It was about this time the actual Usha got a raise – and for a gift, she sent her sister a phone. The cheapest one she could find. This was fine, as the family home still didn’t even have reception; If Virika walked to the road, she could get texts about the time she saw the main road.
Many mornings Virika saw notes on the front stoop. A shopping list from her mother Jyoti, with a little bit of money. Knowing the people her mother cared for at Mina’s old house, she was convinced her mother had come across some stash of money Mina had hidden.
It allowed for long text conversations.
Virika shared her writing, taking photos of what she’d written, updating her sister on her namesake character. It was nice to have someone actually reading it – even if Usha didn’t have that much to say about it, preferring to gossip about coworkers, she said enough.
>> You know what? You should kill me.
<< ???
>> you already said you don’t have any more ideas. Just end me. Start somthing new.
Virika leaned back in the bus seat, her groceries beside her.
<< Nah
<< Congrats you’re undead now
>> Are you sure you want to do that? Considering family.
Virika sent a middle finger emoji.
Usha was never content to stop exploring. While Anjali soaked in the happiness of knowing her teacher’s secret, but the whole reveal Usha had left with no new inspiration. This was fair, as Anjali had a child to raise and no reason to think about such things all day.
Usha became depressed. She wandered around the village, not talking to anyone, people found her zoning out looking at nothing, and tried to wake her up. She tried to explain that she was Brainstorming! new ideas, trying to listen to every little bit of her body, but it wasn’t working. Eventually she went to more normal stretches, moving between Ardheka Bandha and Uddiyana Bandha more easily than most people do Nauli. She did it in her frontbends, to give her something more to do than stare at her butt. During backbends – it made her look like a little inch worm. During her middle splits, she could pretend to dribble her Ardheka like a basket ball.
Then she had a horrible thought: what if she could actually dribble her Ardheka like a basket ball.
Now, being a Christian, Mina didn’t really believe in the Chakras, even if she did Chakrasana all the time. she did believe in organs, though, so she worked to draw all her organs all he way into her Ardheka. Her intestines, her liver, her hear and her lungs, even her bladder this time. She practiced making it balled-up-tight as she could, drawing as sightly as she could manage – and.
Well, it was very baller. But what was she expecting, to just come apart like an old doll? She relaxed a little, and tried to roll up her super-Ardheka into Uddiyana, like her normal one, and pop it slipped off.
Usha was stunned and thrilled as her ball of guts rolled away on the floor. She checked for her pulse – her blood was still pumping. But she watched her Ardheka shimmy as it pumped blood to match. She felt what was left of her abdomen – and she couldn’t tell how it had hooked or unhooked. She searched for some sort of seam in the skin around her spine, but found none.
Carefully picking up her Ardheka, she examined it – it was not a perfect ball. but all the same, she could not tell just how or where it had disconnected from her body. She tried to feel her hands probing what should be her belly, but felt nothing she recognized.
She had to put it back on. She couldn’t live like this. Well, maybe she could live like this, but she wanted to be sure not living like this was an option. She cursed herself for keeping her navel flat before this, trying many times to align her belly with her spine, dragging it up and down to try and cat it on some unknown thing. And just as suddenly, it did. She suddenly felt exhausted, her organs sloshing back into place as her Ardheka deflated.
She didn’t know who to talk to about this with. Anjali, when she mentioned it, went cross-eyed, and started believing it was a metaphor for something. She visited yogis in other villages, but they only replied with made up junk about the mind’s interpretation of reality. They just wanted people to be impressed by them, and to give them free stuff.
She thought back long ago to Nabhi village, where she had once visited. she sent them a letter, but never got a reply. But she wasn’t even sure it was in India, so had she used enough postage?
She waited for a while, getting bored. Eventually she determined she must do it again on her own, and she prepared by revealing her navel and practicing Nabhimamsa. She would never again depend on it like she did that long year, but it would make reattachment much easier. Usha bent forward, bring her face close to her navel, and making her Nabhimamsa lick her face like a puppy, but that was weird. She shared a big kiss with it, which was also weird but Usha was desperate for a kiss.
Usha sat on her charpai and gathered her organs again, which took a bit. The sun went down, and she didn’t light a lantern because she was so focused. In the moonlight she popped her Ardheka again – she expected to be invigorated, but she was dead tired, so she lay her Ardheka at the head of her charpai, and using it as a pillow, she fell fast asleep.
Late in the morning Usha work up to kisses on her cheek. Not realizing what they were, she brushed them aside, groggily getting up to do her morning yoga. She felt… light. But disconnected. She tried to drink some tea to wake herself up, but she just coughed it up. She’d go on a walk to wake up.
Later that day, Anjali came by Usha’s house to check on her, like she had been lately. She screamed and ran out – there was something on Mina’s charpai, and it had mad a weird noise at her. Scared for Mina, Anjali got her largest pot with a lid, and captured the thing like a rat, though it was much bigger than a rat. it wobbled round the pot weirdly, so she held the lid on firmly as she took it home. Maybe it was worth eating, maybe it wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t going to attack her teacher. She stacked things on top of the pot and kept it contained, opening it only for a moment to push in some cauliflower for it to eat.
Usha had, on her long walk, realized what was going on, when she realized how her clothes were hanging wrong. she slipped into the forest beside the road hiding in the trees, and examined herself. If anything, the separation was even cleaner than the last time; Usha could easily access her ribcage void, which was surprisingly still as no organs moved along the edges. Undressing, she tried her “Submission to the Void” trick, resting on top of her skirt, surprised how much quicker it was to accomplish without the Ardheka to manage – she felt the air in strange places, then realized there was nothing to soften the appearance of her spine. Moreover, no navel meant no way to propel herself.
She sat there for a moment, truing to rock herself back and forth, and then just sitting. Spine. She had forgotten something.
She heard children’s voices in the distance. This was no state to be found in – she quickly untangled herself, slipping back into her clothes, and waited by the road to greet the children. Of course she have been looking for the creature.
When Usha came back with the school children, Anjali was happy to see both her and her daughter were safe, Anjali forgot about the pot.
Usha rushed off to give her lesson, mentioning nothing about her current state. If her students thought they saw anything, it was just another day practicing Uddiyana. Unusually, Usha joined them in their practice, eager to feel her unburdened state in various poses. A lively day for her meant a difficult day for her students, and even Anjali went home aching.
Then came the discovery. Or, Usha’s lack of discovery. The Ardheka was gone. Missing? Stolen? Had Usha wandering so far from it caused it to disappear?
Usha tried to look for it the rest of the day, and into the night by lantern light. There was no sign. But in the morning… she felt awake. Still energized. She searched around her little home and the field again, but was less worried. Certainly, if she was going to feel some ill effect, she would have started to feel it by now.
Usha retraced her steps of the last morning. Maybe, without a mind controlling it, the Ardheka had used it’s Nabhimamsa to follow her somehow? But there was nothing unusual along the road, and no creature sightings.
Usha sat in the forest, where she had been yesterday, but clothed. What had she done to herself? She had no stomach, no lungs, and yet she walked around. She was almost a skeleton – though one who’s face could hide it well. She had found a new secret, and lost so many of her other secrets. She tried Uddiyana on her current state, and got nothing. Ardheka? She couldn’t even feel muscles, let alone pull them.
Spine. That was it. Picking herself up by the spine, all those years ago. Neglected, with the villagers eyes always on her.
She tried just picking herself up – her spine was ridiculously easy to access now – and she definitely felt her hand around it, but pulling upwards did nothing. She tried knotting her spine – not an abandoned move, but one her control of Ardheka and Uddiyana had not required for a while. SHe took her spine again…
And her feet lifter from the ground. She didn’t know how, but she felt lighter in this grip than she had used to.
Rather than practice, Usha planed over the next days. She wanted to fly.
Her Ardheka continued to sit in a pot in a corner of Anjali’s house.
One night a strange sight was seen over the village. Some called it a UFO. Some declared it was a skeleton – or part of one, the top half – flying in the air, wrapped in rags. Conversation the next day had decided it was a skeleton, or a ghost. though one person claimed it was a bird, having see it perched high in a tree. Most conversation was trying to figure out who’s ghost it could be. There was the rumor of the boy that had seen a half-eaten man. There were those drowned in the last monsoon, even if the flooding hadn’t reached the village.
Usha had wanted to try floating above the ground at walking height, but that had proved unconvincing in front of a mirror. Instead she had pulled her legs into her ribcage void, arranging them carefully so she could still reach back and in to grip her spine. It was surprisingly effective, letting her pull herself much higher than she had used to go. She had tried to disguise her head on her first public display, but obviously that had failed. At least nobody had seen her face.
She kept her flights to the forest after that – she was able to easily store her normal clothes beside her legs pulling out with something that looked a bit more natural among the trees. While she occasionally found some vista to land and stretch on, all the sights of nature held her attention.
One day Anjali, non remembering why the pot was in the corner, pulled it out to heat some oil for frying. It had been a long time since the Ardheka had done a single thing except quiver with a heartbeat.
She boiled it. Didn’t even check the pot, just boiled the thing. Only realized she had done it when the oil bubbled over the edge. Not knowing what else to do, Anjali scooped off some oil and let it cook.
After what she hoped was enough time, she managed to hook the creature in the… mouth? And pull it out. It was.. crispy. She let it cool while she did her actual frying – Shankarpali.
As soon as that was done – and sampled, thankfully the Shankarpali didn’t taste weird – she carved into the beast seeing what meat there was to it. It was rather disappointing – and weird. no bones to it, meat along the edges – mostly organs. Not even teeth. Most of it was usable – she knew how to handle offal, so she broke it down as much as well as she could and packed it away. Over the week she made little dishes for her neighbors, not letting to want any of it to go to waste.
Usha didn’t know why she was suddenly so tired. She had been running on hardly any sleep, but suddenly she seemed to be sleeping for days. She canceled her classes. She stayed in bed so long she had bed sores. She tried to eat something. Apparently Anjali had happened on some bushmeat – but she had slept through the handout. She sputtered each time she tried.
She tried to focus on anything, her mind went wild. Her students would come visit, telling her about goings on. Eventually she started to gather herself again. She sensed… something. In the air. A power. She prayed to God.
Usha eventually made it up on her feet. Only she hand known how skeletal she had looked before, now everyone could see it. Her skin clung to her bones, while it seemed to drip off of them. She made her way to her students houses, thanking them for their visits. When she found herself at Anjali’s house… something in the kitchen pulled her attention. She sorted through pans – to stop on the largest.
She wanted to get in it. Desperately. Wanted to fold in upon herself inside.
She forced herself to walk away from what had become her phylactery. Although Anjali was welcome, she never visited Anjali’s house again.
Usha slowly forced herself to recover. Long walks through the forest, long fight though the forest. She felt it all seem to die a little around her if she stayed too long, but if she kept moving, she could enjoy what she passed.
One day, in flight, she came upon an elephant. she settled on a branch, a weird bird-like thing. It reached out to her with it’s trunk and she reached back.
A soon as they touched, the elephant became alarmed, sensing somthing unatural. It turned away and started running. Usha flew after it, curious, not understanding. In a quick motion it caught Usha in it’s trunk and slammed the flying thing into the ground. The elepant turned it’s flank to Usha, and crushed her under it’s weight, seating skin and breaking bones, and fled.
Usha at first, hadn’t realized just what had happened. Then she noticed the moon, distorted in the sky, and the pain. She cried out to God to let her die.
She could not cry herself to sleep; she had no tears. But sleep she did, and dream she did. Saw Jesus, and wanted Him to take her. He comforted her, but He shook his head. In all her study, she had not focused on Him, and pulled herself away. She could not come to him now, but had to wait until He came back to to the world.
Usha spent a long time in the jungle, her bones and skin pulling themselves together. Many months later, the people of the village were shocked to see her skeletal form on the roads; they thought she had gone on another journey on the roads, but never expected her to return like this.
She went back to her house. The years want by, and everyone she knew died. Some went to be with Jesus, but others didn’t. Anjali was gon, her daughter was gone. Usha could not cry for them either way.
If you go to the church, back in the basement, you will see a bony thing that looks like a saint, but it isn’t. In a glass box, the figure stares at a bible, bent in some amazing or terrible twist. If you should happen to look away, and then look back, you will she the pose changed, or the bible flipped to another page. It is Usha, the world going on without her, as she waits for Jesus.
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