Soul Searching

“For Sale: One soul – gently used. Cheap! Inquire within.”

The sign in the dusty window of the Holberg second-hand store surprised Susan for an instant – not that seeing signs in the windows of second-hand stores were an unusual sight for Susan. It was just that such signs normally advertised more mundane things: ‘The St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Bake Sale next Saturday – don’t forget your nickels for the bottle toss!’ they usually read or, ‘Books! The Library Guild of Greater Oxford is proud to announce our annual book sale!’

And when Susan Connell found herself wandering into the junky little shop, it wasn’t in her mind to ask about the soul. Not really. She was curious about the sign, of course, but it had to be a joke – a misspelled word. And so Susan Connell was doubly surprised – twice in a day – when she walked out of the store twenty minutes later, the proud owner of a sparkling new soul.

Surprises were a rarity in Susan Connell’s life. Life was a rarity in Susan Connell’s life. She wasn’t quite sure how this had happened. Often, she’d lay awake in bed, long after her husband had gone off to work, the sheets on her side still damp from the obligatory morning fuck, a puzzled, far-away expression on her face, trying to remember. To remember what it was like to live, what it was like to dream, to hope, to feel passion – to feel anything. Ghostly images would haunt her mind, so vague and insubstantial that she was sure they belonged to someone else: wild laughter in the black of night, nakedness and cool rain, green wolf-eyes devouring her body, lust and love and happiness and life. And always – obscuring the distant memories like a dirty rag streaked against clean glass, the things she couldn’t forget: laundry in the hamper, dishes piled in the sink, rugs that hadn’t been vacuumed in five days, groceries to buy, the endless stream of people living the life she wasn’t on the television. Susan Connell was a woman lost, until one surprising day, she was a woman found.