no coming back, as was the case with my mother.
Once I arrived at my third resting point, I knelt down to drink from the stream that flowed down the mountain. I heard the same voice rising through the air behind me. I turned to see who was there. Nothing. No one. Just the voice ringing out from within the air, like a memory. I called out but received no answer. The voice drew back, sinking into silence. I continued to climb.
When I finally positioned myself in the bathtub later that night, watching the soapy water strip dirt and such from my feet, I closed my eyes and began humming “Death Chore” without so much as a thought as to how it had arisen in my mind. A third of the way through the second verse, a whisper shot like lightning into my ear. Normally, this is somewhat commonplace while meditating, but I had not done so that day. It was the same voice I’d heard singing all day. My body froze, my nerves so tense I thought something must have fallen into the tub, electrocuting me. Hisses and groans swirled around me, coalescing into unrecognizable sounds, then a dysmorphic yet recognizable name: Cassandra Freemond! A pause. A bang somewhere in the night sky. And an echo of the voice, again singing “Death Chore.” Ms. Freemond, I’ve never been so terrified in my life, though I have stood against the truly frightening threats of detached consciousnesses and existential terror. This, though. This was wholly distinct. A consciousness had reached through the space of intangibility and made contact with the tangible. There should be limits, but as I stated, the power line has started to reconnect itself.
I awoke the next morning on the wicker swing on my back porch covered in a Mexican blanket I’d purchased at a swap meet in the mid-‘80s. I wore a single penny loafer. After hauling myself to the bedroom and changing, I made blueberry pancakes and ate in peaceful solitude as I often do. Still, something felt unfamiliar. In my body or my mind, I can’t recall. Something felt out of place, disheveled, shifted. Days went by. Weeks.
Then on a Wednesday evening, prior to my nude hike, I again felt uneasy. I sat on the couch flipping channels. As I unthinkingly clicked the remote-control, I came upon a documentary about the particular decade in which you were considered to be at your prime. To my pleasant surprise, there you were on my screen, sitting on a couch in your Manhattan home going into detail about the decline of album sales in the newly digitalized industry. Next to you, a woman. Big green eyes, black lips, a shaved head. She smiled and stroked the back of your neck as you went on. The interviewer directed her attention to the woman and said, “None of this seems to concern you, though, Jeanne.” Jeanne spoke. I felt as though my body was sinking deeply into space, free-falling, knowing no end. The lights in the room brightened tenfold. I knew that voice. Not alone from my memory flooding back from earlier years of maintaining a steady eye on your personal relationships, but from the day spent nude on the mountain. Her name came to my lips, and I spoke it thus aloud: Jeanne. Jacobsen.
That same hiss came bolting into my ears like Christ on a cloud. Yes, Jeanne was communicating with me. I admit, earlier on, I had attempted to meditate and meet her consciousness somewhere outside of this tangible realm in hopes of leading her beyond. She would not permit me. Imagine yourself crashing into a brick wall at ninety miles per hour, only to survive without bruise or broken limb, all while still feeling every bit of the pain and agony. This was every attempt I made, Ms. Freemond. Cassandra. Cassafras, she calls you.
As I mentioned before, a reattached power line may not function the way it used to. If there was any kindness to your former (ex-) lover, Jeanne Jacobsen, it has either dissipated or is malfunctioning inside her conscious circuitry. While she is not necessarily cruel, there is an almost cruel curiosity within her to test the boundaries of her own ability while interacting with the tangible world. For example, as I was mowing the lawn one afternoon, I found a rattlesnake coiled behind my toolshed. I heard a hiss in the wind. The snake rose, in a trance, and began striking the air. At once, I grabbed my weed eater and hacked it to bits, but not without fear for my own safety, to be sure.
Do you still have the nightmare where snakes are eating you alive, Cassafras?
With Jeanne persisting at my side, something has occurred. I can’t properly explain it, but perhaps you can shed some light. She is growing irritated, I think. There are moments when she tries to convey messages to me, but they prove too difficult for me to properly translate. These messages come out in single utterances or phrases, echoing in my mind like metal upon metal. I assumed, at first, they were perhaps lost song lyrics of yours. If they are, that would explain much. However, along with these phrases, Jeanne’s consciousness has demonstrated a stronger emotional reverberation. In the past, upon conveying memories into my own consciousness, I have felt much of what she has felt: romance, sadness, regret. However, with these few phrases, I sense only wildness, destruction and chaos. Tell me, do these make sense to you:
“Under the blank, caveat, bleed me.”
“She. No thorn. She.”
“Find the mahogany candle, find the this and that.”
This is a great deal to take in, especially to someone who may not be familiar with the workings of consciousness and the planes of living and non-living.
Of late I have found myself losing track of time. Some things I possess aren’t mine.
Ms. Freemond, Cassafras, do you have any reason to believe Jeanne means you harm? I have felt her pain and regret regarding the end of your relationship. The chaos, though. God. The night has become darker and the day gray. I am fearful for you.
However, all of this may be taken completely out of context and Jeanne may simply be desirous of speaking to you one more time in order to receive the peace she needs in order to move, finally, onto the plane of the non-living. Would you join her some day? Life is a fickle place, I know, and these mystical albeit manageable circumstances require one to pause for a moment and consider their own position in this dying world.
It is important you contact me. There is only so much I am capable of managing myself and Jeanne’s desire to see you again is outweighing my own desire to move on with my life. I wake up thinking about you, wondering what you’re doing, where you are, things a lover wonders. I stare into the kitchen sink and watch the water run. I am losing hold.
Please make every effort, Ms. Freemond. Any effort.
Jeanne remembers.
Best regards,
John Bradford
D.T. Robbins received his MFA in fiction from National University in 2019. His stories can be found in Chiron Review, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and more. He lives in Rancho Cucamonga, California.