Day 133 - Souls Story

Souls Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

While difficult to truly assess, if Maddock had to choose what he thought to be the one greatest failure of his life, he often decided upon the same answer – the inability and lack of capacity to organize his many souls and induce a spirit of cooperative behavior between them. It should be noted, that while Maddock did believe he had multiple souls, it really is a very difficult thing to prove to the skeptical and nonbelievers. If he had to choose two greatest failures, the second might have been his failure to properly identify all of his souls. He wasn’t sure about that one. There was a girl Annie from Kansas City that he had been quite fond of. Missing her was one of the few emotions he felt on a regular basis. Otherwise he was normally quite reserved. He figured he must have had at least one very romantic soul and one very logical or jaded soul. Again, not an easy thing to test or prove. He suspected that Annie was not her real name. She was a bit of a drifter and the name seemed made up. Still she was spirited and had made an impression that he wasn’t soon to forget. He worried about all his souls, but he worried about Annie too. It was a tough toss up, trying to determine which the bigger failure was. A person didn’t always need to know all the souls they had inside them. But an interesting companion? That could be pretty hard to find. That could be special special, not just special. And Annie was always pretty extra special.

Maddock’s first realization that he had a second soul came right after his grandfather died. He had never been close to the man and was far too young to really have a grasp of whom and what his grandfather was. But at the funeral Maddock began to feel different. He was thirteen and going through puberty. He already felt different, but this was different in a different way. He was awkward enough with pimples and a cracking voice and all sorts of other things to feel anxiety over. He wasn’t excited to add to the list and he really didn’t need the soul of his dead grandfather cohabitating in his body. But that was beyond Maddock’s power to control. Really, all things considered, it wasn’t a very intrusive soul. It never took possession of him or his actions or thoughts. It didn’t talk to him or fill him with forced memories or any of that. It was more of a kind and benevolent force that simply wanted to bring peace to Maddock. It could be relaxing and really knew how to waste an afternoon away. Maddock found new ways to be lazy, rediscovered the refreshing beauty of a midday nap, and gained an appreciation for vests and suits and hats.

As Maddock aged, the number of souls grew. For a brief period he was afraid he was some sort of soul magnet and grew worried that his body could not handle all of them. He didn’t have a firm metaphysical grasp of concepts like spirits and souls and didn’t understand that physical rules like spatial limits didn’t really matter to things like souls. He need not have worried. The human condition has all the room it needs for all the souls it ever may encounter. Souls could be mixed and matched and bandied about, moving from place to place and host to host as necessary.

Maddock carried a great number of artistic minded souls along with a variety of spirits too. He didn’t know that he had both, and probably wouldn’t have really understood the difference, for they were often very similar. A soul is a spirit, but not all spirits are souls. The spirit came from the living and the flesh of the world, where a soul could come before or after the body and was often immortal. Maddock had spirits that liked to sing and some that liked to dance. He had one spirit that was in touch with all the pain and suffering in the world and could make Maddock cry on cue.

Maddock didn’t know it, but one of the reasons he was so attracted to Annie was the fact that she carried a great number of spirits with her as well. She found a spirit in every city and every state she visited. She had nearly a dozen spirits so far, each with a distinctly different destiny. That was one reason she always seemed to be pulled in so many different directions and was always moving from city to city. Maddock didn’t have that problem – unbeknownst to him, his souls had no particular destiny in mind. He was free to do whatever he pleased. It was an unusually amazing gift to possess – freedom. He didn’t know it though. He didn’t know how to ask and his souls didn’t know how to tell him. He just thought he lived a life of hobbies and experimentation. He never thought it was some sort of gift from a multidimensional existence. Still, all things said and done, he would have gladly traded any and all of that freedom just to have one less regret and one less failure in his life.