Demon Stories

Josephine: From the Dream of Times Gone By, 1983, New York City

Josephine

From the Dream of Times Gone By

1983, New York City

Sometimes, late at night, I wake up and I see a vision of two faces. A sweet face, a kind face. Even a loving face, sometimes.

In the lovely vision, time is spared and there you are, both of you standing perhaps at the far corner of the room, together but separate. One is very tall, the other is shorter but no less majestic. Both with brunette hair, of differing shades. So similar, but so unalike. 

How you loved me was similar. How I found such a love in two lifetimes, I can not comprehend. Sweet love, caring love. Soft, beautiful love. Its all in your eyes, looking at me in the same gentle way. It is a look that says you want to take care of me, yet you want me to be independent as the migrating bird you know me to be. 

Over these centuries, these differing times and places, there was no reason why we should have met, but we did. We shouldn't have seen each other, but we did. 

My dear Andrew. Crystal my dear. How did you understand me as you did? I will never figure out how you just knew, and that's what drove you to do those things for me. To treat me like you did, when no one else in this whole world knew how. 

I have never spoken to anyone about you. You both are pressed into my heart, as if my heart were a locket and just your two pictures are inside. You cause me to forget everything else, and as long as I can see you both I am calmed. As long as I can remember, nothing else can matter and nothing gets caught in my mind.

However, there are those times when I can't bear to remember you. I can't bear to remember your faces, your kind touches...your kisses. My heart cries out because she knows there will never be anyone else like you. How there will never be anyone else who will love me like you did. How much I miss you, so much that I want to be dead with you. 

My Andrew. I was there at your funeral. I watched your father, overcome with grief, put lilies on your grave and saw when he collapsed on the ground so quickly because his son was murdered by that wretch he had brought in so many years ago when his son was just a boy. Just a lonely, sad little boy who had no one. He cried, and I was crying, too. I was staring at his face, at the same green eyes which you had and how they became almost a yellow-green like sweet grass when they were full of tears. I remembered your face when it was full of tears, when you looked up at me when the first plunge of the knife went into you. The strangely serene look, like you didn't understand what was happening and you were just relieved to see me. 

I want you to know how much I cried when your blood was pooling out of you. I want you to know how much I loved you and that I could not stop what happened to us. Most of all, I wanted you to know how much I wished I had been a woman so I could have been your wife. How I used to stay awake in the night when we were children, when we slept in the same bed with your arm over me as it often was when you were asleep, thinking about if our children would have my red hair or your brown hair. I wanted them to have your green eyes, Andrew. I wanted them to look up at me with your eyes, because I never wanted to see anyone else's.

But as tears pool into my eyes now, I think of more reasons for tears and I can't stop myself from crying anymore, because I thought of you, Crystal my dear.