Umbra

by Tiffany Jimenez

Sometimes I imagine myself curled up inside of a simple locket that my husband only takes off when getting an x-ray. Sometimes imagining this makes my sleep more restful. Lately, I’ve been struggling to sleep. My legs kick in resistance to every position I try. My husband has stopped complaining. He saw something online about a man with restless leg syndrome that made him accept that it is indeed a real thing.

Sometimes when I imagine being inside of a locket, I start to consider the logistics of the space. Is the seam of the front and back loose enough to allow air flow? And how firm is the surface? This is particularly of interest. As someone who always opts for the softest mattress available, it’ll be life-changing to discover that I should have been selecting firm this entire time. Three mattresses in, I’m waiting for the most recent mattress’ lifespan to shorten so that I can build myself up to the purchase.

Sometimes, I imagine this locket and wonder why I see it as simple. Why can’t I overwrite the image and curl up inside something ornate, intricate, and expensive? It’s probably because we’re broke and no amount of scratchers and wishful thinking will change this. My prior daydreams of renovated kitchens and bathrooms and an added suite became quickly unsustainable. The hole doesn’t grow but it never gets filled in either. I know there’s a limit to what is appropriate to complain about. I know there are people with bigger holes. But in my attempt to set the scene, I want to underline the fact that you can’t find hope hiding in a hole as consistently sized as mine is.

 The Federation offers several programs for middle-aged individuals who have found themselves in financially precarious situations and can provide brave contributions to science. Without conferring my husband, I decided to schedule an appointment to explore my options.

Without the guarantee of survival (a 72% chance that I found rather reassuring), each program can easily be described as a handsomely paid research study. I traced the smiling faces of the models on the brochures in the waiting room and then slowly traced my own, forcing the corners upwards. I can do this, I whispered to myself. Anyone who looked at me sitting here would put money on my survival. It would be evident from my cast-down eyes that I was a focused problem solver.

The marriage counseling one was tempting but required both partners’ consent. Vincent would not oblige nor be tempted. He always describes our arguments as normal and our financial strains as doubly normal, and as far as counseling goes, I broached the subject once and he said something like: our marriage is strong because we don’t perish under pressure. We muddle through life whether it’s day by day or month by month because nothing else matters so long as we’re together, June. He got serious here and pressed his forehead against mine. We’re lucky, June, don’t you understand? We’ve found something no one else has been able to find: each other. Money problems and that other stuff, that just comes with the territory of being alive.

Another program involved relocating to a country now underwater. Belbark is trying to re-establish its world dominance in the culinary world but is struggling to master its new native ingredients and needs sophisticated taste testers and sous chefs. As one who opts for no food rather than cooking food, I counted this program as a non-option. Not allowing myself to get discouraged, I continued to scan the brochures as I waited to be called for my 9 am appointment.

“June?”

“That’s me!”

“This way, June.” The representative held open the door and I tried to make myself even smaller than I already am in order to show the ease of me. I had read that the programs each had a 45% acceptance rate so any advantages I had, I needed to take.

“Do you have an idea of what program you’d be interested in?”

“Well, not quite. I’ve only been able to eliminate a few.” I offered a hopeful smile but pinched my thigh in anger. I shouldn’t have led with a negative.

“Did you bring a resume?”

“I did not.”

“Would you like to run through your work history with me so that I can get a bit of insight as to your aptitude for the various programs?”

“I would like to, yes, but there is not much to say as I have never been what you would call “gainfully employed” but rather I have been the beneficiary of circumstance up until recently when my husband and I purchased a house using the funds that I inherited from my parents’ estate for a downpayment after paying off school. I have a PhD in economics if you can believe it. If you’d like to talk about my interests—”

“That’s alright. Maybe we should start here.” She rummaged through her filing cabinet drawer, which sounded full of marbles, not paper, and pulled out what looked like a lighter. “This will scan your system for preexisting conditions and help me eliminate any non-compatible programs off the bat.”

I tried not to laugh when she brushed my hair behind my ear and flicked open the metal contraption. I closed my eyes as I did when I got my hair cut or teeth cleaned. I waited for the sensation of a flame that never came.

“It looks like you would only qualify for the Umbra Program.” The representative, who I did not catch the name of, reached back into the same cabinet and pulled out a small orange box that she placed on the desk, and then she returned to rummaging for something else. “You’re actually the first client I’ve encountered who ticks all of the prerequisites for Umbra. It’s generally hard to find someone so genuinely adaptable.” Her matter-of-factness seemed like the polite way to tell someone they had limited qualities. I allowed myself to chuckle in response and waited for further descriptions about the program and about my aptitude, but they didn’t come.

“I have to be honest with you—” When she looked up, her eyes seemed to have changed colors. What they were before, I couldn’t remember. But it was a good and timely reminder that change can come suddenly when you’re paying attention so I maintained eye contact and kept my mouth tightly curled into an attentive half smile. “If you get through the Umbra Program, you’ll have been the only one.”

“Is it like the lottery in the sense that the pot keeps getting bigger until someone wins?”

Her newly blue eyes brightened but her expression remained unchanged: “Yes.” I felt encouraged to keep asking questions that tiptoed around the program’s topic rather than overtly asking as if this was part of the screening.

“Is it umbra as in total darkness?”

“As in specter.”

“You mean like ghosts?”

“You can use that term, yes.”

“As in I will have to speak to the dead?”

“Other way around.”

Suddenly, I understood. I silently rewound the conversation in my mind: no one has survived because ghosts are already dead. It seemed silly to confirm this out loud, the representative was clearly being vague on purpose. I smiled to gain myself another moment of silence. Isn’t the hole I’m experiencing a sort of death anyway? ‘Midlife crisis’ had become a silly diagnosis prescribed by young adults on a demographic that isn’t at all that old. That in-between of having drawn a path you currently find unsustainable in the happiness or even contentment department is as haunting, if not more, than an actual ghost. At least with a ghost in the mix, something new and exciting could be the deus ex machina and that is what I needed.

I regained the perfectly contrived half smile and the representative smiled back in return. She didn’t ask me if I’d like to register. She didn’t have to. The lighter ran the diagnostics and knew I’d say yes, whether I was hesitant to or not. Adaptable, sure. But really, I just knew Vincent was right. That nothing else mattered. And we needed the money. I stared at my signature with pride. It was the best version of it that I’d ever scribbled.

I woke up in my own bedroom with Vincent. I felt light both physically and mentally and in the mirror, I became entranced by how I sparkled.

I could tell Vincent had been crying. Looking at his phone, which unlocked to my touch, it had been over a week since the appointment. Part of the program’s directive was to obtain data on the afterlife and to measure the impact that temporary death had on the body and mind. My eyes, now blue, were synced with the Umbra Program’s lab and while I was assured my thoughts could not be transcribed, all images and memories would be downloaded as reels, reviewed, and then archived. The materials procured from the experiment would be open for public review in 50 years with proprietary information redacted. The lighter contraption that ran my diagnostics had never read my mind, I learned; it simply counted my blood cells, scanned my organs and skin for masses, took my blood pressure, and made sure I didn’t have early onset dementia. In bold print at the lab, I read: “Memories made during the participation of the Umbra Program are the property of the Federation.” For seven days, I read this disclaimer before entering into a dark room with a humming in the background where my body was gently stripped of clothing by invisible hands and I was put to sleep on my side on a semi-firm mattress I forgot to ask about. After the final day, in a quiet and direct voice, the representative passed the following message to me before uncharacteristically hugging me goodbye: “Survival is not an objective thing.” I smiled and embraced her back, feeling her body un-tighten.

I walked through our home, taking inventory of the furniture, the paint colors, the need-to-complete items versus the wishlist items. Payment for my participation would be deposited into a trust account weekly, and automatic payments to our mortgage’s escrow account were scheduled monthly starting the following month. The letter from the Umbra Program explaining my participation in the research study and the payment schedule should have been sent to Vincent by certified mail and via email the moment I underwent my first procedure. There had obviously been a lapse in coordination between the representative’s office and the police department because it seemed a missing person’s report had been filed. My name should have been flagged from the appointment as a hold that would resolve once I was or was not admitted into a program. I read the various fields on the missing person’s form that was left out on the dining room table amongst a few dry bouquets of flowers. Vincent hadn’t allowed more than two hours of silence on my end before calling the police. He listed my eyes as the darkest shade of brown, my hair as mid-to-dark brown, and my skin as “currently” tan with extra spots under the eyes. I whispered a thanks that our parents had since passed. The missing 45-year-old daughter turned lab rat would have been incomprehensible to them. I couldn’t imagine them listing my eyes as the darkest shade of brown. They were convinced my eyes were black from the day I was born.

With the mortgage taken care of, Vincent’s salary would be able to support the majority of the renovations. I began to write down the game plan in my favorite notebook when I heard the front door unlock. It was Vincent’s sister Monica who I’d always loved. Her bright pink hair sat in perfect layers down her back. I snuggled up behind her and inhaled her citrus-based perfume. Always the model for maintaining strength in sticky situations, Monica often seemed fueled by mayhem. When a car struck mine after failing to yield, it was Monica, unharmed and in the passenger seat, who called the police, who knew not to move me from my crushed position, who knew what to say to Vincent so that he didn’t cry when he met us at the hospital and my left-side was hidden underneath bandages. 

I had been pre-conditioned during the procedures to understand that I could not be seen or felt by the living unless they were prone to seeing phantasms. Monica’s body slightly flinched with my touch but there was no other indication that she had felt anything. Hope buzzed along my sparkling fingertips. Vincent had been instructed to sign a waiver of liability and prescribed a special benzo to relax his prefrontal cortex and enhance his cerebrum. If he had been taking it for the past few days as he was supposed to, he should be able to hear me.

Monica picked up the police report and folded it in half. She tucked it into my notebook which she put back on the bookshelf. I followed her to my bedroom where she kneeled beside my husband. Vincent’s tears had left dry looping tracks along his freckled face. She combed his growing hair behind his ears and then made her way to the bathroom.

“June, I know you’re here.”

How?

Monica steamed up the bathroom by running only the hot water. The fogged mirrors heightened the sparkle of my outline.

“I saw your indentation in the mattress.”

Smart inquisitive girl. I wondered if she’d read the letter. While participation in the program did not need to be kept secret, the patient was only allowed to select one person to haunt. Funding for the program did not allow for prescriptions for more than that. Sharing pills was prohibited and to add an extra layer of security, the pill bottle was encrypted and only openable by the identified individual.

“Try writing something down.” She then took her finger to the fogged mirror to demonstrate. I obediently drew a heart over the reflection of her eyes. She burst into tears as she held her hand over it. “I’ve been working with a medium on exercises to help heighten my senses and open my mind. Stupid bullshit I’d happened to do, June. Stupid bullshit that has paid off and you owe me for.” The sensation of tearing up was there, but nothing came out. It was as if the displays of emotions a body naturally has in its toolbox were taken from me. I looked past Monica’s shoulder and at my own reflection in the mirror. I was gorgeous in 40% opacity. The glimmer outline of my body shape seemed to be the loophole to relaying my inner joy. I glowed.

I turned off the water even though we could afford to let it run now, dropped a few small things, and flipped over the corner of the hallway rug as I made my way back to the dining room to grab my notebook. I quickly wrote down a few bullet points remembering what the representative let slip during the transition about energy and conserving it. About limiting my interaction with inanimate objects. The study wanted to see what boundaries could be pushed so didn’t go into detail about things to do versus not to do—the only exception being no attempts at possession. No murder was a given. If any attempt of possession is detected, the patient’s physical body will be terminated immediately. I longed to joke with Vincent about the rules of haunting. It was exciting to think that Monica could be a part of this too.

•             I love you

•             We can start renovations

•             Did Vince take meds?

I must’ve fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, Vincent was in the kitchen microwaving mac and cheese and Monica was gone. I looked down at my open notebook and saw the start of a long response.

Vincent? I flitted over to him and tucked my body in between him and the stove. I blew out air on his bare chest with no reaction. Vincent, can you hear me? He continued to stir, unhooking the pasta from one another. He’d lost significant weight in a single week. I ran my finger along his ribs, kissing each afterward, one by one. I tried not to be impacted by his silent treatment and picked up the notebook.

June, this is not another unfinished project Vincent is going to silently complete for you. You’ve blown up everyone’s lives for cold hard cash. I love you so much but I don’t think you’ve thought this one through; I actually know that you didn’t think this through. Who in their right mind would opt to get paid to commit suicide? Let’s be clear, you’ve killed yourself and have ensured that Vincent is the beneficiary. My medium says that the Umbra Program is really a military operative. They’re trying to figure out how to militarize the spirit world. They’re not at all interested in watching you float around your husband for a month and then turning your body “back on”. You may think it doesn’t matter because you get to stand by Vincent’s side whether ethereal or not, but did you consider who Vincent will have? Renovating the house was that life-or-death for you? Vincent is not going to take the pills. He’d prefer to start the grieving process and move on.

I should have known that Vincent wouldn’t take the medication. I went to the bathroom and found the pill bottle. I carried it back to the kitchen and then to the table where Vincent sat blowing on his mac and cheese. I placed the bottle in front of him but he didn’t react. I blew hard on his forkful of food. I put my mouth over it at the exact moment that Vincent did and remembered precisely the feeling of his thin lips inside mine. When I peeked inside his throat, I saw a small glow. How easy the afterlife makes it to locate the soul.

I followed Vincent around the house, pill bottle in hand to place it within his reach at every opportunity. I fell asleep and woke up, bottle still sealed. Monica stopped by a few more times throughout the next few days with food, she kindly read out loud my written pleas that only she could read. She reiterated that I chose him and no one else. That if he didn’t take the pills in the next week, he’d lose the opportunity. There was a time limit.

Isn’t that ironic? Monica smiled as if she knew I had said something funny.

I took walks and kept my eyes open for others like me. Whether Umbra Program recruits or real ghosts. I kept special watch for my parents when they didn’t spring forth from their urns after I twisted open the caps. I walked by my childhood home, but they weren’t there either.

Each time I woke up, I wondered whether this spirit world was, in fact, manufactured as Monica’s medium had suggested. I started to question whether my loss of consciousness as a ghost was actually just the Program turning the TV of my life on and off as they refreshed the content. As I considered it more, it would probably be more cost-effective, too, than paying for the science of it all.

We were approaching the few hours before Vincent wouldn’t be able to open the pill bottle when an orange box appeared on the front porch. In the box was the first monthly statement for my participation in the Umbra Program. It included interesting summary charts showing my brain’s activity. Corresponding “memories” were summarized in a few words, such as “Silent Husband (Thurs)” and “Sister-in-Law in Mirror.” Another chart broke down what emotions I’d wanted to but couldn’t exhibit. The beginning showed a large fluctuation between “joy” and “sadness” with random outliers of “self-righteousness”. As I examined the charts, I pictured the non-opaque me dashing in and out of the golden locket, laughing and crying, tacking up wallpaper, and then tearing it down.

Attached to the statement was a handwritten note from the representative: If he doesn’t take the pills, you will more than likely be stuck. “Ghosts” thrive on unresolved tensions. If the “haunted” chooses to not participate, you will lose your chance to find resolution and, therefore, forfeit the path back to the physical world. As I sat up, a small orange pill fell from the envelope on my lap. I got a tingling sensation when I pinched it between my fingers. I had a mere hour before our time was up. I flitted to the kitchen where Vincent was reliably tearing the top off from his mac and cheese cup. I dropped the pill into it before he closed the microwave door and I crossed my fingers, toes, legs, and arms. I crossed everything I could think of. I crouched down and wrapped myself around his legs like a koala bear and he didn’t move for three minutes.

Even when the timer went off, I stayed wrapped around Vincent. I listened to him go through the motions of tearing off a few paper towels to help him pull the cup out, then wiping down the water that had spilled on the platter. I listened as he pulled open the utensil drawer for a fork. I listened and listened and hoped the color of the pill was indiscernible within the processed cheese.

The representative’s name, Sasha, swirled around in my mouth. I must’ve read her name tag or business card and just recalled it. Her blue eyes reflected back at me from the metal leg of the dining room chair. Survival is not objective. She was hanging on and saw that I could too.

“I’m not going to take the pills, June.”

I yelped as if Vincent kicked me with his slippered foot. I unraveled myself and made my way up to his lap.

Vincent?

“I loved you so much, June.”

Then keep me.

Vincent continued to load his fork and eat. It was unclear whether he could see me, hear me, feel me. It wasn’t clear if the pill I gave him allowed him to see, hear, or feel me, or merely loosened his tongue. I tightened my grip around his neck, kissing just beneath his chin again and again. I could see the glow pushing from inside of his skin. I licked it and it tasted like sweetened coffee. I licked again and felt the sensation of a fire below my ear.

Vincent.

His hug was tight and I readjusted my limbs to mold myself into its grip. When he put his hand around my jawline, he flinched.

“June, I think you’re on fire.”

I didn’t let go, even as visions of my parents surfaced at the bottom of my line of sight. They waved, but I wouldn’t wave back. I felt my mother’s hand tickle my elbow. I felt my dad tap my foot. I even felt Monica. It’s o.k., I whispered, and I hoped with all my heart that it would be.

I’d found a loophole. Sasha, who had been watching alongside the other doctors, watched my spirit become consumed in flames as I attempted to hold onto my husband’s soul. Lucky for me, this didn’t count as possession as possessive and primal as it arguably was. Mine.

What the doctors learned from my case was that unresolved tensions are an antiquated measure of tethering a soul to earth. Vincent and I, like many others, are bodies coiled up in tensions. With each other and with ourselves. By opting out of an experiment he had never signed up for in the first place, he had also opted out of the belief necessary to fuel my existence. Put simply, he believed I was dead and he didn’t believe in ghosts. While my ghost-self went up in flames, my real body woke up unassisted. And I woke up so well rested and prepared to repay my debts.

BIO: Tiffany Jimenez is from Oakland, California. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz, and her MFA from Saint Mary's College of California. She is the author of the novella, "The Moment You Remember, You Forget" and she is the recipient of a Prairie Schooner Virginia Faulkner Award. Other than being an ardent supporter of the imagination and the art of storytelling, she writes a lot, laughs a lot, startles easily, and loves potatoes. Tiffany’s social media handles are @tiffunny329 (Instagram) and @tiffunnyj (Twitter).