Soul Epidemic

Universal ensoulment has overtaken this small world

Our heroine heard from the telly that a soul epidemic had begun in the world. Out of the nowhere, people had acquired souls, and nobody knew what to do with them, what the consequences would be, whom to write to and where to complain, and what this "soul" thing even was. Sounds rather pompous, one must say.

— Today, on one of these August days, you are something more than merely human, — the telly said even more pompously, placed a hand on its heart, heaved a deep sigh, bowed, and walked off, as if to say, sort yourselves out, humans, with your newfound power.

But people are people, what can you expect? With them, everything's either done the human way or humanely, and never any otherly. No matter how much people might want it otherly, it doesn't work out, and it turns out as it always does. But that's with adults; with children, for some reason, nothing ever happens in a childish way, not in a kiddie way, and not "as always", but differently, not as it ought to be. Even now, with the sudden acquisition of a soul, our heroine felt that something wasn't right ("Again..."), and perhaps something terrible had happened, perhaps she'd done something, pressed something somewhere, visited the wrong website, downloaded the wrong game, and there you have it — universal ensoulment had overtaken this small world.

Her parents in the kitchen grumbled about this announcement, understood nothing, and continued eating salty biscuits with sweet tea and engaging in other oddities ("Everything as adults do"). Our heroine sat in the next room, pressed against the wall with a radio-cup she'd fashioned for extracting forbidden-after-nine-p.m. television information and conversations from the kitchen into her bedroom, still trying to come to her senses after what she'd heard. This news had split her in two, as it were; she wouldn't sleep a wink all night because of it, would spend half the night by the wall, listening to the telly in hopes of additional information about her newly acquired ailment, and the other half of the night, when something truly forbidden even by her personal standards came on — up on the wardrobe, in her den, higher up from what was happening, but then, closer to dawn, she'd decide — who knows, so there's a soul, big deal — and go to bed.

. . .

In the morning news bulletin, right after the dreadful cartoons for younger children, they announced the epidemic again and filled in the gaps in knowledge about the separateness of the corporeal and incorporeal, soul and not-soul:

— The presence of a soul may cause, shall we say, soul-ache. Localising this pain isn't simple, as the soul doesn't happen to one organ in the human body but affects the entire body at once, which makes it seem as though literally either everything hurts or nothing does, but still something does hurt, presses, cuts, stabs, simultaneously from inside and outside, but rather in a metaphysical sense — it won't hurt, but it will ache.

There's a word for that, thought our heroine, "make-believe." She, unlike ("all") the grown-ups, knew the definition of "metaphysical."

— But don't despair, now besides each of you in the world there's also a not-you, that is, you, but another, and not here but there, which, despite the often unbearable and indescribable soul-ache, has its potential advantages: life after death, rebirth of the soul, transmigration of souls, and all that sort of thing. Now you are something more than merely human. Now you are not alone.

Our heroine's confusion grew into indignation, and that, as information arrived, grew into protest.

— Dear parents, I'm not going to school today.

— What do you mean "not going"? — her parents were taken aback.

— Parents, what, didn't you hear the telly? I've got a soul.

— What do you mean "I've got a soul"? Who doesn't have a soul now? Everyone's got a soul. We're going to work. We've got souls too.

— You're adults, you're in wage slavery, everything's adult with you, humanely, the human way. You have to go there, they pay you money, even though you spend it on salty biscuits, but nobody pays me for going to school, quite the opposite!

— The soul goes to school too.

— They didn't say that on the telly.

— It's implied, dear daughter, — her parents instructed her. — Learn to be an adult, don't listen with half an ear, much in this life is precisely implied, not stated directly.

— Well then let my soul go instead of me. I listened so hard that I heard that implication too.

Of course, when it came down to it, the soul didn't bring any new conveniences into life, and she had to go to school, hunched over, sulking, in a bad mood, having forgotten a couple of exercise books and textbooks, leaving a stain from hellishly minty toothpaste on her sleeve. Apparently our heroine had been struck by that very indescribable soul-ache described on the telly and it stayed with her all day, attached to her like a puppy, disappearing only for those brief intervals when our heroine forgot about her soul and suddenly became absorbed in something: drawing in art class, maths in literature class, composing poems in PE, doing random things in any class. In these moments nothing seemed amiss to her, she thought of nothing, as there was no time for it, and it was as if the soul had never existed, and the indescribable aching would stop, but at all other moments even a little bit of soul quickly turned into a lot and filled all her mental space, and the quantity and length of those other moments was growing at rapid rates.

She sat on the summer-cold radiator of the school heating system, chewing mini croissants, staring at the wall, pulling them blindly from the packet, which left her entire sleeve and everything around covered in croissant sawdust. Children passed by, younger and older, and all of them, it turned out, had souls, though you couldn't see them. They positively reeked of soul, though this smell mixed with the aroma of pastry and butter and jam filling, which perhaps made it bearable. The thought that somewhere there might exist a heroine of our heroine, a continuation, or copy, or part of her, made her chew quickly, greedily, but thoroughly, for if there was someone, a not-her who was her, then this girl probably also loved mini croissants filled with random fruit and berry jams, and probably, likely, not impossibly, perhaps, the pleasure of eating them was now divided in half, and for our heroine complete absolute enjoyment of croissants was now impossible, only, as they say on the telly, after death.

In the girls' loo, in the mirrors positioned opposite each other, our heroine saw herself and no one but herself, very many of herself, and each of them was alone. The soul, if it existed, didn't reflect in the mirror, quite vampirically, just as its behaviour felt in reality: bloodsucking, parasitic, buzzing in one's ear, possibly afraid of garlic, sunlight, and those who don't believe in fairy tales. She squeezed her cheek with her fingers and pulled it, measuring whether it had become softer, more elastic, simply bigger, for everyone told her that eating croissants in such volumes led to an increase in her own volumes, and the soul probably ("What else to expect from it") didn't take the hit, in no way sharing the calories our heroine received — such was the injustice of ensoulment.

. . .

Only our heroine sat in the den on top of the wardrobe with her phone and no one else, for she needed no one else, not even the second not-her. She'd built it herself, climbed up there herself, wasn't planning to climb down from there also by herself. Thus, only thus and no other way, she intended to fence herself off from the universal ensoulment, which, it seemed to her, hadn't yet reached her. She'd become a prisoner of the world, and the world had become her captor. In it, judging by the news, complete bacchanalia was occurring, for the sudden acquisition of souls had suddenly led to the sudden realisation that one could live not now but later, as they say, "put off till tomorrow what you can do today," "in the next life," when it would be the soul's turn to engage in this tedious and incomprehensible activity — life. Our heroine's parents had no time for that, as something else had happened to them — daughter.

— "bring food," — she texted her parents, and they, not knowing how to extract her from under the ceiling for days now, obediently complied, as if she weren't just a girl or even an old Greek philosopher living in a barrel far from this world's disappointments, but a proper Olympian goddess to whom simple mortals were forced to bring offerings to gain her favour, for you couldn't simply pull her down by the leg from there.

— "What would you like?" — her parents texted.

— "you know. won't accept anything else"

— "Sweets are bad for you."

— "dear parents, don't know what's worse for me — you, the soul, or sweets 🥀🥀🥀"

She didn't go to school ("In the next life"), though it had fortuitously happened that right after the soul epidemic began, a much more pleasant epidemic of school holidays suddenly started, from which, fortunately, only parents suffered. They couldn't get to her fortress above the wardrobe at all and had to accept this state of affairs. Firstly, they were short and plump and couldn't reach her, or climb up to her, or sometimes even shout loud enough for her to hear. Secondly, she threatened to throw something at them, be it a plate brought to her or a mug or food scraps or even her phone ("I'm so fed up with it"), which she actually did a couple of times, which led to peak anger levels in her parents' hearts, to subsequent exhaustion from it, and then to its complete unconditional capitulation.

— Dear daughter, we humbly request you come down from the wardrobe.

In response she banged her fist on the wardrobe, indicating she'd sent a message.

— "dear parents, no 💀 💀 💀" — it read.

— But dear daughter, you can't sit on the wardrobe forever.

— "can 💅"

— But dear daughter, your action is quite soulless, think of your dear parents, where would we be without you? We love you, with all our heart and soul. You're not yourself, dear daughter, your poor little soul has gone astray.

Here, of course, our heroine's knight-visor dropped ready to battle. She couldn't tolerate such a concentration of soulfulness. The ailment, she thought, having penetrated a person ("An adult"), then penetrates language, and through language all sorts of contagion creeps in, through it there's already a straight, smooth road to infecting her as well, which she, of course, absolutely couldn't tolerate. She leaned out of her den and launched into another tirade:

— I'm not ill! I am me without any not-mes in my girl body. Two eyes, two arms, two legs, but one head, the brain in it is also one, the heart's also one, for I'm not an earthworm, I don't really need five hearts, do I? Just as I don't need another body or another me. I've checked — took photos, always alone. Ring the telly, write on the internet, you can even write a letter to the government — I'll sign it — that your daughter is indivisible and no epidemic can touch her, that your daughter is self-sufficient, and anyway this is all rubbish, fairy tales, they should be told at bedtime, to frighten little ones. I don't want anything, don't want to eat, nothing. Won't go anywhere else. Will sit here all my life. I don't want to go to school either. Won't ever go. Will sit here alone by myself with myself and won't go anywhere. Another like me and no other like me and not like me cannot exist, I forbid their existence. The ungrateful daughter — that's also me, and the silly daughter too, probably. I'm ready to accept it and be silly if you really want — I don't care. I'm ready to bear this burden. I have everything necessary in me, and even more than you can imagine, dear parents. And I go to school, and I don't go there — also me, and I get bad marks, and fly on a broomstick in my dreams — also only me. If you want a soul or spirit or something else like that for yourselves — please, but I want things as they are and don't want it any other way, I want everything as always, and no other way. You know what, I'll dye my hair ginger. Yes, I'll go to my friends, and they'll dye me ginger, and gingers don't have souls and can't have them, just like me. I'm against all this anyway. *sigh*

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