Soulmate: Chapter 1 When Worlds Collide

An unidentified man lay on a floor, alone in a room enveloped in darkness but for a single light above his head. Slowly, he struggled to stand, then wavered a bit once he was on his feet.

The light above his head illuminated the area immediately surrounding him, and no more. Looking out beyond the light, in all directions, he saw nothing. For a brief moment, panic washed over him, but he quickly regained his composure.

He yelled out into the darkness, “Hello!” but heard nothing in response. He tried again with, “Is anyone out there?”

He felt a little unnerved at the way his voice sounded.

When he yelled out, the darkness absorbed his words as though he were pouring water slowly into a sponge. There was no echo whatsoever, and no one replied. He continued to yell despite his belief that no one would hear him.

He sat on the floor for a bit, then lay down, and after a while, he stood back up and yelled some more. He repeated these motions under the singular light numerous times. He was uncertain of how much time had passed. “Was it minutes or hours?” He wondered to himself, reluctant to leave the security of the light and wander off into the darkness. It felt as though nothing existed, not even time, outside of his space beneath the light.

More time passed, and he convinced himself that he couldn’t remain where he was; moving in any direction would be a better decision than staying put. He stepped out of the light and quickly disappeared into the darkness. No more than twenty paces from the light, he placed his hand in front of his face and couldn’t see it. He could feel his heart begin to race as his anxiety increased. He despised the feeling of being so afraid that it quickly turned into anger at himself for not being able to maintain control over his fears.

He shouted out again, “Hello… is anyone there?” Nothing.

“I need this place to be lit up! And I need it to be lit up now!” he yelled with rage, looking up into the darkness, his hands balled into tight fists by his sides.

Like daylight entering over a horizon, the darkness began to fade as light slowly consumed a vast area surrounding him. Feeling confused, the man started looking in all directions for a clue as to which way to proceed. Where everything had seemed completely black before, it was replaced with the opposite. The floor was a shiny, bright white, as though it was brand new, with no blemishes or marks anywhere that could be seen, and it impressed upon him that he was in a completely sterile environment.

He continued to look around, hoping to find a wall, and perhaps a door or window. It was as though he were alone in a warehouse which continued infinitely in all directions. His perception was that he could see a couple of hundred yards in every direction, and all was open space, but it wasn’t easy to tell, as there wasn’t a single object for him to focus on. Nothing existed, no columns or any other infrastructure, just the light above and a bright white floor below. It took him a few moments to realize that beyond the light lay darkness, and that he now had a much larger space to view, yet remained surrounded by an abyss.

With the bright white floor below and bright light above, both stretching out so far that he could barely see the darkness in the distance, a small gap between the two created a border that surrounded him. He was uncertain if he should feel better or worse about his situation.

With no direction to follow, the man began to walk, nearly convinced he wouldn’t actually get anywhere, yet still believing he must try. To his surprise, his perspective began to change as the band of darkness he was walking toward grew in height while the band behind him began to shrink from sight. This gave him some much-needed encouragement, and he began to walk faster. As he approached the border of darkness, he stopped with approximately fifty feet of space remaining. He sensed something or someone was there. He stared intently, trying to listen for any sounds. Even though he could see and hear nothing, he was becoming more convinced by the moment that someone or something was approaching, and he began slowly stepping backward, as chills covered his body and his arms began to pimple up in anticipation.

He froze where he stood when he noticed a hand breaking the pane of darkness from the other side. Slowly, a woman’s hand extended from the darkness, followed by a forearm wrapped in a draping white garment. She stepped entirely into the light and stopped to look at him. His hands began to tremble at the sight of her, and disbelief quickly gave way to joy as a smile spread across both their faces, and they rushed to embrace each other.

Ten years later, Kenneth Wilson was driving on a winding road, late at night, in his sporty new red Corvette, while thinking about the day he’d just experienced. He was a partner in an architectural firm, and they were left with no choice but to downsize after some major industries within the county had relocated to other states, essentially shutting down the potential of any new development in the area. Ken wouldn’t be without work; he would just be without the cool office space, which he had designed for the firm nearly fifteen years ago. He loved that office and had enjoyed going to work there every day since the construction was completed. Now, he would work from home for the foreseeable future. The firm would continue to hold the property as an asset, but eliminating the overhead of maintaining the building would make all the difference in saving the company in the long term.

After Ken had emptied his office area of personal belongings, which were currently stored in a box on his passenger seat, he attended a small party at the home of one of the firm’s other partners. He had a little to drink, but not too much, and it was the aggravation of the day which was skewing his judgment behind the wheel, not any substance in his system. Even though there were signs indicating a hairpin turn, they didn’t register with him until it was nearly too late. He let off the gas and was breaking hard, but the back end of his car fishtailed around the curve. As he tried to regain control of the situation, he found himself staring, imminently, into another set of oncoming lights, accompanied by a chorus of dueling screeches.

The chaos of lights and sounds seemed to be the last thing that Ken could recall as he sat up in bed at the crack of dawn, dwelling on the close call he’d experienced a few hours earlier. He jumped to his feet and looked out his second-floor bedroom window, to his driveway below. There sat his beautiful, shiny Corvette, with not a scratch on it. “Wow, I guess I was lucky!” he murmured aloud to himself.

As he looked out his window, he noticed a couple standing outside the house next door. He was a bit surprised as he hadn’t even realized anyone had moved in. He saw a man in a uniform yelling at the woman. With the sound of the conversation being muffled by his closed window, he couldn’t make out all that was being said. Still, he deciphered enough to understand statements like, “you stupid bitch! What were you thinking?” and “you’ve never been anything but trouble! Good riddance!”

Ken tossed on some clothes and shoes, then walked downstairs and out his front door, half thinking he should get involved so the situation didn’t escalate into some physical abuse. By the time he made it outside, there was just the woman standing alone, and the uniformed man was nowhere to be seen. Ken walked over to introduce himself, and when the woman looked up at him and said “hello,” his heart instantly melted.

She stood tall, about 5’9” to Ken’s nearly 5’11”, and had an athletic build with thick, shoulder-length, dark hair, laced with strands of gray, which gave her a salt-and-pepper look that Ken found both sexy and irresistible.

“Are you okay?” Ken asked a bit timidly.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she replied with a smile, backed up by a bubbly personality that instantly lit a fire inside Ken, as she extended her hand to shake his. “I’m Amelia Hart, by the way, but most people call me Amy.”

“Well, Amy… my name is Kenneth, but most people call me Ken. “ Welcome to the neighborhood,” he said, as he reached out to take her hand. “Amelia Hart? Sounds a lot like Amelia Earhart, so that’ll be easy to remember.”

Amy produced a fake smile, indicating she had heard the Amelia Earhart comparison too many times, and replied, “And that’s why I have people call me Amy.”

Ken was a handsome man at fifty, with a mature and gentle look about him. He was mostly gray, with a hint of balding. Having been athletic for most of his life, he still has a youthful and toned physique. Amy immediately found him attractive but didn’t show it.

They stood outside and continued to talk for nearly two hours. She did most of the talking, telling him all about the divorce she was going through and the bad dates she’d recently been on, laughing and joking about it all. Ken found himself not wanting the conversations with her to end and was confused by an uncertainty of just why he felt so drawn to her, seeing her as mesmerizing as a flame is to a moth. As they departed, she said, in a very childlike and innocent voice, “Will you be my friend?”

For some reason, those words struck a chord in Ken, hearing such juvenile innocence from the mouth of a forty-year-old.

Ken knew he would have to get to know this remarkable woman better, and he replied, “Of course I’ll be your friend.” He walked back home, unable to get those last words and the way they were spoken out of his mind.

A couple of days passed, and Ken still couldn’t remove Amy from his thoughts, so he went next door to check on her late one evening. She was dressed in comfortable clothing and sporting a baseball cap on her head. Conversations ensued, and he told her that he’d like to spend more time getting to know her.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “I must have seemed like a hot mess the other day. I know I rambled about a lot of crazy stuff that would have run most people off.”

“Honestly?” he replied. “We laughed and had a good time, but I saw through all that with you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked with genuine curiosity, cocking her head slightly to one side.

Ken paused for a moment, then looked her in the eyes and replied, “I saw someone with a lot of pain in their life, desperately trying to distract themselves in any way they could.” Quite frankly, I recognized it because it’s precisely what I’ve done most of my life.”

Amy’s head straightened, and her jaw dropped slightly as she looked at him in disbelief that he could actually see through her. Ken knew by her body language that he’d nailed it. She then nervously grabbed the brim of her baseball cap and pulled it down, looking downward as she attempted to shield her eyes. Ken noted the discomfort his discovery had caused and assured her all was okay.

After a couple of moments, she looked up at him and invited him in. They started with a bottle of Merlot and continued for another two hours in conversation. When the night was over, Ken kissed her for the first time. Amy leaned her head into his, forehead to forehead, and said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you.”

“For starters,” Ken replied, “maybe we can go for a walk or something tomorrow evening when I wrap up my work. Then we can figure it out from there, okay?”

“I’d think I’d like that,” Amy said with a sheepish smile.

The next morning, Ken awoke, got ready for the day, and then headed downstairs to his kitchen. The floor plan in his home was relatively open, and the kitchen area had no actual boundaries from the living area. As you looked out from the kitchen, the view was of the back of a flat-screen television mounted on a stand, with a sofa and a couple of chairs just on the other side, facing the TV and the kitchen. It wasn’t the best arrangement of furniture, but it worked for him as he considered it temporary. Things just got dropped in place when he moved in, and he knew one day he’d decide on how he wanted things to look.

As Ken fumbled around his kitchen, he heard his television turn on and turned to look. Then, he jumped like a startled squirrel as he noticed a man sitting on his sofa. He quickly recognized him, calling out, “Dad? Is that you? What are you doing?”

The man just sat there. Ken walked over to him and walked between his father and the television. “Dad? You okay? What are you doing here this early?”

His father continued to sit with a blank stare on his face. Ken watched him with curiosity, and after a few moments, his father said, “Ken, I’m so sorry, buddy. I’m so sorry.”

A few months ago, Ken’s mother had died of cancer, and his father had become so withdrawn that Ken had barely seen him. He knew that somehow his father blamed himself for his mother’s death, but he had no idea his father was this bad. Ken didn’t know what to say, but didn’t want to say nothing, so he replied, “It’s okay, Dad, nothing is your fault, you know? You sit here as long as you like, and I’ll be here all day if you need to talk or anything. Okay?”

His father just continued to sit there, staring off into space, and it made Ken quite sad to see his father in this condition. Ken waited a bit, hoping for some interaction, but finally walked off and went about his day, making breakfast first, then retreating to his home office. His office area was a little bare because he hadn’t used it before today, so he hadn’t had a chance to finish setting it up. On one side of the room was a desk with a new iMac on it, a black leather office chair, and a bookcase in the corner with only a handful of books pertaining to his profession along with a leather-bound version of Phantom of the Opera, given to him by his best friend, so he always kept it close by. The walls of his office were bare for now, and he knew he couldn’t let that last for long.

Ken spent the first part of his day dressing up his office, hanging pictures, unpacking books from boxes to fill the empty shelves, and then set up his iMac so he could begin his first project at home. At the end of the day, Ken wrapped up his work, and his mind quickly embraced the anticipation he was feeling about seeing Amy again. Ken walked out into his living area to find that his father had left without ever saying goodbye or anything else to him.

Ken left his home to visit Amy, and the two headed out into their neighborhood for a walk. There were twenty-three new homes in the small community, each on one-acre lots, with twenty-one homes remaining vacant. As they walked through the neighborhood, Ken explained that he had designed each of the homes to have a unique sense of style, both inside and out. The way Ken was walking and explaining made it seem to Amy as though it was more like a fun, private little tour than just a walk.

“So, no one else lives in any of these houses?” Amy asked.

“At least not that I know of,” said Ken. I had assumed they were all empty until I spotted you next door. If you’d moved into any of the other homes, then I’m not so sure I’d even know you were in the neighborhood.

“Then I’m glad I picked the one next to you,” Amy stated with sincerity.

“They’re all really nice homes, so why is it they are all still empty? And, don’t take this the wrong way, but an empty neighborhood like this is a little creepy.”

“Yeah… I think it’s quite creepy!” Ken said with laughter. “My firm made a deal with a builder to develop this neighborhood, and before we were even finished, we lost a lot of employers in this area. The town lost thousands of jobs overnight, and people began selling their homes in the area far below market value so they could sell quickly and follow the work, or perhaps move on to another town with better prospects, I suppose. Anyway, the housing market dried up fast, and we found ourselves stuck with all these new homes and no real solution to sell them without taking major loses. We’ve elected to hold on to them until the local housing market turns around. I agreed to take the home I’m in as compensation because my firm was essentially too cash-strapped to pay me properly. And that, as they say, is all she wrote.”

They walked in silence a few moments before Ken asked, “What’s your story?”

Amy was silent, but her face was contorting as though she was trying to figure out what to say, as Ken injected, “I mean, you seem to be at home all the time, right? Do you work, or don’t you have to work, or do you work from home?

“I spent many years working for a telecommunications company,” Amy replied, “but the company has been limping along for quite some time and is basically a sinking ship. So, I’m looking for somewhere else to fit in, but in the meantime, I’m receiving a nice settlement in my upcoming divorce, so I’m taking my time and being picky. And I’m just trying to enjoy some time off to get to know myself again, if that makes any sense.”

“I get that,” said Ken as they reached the backside of the neighborhood.

“Wow, that’s really pretty,” said Amy in her childlike voice, looking across a creek which divided the neighborhood from a rustic-looking farm, with a home and old barn up on a hill in the distance, and a beautiful open meadow full of wildflowers just on the other side of the creek.

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