Fiction: The Soul Guardian 2

[ Read Part 1 over here ]

~ January 2007 ~

Somewhere in the middle of remembering and forgetting, Anson recalls in her future, the child will be named Penelope. He sneaks a glance at the girl and turns away.
    "What's your name?" Her loud voice surprises Anson again. She has been asking and he has been dodging. What does it matter what he is called? Besides, Anson is not his real name.
    The child's body's constant attempts to wake from her deep sleep causes her soul to wander and as her guardian, she would always find Anson until her soul settles in place. Her constant appearance puts a dent in his calm and yet, he cannot deny her presence makes him curious. But as she will not remember him when she returns to the living, there is no need to interact with her any more than necessary. He must return her, however cruel it may be.
    They appear at the hospital where the child has been moved to a large room full of other children. Anson gives her soul a gentle tap and she slips back to her body. She is still a tiny form from her years of starvation but he notes she has grown a little in two years. He gives her a second glance and leaves.
    Thoughts of his old life trickles through his mind. Childhood with absent parents. Working through medical school. Residency at a small hospital which he gained much needed experiences. It would have been followed with a fellowship at a prestigious hospital. All gone in just five minutes by a single act of imbecility. The abruptness of it all had made him angry but he had lived a thorough if incomplete life and that should have been enough.
    Anson can't help but think of his damaged body lying in a small white room and being kept alive by machines. As long as his body lives, Anson will always be tethered to it. If some day, his body is released from its hold, he would move on to a new life or so he believes. After many years as a guardian, he has stopped wondering about his fate.
    Unlike Anson, most soul guardians are untethered to any bodies. They have what some might called ghost bodies as they are neither alive nor dead. All souls return to their bodies, move on to the next life or become a soul guardian. There is one exception - runaways. Runaways are souls who have gotten away from their bodies. Sometimes they lose connections with their assigned guardians and this make them lose their way. If they are tethered to a body, that body will die after 49 days as no runaway can ever survive without a body and no body can ever survive without a soul. Runaways are rare and only the oldest of guardians have ever encountered them.
    If Anson's guardian hadn't showed up in time, would he have been a runaway and lost himself and then faded from existence? Anson moves away from those thoughts. He has work to do.
    A woman opens her car door just as a guy stabs her, pushes her to the pavement and drives the car away. The woman lies on the ground with blood soaking her coat. Anson stands over her. In her state between delirium and sobriety, she sees him but her eyes does not linger on Anson. She pulls out a phone from her coat pocket and presses the screen. The voice on the other line speaks but the woman loses consciousness. Anson bends down toward the phone and gives the street name and the necessity for an ambulance.  
    A few moments later, Anson stands beside the stolen car where the thief had crashed it into a pole. The thief's soul detaches from his body and Anson forces him back with a hard push. The kid, perhaps seventeen or older, opens his eyes briefly before slumping his head on the wheel. Anson waves a hand at the car and the alarm screams. Lights flicker on in the surrounding shops. In this late hour, a few people comes out and rushes toward the scene. Anson silences the alarm before leaving.
    In another street, Anson appears. A woman with short, silver hair with a youthful face passes by him. She gives him a nod and he returns it. Her name is Emanuela and she was once Anson's guardian. As guardians, they can simply send thoughts to each other even across a great distance but Emanuela rarely likes to do that nor does she likes to talk.
    When Anson first met her some nine years ago, Emanuela had simply said to him, either he stay with his body or become a temporary guardian. Since then, she has spoken little to him.
    Perhaps the passing of years has made Anson more introspective but Anson does not seek the company of other guardians although they all sense each other's presence. Though his work is solitary, Anson does not mind it. After all the chaos of living, he prefers it.
    Penelope appears but Anson keeps his eyes averted from her smiling face.

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This week's Words for Wednesday prompts are: cruel, return, sneak, solitary, middle. More Words for Wednesday over here.

Words for Wednesday Prompts - Feb 12, 2025

This February, I am the host for Words for Wednesday. Words for Wednesday is started by Delores a while ago. Now the prompts are hosted by various people on various blogs with Elephant's Child as the coordinator. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

This week's prompts are:
1 - cruel
2 - return
3 - sneak
4 - solitary
5 - middle

Charlotte (Mother Owl)'s color of February is Glass Elephant Blue. See the color at Charlotte's blog over here.

You may write your piece in the comments or post it on your blog. If posting on your blog, please leave a direct link to the post so we can all visit you. Have fun writing!

Fiction: The Soul Guardian 1

~ January 2005 ~

Another soul forgotten. How easy for humans to abandon each other. At this late hour, in this dark alleyway dumpster, there are few humans passing by. Even with a light beaming down on her, she goes unnoticed.
    Anson kneels down by the child and places a hand on her small form curved in a fetus position. His warmth will do little for this young one. The child's soul appears beside him. He straightens up and looks her over. Such a fragile child but she cannot leave, not yet. Anson doesn't like it but it's not his decision.
    She tugs his hand. Anson pulls away and points to her body. "You belong there," he says in a calm voice. He gives her a gentle tap on her shoulder and she seeps back into her body. He whistles. A dog's bark echoes. Taking a few steps back, Anson eases into the shadows.
    A doberman steps into the light follow by a woman holding onto the dog's leash. Quickly, she assesses the situation and takes out her phone. Anson leaves before the dog can react to his presence.
    Further down the streets, Anson continues his walk. A quaver sweeps over the land - a chorus like cries of lost children echoed lightly in the air. Anson stops. A sinking feeling like he has missed something comes over him. The sound vanishes bit by bit. All soul guardians can hear and feel this disquiet every one hundred days but no one knows what it truly means. Anson lets out a breath.
    With a single thought, he can move from place to place but that is a rather dull way to travel. He prefers to use his body and keep the human habit. He has no worries about time and yet, everything he does depends on time. A second, a minute, might mean the difference between living and dying.
    He soon comes to a three-story house. Inside, a man is pounding his fat fists into a woman. She falls onto broken bottles on the floor. Her fingers find a large piece and she shoves the shard into the man's right thigh. He collapses to the floor. His soul appears beside his body. Beady eyes look from his body to Anson. Anson gives the man a hard shove, sending his soul back into his body. Without thinking, Anson presses a foot on the man's wound making him scream. After a few seconds, Anson releases his foot. It isn't his place to punish. The man falls unconscious.
    The woman scrambles away from the man, not even noticing her bare left foot is bleeding. Long years of violence has unstrung her. She trembles but her eyes remain dry as she shifts her body into a tight ball. Anson places a hand on her shoulder. The warmth from his touch provides poor comfort. She continues to sit and stare. In a few moments, she will call the police. Anson leaves. It isn't pleasant to linger. The man will continue almost without any regrets while the woman will be haunted for the rest of her life.
    Out in the open night air, Anson takes in a breath though he doesn't need it. His next assignment is far away. He must travel by thought. He appears inside a collapsed building where two men and a woman are crawling their way through an air duct to get inside. Their headlamps light the space and their dirt-covered faces. Anson leaves them and appears inside an open area. Under a pile of fallen ceiling, a boy and his brother are unconscious. Beside them, their mother lies on her stomach, dead, like the others in the semi-darkness. One of the boys is clutching an mp3 player. Anson flicks his fingers and the player's screen brightens. He chooses a slow song and turns up the volume to the highest level and then he waits. Later, he watches the boys being carried out but he doesn't stay.
    The night is long. But as he starts walking toward his next assignment, the little child from before appears beside him. He presses his lips tight. He must be resolute. She must go back. He turns around and the child follows.

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This week's Words for Wednesday prompts are: abandon, vanish, quaver, unstring, poor.  More Words for Wednesday over here.