Free Translucent by Nathaniel Beardsley Page A

and don’t need any sort of medical treatment.”
    Karena’s parents were stunned. Finally, Christi was abl e to gain enough control of her flabbergasted jaw to utter the phrase: “What?”
    Karena sighed. “Look, I can explain everything,” she said. “I just need you not to freak out and not to panic or anything like that.”
    Harold’s eyes grew wide. “Okay, then,” he said in a trembling voice , sitting down. Karena didn’t know if he thought he was in a dream or what, but he would soon snap out of his trance; both of them would.
    And so Karena, not quite sure if her parents were really listening to the words she was saying or if they were still merely mesmerized by the fact that she could talk, explained the whole situation to them, only leaving out, like last time, t he aspect of the Sandman, which now actually seemed like a pretty major part of the story. There was no need to tell them about that. Then they would think that she really was crazy. Besides, talking about him now wouldn’t be good for her. For the past few minutes she’d forgotten about him when she’d been rambling on to her parents, and she wanted to continue having forgotten about him. S he wanted to keep it that way for as long as she was able, which she knew wouldn’t be very long.
    After she was done explaining the situation to her parents, they were still stunned. “How,” Christi gasped, seemingly out of breath. “How is this even possible?”
    “I don’t know any more than you do,” Karena said.
    “I don’t understand,” Harold whispered.
    “Neither do I,” Karena replied. “But I accepted it a long time ago, and that’ s what you should do now too, like you did eventually in my past life.”
    “We were there in your past life?” Harold asked.
    Karena hesitated. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “My past life was identical to this one. This all happened to me before.”
    “Were we there when you disappeared?” Christi asked.
    Again, Karena hesitated. Then, making a decision in that moment, she said: “No, but this time you will be.”

22
    Karena’s deja-vu was far, far stronger than it had been in her previous life. If you experience so mething for the second time, the n undoubtedly you will have a sense of deja-vu, perhaps even quite a strong one. But if you experience the exact same thing a third time, the sense of deja-vu will be practically overwhelming.
    This is exactly what Karena experienced on a day-to-day basis growing up as a child in her third life . Everything that happened, everything in the news, everything with other people an d with the town, she’d known what would happen before it even happened. She even proved this to her parents in the early days when they still didn’t quite believe her story.
    One day, told her parents exactly who was going to win the election for governor in their state the day before the election. And sure enough, the next day that very person was elected, much to the surprise of Harold and Christi. She did this multiple times, predicting the outcomes of elections and sports tournaments, not that she’ d been paying much attention to these things in her past life, but she had a pretty good idea of what the outcomes of major events would be.
    She figured she could make a pretty good career betting on the outcomes of these sort s of things, but she immediately discarded the idea as fruitless. She would start over everything anyway, and so it wouldn’t prove to be of any merit to her or to anyone else.
    Growing up from a baby into a toddler and beyond for the third time was even more painful than it had been the second time. Along with the deja-vu, there was also an overwhelming sense of hopelessness that hung over everything. How long would the Sandman let this go on? How long would she have to endure this repetition? Was this only the beginning, or was this the last time she would start over? There was no way of knowing.
    Like last time, Karena tried to focus on