I talk to people, both dead and living.
I hear people, both dead and living.
I see people, both dead and living.
I see the past.
I see the future.
I, Jade West, am a medium.
The first person - dead anyway - I ever heard, talked to, had a 'conversation' with, was a young girl named Betty. For a little while, she was considered an imaginary friend. Imaginary friend - a cutesy way for parents to explain why their child is talking to nothing but air at random times of the day. She told me things about her life, and I'd tell my Mom, who'd laugh it off and say something in the kind of voice that told me she was too busy to care.
So I stopped telling her. My uncle bought me a journal for my fifth birthday to write in someday, so I'd idly record her stories in there, certain details she'd include. Dad would come in, kiss me goodnight, and order me to go to bed. I wouldn't. Betty kept me up because she couldn't sleep.
"Take some sleeping pills. Mom and Dad do that whenever they can't sleep, either."
"I can't take sleeping pills."
"Betty...why are you here?"
It'd slipped out. Her face remained stoic, serious. Betty stood, turned to the window and stared at nothing - just the dark abyss out the window. I still remember her words. There's no fun in being dead when you can't spend time with someone. My ears had caught that word. Dead. She was dead?
"Wait, Betty, you're dead? But how? When?"
She looked scared when she looked at me, and at some point during the time I was staring her down, I'd fallen asleep. When I woke up, she was gone. Betty never came back - I never saw her again, and even asked Mom if I could get on her computer to look something up until I remembered that she never gave me a last name. It was just always Betty, and awhile after a long hour of searching, I finally gave up. I'd lost a friend, one that was dead probably long before she realized she could see me, and I was completely lost. Lost because I couldn't figure out why she was dead. Lost because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with that information.
I asked Mom. I asked Dad. Both told me I was silly, that it was just my imagination.
"There's no Betty. She's not real, and if she's not real, then she's not dead," Mom would say before returning to the dinner she was preparing.
"Jade, do you see all of this paper work here?" Dad would gesture to the heaping pile of files on his desk. "These are all the people who actually need my help - a six-year-old girl who doesn't know what in the world she's talking about isn't one of them. Now, please, leave my office."
I argued with him, told him I did know what I was talking about. There was a dead girl name Betty who has been visiting me for the last few months, keeping me up late at night, talking about the most childish yet wise things. The thing was, she never looked dead to me. In fact, she looked as though she was at peace, flawless. He never believed me.
"I'm a lawyer, Jade. It's my job to be insensitive and unbiased - especially when my daughter tells me that a 'ghost' named Pretty-"
"Betty."
"-has been visiting her, talking to her." He laughed in my face, and then ushered me out of the office so he could return to his at-home duties as a lawyer.
That's how I learned to never bring it up to him or Mom ever again; if I did once more, they'd send me to a psychiatrist and then maybe to a mental institution. So I always lived in silence, going from place to place and seeing someone's spirit somewhere there every once in a while. It's a secret. Never to be told.
The first time I saw the past...
My grandmother came to visit, and at one point, she sat me and my kid brother down while we were fighting over whatever ridiculous things siblings fight about. He'd come in my room, stolen something from one of the drawers in my closet, and then the rest was nothing but a hazy memory. Reluctantly, we listened to her talk about an argument she had with her sister years ago. They shoved the harshest words down each other's throats, each delicate word laced with hate and cruelty. After that, her sister stormed out of the house and was run over by a car trying to get across the street where a childhood friend lived.
Her sister didn't survive.
"I miss my sister greatly, and I regret every mean thing I said to her in those final moments. So stop with the bickering you two, and realize that while both of you are still here today, one of you may be gone tomorrow."
"But Grandma, she started it!"
"I so did not," I rolled my eyes.
"Yes, you did!" He yelled before storming upstairs, obviously having had enough. I took a deep breath, looked over at Grandma, and saw something behind her. Someone.
And that's when the scenery suddenly changed; we were no longer in the 21st century, and it was a completely different living room setting. Two young girls were bickering over their parent's divorce, blaming each other for something that neither one of them probably didn't do. That's when I realized I was seeing it. I was seeing the moments before great-aunt June died.
I always knew Grandma had a bit of a mean streak, so it didn't surprise me when she flipped the bird and waved it in June's face. June was a few years older, but Grandma was slightly taller. Her hair was lighter, eyes darker, and her shoulders were slouched.
"If you stopped being a selfish drama queen, Mom and Dad would still be together! It's all your fault, June. I will never forgive you for tearing this family apart."
"Are you sure it was my fault? Last time I checked, I wasn't the one who introduced Mom and Royce to each other! It was YOU. You've always been the selfish bitch of the family."
A smack across the face interrupted all the yelling, and a silence befell the room. June looked at Grandma in shock, a hand rubbing the spot where she was hit moments before. She didn't say anything - instead, she started to walk backwards until she reached the foyer. When she was at the front door, she bolted. I watched as Grandma put her hands on her hips, and took a deep breath, trying to calm down and regain her composure. That was until, a scream was heard and a car screeching to a halt followed.
Before I could see anything after that, I woke up in the living room. It was still light outside, and there were signs that I must've taken a nap shortly after the conversation with Grandma and Nathan.
"Did you enjoy the dream?" A voice captured my attention. Not Nathan's, nor Grandma's, nor Mom's, nor Dad's. It was unfamiliar, surprising even. A woman sat on the other side of the couch, tire marks running alongside her body, and wearing outdated clothes.
I muttered, "That haircut is so 1950s."
"Well, good afternoon to you, too. It's good to hear my great-niece has outstanding manners." Even the dead can be sarcastic. "Your grandmother was telling to the truth, you know. Life is fleeting - I know that for sure. Hell, I've been dead for nearly a century, haven't I?"
"Why are you here? Why did you send me that dream?" I still didn't know how to control this "gift," whatever you call it.
June looked over at the kitchen where my Grandmother was helping Mom cook her famous chicken enchilada casserole. I made sure to keep my voice down as I asked the question. "I wanted to help prove my sister teach her grandchildren a lesson, and I figured I owed her one. She felt so guilty when I left - and I didn't necessarily want to, but watching our parents go through the divorce was even more painful than being hit with the car. I didn't want to suffer any greater pain, so I left."
"So whose fault was it really?"
"Nobody's except Mom's and that other man. Grandma isn't to blame. I'm not to blame. My mother's actions and that man's behavior was what caused a broken marriage." June gave a painful smile before she stood up to go.
"What am I supposed to do with this? You're dead. Your parents are dead. Am I just supposed to shout from the rooftops that a dead woman and man are at fault for a broken marriage?"
"That's easy. Just wake up, Jade."
In a cold sweat, I suddenly jerk and hit someone sleeping next to me. My eyes open and quickly adjust to the darkness of an RV. Suddenly, I remember where I am. Beck groaned, pain coursing through his side after being hit in the side. He groggily hissed, "Jade! Not again."
"Sorry," I apologized. "It was just another...weird, silly dream."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No, just go back to sleep." I take another breath before laying down next to him in the bed. He tiredly pulls me closer, my head finding its way onto him, and I can feel his chest rising and falling with every exhausted breath he takes. I close my eyes, and hope for no more weird dreams. One a night is enough.
I see the future.
If I walked up to you one day, and said that I once met my future son in a dream, you'd think I was crazy. You'd think it was one of those odd things someone thinks of at the top of their head. Except it wasn't.
He held a very strange resemblance to Beck; same olive skin tone, same wavy black hair, yet he had my eyes and smile, and broody demeanor about him. There was a childish tone in the way that he spoke. "Mom? Do you think that dogs can think, kind of like us? We think in words, but what do they speak in? Some gibberish, bark language that only dog mind-readers can understand?"
"What are you even saying?"
"Like, imagine if instead of robots taking over the world, it was dogs. They had their own foreign language; they can walk, talk, think, do all kinds of human-like things. What if every dog in the world had become Dr. Maxi?"
"Okay, I think that's enough cartoons for you. At least for this week."
He laughed. "Come on. I saw it in a dream - Dr. Maxi wasn't a cartoon, he was real. And the world was overrun with these human dogs."
"Bentley, please."
There were several seconds of silence before he spoke again. "Do you ever dream, Mom?"
"Everybody dreams."
"Do you ever dream about me?"
"Every mother dreams about her children."
"But what if Dr. Maxi comes in, and tells you to wake up so you can't dream about me anymore?"
"Well, Dr. Maxi will just have to deal with getting his ass kicked."
"I'm serious, Mom. Dr. Maxi will come in and say wake up. Wake up, Mom. Wake up."
Wake up, Mom. Wake up, Mom.
"Jade! Wake up." My eyes fluttered open, and Beck was standing right there. He was hovering over me, running a hand through my hair with a look of concern written across his face.
I raised a brow. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You were talking in your sleep - something about talking dogs."
"Oh." I nonchalantly nodded, getting up to use the restroom. "It was our son."
Beck remained quiet for a second as I closed the door behind me, and then I heard a confused "What?!" come from the other side of the door.
I talk to people, both dead and living.
I hear people, both dead and living.
I see people, both dead and living.
I see the past.
I see the future.
I, Jade West, am a medium.
TO BE CONTINUED. Very loosely based on the show 'Medium'.
