This fict is a prompt 2 from Klamille Week but it's so long I decided to separate it.
New Orleans, Louisiana - Cami
I consider myself a practical person. I have dreams and ideals, but I'm not delusional. I love when things make sense. I like that there are uncompromiseable laws in the universe. Certainties that will never change. Death, life, gravity, soul mates. The last one was more annoying than the former three.
Not that I don't believe in the concept of soul mates. I just hate how our world is so damned obvious about them, how it dominates our society. It's not required to be with your soul mate. There aren't any punishments or anything. The chance you meet your soul mate is 100%. The universe doesn't just give you your soul mate and make sure you never meet. No, it makes sure you bump into them at least once in your lifetime. No one knows when that will be. You can meet them in the nursing home (I have heard of that) or when you're in high school (some of my classmates did). One of my favorite stories is a woman met the preacher who would marry her and her fiancée, turns out the preacher was her soul mate. Talk about awkward.
The point is you never know. Who wants to base their life around one meeting? The universe grants us soul mates, but not perfect timing. Or maybe it is perfect timing. My brother Sean thinks you meet your soul mate when you need them the most. Well, I wanted my soul mate to appear when my high school boyfriend dumped me. I could have used some loving, the guy didn't appear.
Anyways, when you do find your soul mate, what if you've found somebody? What if they have? It could be too early or too late. Waiting around to run into your soul mate doesn't seem great to me. Some people don't. You can marry someone who isn't your soul mate and have a true love. It won't be anything compared to the love you could've had with your soul mate, I'm told, but it's not disastrous. But what about your soul mate? What if they believe in your love and find you, only to see you're with someone else? Don't they have a right to be mad? But it's not like they own your being. See? It's messy. Not to mention, what if your soul mate dies suddenly? Is a person soul mate-less? Or does the universe give you another soul mate? But was your new soul mate stolen from someone else? Does it automatically shift things apart? Again: messy.
Or maybe I overthink it.
My dad had no problem with the idea of soul mates. He didn't bother with seriously dating anyone else, he just waited to meet my mom and was glad not to waste his time with anyone else. However, he could've just as easily married the first woman that loved him and settled down, not worrying about it like other people do. I suppose I should be grateful that the universe doesn't force us to be with our soul mate or take the choice away from us. It just makes it painfully obvious that you aren't with your soul mate. Every second of the day you're aware that you're apart.
You're probably wondering how we even know when we've met our soul mate. Well it's quite simple. Its called soul sight. The second you meet your soul mate- you don't even need to speak- when you make eye contact, and hold their eyes, you can see in multicolor. A whole new world opens up to you. Until then you're stuck seeing one color: the color of your soul mate's eyes. In my case, everything in the world is a variation of blue. So I know my soul mate has blue eyes. Thanks to me, he sees everything in green, unless he puts on color contacts to see in other color. But nothing compares to a world filled with all the colors at once, full color. Everyone wants to see a world of full color, hence the incentive to find your soul mate. But its not enough to find them. To keep your color filled world you have to remain with your soul mate, around them. Or else it's back to unicolor vision. I don't know why soul mates are connected through color and their eyes but I don't make the rules.
Some people say it's selfish to doom your soul mate to that life by being with someone else. Unless you're both okay with it. My brother Sean, totally is. He's content to see the world in shades of brown.
Me, I have no idea what my situation is, or what I want to do about it. All I knew about my soul mate was that he had blue eyes and was an artist. I knew the latter because the eye and color connection aren't the only thing soul mates share. You also receive your soul mates talents.
I discovered my soul mate's talent for art when I was very young. When my parents saw my painting of a teddy bear they declared it the best painting by a six year old in the history of mankind. It was pretty amazing if I do say so myself. My parents thought it was remarkable since I never showed interest in art like that before. As I grew up and my lack of passion for creating art continued, we surmised it was my soul mate with the affinity for the arts, particularly painting. He was also good at sketching and charcoal drawings. Needless to say, he made my art electives easy As, not to mention my French classes. Yeah, apparently my soul mate was multilingual as well. Thanks to him I knew Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese. While I lucked out I think he struck out when it came to the talent exchange. All he'd get from me is the talent of solving crossword puzzles and knowing Harry Potter trivia.
That was another thing that bothered me about this whole soul mate thing. The idea was the two of you come together to complete each other. You're two halves of a whole, but I didn't want to lose myself in my soul mate. How did I know where he began and I ended? If talents were naturally mine or acquired from him? Art was easy to figure out but what about the other things I loved and was good at? Was my high level reading really his talent? What if volleyball was his thing and not mine? I drove myself crazy wondering.
Sean, my brother, always tried to calm me down. "Don't spend your time worrying over this, Cami. You're your own person."
"But I don't know if the person I am is completely me without some of him."
"Is this because of your own identity issues? You need to discover who you are."
"Hey, I'm the one in school to be a shrink, not you." I pointed out.
"I'm just saying: be who you are and forget about your soul mate."
Easy for him to say. Sean was my twin, and as far as I'm concerned he got all of the confidence and indifference. Sean wasn't a person easily rattled while I came up with a hundred scenarios where something could go wrong. I envied him. Sean always knew who he was. He decided to follow in our uncle's footsteps and join the clergy. He hadn't met his soul mate yet, but that didn't bother him. He'll just break the news to her that his true soul mate is God and hopefully she'll understand and move on. At least Sean decided he didn't want to be with his soul mate already. I was still undecided.
But after that conversation I did decide. I decided to be like Sean, and not make it a big deal. I decided to be like my friend Patricia, and not care about my soul mate until I saw him face to face. I was doing perfectly fine with that too, until a week ago.
Patricia wanted me to tag along with her to this hot new club she got invited to. She begged me to, in fact, resorting to harassing me at work.
"C'mon Cami, I need you to come with me. This club is supposed to be crazy exciting."
"I don't know, Trish." I said as I wiped a table. It was morning, and I was getting ready for Rousseau's to open for lunch. "You know the club isn't my scene."
"That's because you don't make it your scene." She pouted.
I rolled my eyes but smiled. "Since when do you beg for company?" One thing I admired about Pat was her high energy level. People were drawn to her. If she went somewhere alone she didn't stay that way. Not to mention she was a knock out with her cocoa brown skin, bright smile, and shoulder curls. Trish was always out, scoring invites to the hottest places. She liked company, but she didn't need it. She was independent that way.
"I'm not begging." she argued, following me as I cleaned.
"If you're going to be here you might as well work." I held out a towel for her to clean with.
She shrugged and started wiping the bar counter. "This really fine guy invited me and he said I could bring a friend. We'll be VIP. He's a cool cat and I want to impress him."
"If he wasn't impressed with you, you wouldn't be invited. You missed a spot."
Patricia sauntered over and whipped my butt with the towel. "What's the point in studying human behavior if you don't experience it?"
Trish brought up a good point. So I went. I hadn't been out in weeks and an night with Trish was never a disappointment. That Friday night was no exception.
I called it a successful night. Trish hung out with her new guy and I chatted up one of his very attractive friends. We exchanged numbers. I even danced after a couple of drinks. I never dance.
We left the club at one in the morning, stumbling down the side walk. Trish because of alcohol and me because I was shouldering most of her weight. She wasn't completely shitfaced but didn't look too far off from it. It was no surprise the men grabbed us with so much ease.
One "accidentally" stumbled into us on the street, pushing us into his friends that were waiting in the alley way. They drug us away from people so no one could hear our cries for help. There were three men. Trish struggled in vain. I screamed and fought which earned me a backhand across my face. I saw stars and my face throbbed.
What happened next surprised everyone. I grunted, leaning as far forward as possible before slamming my head as hard as I could into my assailants face. He stumbled, and I used the time to elbow him in the ribs causing him to loosen his grip. I elbowed him with my right elbow this time, aiming higher towards his face. When my elbow hit its mark he loosened his grip more allowing me to drop under his arms. I grabbed one of his wrists and twisted it into an unnatural position. He yelled in pain and I gave him a roundhouse kick to the chest. When he staggered back I kicked him again, causing him to fall on his back. I slammed my food down on his stomach to keep him down.
Before I could process what I just did my instincts told me to turn around and dodge. I didn't have any fighting instincts. Nevertheless I'm glad my body listened. I whirled around just in time enough to avoid the huge fist aimed for my face.
I wasn't lucky the second time and a fist knocked the wind out of my chest. My second opponent grabbed me by the throat with both hands. Dark spots blotted my vision. I weakly brought my elbows up and slammed them down into his open ones, causing him to let me go. I didn't waste time pushing my thumbs into his eyeballs. He yelled and threw me into the brick wall.
I crashed into a window. I felt the glass cutting me but Trish's screams spurred me on. I pushed off from the building and dove into a forward roll, narrowly escaping the man as he ran towards me trying to push me back to the wall.
When he turned back around I dropped to the ground and kicked my feet as hard as I could, aiming for his kneecaps. I wagered I hit my mark by the sickening crack I heard and his screams of pain.
"Bitch!" He roared, reaching for me.
Yelling, I picked up a discarded beam of wood and brought it down on his forehead. He crumpled to the ground.
My first assailant was back up. I flipped myself up from the ground, giving me the extra force I needed to swing the beam which was heavier than expected. He dodged and I quickly calculated the targets I needed to hit to bring him down. After two failed attempts I finally hit my mark, swinging the beam at his side. When he fell over I hit him in the back of the head with it.
"Enough of this shit!" The third man yelled. Trish trembled in front of him. His hand was around her throat. "Move and I kill her." He threatened.
Trish was crying. I fumbled with the shard of glass in my forearm. I whimpered in pain as I slowly pulled it out. It was large enough. I knew what I needed to do.
"I said don't move!" He yelled again.
Before he could say another word I threw the piece of glass at his left eye. It hit his cheek but stuck and he screamed. Trish was lucid enough to stomp his foot and push his arms away. He wailed, grabbing his face in his hands. Trish kicked him in the groin. I clubbed him with the wooden beam.
I suddenly felt my energy deplete. I sagged against the wall.
"Cami, what the hell was that?" Trish asked. She looked at my cut arms and half swollen face.
"I don't know." I gasped. "I don't know anything about..." I couldn't finish my sentence. I was too weak. The adrenaline was wearing off. I spat out blood.
"You saved us." Trish put her hands on my shoulders. "You don't know shit about fighting but-"
We both looked at our would be rapists. Three large men, all wounded and now unconscious thanks to me.
"Looks like your soul mate has a talent for causing major damage. Good for us." Trish grabbed my arm. "Lets go, we need to get out of here."
As we hobbled out, putting as much distance between us and the alleyway, one question pulsed through my mind.
Who the fuck was my soul mate?
