Reprise: A Story of Reincarnated Love
folder
Romance › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
15
Views:
2,247
Reviews:
16
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Romance › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
15
Views:
2,247
Reviews:
16
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
In Search of the Dream
Warning: This chapter contains the first account of Felicia's rape. If such things offend you, please do not read further.
** 7 May 2007 3:45 p.m. Airborn 31,000 feet over the Gulf of Lion , French/Spanish border **
Sean shifted stiffly in the 1st class overstuffed leather seat and absently stirred the tooth-picked olives in his Beefeater gin martini. The nearly 48 hours since his encounter with she-who-may-be Felicia had crowded his head and body to beyond unhealthy extreme, and the low, steady drone of the two-engine deluxe commuter jet had been slumbering him for the past hour. He rewound the past day-and-a-half in his mind as the sleek jet closed the 700-plus miles between Paris and Barcelona , now 45 minutes from touch-down.
He had awoken mid-morning on Sunday in his gallery office chair, still facing Felicia’s portrait. Sweaty and gritty, he had locked the gallery and signed it “fermé,” “closed,” repaired to his nearby townhouse (one of five in the greater Paris area) overlooking Pont Neuf and the Seine . After showering and eating lightly, Sean had devoured the Sunday hours into the early morning hours of Monday at his computer, surfing and searching for all he could find on reincarnation and the remembrance of past lives.
Sean had become obsessed with the topic since seeing the breathing image of Felicia on Saturday. He had essentially always dismissed the often jarring visions and deja-vu notions of having lived or experienced things in the past, which had been core to his existence since childhood, as mere workings of the dreaming mind, and nothing more. But, a nagging sense that there might be far more to it all perpetually lingered in the wings of his consciousness. That disquiet had now claimed center stage as a certainty, and Sean had determined to understand it.
The web research was by and large frustrating and fruitless. Sean had not sought proofs of reincarnation or past lives, as the preceding days events had convinced him that he clearly was in touch with many past incarnations, Spain in 1835 being but one. Her sought the “whys” – why and how could he remember these previous existences?
He found jumbles and volumes speaking to conjecture and conventional wisdom and religious doctrine and personal belief and dimensions of consciousness and psychobabble and on and on. There simply was no empirical basis for explaining his perceptions into his past.
One concept, however, seemed to perhaps fit. Regression analysis was a psycho-hypnotic technique for guiding patients to recall very early childhood memories now lost to upper consciousness, and for those who studied reincarnation seriously, a tool for helping one to rewind back through past lives. Perhaps, Sean had concluded, some quirk in his DNA allowed him to auto regress – to journey back through visions to his former selves without third party hypnotic assistance. Either that, or some sort of divinely-granted preternatural capacity. Whatever the explanation, if any, Sean now knew that he had come before, and that he could revisit his former lives.
In those few hours, he became a mission-driven man. All other endeavor paled in his unrelenting need to fill in the gaps about Felicia, and to somehow engage the woman he had seen on the 5th in a relationship that would be destined, were she in fact his contemporary Felicia. Before pursuing her, which he would passionately, he wanted to visit Spain – the Spain of his visions.
Mid-Sunday afternoon, he had secured reservations for a 2:05 p.m. flight to Barcelona . From there, he would Tuesday early drive to Tarragona , the Mediterranean sea port some 69 miles north of Barcelona . He would spend the day thereabouts, remembering if he could, and return to Barcelona late afternoon for an evening flight back to Paris . The gallery would remain fermé until Wednesday.
** 8 May 2007 9:50 a.m. The Highway to Tarragona **
Sean disengaged the cruise control of his silver and black rented Citroen Picasso to ease into the broad curve up ahead. Tarragona lay some 6.4 kilometers, 4 miles, ahead. As was true almost everywhere across the hill-and-valed expanse of Spain ’s Catalonian region, the countryside was virtually unsullied by human hands. The occasional fruit and olive tree farms, sheep paddocks, traditional country farms, and heavily tree-sheltered estates seemed natural features of the landscape.
Barcelona had been a bust for Sean. It had always been one of Europe ’s most brashless, understated carnival towns. A place where one could find any kind of obsessive outlet or entertainment or cultural happening all hours of the day, every day. The night life ranged from family-rated to the totally outrageous. A man could find any kind of woman for any price, any kind of booze in any kind of gin joint, any kind of drug off the streets or in a parlor. It all was wasted on Sean when he dragged into Barcelona ’s five-star Gran Hotel la Florida . He’d taken a meal in his suite, soaked in the tub, and collapsed on the bed, asleep before midnight. He slept soundly and peacefully.
Sean negotiated the curve in the road and viewed what lay ahead. More of the same that had been coursing by since leaving Barcelona , and, up ahead, a narrow intersecting road to the left, toward the west.
Since stepping out of the airport terminal and outside, onto Spanish soil, Sean had been in a strange, but not unpleasant, state of liquid motion and mind. Things seemed to drift by him; he seemed to drift by them; his mind was easy and content, in marked contrast to previous days. His overall sense was that of “belonging,” familiarity, security about his presence there. As he approached the side road, all those sensations intensified, and his chest began to pump wildly. But, another sense shaded the rest darkly: a sense of foreboding and peril. An adrenalin-releasing impression.
Sean knew he must take and follow the side road now. It was what he expected to happen, to be able to follow his nose and fall into the past that he knew resided there for him in Catalonia .
Sean moved a couple of kilometers down the road, now far from view of the main highway, and suddenly slammed on the brakes, grinding to a gravely sliding stop. With the dust still fogging up around the car, he emptied himself out and stood looking off-road, toward a nearby rocky hillock surrounded by tall, old trees.
The ground was rough, uneven. He passed from the roads, walking gingerly toward the hillock. The place became noisome to him suddenly. It felt ominous there, with shadowy somethings lurking behind the trees and within the deep pot holes of the eroded earth underfoot. Something quite outré was resident there, watchful, dangerous…
A blackness fell around him, though the hillock and trees ahead remained in view.
“Bring the bitch! Carry her, comrades. Here, keep still!” Sean heard the words in front of him, and heard a gut wrenching thud and liquid smack of something hard striking something soft. Then, he saw them.
Five men, bandoliers, Rivera-Leon’s thugs, carry-dragging a screaming, thin woman toward the hillock. Thin tendrils of blood oozed down her cheek from an abrasion on her temple. Her hair was matted, wet, crusted with red clay earth and twigs. What remained of her clothing hung more like rips and tears upon her frame than fabric with rips and tears. She turned as if to beg the large, tall man who followed behind the other men to release her.
It was …. Felicia!
Sean cried out, and tried to rush the band of ruffians blindly, but found himself riveted to the spot. The scene before him faded. Just as quickly, he saw the men ahead, now huddled against the hillock. No, not huddled. They were holding Felicia down on the rough ground, on her belly. Two men held each of her limbs, pulling her arms straight out and at right angles to her torso, and the other two grasped her ankles, spreading her legs wide. The fifth man held a pistol to her bloodied temple. She lay facing Sean, her head raised and her eyes supplicating for rescue. Sean’s eyes welled with acrid tears. The big man, Rivera-Leon, pantless and hideous with his twisted, angry veined phallus dangling between his legs, dropped down on his knees between her legs, yanked on a batch of her hair, and shouted, “Now! Haaaa aaaaa aaaaaa……..”
They were gone. The blackness was gone. Sean was alone. He sank to his knees. An eerie biting wind tore across his face. He threw back his head, raised his arms outstreached, high over head, and belched out an agonized scream that went on and on until he lost all his air and fell forward onto the ground, sobbing.
** 9:00 p.m. **
Sean trudged down the airplane tunnel to his return flight to Barcelona . He had not proceeded to Tarragona after the vision. He eventually collected himself and drove back to Barcelona , lost in grief and guilt and sadness. He knew now. He knew all that had happened at the spot off the road, and could conjecture what had happened afterward. And, he knew, deep in his soul of souls, that she was she – Angelo’s “model” was his Felicia, re-born.
His life now could begin anew. He would be with her again. And, together, they would climb out of the ruins of the past. Hope had come to Sean. He could not wait to be back in Paris.
** 7 May 2007 3:45 p.m. Airborn 31,000 feet over the Gulf of Lion , French/Spanish border **
Sean shifted stiffly in the 1st class overstuffed leather seat and absently stirred the tooth-picked olives in his Beefeater gin martini. The nearly 48 hours since his encounter with she-who-may-be Felicia had crowded his head and body to beyond unhealthy extreme, and the low, steady drone of the two-engine deluxe commuter jet had been slumbering him for the past hour. He rewound the past day-and-a-half in his mind as the sleek jet closed the 700-plus miles between Paris and Barcelona , now 45 minutes from touch-down.
He had awoken mid-morning on Sunday in his gallery office chair, still facing Felicia’s portrait. Sweaty and gritty, he had locked the gallery and signed it “fermé,” “closed,” repaired to his nearby townhouse (one of five in the greater Paris area) overlooking Pont Neuf and the Seine . After showering and eating lightly, Sean had devoured the Sunday hours into the early morning hours of Monday at his computer, surfing and searching for all he could find on reincarnation and the remembrance of past lives.
Sean had become obsessed with the topic since seeing the breathing image of Felicia on Saturday. He had essentially always dismissed the often jarring visions and deja-vu notions of having lived or experienced things in the past, which had been core to his existence since childhood, as mere workings of the dreaming mind, and nothing more. But, a nagging sense that there might be far more to it all perpetually lingered in the wings of his consciousness. That disquiet had now claimed center stage as a certainty, and Sean had determined to understand it.
The web research was by and large frustrating and fruitless. Sean had not sought proofs of reincarnation or past lives, as the preceding days events had convinced him that he clearly was in touch with many past incarnations, Spain in 1835 being but one. Her sought the “whys” – why and how could he remember these previous existences?
He found jumbles and volumes speaking to conjecture and conventional wisdom and religious doctrine and personal belief and dimensions of consciousness and psychobabble and on and on. There simply was no empirical basis for explaining his perceptions into his past.
One concept, however, seemed to perhaps fit. Regression analysis was a psycho-hypnotic technique for guiding patients to recall very early childhood memories now lost to upper consciousness, and for those who studied reincarnation seriously, a tool for helping one to rewind back through past lives. Perhaps, Sean had concluded, some quirk in his DNA allowed him to auto regress – to journey back through visions to his former selves without third party hypnotic assistance. Either that, or some sort of divinely-granted preternatural capacity. Whatever the explanation, if any, Sean now knew that he had come before, and that he could revisit his former lives.
In those few hours, he became a mission-driven man. All other endeavor paled in his unrelenting need to fill in the gaps about Felicia, and to somehow engage the woman he had seen on the 5th in a relationship that would be destined, were she in fact his contemporary Felicia. Before pursuing her, which he would passionately, he wanted to visit Spain – the Spain of his visions.
Mid-Sunday afternoon, he had secured reservations for a 2:05 p.m. flight to Barcelona . From there, he would Tuesday early drive to Tarragona , the Mediterranean sea port some 69 miles north of Barcelona . He would spend the day thereabouts, remembering if he could, and return to Barcelona late afternoon for an evening flight back to Paris . The gallery would remain fermé until Wednesday.
** 8 May 2007 9:50 a.m. The Highway to Tarragona **
Sean disengaged the cruise control of his silver and black rented Citroen Picasso to ease into the broad curve up ahead. Tarragona lay some 6.4 kilometers, 4 miles, ahead. As was true almost everywhere across the hill-and-valed expanse of Spain ’s Catalonian region, the countryside was virtually unsullied by human hands. The occasional fruit and olive tree farms, sheep paddocks, traditional country farms, and heavily tree-sheltered estates seemed natural features of the landscape.
Barcelona had been a bust for Sean. It had always been one of Europe ’s most brashless, understated carnival towns. A place where one could find any kind of obsessive outlet or entertainment or cultural happening all hours of the day, every day. The night life ranged from family-rated to the totally outrageous. A man could find any kind of woman for any price, any kind of booze in any kind of gin joint, any kind of drug off the streets or in a parlor. It all was wasted on Sean when he dragged into Barcelona ’s five-star Gran Hotel la Florida . He’d taken a meal in his suite, soaked in the tub, and collapsed on the bed, asleep before midnight. He slept soundly and peacefully.
Sean negotiated the curve in the road and viewed what lay ahead. More of the same that had been coursing by since leaving Barcelona , and, up ahead, a narrow intersecting road to the left, toward the west.
Since stepping out of the airport terminal and outside, onto Spanish soil, Sean had been in a strange, but not unpleasant, state of liquid motion and mind. Things seemed to drift by him; he seemed to drift by them; his mind was easy and content, in marked contrast to previous days. His overall sense was that of “belonging,” familiarity, security about his presence there. As he approached the side road, all those sensations intensified, and his chest began to pump wildly. But, another sense shaded the rest darkly: a sense of foreboding and peril. An adrenalin-releasing impression.
Sean knew he must take and follow the side road now. It was what he expected to happen, to be able to follow his nose and fall into the past that he knew resided there for him in Catalonia .
Sean moved a couple of kilometers down the road, now far from view of the main highway, and suddenly slammed on the brakes, grinding to a gravely sliding stop. With the dust still fogging up around the car, he emptied himself out and stood looking off-road, toward a nearby rocky hillock surrounded by tall, old trees.
The ground was rough, uneven. He passed from the roads, walking gingerly toward the hillock. The place became noisome to him suddenly. It felt ominous there, with shadowy somethings lurking behind the trees and within the deep pot holes of the eroded earth underfoot. Something quite outré was resident there, watchful, dangerous…
A blackness fell around him, though the hillock and trees ahead remained in view.
“Bring the bitch! Carry her, comrades. Here, keep still!” Sean heard the words in front of him, and heard a gut wrenching thud and liquid smack of something hard striking something soft. Then, he saw them.
Five men, bandoliers, Rivera-Leon’s thugs, carry-dragging a screaming, thin woman toward the hillock. Thin tendrils of blood oozed down her cheek from an abrasion on her temple. Her hair was matted, wet, crusted with red clay earth and twigs. What remained of her clothing hung more like rips and tears upon her frame than fabric with rips and tears. She turned as if to beg the large, tall man who followed behind the other men to release her.
It was …. Felicia!
Sean cried out, and tried to rush the band of ruffians blindly, but found himself riveted to the spot. The scene before him faded. Just as quickly, he saw the men ahead, now huddled against the hillock. No, not huddled. They were holding Felicia down on the rough ground, on her belly. Two men held each of her limbs, pulling her arms straight out and at right angles to her torso, and the other two grasped her ankles, spreading her legs wide. The fifth man held a pistol to her bloodied temple. She lay facing Sean, her head raised and her eyes supplicating for rescue. Sean’s eyes welled with acrid tears. The big man, Rivera-Leon, pantless and hideous with his twisted, angry veined phallus dangling between his legs, dropped down on his knees between her legs, yanked on a batch of her hair, and shouted, “Now! Haaaa aaaaa aaaaaa……..”
They were gone. The blackness was gone. Sean was alone. He sank to his knees. An eerie biting wind tore across his face. He threw back his head, raised his arms outstreached, high over head, and belched out an agonized scream that went on and on until he lost all his air and fell forward onto the ground, sobbing.
** 9:00 p.m. **
Sean trudged down the airplane tunnel to his return flight to Barcelona . He had not proceeded to Tarragona after the vision. He eventually collected himself and drove back to Barcelona , lost in grief and guilt and sadness. He knew now. He knew all that had happened at the spot off the road, and could conjecture what had happened afterward. And, he knew, deep in his soul of souls, that she was she – Angelo’s “model” was his Felicia, re-born.
His life now could begin anew. He would be with her again. And, together, they would climb out of the ruins of the past. Hope had come to Sean. He could not wait to be back in Paris.