Empath

You don’t understand.   You can’t hear.

When I break your barriers, shout into your mind, you’ll hear me, you’ll hear my words, like a radio.

But from where I stand you’re deaf and blind.

You all think you’re whole, but you’re part beings, living an illusion.  I see it, I hear it, I feel it.

You walk around like dolls operated from a distance.  It’s as if your physicality is separated from you even as you perambulate and pontificate.

This is true anyway to a certain extent.  You operate, as do I, generally a quarter second behind everything sophisticated.

So, you can catch a ball, but you’re never looking at it, just the thrower.  You can drive a car, but autonomous systems take care of most of it.  You make love, but your minds are not truly on it.

In fact, it is hard to get you to focus on any one thing for a moment, and when you do it’s hard to get you to stop as if you’re subject to some sort of monomania should you let yourselves slip.

You let yourselves slip all the time though, one way or another.

Forbidden thoughts.

Internal rage.

The endless battle of the triad, what you simply call your superego and ego, underlaid by your hideous tentacled id, I see it, and all the complex desire within, however base.

And you are base, all of you.  The essential dichotomy of your lives is your need.

The three f’s; food, fornication, fortune.

You are all these desires and I listen, listen, listen, all day long.

My mind is like a cave echoing with a billion voices and people speak to me and expect that I can pay attention.

I am a princess in a tower.

More specifically, on an island, Tristan da Cunha.  It was inhabited, and it still is, by me and me alone.  Everyone else left.  It wasn’t voluntary, I sent them away.

Just me and the volcano and every three months a food parcel sent via an unmanned ship which spits out a container and then retires.

It’s not an easy life sure, but the rest of the world rests easier knowing that I’m here.

I’ve been called the greatest threat to mankind ever known.  There are at least three countries aiming nuclear missiles at me.  I think it won’t work, not if I can hear them or see them.  I won’t allow myself to be killed, and that’s more or less reflex.

It might be hard for me, it is hard for me, living here, alone, but I have no desire to pass from this world.

You’re going to wonder how it is that I can do what I do.  I can’t tell you.

I only know that there was the murmur and I lived with it all my life.  And then there was this man.  He desired me.  I could feel it.  But he wasn’t the kind to negotiate, rather, the kind to manipulate.  He convinced so many others that he was what they wanted and shifted the pattern of their thoughts to match his.

Neuro-linguistic programming they call it, and it had been debunked and adopted and debunked so many times, but he could do it and he was a genius at the real thing.  The real thing is to say the words that lead the lady to the desired outcome, to convince her that she is thinking the thing he wants her to think, that it is she that wants to bed him, and she’s leading him.

Like I say, exceptional.  In a big world with a lot of people in it, you’re going to get exceptional people with exceptional talents.

None like me though.

This man.  He saw and turned his attention to me.  He was clever, suave, insidious.  But his manipulation woke me from my dreams, the murmur became a shout and his voice was the loudest.

I couldn’t help myself; I showed him that I knew, I showed him.  I don’t what it was, a flicker, a breath, some hesitancy, and he was on me like a cat with a mouse.  He laid his hand on mine, it looked casual, but it was strong and controlled.

“I always get what I want in the end you know.”  He fixed me, holding my gaze, while his thoughts flooded into me.  I could see his victims, see his enjoyment.  “I see you’re one with a little fire in her eyes.  You think you’re leaving, don’t you?” I went to move my arm, but his touch was like iron.  All around us, people danced and chatted and flirted, oblivious.  It was a wall of sound in my mind.

I glared.  “I am leaving.”  I declared, but he moved and swung me out onto the dance floor and we were moving together in rhythm before I heard another thought.  I could hear, but there was so much noise.  I’d missed the cue.

“Are you sure you’re leaving?” I could feel him being around, and in his mind, it was so much worse, because I could feel that it was as much the challenge as anything.  He was so sure.  So definite, he was going to have me, going to enjoy me, make me do his bidding.  I could feel myself sliding into his mindset.  He deserved me, all the more because I was being resistant, difficult.  He would conquer me and I would cry out with pleasure.

He was kissing me.

The endless mirror of his pleasure trapped me in a reflection in my mind, hammering on the glass, but I was his and something in me was crying out but, caught up in his trap more than most, I returned it until I felt a pulse from my own body and he knew he had won.

It shattered the mirror, that moment of victory; because it was his pleasure and not mine, his power and not mine, not even my own self.

I lashed out, I thought, with my arm, scything his throat as I had been taught in self-defense class.  I could see him choke.

But I had not lashed out with my arm, that was the illusion, the shape of it dictated by practice and fear and anger.  A hand laid flat and horizontal, neck high for a tall man, and head height for everyone else.

There was silence in my mind, sudden, deafening me with shock; and the music stopped as the body of the DJ slumped over and the equipment fell off the stage.

Everyone was on the ground.  Everyone.  The man, they told me his name later, but I don’t remember it, was choking on the ground, the only sound left in a room of three hundred people.

They were on the ground bleeding from their ears.

I went cold.  I couldn’t scream even.  I just put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from throwing up and staggered outside.  Security was down, and cars were crashed everywhere I looked in the dark, street lights bearing down on bodies collapsed in the street, a single car alarm going off a few hundred yards away.

I scrabbled in my bag, called the police.  I don’t remember what I said, I became hysterical, crying, screaming, they all looked dead, they all were dead, but I couldn’t know that.

The police came, with paramedics, and the coroner.  They recovered him.  He would never talk again, but he screamed my name in fear and loathing in his mind, and he was quite, quite, mad.

I could hear them.  Confusion, blame, curiosity, lust, pity.  I tried to block it out.

I could hear them though, it was fascinating.

It wasn’t a murmur anymore, and it was hard to block it out.  Hours in the station, they didn’t put me in the tank, but in an interrogation room, with coffee, and a hot meal, like I was a survivor.

They sent a woman in to talk to me.  She was severe, disciplined.  Single and not interested in people except to do her job, perfect for me.  She saw me as a victim and a survivor and a suspect.

“Tell me what happened.”  She said simply.  I told her the truth, or as close as I could.  I didn’t say I could hear him think.  It wasn’t hard, I really didn’t have to lie.

“That’s all there is to it,” I concluded.

“So, let me get this straight, you say this man tried to what did you call it?”

“Neuro-linguistic programming.”

“Right, that, do that to you and you were on the dance floor and recognized what he was doing and you hit him in the throat.”

“That’s right.”

“Wasn’t that a little extreme?”

“He’d forced me on the dance floor and said he was going to have me, I didn’t want that.”

“You changed your mind?” I could feel her scepticism, but it wasn’t about what I was saying as much as all the rest of it.

“Does it matter?” I said defensively.

“I don’t know, you tell me.  Did you give him the impression you were going to go with him?”

“Why?”

“Because he is scared out of his wits and he wants to press charges, that’s why.”

“He was going to rape me.”

“You wanna press charges?”

“Can I press charges for ‘going to’?” She looked at me; I couldn’t read, just for a moment, what was in her mind.

“Uhuuh, no.”  She made a decision.  “I believe you about this, but I got three hundred dead bodies out there and the coroner tells me that he’s finding most of them died of,” she looked in her folder.  ‘intracranial aneurysm.’ You know what that is?” I shook my head.

“Well I’m gonna tell you what that is, it’s where their brains exploded all over the inside of their heads.”  She looked up at me.  “You care to explain that?” I just looked at her with my best bewildered look.  She saw through it, but she couldn’t imagine what explanation I would give; she was taking a shot and seeing if she could come up with something that would get her off the hook from having to explain it.

“Well I’m gonna get you another coffee, and I think I’m gonna bring one in here and we’re going to sit down a few minutes and see if we can’t work something out.”  And she left the room.

I settled and as I calmed my mind reached out again.  A lot of detectives and other police people were sitting down and telephoning people.  They were thinking what a long and shitty day this was going to be.  Among other things.

There was a fear too.  I could almost smell it.  Three hundred odd people died and I was basically the only unscathed survivor.

The DJ survived, barely, he was being operated on and in intensive care, his back severed by an aortic aneurysm the report said.  Busgy was reading it while eating a doughnut.

Devon, I couldn’t sort out her first name even when I listened carefully, the woman who had been questioning me, came back in with the promised coffee.

“There’s more than one survivor, right?” I blurted out.

“How do you know that?”

“Logic, hope.  Not everyone died, if he didn’t die then someone else had to survive.

“Yeah.”  She thought about what she was going to say next, it was jumbled and I didn’t get the right sense of it until she spoke.

“See, I should tell you we a have a pretty clever coroner in our district.  He’s not one for accepting conventional explanations.”  She sipped the coffee and pushed the other one over to me.  “He’s convinced the hospital to lend him a CT scanner and it’s showing him something very peculiar.”

“What would that be?” I said, knowing.

“They all got this aneurysm at the same time, that’s why they died, but it turns out that’s not the unusual thing.”  She sipped the coffee again and mentally prepared herself to say something she didn’t believe could be true, or relevant.  “They all got it at the same height, the same height your boyfriend’s neck was, the same height the DJ’s back was at.”  She swirled the coffee around, leaving a blank space in her thoughts for me to fill.

I know people do this, that is, I knew people do this before, well, before.  It’s a trick, trying not prepare what you’re about to say next, give you a chance to hear and include what the person talking to you has said in your own thought processes.  Slows down speech, but makes it more intelligent.

She was waiting.

“What would you like me to say?” I replied.

“I want you to tell me why three hundred people are dead and you’re the only one untouched.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t!” I shouted.  It must have had some force, because her chair slid backwards by a foot.  She just gave me a look, disbelieving what just happened and got up.  He coffee cup had tipped over and sprayed her with the dregs, mine was still standing, and hot.

“I’m going to get a cup of coffee, and you better not spill this one.”  She said, and left the room.  I looked at glass wondering who was behind it and if they were recording this.  Of course, they were now, if not before.

She came back and two very large officers came in with her, the sort who work out, valuing bulk and strength over brains.

“Ma’am” They said, and stood either side of Detective Devon like a brick wall.  Devon set her coffee down again.

“This wasn’t my idea.”  She said, gesturing with her head.  “I have a, uh, nervous, higher up.”  I nodded not trusting myself to respond.

“You thought about all those people yet?”

“Nothing but,” I lied.

“You got anything for me?”

“I chopped at the asshole’s neck with my mind and accidentally killed three hundred people as well.”  I ventured.

“Nothing then.”  It was a statement, she didn’t, couldn’t believe me.  “Well then, I can’t hold you, you’re free to go.”  She shut her folder with a snap.  “I’d prefer it if you make yourself available over the next few days in case we have to answer questions.”  And that seemed to be it.

It wasn’t.

What I’d missed, because my reach wasn’t that great at this time, was that outside the station was a scrum of reporters all hankering after the same thing, new, gossip, excitement, lurid detail.

I stepped out into it as if the station itself had been a shield against their thoughts and was inundated.

It was chaos.  I don’t remember what they said, it was all variations on “Do you have an explanation.”  Anyhow.  He’d been communicating.  He made it very clear that I was to blame, but the press couldn’t buy that.  They could buy that I’d assaulted him.  Some of them pressed that.

I couldn’t cope.  It was hard to breathe.  No officers had come out with me, no-one, why was that.  I tried to push through, but the scrum was uncontrolled, they were firing questions, I couldn’t make out individual thoughts, it was like being beaten with sticks.  I raised my hand and struck out.

Where I struck, all the reporters fell over.  Just ragdolled their way to the ground and didn’t get up.

“Get away from me!” I screamed, and I could feel that they all had to run, to get away, tripping and falling over each other in their rush to obey this thought that I had planted deeply within.  I know that one runs even now.  No therapy can stop it for him.  He was vulnerable.

Policemen appeared at the door with guns.

“Get down on the ground and put your hands on your head!” But I’d had enough, and waved my hands at them.

They fired.  I could see their thoughts as clear as day, that simple and clear reflex, and my fear kicked in; I could feel more parts of my mind open up and I stopped the rounds as they left the guns, and held them for a moment in mid-air.  All of them.

“I’ve had enough.”  And I used the rounds as a bunched-up bludgeon to hit them in the forehead, knocking them off their feet.

I didn’t see the rifleman with the darts.

It all went black.

I woke up on the ship.

Detective Devon was on a screen on the laptop, and it said press a button.  There was a wait while she came on in person.

“Hey, you’re awake,” she said, sipping coffee.  She looked tired.

“Obviously.”  I felt woozy, too rested, but full of cotton wool.

“That feeling should pass soon.  You’ve been out for a month, last time.  We took the last of the people off eight hours ago.  Unless you can pilot a ship, you’re going where we’re sending you.”  I just looked at the camera stupidly.  “Tristan da Cunha, it’s as far as we can send you from anywhere and anyone.”  She sipped again.  “We don’t know how you do what you do, but, and I’m going to be honest here, after the fourth time you woke up, and we got you down again, we tried to put a bullet in your head.  Did it myself, no-one else could.”  Sip.  “Didn’t work.  Your powers extend way beyond reading minds and commanding people, killing them is just an accident we think.”  True enough.

“You’re abandoning me.”

“Not abandoning, isolating.  We’ll send supplies, the island is abandoned now, you can take your pick of the houses, hell, use all of them if you want, no-one’s coming.”

“That’s a kind of hell.”

“It heaven compared to the hell you caused here.  You cost us a lot of good people, and we can’t punish you for it.”

“You’re putting me in prison.”

“No, we’re exiling you.”

“Same thing.”

“No, you get to live and you’re free on the island, and you’re alive.  Any funny business though, and the UN says you won’t see it coming.  We’ve got satellites looking at you, and nukes pointed at you, so behave.”  She finished the coffee.  “I’m not authorized to say any more, but before they cut me off I want to say that you changed everything quite apart from the body count.  We got new bureaus, looking for more like you, so you get any company they gonna give you a run for your money, and we got protests and new law and fear.  That’s what you did to us, so take it and be grateful.”  Her eyes moved to look at something behind the camera.  “I gotta go.  Remember what I said.”

And here I am.  I get the news, I’ve got a wind farm working for power, water comes from a spring and every three months a vessel arrives with food and essentials and I send it back empty.  They destroy the returning vessel.

I don’t think I’ll be lonely forever, I’ll have a friend or an enemy soon enough because if there’s one of me there’s got to be more than one, hasn’t there?