Everybody hates a telepath. Me, especially. I've got secrets that I don't want pried out of my skull for the world to see.
The name that I tell everyone that I have isn't mine. The parents that I post on social media are photoshopped out of stock photos, and the apartment that I take my friends to is miles away from where I actually live. I've been running for my life for ten years, but wherever I go, I try to give those who know me the impression that I'm standing still. I like it that way; causes less suspicion, and I need all of the trust that I can get.
I invited a date to my fake apartment an hour ago: a nice enough girl, I guess, but dating's something I've never really taken any interest in. Her name was Deborah and she had shiny white teeth that threw me off whenever I wanted to get a word in edgewise between her rants about her job and cats and hobbies. Dinner like that had been downright terrible, but at least I was able to confirm that she could not, in fact, read minds, and that her Tinder profile had been truthful about that fact.
(Like I said before, everyone hates a telepath. They're much more likely to violate minds without consent, so most telepaths put their abilities on their dating profiles ahead of time. For transparency, they say.)
I figured I'd string Deborah along for a few more dates. I'd only gone out with her in the first place because the guys at my work had been getting suspicious about my lack of a sexual life, and had even started mock-casually bringing up girls that they could set me up with in conversation. That needed to stop right away. I don't know what I'd do if some random woman showed up to my fake-apartment, when I was... busy.
I'm busy tonight. Now that Deborah has left, I've started The Ritual.
I peel off each article of clothing, stretch, and allow my Normal Face to fall away. I stare at myself in the mirror for a while. My eyes look cold, and dead, and inhuman. Like an uncaged animal.
I will kill someone tonight. I will drape myself in black and stretch rubber gloves over my hands before I drive a knife into their chest three times: exactly three. Always three. Then, I will take a lock of hair from the corpse, stuff it in a Ziplock baggie, and stash it away in my closet with the others.
The whole thing will probably take about three hours. I'll be back before dinner.
This is what I obsess over in the hours when I allow myself to drift into fantasy. Wide eyes, pooling blood, and that awful, awful smell. For some reason that remains a mystery, it excites me, lights my skin on fire.
I don't understand it, and I doubt anyone else could either -- especially not the police, and especially not from some suspecting telepath with a penchant for picking up on thoughts that circle around a person's head 24/7.
My phone vibrates in my pocket just as I'm setting my knives onto the bed, sharpened and shined in good order. Deborah. She wants to meet me for dinner at a nearby bistro. My hands clench and I shout into the silence of my apartment. Bitch.
If this is what having a girlfriend is going to be like, it's going to be too much effort. I'd rather move again and start over. Nevertheless, I have to meet her now, to avoid suspicion. I put on my Normal Clothes and arrange my features into my Normal Face in the mirror, trying not to grimace at the unpleasantness of the sensation.
The bistro is crowded by the time I get there, because of course she decided to schedule dinner during the busiest time of the night. I sit in a booth and tap at my watch, hoping that this will end soon enough for me to have some chance of completing The Ritual once I get back. I might not be able to stay for more than an hour.
I wait twenty minutes. Thirty. I sip multiple cups of coffee, my leg bouncing up and down. She comes in finally at six forty-five, sliding into the booth in a thick woolen sweater.
"Hey," she says, smiling with her too-white teeth.
"You're late."
"Sorry." She shrugs. "Work got busy down at the station."
Right. Deborah's a police officer. That's part of the reason why your eyes lit up when you saw her profile: if you managed to subdue her, you might buy the confidence of a few cops along the way. Could come in handy. Still, tonight it seems like too much trouble.
"Should we order?" she says abruptly, cutting into my thoughts. I nod, and make eye contact with a nearby waitress.
I notice as our entrees arrive that Deborah's been staring at me. Not in a benign, I'm-in-love kind of way, but in a puzzling, calculated fashion. It throws me off.
"Everything alright?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says, and the words falter. "Everything's just fine, Charlie."
The word falls over me like a bucket of cold water. My mouth hangs open. "What?"
"I said, everything's fine."
"No, you said-" You're sputtering, now. "You called me Charlie."
"Well, it's your name, isn't it?"
"Nobody's called me Charlie in years. Decades."
Deborah's shaking slightly. "Yes, I know," she says. "I know everything."
And that moment, the world begins to spin out of whack. "No," I breathe. "You're not--"
"I am. I'm a telepath."
Silence stretches long miles between them.
For some reason, she breaks through the quiet with a laugh. "Nobody wants to date me when I tell them that, so when I got on Tinder, I lied. Of course, you lie, too, and more often." Her gaze levels with mine. "That whole lunch we spent together, I could hear you thinking about those dead girls. Over and over again, their names circled around your head, so loud that I could hardly focus, and I started talking about the most inane things... I knew you wouldn't notice. With thoughts that noisy, I don't know how you can focus on anything or anyone else."
I put my head in my hands. "This is the end, isn't it," I say between my fingers.
"Yes." Her voice is cool and calm. "There are officers waiting for us to come out outside. It's over."
It's over. All of the blood, the death, the screams... I can't imagine another way. There is no other way.
My hand inches towards the steak knife that sits next to my plate, and my mind tries to keep itself carefully blank. The moment that my hands graze the familiar cold touch of steel, the world goes black.
--
Years later, Deborah stands in front of a hospital, thoughts spinning around her head.
Martha. Maria. Kaylen. Diana.
These thoughts aren't her own. They've been burrowing through her skull for years; a virus, making her temperature rise and her hands twitch to do horrible bloodied things.
Sarah. Donna. Ashley.
So loud she can't think, the desire to plunge a knife in three, exactly three times.
Natalia. Leah.
She steps inside the hospital's sliding doors and approaches reception. "Hello," she says. "I'd like to admit myself to the psych ward. I think I'm going to do something terrible."
She can sense the receptionist's abilities, and his fear as his thoughts burrow into her mind.
"Martha. Maria," the receptionist says aloud, then clamps a hand over his mouth as if he'd sworn.
"Oh, God. Martha. Maria." The words spill out of Deborah, and tears drip down her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
musicalharmonica t1_iy9oc4t wrote
Reply to [WP] A dormant gene, (previously thought to be a myth) has been activated, granting a random 10% of the population telepathy. You are not part of the 10%, but you have secrets to keep, so you can't afford running into someone who is. by Frenchvanilla343
Everybody hates a telepath. Me, especially. I've got secrets that I don't want pried out of my skull for the world to see.
The name that I tell everyone that I have isn't mine. The parents that I post on social media are photoshopped out of stock photos, and the apartment that I take my friends to is miles away from where I actually live. I've been running for my life for ten years, but wherever I go, I try to give those who know me the impression that I'm standing still. I like it that way; causes less suspicion, and I need all of the trust that I can get.
I invited a date to my fake apartment an hour ago: a nice enough girl, I guess, but dating's something I've never really taken any interest in. Her name was Deborah and she had shiny white teeth that threw me off whenever I wanted to get a word in edgewise between her rants about her job and cats and hobbies. Dinner like that had been downright terrible, but at least I was able to confirm that she could not, in fact, read minds, and that her Tinder profile had been truthful about that fact.
(Like I said before, everyone hates a telepath. They're much more likely to violate minds without consent, so most telepaths put their abilities on their dating profiles ahead of time. For transparency, they say.)
I figured I'd string Deborah along for a few more dates. I'd only gone out with her in the first place because the guys at my work had been getting suspicious about my lack of a sexual life, and had even started mock-casually bringing up girls that they could set me up with in conversation. That needed to stop right away. I don't know what I'd do if some random woman showed up to my fake-apartment, when I was... busy.
I'm busy tonight. Now that Deborah has left, I've started The Ritual.
I peel off each article of clothing, stretch, and allow my Normal Face to fall away. I stare at myself in the mirror for a while. My eyes look cold, and dead, and inhuman. Like an uncaged animal.
I will kill someone tonight. I will drape myself in black and stretch rubber gloves over my hands before I drive a knife into their chest three times: exactly three. Always three. Then, I will take a lock of hair from the corpse, stuff it in a Ziplock baggie, and stash it away in my closet with the others.
The whole thing will probably take about three hours. I'll be back before dinner.
This is what I obsess over in the hours when I allow myself to drift into fantasy. Wide eyes, pooling blood, and that awful, awful smell. For some reason that remains a mystery, it excites me, lights my skin on fire.
I don't understand it, and I doubt anyone else could either -- especially not the police, and especially not from some suspecting telepath with a penchant for picking up on thoughts that circle around a person's head 24/7.
My phone vibrates in my pocket just as I'm setting my knives onto the bed, sharpened and shined in good order. Deborah. She wants to meet me for dinner at a nearby bistro. My hands clench and I shout into the silence of my apartment. Bitch.
If this is what having a girlfriend is going to be like, it's going to be too much effort. I'd rather move again and start over. Nevertheless, I have to meet her now, to avoid suspicion. I put on my Normal Clothes and arrange my features into my Normal Face in the mirror, trying not to grimace at the unpleasantness of the sensation.
The bistro is crowded by the time I get there, because of course she decided to schedule dinner during the busiest time of the night. I sit in a booth and tap at my watch, hoping that this will end soon enough for me to have some chance of completing The Ritual once I get back. I might not be able to stay for more than an hour.
I wait twenty minutes. Thirty. I sip multiple cups of coffee, my leg bouncing up and down. She comes in finally at six forty-five, sliding into the booth in a thick woolen sweater.
"Hey," she says, smiling with her too-white teeth.
"You're late."
"Sorry." She shrugs. "Work got busy down at the station."
Right. Deborah's a police officer. That's part of the reason why your eyes lit up when you saw her profile: if you managed to subdue her, you might buy the confidence of a few cops along the way. Could come in handy. Still, tonight it seems like too much trouble.
"Should we order?" she says abruptly, cutting into my thoughts. I nod, and make eye contact with a nearby waitress.
I notice as our entrees arrive that Deborah's been staring at me. Not in a benign, I'm-in-love kind of way, but in a puzzling, calculated fashion. It throws me off.
"Everything alright?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says, and the words falter. "Everything's just fine, Charlie."
The word falls over me like a bucket of cold water. My mouth hangs open. "What?"
"I said, everything's fine."
"No, you said-" You're sputtering, now. "You called me Charlie."
"Well, it's your name, isn't it?"
"Nobody's called me Charlie in years. Decades."
Deborah's shaking slightly. "Yes, I know," she says. "I know everything."
And that moment, the world begins to spin out of whack. "No," I breathe. "You're not--"
"I am. I'm a telepath."
Silence stretches long miles between them.
For some reason, she breaks through the quiet with a laugh. "Nobody wants to date me when I tell them that, so when I got on Tinder, I lied. Of course, you lie, too, and more often." Her gaze levels with mine. "That whole lunch we spent together, I could hear you thinking about those dead girls. Over and over again, their names circled around your head, so loud that I could hardly focus, and I started talking about the most inane things... I knew you wouldn't notice. With thoughts that noisy, I don't know how you can focus on anything or anyone else."
I put my head in my hands. "This is the end, isn't it," I say between my fingers.
"Yes." Her voice is cool and calm. "There are officers waiting for us to come out outside. It's over."
It's over. All of the blood, the death, the screams... I can't imagine another way. There is no other way.
My hand inches towards the steak knife that sits next to my plate, and my mind tries to keep itself carefully blank. The moment that my hands graze the familiar cold touch of steel, the world goes black.
--
Years later, Deborah stands in front of a hospital, thoughts spinning around her head.
Martha. Maria. Kaylen. Diana.
These thoughts aren't her own. They've been burrowing through her skull for years; a virus, making her temperature rise and her hands twitch to do horrible bloodied things.
Sarah. Donna. Ashley.
So loud she can't think, the desire to plunge a knife in three, exactly three times.
Natalia. Leah.
She steps inside the hospital's sliding doors and approaches reception. "Hello," she says. "I'd like to admit myself to the psych ward. I think I'm going to do something terrible."
She can sense the receptionist's abilities, and his fear as his thoughts burrow into her mind.
"Martha. Maria," the receptionist says aloud, then clamps a hand over his mouth as if he'd sworn.
"Oh, God. Martha. Maria." The words spill out of Deborah, and tears drip down her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."