Harmony
21

When Pixie’s awareness returned, she was in her childhood bedroom. She remembered everything; her doll and soft toy collection, the pictures of angels and unicorns on the wall, her clothes, how it felt to stand barefoot on the carpet, what her oversized four-poster bed felt like to sleep in, and everything else about the family home. It was astonishing. She knew how old she was too: approaching her third birthday. Why she had skipped the preceding early years of her life, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they weren’t important.

Then she saw her mother and got her first past-life review shock: it was Hanna, the kind lady that had let her out of prison in her most recent vivid dream. Hanna, her mother, had visited her in her dream, in the village, in New Earth! Was these even possible? Even within the past life review, Pixie was aware enough to know that she must ask the Pleiadians about this connection afterwards.

In any case, she knew that her parents, Hanna and Klaas, were taking her into the city for the first time. They told her they would take her for lunch and then she would go skating, which should be a lot of fun. Seeing all of this again should excite her, but it didn’t. This was a reliving of her life, minus the emotions.

She moved quickly through the day, experiencing and reliving, and then through the days and weeks after that. She reabsorbed each day into her memory, and it was then replaced by the next one. Only the important events lingered, such as birthdays and holidays. She had a happy home life, although she could not feel the happiness. It was almost like watching someone else’s life, except that she knew absolutely all of the things contained within it. They all came back to her, all at once.

She had a good home life. Her mother was a kind woman and her father was a good man. She had one Christmas, and then another, and then another. There was a family holiday to Denmark. She really liked Copenhagen. She asked her parents if they could come back some day. They said they wanted to go to West Berlin next. It would be just as nice, they said. There was a school they wanted to take her to. She would have her mathematics tested, they said. Pixie liked math. It explained the world. There was no vagueness with mathematical equations. You worked them out and they gave a definitive answer; no grey areas.

She was sixteen years old now. How did the years go so fast? She was aware she was reliving all of this, but she wished she could have lingered a bit longer. In fact, she had no sense of time. There was only a whole series of ‘nows’, following one after another in rapid succession.

In the back of her mind was the ascension thing: this service-to-others that Kjersti had explained to them all. She was a dutiful daughter and an only child, but other than being nice to her parents and trying hard at school, she failed to see what she’d done that was outstanding in the way others’ lives had been. She recalled Neca’s home life, which was much more volatile, and how Neca kept the peace and was very giving. Pixie didn’t have that opportunity. She didn’t think being nice was enough. Still, she was young, and there was probably something coming up. She wasn’t sure. Her life was so nice, too, such that she wondered why she was worried about going through this process.

There was something not right about this West Berlin trip though. She couldn’t quite place what it was, but she felt uneasy about it. Nonetheless, she was in the back seat of her parents’ car, reading and occasionally looking out of the window while they made the nine-hour trip from Amsterdam to the West German capital. As a Dutch girl, she could understand some of the German language. Her English was fluent, though, so she hoped a lot of people there at the maths institute spoke English.

About half-way through the trip, in the middle of the province of Lower Saxony, their car ran out of petrol. Her father had been a bit careless. His fuel light had been malfunctioning and he had forgotten to get it fixed. He also clearly hadn’t noticed that the fuel gauge was low. Fortunately, they were not too far from a petrol station. They had passed it only a few minutes ago. He would walk back and get petrol while Pixie stayed with her mother. As she and her mother were somewhat isolated, her uneasiness grew. This was a strange country, even though it was not much different to her own.

Another motorist stopped in front of them, to ask if they needed help. He offered to take them to the petrol station and then pick up Pixie’s father. He was nice on first impressions, but Pixie’s mother declined. The man did not appear to be German. He looked in his early twenties and spoke very good English. Rather than getting back in his car and driving off, Pixie’s mother’s refusal angered him.

“I offered to help, and you refuse me? What sort of a person are you?” he almost screamed. His accent changed as well. It was almost impossible for Pixie to figure out what it was, where he might be from, or why it changed in this instant.

He pulled a knife out of his pocket. Pixie would have felt fear at this at the time, she was sure, but in this review, she only felt the memory returning. She was grateful for that. He motioned for her to get in the car. She glanced at her mother, who was shaking her head, but then looked back again as she couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. Couple with the man’s aggression and his strange accent, she thought he might be capable of anything. Fear drove her, or at least she remembered the fear, and she complied, getting in back seat on the driver’s side. The man then motioned for Pixie’s mother to get in the back, on the passenger’s side. Pixie waited as her mother walked around the other side. The man got into the driver’s seat quickly, changed into first gear and planted his foot on the accelerator. Pixie turned quickly and all she could see was her mother rapidly disappearing from view, screaming and crying.

Now all of Pixie’s doubts and trepidation about going through this process made sense.

Thankfully the helmet had taken away her emotions, and there was almost constant waves of peace. Pixie needed them, for she was now alone, and neither of her parents could help her. Her fear the first time that this happened would have been significant. She tried to open the car door, but the handle was broken. The car was going too fast anyway. She would be severely injured if she tried to jump out of the door. Any thoughts of attacking the man were out of the question. The car might crash, or he might stab her. She was trapped.

Pixie dared not look at the man. Instead she fixed her gaze down at her lap, occasionally glancing out of the window, to see where they were going. She was grateful to not be feeling fear or anxiety. The helmet must be preventing this somehow, or it wasn’t possible, as Kjersti said. Suria had suffered at the hands of her parents and showed no ill effects, and Pixie wasn’t suffering emotional distress here either. Whatever had happened from this point onwards, it was all over now anyway. This was only a replay.

Nonetheless, she still had to relive this experience, and it was only just starting.

The man had been driving for a few minutes in the opposite direction to the way her father had gone before he turned down a dirt road off the highway, drove a bit further, and stopped the car. He turned around to face her, showing her the knife again. It was a large switchblade. He also had in his hand a small white pill, and she had no idea where he’d gotten it from. He told her to take it. She did not know what he was capable of; she felt that she had no choice. He had a crazed, almost psychotic look on his face. Doing anything other than he said would have been madness. Yet, taking this pill was surely very dangerous. It could be anything.

She tried to plead with him, reason with him, appeal to his compassion, if he had any. She lied and told him her parents were rich. They would pay whatever he wanted. He shook his head each time and pointed to the pill, with increasing impatience. She shook her head also and was crying with what must have been fear. She could feel the tears streaming down her face. He brandished the knife threateningly towards her. It seemed like he might use it. She took the pill. She hoped that whatever drug it was, would knock her out and she wouldn’t experience whatever it was he wanted to do to her. She was right, it did knock her out, within a minute or so.

Her next memory was waking naked in a strange bed. Her body was hurting in places she did not want it to hurt. Her worst fears had been realised, without the actual fear. Whatever the helmet was doing to take away the emotions associated with her life review, she accepted it as the greatest device in the known universe. There were some moments of lucidity that followed that day, interspersed with more sleep. When she was awake she tried to assess her location. The only window in the room was high on the wall opposite the door. She could only see a fairly plain looking garden out of the window. No identifying signs otherwise. She could be anywhere. Then, it happened, just like she knew it would.

He came in: exactly like he did in her nightmare back in the village.

This time, it was only the beginning of the scene. She blacked out soon after he entered the room. The following days and weeks were much the same. He brought her food and water. She explored the room. There was no way out. There were bars on the window and her side of the door had no door knob, nor any way of prising it open. She was wary that he would hear her if she tried anyway.

She gave up any hope of getting out of the room. It felt like a fortress, and she was intensely fearful of him. At least, she remembered being so. He constantly threatened her with physical harm if she tried to escape. He said he knew where her parents lived, and he’d hurt them too. That strange accent was still unplaceable. Her situation was dire and uncertain. She had no idea how she had coped with it when she was living it the first time.

She did not speak to him for the first few weeks. Then she tried another approach. She tried to get to know him. He had never told her his name. She hadn’t asked, until now. He ignored her, but she detected the slightest softening in his manner. It wasn’t much, but it was there. She kept asking as often as she could, not wanting to nag him or anger him as she did so. Strangely, or perhaps not, he had not asked for her name either.

He was still treating her terribly. She was an object in his possession, nothing more. She was thankfully spared the reliving of the actual abuse itself. Sometimes she would black out for days. Perhaps that was aftermath as well, not the actual experiences. Nonetheless, this was all quite challenging, despite the calming influence of the helmet and the knowledge that this life was over and this was only a replay. How did she not lose her sanity? At one stage she had a fleeting thought about trying to figure out what her ascension thing was, then the events of her life intruded again. Her life was rolling through so fast that she had little time to analyse it.

He had started to bring her clothing. Then costumes for her to wear. She complied with everything. She still tried to replace out his name. He continued to ignore her. She never gave up. She tried to ask him what he did, and then, what his interests were. She sensed more softening. At the same time she could feel herself getting weaker emotionally and she was beginning to think things were hopeless. It had been well over a year in captivity. She knew she had had at least one birthday, but not two. The seasons had cycled through only once. Nonetheless, it felt like forever. She might never escape. The one glimmer of hope left was a concept she was slowly starting to form in her mind.

She was getting through to him. She knew it. With all of her soul.

Every day, without fail, she asked him his name. In many different ways. It wasn’t working. She even thought it was backfiring and making him angry, because she’d see the beginning of his anger, and then she would black out. She would awaken some time later, her body in pain somewhere. She wondered again how she had coped when she was living this life the first time. Her mental state must have been brutal.

Talking him around was her only hope left, but it wasn’t working fast enough. She was getting through, but could she sustain it for long enough? Her mental and physical strength was failing. She kept trying new ways to get him to talk. He wasn’t buying anything she was saying. One day, though, she came up with the right words. Words that changed everything. He had walked in not long after she had woken from another blackout, with food. He appeared distressed, like a lost toddler trying to replace their mother. He wasn’t even looking at her.

She said, with as much softness as she could manage: “My life will be worth it if I have helped you in any way to feel better.”

His head snapped around sharply, their eyes meeting for maybe the first time. She had her chance. Now to really press it.

She simply stared at him, trying to look deep into his eyes, trying to replace his soul somewhere in there. During all her time in captivity so far she could barely look at him. Every time she had asked his name, she had looked at the floor, or the walls, as she did so. This was mostly out of fear and disgust, she remembered. This time, she stared right into his eyes, with all the compassion she could muster.

He looked away, and the lost child expression returned.

“My name is Titan,” he said. “What sort of mother names their kid that!”

He turned abruptly and left the room. She had done it.

The abuse continued, but it lessened in frequency. She slowly and gently began to press him for details on his life, and he gave them to her. He was an only child, like her, but he had no father. His mother was mentally ill somehow, as far as she could tell, but he wouldn’t say how this affected him. Pixie was not ever going to excuse him taking her as his prisoner, but on some level she could understand why he did. He had no moral compass and was never given any sort of parental role model to follow, which exacerbated a predisposition to mental illness. That was how Pixie was rationalising it, anyway.

She continued to meet his eyes at every opportunity now, making sure not to do so gratuitously. Overdoing it would lessen the false impression she wanted him to have: that she genuinely cared about him. She hated what he had done to her, and the liberty she’d been deprived of, but a small part of her genuinely wanted to heal this man. Not because she cared about him, but because it was a core value of hers. She did not know how she had acquired this value, but it meant the world to her now that she had discovered it in herself. She clung to it with all her might; with all that he had not already taken from her.

Pixie wasn’t religious, and neither were her parents, but she had read the Bible. “I wanted to see what all the fuss is about,” she had told her mother one time. In it, Jesus’ ability and desire to save the most forgotten, the most downtrodden and the hardest to reach really resonated with her. At the time she didn’t know why, but it made sense now.

She thought that the human race can praise the good ones and raise them up if they chose to. They could eulogise the saints and hold them up for their virtue and their goodness. The world needs examples of goodness and virtue. That was beyond question.

Then there was the flipside of this concept. Those who need help, though, really need help. Perhaps they can’t do it on their own. Maybe they don’t realise what they’re doing. Maybe their brain is not quite right. They were born a certain way, without the capacity for self-awareness or seeking out help. Bad behaviour is still bad behaviour, but what if it has a source somewhere: a source that is not entirely under that person’s control?

The sick ones, the unhealthy ones, the forgotten ones, the neglected ones: they’re the ones Pixie thought the world should try to replace and redeem. She was aiming to do that, no matter how hard it was. Little by little, she put the abuse behind her. She distracted herself by diving into fantastical worlds of unicorns and angels, like the ones on her bedroom wall back at home, flying around and visiting her, healing her. It seemed to work. She was able to give more compassion to Titan the more she believed that the angels and unicorns were healing her.

He was changing. He looked on many occasions like he wanted to talk to her as one might talk to a friend. She wasn’t allowing that. It was a delicate line she was treading. She was trying to heal him while keeping him at arm’s length. She was only just managing it. Some days she thought he might snap back to his old ways, but he didn’t. She continued to look into his eyes whenever it seemed right.

Perhaps no-one had ever done this to him before. Maybe that was all it was. No-one had shown an interest in him for any reason. That was a feeling she got. He wasn’t particularly attractive. He was overweight. His body might not have been great to look at, but thanks to the blackouts she never saw it naked in this reliving of her life.

In early spring, well into her second year in captivity, Pixie tried something new. She asked if he would walk with her, outside in the garden. It was a risk. He refused, but he wasn’t angry. She sensed he liked the idea, but he wasn’t ready. She kept asking, making sure to come across as genuine and leaving the impression she only wanted to walk with him and there was nothing more to it. She was making sure she kept pity out of her voice. Understanding and compassion were what he needed.

One day in what must have been summer, he relented.

“Okay,” he said, in that strange accent. “We will walk outside. It is time.”

Pixie was sure she must have felt joy at these words. The memory of the emotion was there. After well over a year, she would replace out what was on the other side of her locked door. He motioned for her to come towards the door. She continued to look directly at him, making sure not to succumb to looking beyond into the next room, whatever it was. The focus had to be on him. She was not even trying to use her peripheral vision, knowing that might break the spell of genuine caring she had been putting across for several months now.

He led her into what appeared to be a small ante room on the other side of the door. There was a staircase in front of her, in her peripheral vision. She was still looking at him, but then she broke her glance to glance down at the stairs, as any normal person would. Then back at him, and a quick smile. She had been saving the smile for precisely this moment. It worked. He was off guard. He looked down at the floor and that was her chance.

It was her moment and she had been waiting for years to take it.

Pixie bolted past him, not knowing how she had the strength to run. She hadn’t run in what seemed like years. She was wearing a dress and soft shoes. Not ideal for making an escape in. Her feet slipped on the stairs. Then she got some traction and started to ascend the staircase. It was difficult. Her legs wouldn’t work properly. It was like a bad dream: the one where you try to run from danger and you’re running in slow motion. She had fooled him however, and as such was at least eight steps ahead of him.

What would she replace at the top of the stairs? Hopefully, a front door and the street, which she could run screaming into, hoping for neighbours to hear her and help her. She could hear him behind her now, reacting to the situation with urgency. She had to keep moving. She expected him to roar with anger or something like that. He didn’t. She just heard him coming after her. Quiet desperation from him must have been terrifying to her.

She made the top of the stairs and was now in the kitchen. There was no time to hunt around for where the door was. Pixie knew he had the advantage of knowing the layout of the house, whereas this was the first time she’d seen it. She turned left immediately and got lucky. There was what seemed like either the front or the back door, a few steps in front of her. She bolted towards it, slipping again but this time on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. She grabbed the door handle and turned it. She could now hear his feet on the floor as well.

“No,” he said. He sounded to her like he was commanding a dog to not do something naughty. She was, for the umpteenth time, grateful that the terror she must have felt in real life wasn’t with her now.

She rushed through the door and out into the fresh air for the first time in almost eighteen months or so. It assailed her and made her pause. She knew she had not the slightest moment to slow down for anything, but the feeling of the breeze and the sun on her skin was overwhelming. At least, the memory of it was. Something else made her slow down significantly, and it wasn’t the weather. There was no street and no neighbours.

Her captivity had been on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

She stopped dead in her tracks. It was all over. She may as well die now. All of her efforts were for nothing. She questioned, in that briefest of moments, why she had chosen to run. She also questioned why she was so keen on redeeming him and saving him. Was that not genuine? Why run now if she truly believed in her actions previously? She may as well give it all up and pretend it was a joke. Maybe he would forgive her. She partially turned around, planning to explain to him that she was keen to get to the fresh air. The only problem with that line of thinking was that he wasn’t expecting her to stop.

Instead of stopping as well, he crashed headlong into her.

Pixie had had enough time to perceive that in front of the door was a narrow veranda, leading to a set of maybe six to eight steps down onto a concrete path. His momentum carried both of them forward and down the steps. The last thing Pixie saw before another blackout was the front door, the roof, and then the blue sky as she and Titan, his arms around her, tumbled down the stairs towards the concrete path.

While she was blacked out Pixie wondered what would happen after her awareness returned this time. How much pain would she be in? Could she escape now? Would she be back in her room again? None of those things happened.

The next thing she heard was Thylen’s voice.

Welcome back Pixie. Your life review is over.