I've felt the lingering hands on my body from people who have long since passed. The last time I saw my grandma she crushed my hand in hers as a wave of pain electrified her body, sometimes I wake with my hand in the same crumpled position. I still feel my uncle's hand on my shoulder in the same position it was in when my graduation photo was taken. He took his life the day after.

I walk by streetlights and they flicker and burn out, only to regain their brightness when my body is 50 yards away. I can't wear a wristwatch as the batteries burn on nearly instantaneously. I've seen more car crashes happen in front of my very eyes in my twenty four years of life than probably anyone else. I can't use a TV remote or the batteries die. I change my channels with a rubber glove.

My gas oven sparks when I touch the dial to turn on the gas. I've taken the light out of my refrigerator so it doesn't shatter again, and I avoid my phone like the plague. I can't afford to spend another thousand dollars because the screen blacks out after only a few days. Insurance always assumes I drop it in the bath or something because the electrical components are fried.

My family nicknamed me “live wire”, when I was just eight years old. While the situation has progressed substantially since then, it started when I was just a kid, mainly just the street lights going out. I’ve had EKGs done, many tests run, and the only conclusion to be drawn from them was a slightly lower than average electrical pulsivity in my brain. I can’t control it, so they couldn’t monitor what happens when the phenomena occurs. It seemingly happened at random and in sparse intervals, but as I grew older, it became much more frequent.

Now it almost seems…calculated. But not by me, by some unknown force at work around me. See, when I try to show someone what happens when I use a television remote or walk by a streetlight, it doesn’t happen. It’s like something wants to make me look crazy for even suggesting that I have a “power” of some sort. The biggest piece of evidence that I can gather is the 12 wristwatches I have that have all seemingly stopped working. People say I just need to replace the batteries.

My last girlfriend left me because she accused me of purposely breaking my own electronics for attention.

“You’re not that special Jay, and you’re wasting a lot of your own money by doing this,” were her last words to me as she closed my lonely apartment’s door and wheeled her suitcase away. Even as I type this, I have to use cotton gloves to keep my computer from shorting out. I’ve learned that lesson too many times. I want to share this for others out there like me, I know there has to be more.

I’ve been doing research extensively. I’ve found what some call “SLIders”, a name for people who experience street light interference. From everything I’ve read in online forums and even the book called SLIders by Hilary Evens, most people don’t experience it to the degree that I do. Most just recognize that street lights go out with an alarming degree of frequency around them. Occasionally electronics will short out for no good reason, wristwatches included. I am reaching out now because…well because this isn’t a gift. It’s become a major hindrance to my life. I have lost multiple jobs due to this annoying aspect of my life. And it’s only getting worse.

Two months ago, I killed someone. It was an accident, a freak accident, but it was my fault. No one knows this or would even believe me if I came forward, but it happened. I was in the hospital getting stitches. I broke a bowl in my kitchen sink and a piece of the porcelain sliced my hand pretty good. While I was waiting for a room to open up so I could get my stitches, a man was rushed in on a stretcher. Two paramedics and two nurses were rushing by, and the man was hooked up to an IV and a monitor. As they passed by my seat, the wheel of his bed brushed my foot.

I can feel it when it happens. People always talk about a “cold shiver” when they experience something paranormal. This is a hot shiver. Like a pulse of electricity I can feel in the back of my neck. It tingles down my arms and spine, reaching into my finger tips. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I heard the man flatline almost immediately. They rushed him to the next room, but I somehow knew that he was gone. The spot on my shoe that connected with the wheel looked normal, but underneath my shoe, I could still feel the pressure. Ever so slight, but there.

The doctor wrote my tears off as pain from my hand. After the stitches were placed, I went home to sulk in my empty apartment. The guilt I felt, the tremendous guilt I felt, was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I kept my lights off in my house, didn’t touch the television or my phone, I just sat on my couch and let myself feel the throbbing in my hand and foot.

Because of my condition, I tend to read a lot of books. I read a lot of the self help genre for obvious reasons. I discovered something called an empath, or those with a hypersensitivity to energy. As I read more, I didn’t feel completely aligned with those considered “empaths”. Instead, I felt connected to their counterparts. Energy vampires. Draining, leeching off of the lifeforce of others.

I am a good person. I am kind, I listen well, I have a sharp sense of humor. I listen to music from all genres, I am not judgemental, I am polite and well-mannered. I can hold a conversation about most anything. I am slow to anger and quick to apologize. I am by all means, a pleasant person. But people don’t like to be around me. They tire quickly when I am present. As hard as I try to be the “life of the party”, it always seems they end early when I am present. For years I had blamed this on others. I figured they slept too little the night before. They drank too much, they were too dull to talk to me, they didn’t have any substance.

But now I know it is me. I have too little substance. I am taking my life from those around me. Even things around me. I literally suck the energy out of fucking everything. It’s getting worse. I can tell it is because the only time I feel okay is after I suck the energy out of things. For a week after the man died in my presence, I felt rejuvenated. I had the energy to go to the gym, I finished projects at my construction job nearly twice as fast. And nothing I touched or walked by seemed to be drained.

I tested my television - for a whole week I could use the remote. Light bulbs in my apartment didn’t burn out when I flipped the switches without gloves. I could play a game on my phone without the battery immediately dying or the screen blacking out. I thought, perhaps I had been cured. Perhaps the man had taken my condition with him in his death. Maybe I could live a normal life. Type on a computer without gloves. Drive at night without blacking out an entire block of streetlights. Maybe I could have a relationship and kids and…and love.

I was wrong. After a week of near bliss, my electronics began to short out again. Streetlights darkened. People avoided me. As if I had an aura of black around me despite my charming smile. I felt tired and irritable. I slept more, showered less. My brain felt fuzzy. And the hand of my uncle pressed on my shoulder with a force greater than before. My hand crumpled in my sleep. My toe burned. A car crashed.

I went on a walk as I often do in the evenings before the streetlights came on. Rush hour traffic on main street. I looked at a passing car and as I did so, I met the eyes of a tired woman. She swerved into oncoming traffic, causing a head-on collision with a much larger truck. Other cares zipped past, wanting to get home and not deal with the aftermath of such a wreck. I darted into the street and to the woman’s car. As I went to dial the police, my phone went black. The man in the truck got out unharmed, and I urged him to call emergency services. I ran to the driver’s side door and attempted to open it, but it had been crunched too badly.

The woman was unconscious, her face half buried in an airbag. I looked to the back driver’s side door and saw a carseat, a screaming child thrashing in it. The back door opened easily. I inspected the child for any injuries, but saw that the child was unharmed. Probably frightened, but nothing obvious in terms of harm. I didn’t want to touch the woman or the child in fear of what may happen. I reclined the woman’s seat so that her face was out of the airbag.

And then I smelled something alarming. Gas. I swooped my head under the car to see a pile of gas gathering. I made a decision in the heat of the moment that I will never forgive myself for. As I moved to unbuckle the child from the carseat, my bare hand touched hers.

A burning sensation rippled from my hand to my brain, filling it with a cloud of ecstasy. I stumbled back as my vision went fuzzy as my nerves exploded with a joyous electricity. My body shivered and seized uncontrollably for a few moments before the world went black. When I awoke, I was in the hospital. The nurse told me I’d been out for twelve hours. When I inquired about the accident, a solemn look came over her face.

“The mother is in critical condition but she’s stable. Her baby…her baby didn’t make it.”

Through my choked sobs and disbelief, I told the nurse that it was my fault.

“Of course it isn’t, you were only trying to help. It isn’t your fault you fainted,” she said.

She tried to soothe me by placing a hand on my shoulder, but I whipped away from her. “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME I AM A MONSTER!” I screamed at her.

She left the room to grab a doctor. Upon my release, though racked with guilt again, I felt amazing. My electronics were fine, my friends wanted to be around me, everything was normal. But not normal for me. That was a month ago. I feel the drain coming back, slowly. My phone battery is dying faster. I am starting to sleep more. I can feel it coming back like…like a sickness. Like after you throw up and you feel better, and then you drink some water and the nausea takes hold again. The place on my hand that the child touched itches today, but it will burn soon.

I crave with the greatest hunger imaginable the touch of someone else. I know what will happen when my skin contacts theirs. I know what I am and that I cannot stop it. I haven’t left my apartment in three days out of fear, but the lust for contact is all consuming. The electricity can only hold me over for so long. If a dying man can hold me over two weeks, and a child for a month…

This conflict in my heart knows that I should end it now. My life is no more precious than anyone else's. But this appetence is greedy. It knows what it wants. It’s like an evil twin on the back of my head, whispering the secrets of “getting better” into my ear. The burning sensations on my hands, my toe and shoulder, they smolder with desire and blacken my sorrowful heart with an envy of normality. This parasite in my soul must feed, and I must feed it. I fear I do not have the strength to avert my thirst any longer, and I have already pulled up directions to the nearest nursing home.

Please friends, if you have gone through this yourself, help me remove this pattern of torment. What can I do, who can I turn to when everything I touch fizzles into food for the wicked? I want to sink my teeth into something less harmful, yet nothing is more fruitful to me than the electric buzz of life.