The Spirit Lovers – Chapter Eight: Martin’s return
29 November 2017
Courtesy Christian Schloe
Martin wakes up in his hotel room with a strange feeling of not knowing where he is and of having been separated from something he cared about dearly without knowing what it was. His head feels heavy and his eyes feel sore. He gingerly puts a foot down to step off the bed and his head reels. It takes him a few minutes to adjust and be able to put the other foot down and stand up without feeling queasy. He takes in his surroundings as calmly as he can but cannot remember how he had come here. He slowly figures out it is a hotel room and as he goes to the phone to start dialing he remembers that he had left his wife at home after their quarrel and headed towards this hotel.
He dials the number of his wife, not realising that he has forgotten all about his true love.
Helga, good morning. I wanted to say I was sorry. I don’t know what came over me
…
What do you mean it took me six months to come to that conclusion? I have only been away for a couple of months.
…
I am not sure what you mean by that but I don’t remember what happened in those other four months. Can I come home?
Rita thinks back to how you had described the scene to her and how you had realised from the smile of relief on Martin’s face that his wife seems to have forgiven him. She remembers you describing how you watched him starting to pack his suitcase before you orbed back to where I was standing with her trying to console her as she wept Martin’s disappearance. She wonders why the couple of nights that they had passed together in that alternate reality appeared as a distorsion of several months in this reality. She feels a surge in her heart like every time she thinks about Martin but tries to overcome it. Tears well in her eyes and she bites her lip trying to contain them before they spill over her cheeks profusely.
Martin winces while carrying the suitcase down. It seems like something is wrong within his ribcage and he feels like a strain in his heart. He continues carrying the suitcase down and asks the receptionist for help with the other larger suitcases left upstairs. He also enquires if there is a doctor as he is not feeling well. The receptionist enquires and soon a doctor is made available to Martin who by now is convinced that he might be suffering a heart attack as the pain grows in his chest. The doctor who examines him tells him that he finds nothing wrong with his heartbeats nor anything else but that to be on the safer side he should go to the hospital.
Martin rings his wife again to inform her of the news and sets out to the nearest hospital in the hotel’s chauffeured car. When he reaches the hospital, they too find nothing wrong with him but decide to keep him under observation for the day. Martin looks at his wife who has come and realises that he is relieved she is with him but he feels nothing towards her now that she is here. He tries to reproduce the longing he had experienced that morning but it is not there. He wonders what made that change and why it is that he is not longing for her anymore. Is it because she gave in and came so easily to his side, he wonders.
Helga puts her lips softly against Martin’s a few tears falling from her eyes as she does so. Her lips freeze as she realises that he is not reciprocating. She pulls back noticing that he does not seem moved by her kiss and realises that he seems to be in the same frame of mind as when he left several months ago. He had mentioned an excursion he wanted to make to take time off from being with each other and to think about the future. Martin looks into Helga’s eyes and all he can feel is friendliness and gratitude that she came to be by his side.
You are a great woman, Helga, he says
I am your wife Martin
I know. I wish I could change things but somehow the magic is gone
Just this morning you were telling me you wanted to come home, you seemed to have rekindled that love you had for me
I’m sorry Helga. I felt like that this morning when I woke up but I don’t anymore
Martin does not tell Helga that he still feels that impression but simply not directed towards her. He prefers not telling her as he does not wish to hurt her but also because he would be at a loss trying to explain towards whom he has these feelings. He stands up and decides to discharge himself from the hospital as they can find nothing wrong
Rita wipes away the tears from her face and decides to start her mission at the House of Love. She opens the doors to the visitors and graciously answers all their questions about the great love between Nina and Harold the rock star. As honeymooners and couples pass by admiring the various emblems of love she feels her heart warm up to them as she can feel the love surging from them and towards her, pacifying her.
Martin accompanies Helga home and goes through his things. He realises he cannot stay with Helga and feels sorry for having given her false hopes again. He wants to understand more about himself and why he is feeling so forlorn for a love he cannot identify. He knows that his therapist is not going to help him much because he only asks questions and Martin knows that he does not have the answers to any of the questions that the therapist would probably ask. While he is going through his things, he sees a brochure for a place called House of Love and notices that he had circled the address and scribbled down a series of dates and a phone number. He calls the phone number and a person responds that it is an agency that organises honeymoon vacations as well as retreats for couples in a place called the House of Love.
Martin parks his car outside the place called the House of Love and realises it seems as familiar as the agency had seemed. He rings the bell and is welcomed by a butler who takes his coat and tells him that he is a bit early but the House of Love never rejects visitors so he would be welcome to stay in the library while the lady of the house gets ready for visitors. After a short while, Rita goes into the library to welcome the first visitors and comes face to face with Martin.
Martin! She exclaims
I know you, he answers
How did you get here
I know you. Who are you?
Rita throws her arms around him and in that instant all the other essences of Martin gather again within him and he knows. He turns her face slowly towards him and kisses her with all of his longing realising this was the woman he had been longing for when he woke up in that hotel room.
I know you from before Time, he says
I love you from beyond Time, beyond doubt…
He kisses her and the visitors who start pouring into the House of Love start clapping. Some japanese visitors among them take photographs or videos thinking that this is a performance which is part of the exhibition. You and I look at each other with delight though we know that this will definitely be sending some more ripples across time.
Rita wakes up her head still full of lightbeams crossing the dark space behind her eyes where the retina still shivers to the remnants of the Essence’s trails. Slowly she picks up the reality of her surroundings, the beautiful rainbow coloured soft couch underneath her naked body and the pleasantly heavy arm of the man of her dreams lying across her midriff and squeezed into the tight space between the couch and the curve of the small of her back. She stretches and yawns like a cat, partially waking Martin up with her movements as her body pushes against him. Mmmmhhh he grunts softly accentuating the pressure of his hand on the small of her back.
Martin, she whispers, we have to wake up and go change in the bedroom upstairs. Nina said we would find Harold’s and her clothes up there and our sizes pretty much matched theirs so it should be fine.
Mmmmmmh, he merely grunted again his other hand reaching out for her shoulders slowly attempting to pull her back again fully within his arms
She laughs and shakes off his hand. If we don’t get up right now the first visitors will come and find us here still making love and naked, she says grinning
He lifts his head up and looks at her half grinning half dreamily. Is this not supposed to be the House of Love? Why would they be surprised to find us here making love?, he teases. Now half upright on his elbow, his eyes moving all over her body lovingly and teasingly he says: We could always say we are actors hired to represent the all-encompassing urgency of Love and that is why they see us here making love as a living art form dedicated to the House of Love.
She pushes him and stands up laughing. Don’t be silly, I would not stand people looking at me making love naked like that. I am quite timid you know.
Aha, he says. I did not quite get that impression yesterday nor the times before, when we had not met in the flesh yet.
She flushes deeply as she thinks back to the night before and the height of their exchanges. It had reached a point such that they had felt the whole room expanding and igniting with light and they had been briefly in touch with Kayla, Kalen, Nina and Harold again with other less clear forms emerging in the outer circle beyond their gaze. Her gaze softly goes over his body, so familiar yet still so unknown that she would like to spend the rest of her life studying every inch of it, memorising every birthmark and the incredible amount of freckles all over it. Her mind wanders back to the times when within dreams her body had locked with his confused yet happy and giddy with the pleasure of their merging feeling only his essence but not seeing his body. She thinks back to the times when it was no longer in the dreams but during the waking hours that she felt him come to her, instantaneously when she thought of him and desired his touch and how she had had microscopic glimpses of his body and face. She feels the giddiness overcome her again as his energy is drawing her to him. Her arms extended to attempt keeping some distance she lays them on his shoulders then, careful not to touch his body with hers so that she may control the surge, she presses lightly her lips against his.
We really must get up and get ready, she whispers against his mouth, her upper lip tingling with the effect of the bristles of his moustache and her chin begging to rub against the stub on his chin.
Okay my love, he says letting her go at regret. You owe me a thousand and one lives of ecstasy from now on though, he adds his hand stroking her thigh as she extracts herself from his embrace half-heartedly. Don’t shower alone, he whispers. I want to come and shower with you like when we were meeting secretly between the spaces of Time and I would hold your body and lather it with soap before kissing you all over. Do you remember the times when we made love in the shower, you totally incapable of letting go of me yet still scared and wondering what was happening.
I remember everything, every little moment, every flush of heat, every energy surge, that unexplainable giddiness and its aftermath when we merged in Love, she says smiling at him softly, her eyes full of warmth and love. I was both afraid and unafraid because I knew somehow that it was someone I knew from before, someone I knew from a very long space ago.
I cannot believe we are together already, he says, continuing to stroke her thigh as she does not move from near him.
Believe it, she says planting a kiss now firmly on his lips. Believe it, know it, embrace it, live it, she adds planting a small kiss at every partial sentence on a different part of his face. Now, move it, she says finally with a small smack on his bottom as she grins wickedly and runs quickly towards the upstairs bedroom so that he may not catch her.
She hears more than she sees Martin rushing towards her as she rushes up the flight of stairs taking them two by two. She has just made it to the bedroom but does not have the time to close it and Martin rushes through it delving towards her knees as he picks her up in one swooping move and falls with her on the bed.
Pity, pity, mercy on me, she squeals as she gasps for breath.
Oh but I am very very merciful, he says as his face draws closer to hers and the energy shoots up in the room as she awaits his kiss while Time freezes around them.
I look at them through the torpedo they have created and laugh but you seem worried.
“They are going too fast” you say with a slight frown although you are starting to quiver with the energy surge they are already producing.
“Just like us my love” I say wrapping my arms around your shoulders.
“Yes but during our times everyone was ready. Besides, they have not yet initiated their mission and seem to be lost in this multiplication of energy exchanges” you say shaking your head disapprovingly
“Like you don’t understand what it is all about and how compelling it can be” I say moving closer inside your essence
“It’s different, we did not have such a difficult mission to accomplish” you say. “Things were different then” you add. “People did not fight the unified Essence. They were flowing within it and eager to be just particles of the Source. They did not want to emerge and do all that is being done today as small isolated particles. What do they expect? What can they possibly accomplish alone? Why don’t they understand that they must reintegrate the flow?”
“Don’t be too harsh” I say softly. “We too were once not very up to date on what Source wanted, even when we had the partial knowledge and could see the flow. We still had isolated desires and we too still loved one to one. Look at us, are we not a living example of that isolated aspiration? Why did it have to be you and me and not you, me and all the other particles of the flow?”
“You are right” he says. “I keep forgetting how much the energy surge can totally swallow you and make you forget the rest. Yet we did come back to source my darling and though we did keep our particles slightly in isolation we are still fully aware and integrated into Source.
“We too have so much to learn still” I say
Despite the eons separating us, I feel her energy drawing me into Martin’s essence as I can also feel his energy drawing you to Rita’s essence as their bodies lock and their Essences begin to merge. Our Essences reach Nina’s and Harold’s before picking up into a tornado of light shimmering all over. Suddenly, a dark beam from nowhere splits the tornado and separates our Essences brutally as a shrill noise emerges from below…