Chapter 4 of Shiva’s Messenger
Nursing Mom and the Apron Strings
Returning from her late night mercy mission, Cindy found her worst fear confirmed. The young man wasn’t alive. She knew on only a glance but wouldn’t give up yet.
“Wake up!” She yelled at his slack, peaceful face.
Cindy pinched his nose and tilted his lifeless head back. Sealing her lips over his, she blew a breath into his lungs but felt the resistance of the fluid inside. Her fingers groped his neck for the pulse point to prove his flat-line. She pounded her fist down onto his chest in a hard pericardial thump.
“Breathe!” Cindy resonated to the newly deceased.
She slapped his face and pinched him. Listening to his chest, she could detect a flutter of a heartbeat. She blew him another life-sustaining breath but this time she forced as much as she could into his lungs to dislodge some congesting phlegm.
“Where’s that will to live?” Picking up the bucket used to wash him, she dashed it over his upper body. The water had now grown cold. He convulsed and the next shallow breath he took on his own. Her fingers found the carotid artery again. The throb of life was there but tentative.
“Show me some backbone.” She spanked his cheeks hard enough to make them pink. “You’re not going to die on my watch.”
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A visit to a hairstylist had his hair dyed jet black and groomed meticulously into a ponytail. Spending some time each day in a tanning shop had darkened his skin tone to suit the role. Outfitted, as a model stepped from a style magazine’s cover and pampered with a manicure, he now looked the part.
“Hello, Romero Escobedo.” He examined his appearance in premier hotel suite’s mirror and deemed the effect was perfect.
One week earlier, a Caucasian bush rat boy arrived in Calgary with his beat up pickup truck. Now a chic Latino man drove from a temporary base in Cranbrook, in his expensive BMW Z5 sports car.
Having already checked his hair in the car’s mirror and done a fast buff on his shined shoes, Romero tugged at his cuffs to smooth the fit of his charcoal suit. His slightly pointed lapels and the tailored cut of his jacket lent a semi-formal hint of a tuxedo. He took a deep breath on the sidewalk to enter his sphere of awareness and looked though the glass doors at the client service counter.
[The daughter of the mountain is Parvati.]
“Wherever that came from—knock it out of your head.” I don‘t need the complications of a hitchhiking spirit, mooning for his consort from another life. Blocking out any thoughts, Romero found his zone of perception and stepped within. “Focus!”
