Raphael

She didn’t see the moment Rafael fell, but she felt it, and smelt it, and tasted it. The smell of fresh cut grass filled her nostrils. She always hated that smell. It reminded her of the summer of 2008 and she did not want to relive that moment again. The taste of bile and copper grew in her mouth until it turned her stomach.

Yet neither the smell nor taste brought her to her knees like the way she felt. Her insides felt as if they had been ripped out of her stomach, put into a meat grinder, then shoved back into her.

On all fours in her bathroom, she gripped the cheap tan and ivory linoleum that apartment complexes typically used, grateful she had just scrubbed it. As the pain ripped through her, she realized something was wrong. Something happened to Rafael. She had to get to him!

Julia crawled over to the kitchen cabinets and pulling out a drawer, pulled out the top one, and used it to pull herself up.

Her gut continued to clench, and Julia wondered how she would be able to drive. Phone. Keys. She had to find and grab them.

The taste faded, but the smell still seemed to linger. Her alarm on her phone went off just then. Shoot! Chris was coming over so they could go over her taxes. Julia couldn’t worry about that now. She had to get to Rafael.

“Ahhh!” Julia hollered out as another wave of pain tore through her body. What was going on? “Oh God!”

One of her neighbors was out walking their black lab, Petunia. She had to make up some excuse as to why she just hollered. “S-sorry. I-I stubbed my toe.”

Petunia’s owner slowly nodded, her ebony tresses barely disturbed by the slight movement. “Oh. Right. Are you okay?”

Asia clenched her teeth through another vicious attack, but quickly pasted a smile on her face so as not to freak out her neighbor. “Oh, I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.”

Petunia pulled her owner towards an invisible spot that only she knew was the perfect spot to do her business. “Okay. Sure. Anytime.”

Julia dragged her battered body the impossibly long distance of thirty feet to her car. As she pressed the unlock button on the key fob, she was grateful she had it replaced. It broke three months ago, but something told her to just go ahead and get it replaced even though it was a luxury, and now she knew why.

Julia slid into the driver’s seat and put the car into reverse. This was not going to be easy, but she had to do it.

Excruciating pain so intense it nearly caused her to vomit, wracked her body. She took several deep breaths to calm herself and gain some type of control over it. Okay, now she could drive.

Julia shifted the car into reverse and backed out, then back into drive and off she went.

The young lawyer had no idea where she was going, she just knew she was going… somewhere. She got onto the highway going west, when she realized she needed to go east, so right in the middle of the highway, she made a u turn and went east.

Still with no idea where she was headed, she continued to drive. As street sign after street sign went by in a blur, one hit her like a ton of bricks, the one that turned off to her childhood home. Something told her to go that way. With no way to dispute the feeling, she went with it, and turned off onto the road that took her to her home where she grew up as a kid.

Another particularly bad pain rolled through her body, but Julia managed to keep it together and continue driving. Julia took deep breaths in hopes they would subside, and they did, but not completely.

House after house she passed, each one bringing up memories of a time long forgotten. She needed to get back home to her parents more often.

At last, there it stood, her old house. Her parents had moved into a condo just last year, so it stood vacant, with no one in it to love it. The Property Brothers would love to get their hands on this house. Her parents hadn’t done anything to it in the last fifteen years.

Julia parked the car outside on the street, and walking up to the fence, she paused. Memories so poignant and real she could almost taste them flooded her senses. She smelled her mother’s apple pie as she set it out on the windowsill to cool. She heard the mower going in the back yard as first her dad, then her older brother when her father’s failing health prevented him mowing the grass.

With her hand on the fence, she froze as the glint of something caught her eye from the neighbor’s yard, but she couldn’t see anything that would cause it. Taking each step as if carefully excavating a mine field, she walked over to her neighbor’s yard. She didn’t know what, but something inside her told her this was what was calling her.

When she arrived, she noticed Mr. Donaldson way in the distance. As far away as he was, she couldn’t make out what he was doing. His body was obstructing her view of whatever else was with him.

He moved and for a brief second a slight smile crept across her face. It was Raphael, his bull, and her best friend growing up. He’d had that bull… “No-o!” she screamed as she saw Raphael fall.

Her breathing came in short gasps. Her vision blurred as her legs gave out.

“Julia… Julia! Wake up! Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. No, I didn’t bump my head.”

Mr. Donaldson helped her to her feet, still looking her over. “Let’s get you inside out of the heat. It’s brutal today.”

Julia just nodded her head, too numb to do much arguing. How could he kill Raphael? Once they were inside, Julia turned to her neighbor and asked. “Mr. Donaldson, how could you just kill Raphael like that?”

Jeff Donaldson puckered his brow in confusion. “Julia how…” he shook his head, changing his reply. “Julia, it was his time. He had caught a rare form of leukemia and needed to be put down. I’ve had the vet out here like four times. He was the one that suggested it.”

That made her feel a bit better, but Raphael was her friend… no, he was more than that, on some spiritual level, she loved that bull.

“He meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”

Had her neighbor noticed all these years? Was she that transparent? “Yes, he did. Sorry, I… I feel silly.”

“Not at all. My nephew had a strange attachment to a duck once. Of course, he was only seven, but still…”

Julia puckered her brow as she asked politely, not really caring about the answer, just wanting to be hospitable. “Which-which nephew?”

From the kitchen Mr. Donaldson answered. “Oh, my youngest one, David. You wouldn’t know him. He’s been in England with his mom ever since his father died.”

Vaguely Julia remembered when Adam, Jeff’s youngest, died while in the service of his country.

“Hello Julia,” said a deep masculine voice. She had heard this voice before, hadn’t she? In her dreams or something.

“Hello,” she said straining through the pain in her head to focus on the source of that voice. “Do I know you?”

“Sort of. Let’s say we met in a dream.”

“Oh, hey David,” said Jeff. “I was just telling Julia here about you.”

“I see. All good things, I hope.”

Just then the doorbell rang. “Always. Excuse me while I get that,” said the host and left the two alone.

Julia still couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “How… how do I know you when we’ve never met?”

“Oh, but we have, and we’ve had many conversations. I was there Dennis stood you up on your Prom night. I was there when you one first place at the gymnastics competition, and third place at the ice-skating competition.”

That was impossible, but it was the only answer. “Raphael?”

“Do you believe in reincarnation, Julia? It’s me, your Raphy.”