Prologue

Sociologist Robert Maclver once said, "the healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life". But what if the excursion isn't brief and is far from occasional? What if you are consumed by it? What if it is the normality that you crave because your only other option pushes beyond the realm of excitement and into the fear of becoming nothing more to anyone but a freak? I have battled with these questions for years, ever sense my curse became noticeable enough during my childhood to interfere with any hopes that I ever had of having a normal life, let alone a normal childhood.

   My mother told me that I am a Empath. That I am unique in my ability to know people's emotions. But from my understanding of it, I have never thought that empathy quite covered it. Not only can I feel people's emotions but I can see them. In glimpses of thoughts and radiant colors.

   I was shunned by my classmates as a child. After all, not many people want to talk to you when they know that by so much as a touch that their every feeling, every emotional secret they are hiding will be read like a book. And so I withdrew from the world that didn't trust me and wanted nothing more to do with me.

I begged my parents to home school me and despite their attempts to dissuade me I could not be moved.

   There was a time I thought I could try again. I was a young teen when my mother had passed away and it seemed that her funeral was like a test. Could I be accepted in the midst of a room full of people? Could I become part of the world once again? With a casual brush I realized just how disillusioned I had been. My father tried to encourage me, telling me that people had forgotten about my curse by then. That they had been telling themselves that the rumors about me had simply been stories created by bullies to exclude me from any social groups when I was a child. After all, children can be cruel. But tension hummed in the air after one of my mother's old high school friends touched my arm in passing.

   She had turned and stared at me, face white when he realized her mistake, pulling her hand to her chest as if it were burned. I will never forget the fear in her eyes, and there I saw my hopes vanish. I could never become part of this world again. I would forever be someone to fear and shun.

   Shortly thereafter we moved to a new place, my father's hope being that with no one knowing me than there would be no reason to hide myself away.  But it didn't take long for him to get the message that it did no good. I was not going to put myself back out into the world just to have my hopes of a normal life crushed once again. And so I stayed as far away from regular society as I could for many more years.

   But as I sat in sat in the remains of the living room of my late father’s duplex and stared at the urn of his ashes on the charred and ruined mantle, I remembered how I knew that everything was going to change with is death. But never in a million years had I guessed just how much.

   But I get way ahead of myself. Better to go back to when it all started. Back when I was clueless to what I really was. Back when I still had a sense of normality that I never realized I’d had. Back before my world changed forever and I learned that monsters weren’t just imaginary creatures hiding under my bed

                                

 

Author's Note

Still in revision. But thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Reviews

[Fidheallir]

You have a very interesting premise. It would be great if you develop specific incidents more-- the moment at the mother's funeral is a good example. Obviously, you have to be true to your style, but I'm curious about the character's perceptions and I want to see more of her experiences, and more complexity. I'm sure you're going to develop this further as the story progresses ;)

[Eagle Cruagh]

This is a real life adventure that grabs the
reader`s emotions and ties up the mind.

My only suggestion is: It would be easier to
read, flow better and look more appealing if
you spaced two or three spaces between each
idea.
Thanks---- on to the story !
----- Eagle Cruagh