Whispers of a Former Life: Episode 49

Inside the dingy plaid cave, Charity strained to make sense of the chaos that was now her entire world. When Alejandra stood from the cracked plastic chair in the laundromat, the motion jolted through Charity’s spine like a sudden earthquake. Her cheek bumped against the zipper teeth, the rough metal grazing her sensitive skin, a fresh sting layered atop the dull ache of being tossed and jostled all morning. 

She tried to brace herself, gripping a loose seam in the bag’s lining,  but it was no match for the power of Alejandra’s stride. Each step pulsed through the canvas walls in slow, thunderous waves: thud… sway… thud… sway. She could feel Alejandra’s hips twist, the swing of her arm tugging the strap just enough to jolt Charity sideways again and again. 

Where are we going now? Charity’s thoughts scrambled for logic, but the suffocating dark gave her no hints. Her new, hyper-sharp hearing picked up everything except what she truly wanted: Alejandra’s plan. 

Outside, the urban soundscape unfolded around her with painful clarity. A car door slammed somewhere far off, the sharp echo bouncing through alleys she couldn’t see. A bus groaned and hissed, heavy tires bumping over potholes. Someone barked a laugh in rapid Spanish, and even though the words blurred, Charity could feel the warm amusement in the voice,  like a reminder that life went on for normal people. People her size didn’t have conversations anymore; they rode silently in a bag they didn’t own. 

She pressed her ear closer to the canvas, desperate to catch Alejandra’s voice, but there was only the occasional hum,  a soft tune half-mumbled under breath. The language curled around her, low and intimate. Spanish. Always Spanish. Each word was both a lullaby and a fence she couldn’t scale. 

The backpack shifted again,  a sudden tilt that made Charity’s stomach swoop. A door creaked. Heavy footfalls on hollow planks. The musty warmth of the laundromat faded into a brighter coolness: open air, a breeze threading through the zipper’s teeth to kiss her damp forehead. 

Charity’s lungs seized at that hint of outside. Was she going home? 
She almost laughed at the thought,  home. What did that even mean now? The old life was gone, but if Alejandra took her back to the Stevens house,  maybe Kira could be called. Maybe some lawyer, some neighbor, someone important could see her for what she really was, not this trembling thing zipped in a bag. 

She imagined the marble floors. The scent of polished wood and fresh-cut flowers in the front hall. Her father’s sharp cologne,  no, gone, he was a little too. Her mother’s scolding voice,  gone. Her brother? Too far away, useless. The fantasy crumbled as fast as it formed, but still, she clung to it because the alternative,  being Patrona Jiménez forever,  made her chest ache until she could hardly draw breath. 

Another change in rhythm: the sound of shoes on cracked sidewalk, the hollow clop of Alejandra’s cheap sneakers stepping off the curb. The dull rumble of tires told her they’d boarded a bus. She imagined the other passengers: ordinary people with grocery bags, old ladies with canes, kids tapping phone screens. None of them would guess that somewhere near Alejandra’s thigh was a girl once worth millions, now huddled next to a pen cap and a linty hair tie. 

The bus engine rumbled through her bones, the vibrations numbing her thighs and making her teeth chatter faintly. Time became a swirl: stop, start, Alejandra shifting her weight from leg to leg. Charity’s sensitive ears caught a conversation two rows over, but the words blurred together,  too fast, too foreign. Instead she focused on Alejandra’s heartbeat when the girl occasionally pressed her arm against the bag. A steady drum, so impossibly big, a reminder that life pulsed on around her at a scale she could no longer command. 

She didn’t know how long they rode. She drifted in and out of shallow, restless half-sleep, startled awake each time the bus braked or jolted over a pothole. She dreamed of her bedroom: sunlight spilling through gauzy curtains, her plush duvet,  but when she woke, all she smelled was stale canvas and Alejandra’s sweat mixed with that ghost of cheap floral perfume. 

Eventually, the rumble stopped for good. The bag tilted again, and Charity’s stomach flipped so violently she whimpered before she could bite it back. Air rushed in through the zipper,  warmer now, tinged with cut grass and concrete. She strained to see anything through a tiny gap: blue sky, a flash of green hedges, the dull beige of some familiar stucco. 

Her heart lurched. 

She knew this place. The smell of the hedges alone, the same trimmed bushes that lined the Stevens’ long driveway. The faint, clipped rhythm of sprinklers rotating. She knew those sounds, that smell. It clawed at something primal in her chest: home. Home. Home. 

But she didn’t dare hope. 

Alejandra’s footsteps slowed. Her hand adjusted the bag strap. Charity pressed herself to the bag wall, so close her cheek picked up the girl’s warmth through the fabric. She could feel Alejandra’s calm breath, steady and unhurried. No fear. No second thoughts. Just a girl returning somewhere she now owned by proxy,  including the creature zipped in her purse. 

The steps stopped. The squeal of a gate hinge drifted through the fabric. And then silence. Charity’s own breath sounded so loud it made her cringe. 

She brought me back. 
But why? 

Before she could finish the thought, the bag shifted once more,  and the world inside plunged quiet, balanced on the precipice of before and after. 

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