It was a curse. That’s what Yiαyiά Rini called it. A curse that meant my sacred duty in life would be to direct others in theirs. And yet, if you know anything about old Greek women, what she really meant was: we were martyrs, and should be revered. I personally didn’t care too much for veneration. If I could’ve been just another nameless, faceless, person in the crowd, I would’ve died content.

There was a short period where I used the curse as a sort of parlor trick, telling friends which boys were lying scumbags that would empty their bank accounts, or flirt with all their friends then end up taking off with an ex. I thought I was helping people, you know, saving their time, money, and self-esteem. Inevitably that ended badly, though. People get weird when you know too much about them.

My bαbά said it wasn’t a kindness to tell people things they’d rather not know, even if you think it’ll help them. He said it ruined the journey of life because it only showed the possibilities—people and life should be able to surprise you, chryso mou. I know he wanted that to be true. They all want that to be true. Baba wanted to believe that my mother would come around, that her love for us would one day bring her running back, begging for our forgiveness. Yes, my father was a beautiful idealist, so I never told him how she really felt before she left.

Truth be told, my mother taught me the most about life. Through her, I learned the harshest truths were really only harsh when you didn’t know them. Understanding how a person feels right up front is easier. I didn’t suffer when my mother left because her hatred for the family curse (and thus by extension, me) was impossible to hide. Even if I couldn’t read her, I would’ve known by the coldness in her eyes. My bαbά , on the other hand (being that the curse only affected the women in his family), had to suffer through the standard subterfuge humans too often engage simply to keep from telling the truth. It’s bizarre, actually. But lucky for bαbά, he had me, and I would keep him believing in sunshine and rainbows, because his touch was the only proof that the world may contain more than just monsters.

My mother also taught me that long-sleeves and gloves would be a necessary accessory in my daily life. I suppose that lesson was more of a disservice. If I hadn’t been so keen on constantly insulating myself from the horror of people’s inner thoughts, I would’ve known what Jeremiah was before it was too late. But alas, there was no way I would’ve survived to the ripe age of twenty-six had it not been for insulation. Surely, depression would’ve got the best of me long before good ol’ Jeremiah!

Be it curse or what have you, I opted for something between Yiαyiά and bαbά. I never read a person until I knew they would be a fixture in my life, and then, I only read deep enough to know if they were a decent person. However, business was different, I used my abilities daily for my work. Yiαyiά would roll over in her grave if she knew how I’d leashed up my curse, only allowing it off the chain for my own good. But I had no interest in the life of a sideshow freak, nor would I deny myself my genetic right. And that’s how I met Jeremiah. I thought he was no more than a self-important PA. I didn’t read him. He wasn’t staying long. He was, at best, an acquaintance, a friend of a friend of a friend. I needed a discrete hook-up for some pharma-grade ketamine, not the two bit, self-administered nasal spray. I needed the real deal—a lot of it—for a client.

By trade, I was a concierge to the elite. I.E. I acquired things—mostly information—for very wealthy people. It was completely legit—well, mostly, and highly specialized. This particular job was more of a favor. My client had a daughter diagnosed schizophrenic. They’d heard about some promising research involving very high doses of the drug in combination with shock therapy. Very experimental. Who was I to argue? I mean, I could’ve taken a look inside the girl’s head and been more successful than any experimental drug, but I’d never mind-melded with a schizophrenic before, and I wasn’t willing to blow my cover on a thrill ride.

Enter Jeremiah. I’d been given his name, like I said, from an associate. He worked at a Beverly Hills psychotherapy clinic that specialized in very mild, non-intrusive guided ketamine sessions. It was all very above board, and not at all what my client wanted, but Jeremiah was said to dabble in a little off-the-books ketamine sales, and that’s what I needed. I set up a meeting time and location, and figured the job would be the easiest money I ever made. I’d pay for the stuff, drop it off to my client, and boom-bam, twenty grand!

Jeremiah was a handsome guy, with a witty charm a girl doesn’t come across very often anymore. Not flirty, but funny—a good change in a sea of overaged frat boys. He was also intelligent, which was why when he told me he’d only brought a one milligram vial instead of the fiver we’d discussed, my curiosity piqued. However, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and I followed him back to his abandoned Hollywood stash house.

At this point, an eye roll would be appropriate, especially considering I had the best BS detector on the planet, but that was just it. I was the weirdest thing I’d ever come across. In twenty-six years of having this ability, I’d learned that people were liars, certainly; dirtbags, definitely; sad and broken, always; but pathological murders with a taste for a terror-high? Nope, that one never came up. In my defense, while I had no idea what I was dealing with, he didn’t either.

We arrived at this abandoned building and took the stairs to the fifth floor. There was a locked rolling metal door that he explained was for his protection—bad neighborhood and what not—then, he led me into a beautiful flat, tricked out with LED lights and inviting furniture.

“Stash spot, huh?” I said.

“Well, yeah, and my apartment.”

“Nice, how’d you score this?”

“If I tell you, you’ll steal my tricks.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.” I wouldn’t be caught dead in this neighborhood.

“Oh, yeah? Well, it’s one hundred percent free. I don’t pay for water, power, trash, or rent.”

“How’s that possible?”

“See, I can already hear those wheels turning. Water?”

“I only drink sealed water from strangers.”

“Of course, no problem.” He walked to his fridge and returned with a sealed plastic bottle. I accepted it and smiled. “So, what’s with the gloves?”

“I don’t like to leave my fingerprints anywhere.”

He laughed. Most people liked that one, made me seem both funny and mysterious. Of course, he laughed for a different reason, one with a more ironic nature of which I was presently unaware.

“Let me go grab the stuff. Make yourself comfortable.”

I cracked the safety seal on the bottle and walked to the window. As I sipped, I marveled at the fact that he had new double-paned windows in this chic chick-trap. I took another sip and pondered that further. How did he get new windows installed? And wait, were they even glass or something else? I tapped on them. Didn’t respond like glass. I slipped my glove off, perplexed, and laid my palm on the window.

Terror exploded in my chest. The vision hit me with so much force, I staggered and yanked my hand back. My brain swam with the images. I put my fingers to my temples to slow the vision down and concentrate. The terror wasn’t mine. It belonged to a hand that previously touched the window. I studied the darkness behind my closed eyes and brought the images back. In the plexi material of the window, I saw the image of a girl, her hair matted with blood. I looked down at the hands that were, from the perspective of the vision, my hands—blood as well. I looked back to the image and saw the horror filled expression, but only in one eye. The other eye was an empty socket.

“Hey, are you leaving your fingerprints on my glass?”

His voice jolted me out of the vision. “I gotta go. Sorry. My client called. He changed his mind.” I turned, momentarily afraid he would see my missing eyeball, but then remembered that wasn’t me.

“Geez, what happened? Are you okay? Is something wrong with the water?” He didn’t sound concerned like the question should have implied, but more like he was mocking me.

Oh no…the water. I looked down at the bottle in my hand, half gone and cursed myself for my overconfident idiocy. He’s a PA with access to syringes and drugs. How could I be so stupid?

As the tally of my mistakes mounted, I tried running for the door anyway, but he easily stepped in front of me. He laughed and cuddled me like a lover, stroking my hair and shushing me. I could hear my own breath in my ears—a wild panicked sound—and imagined I would soon look like the girl in the glass.

But I was not her. I was me, and I wasn’t wearing my glove. I drew my hand up to his face and placed it on his cheek. Unafraid of me, he rubbed his face across it, as visions assaulted my mind. I saw myself as him, standing over a girl strapped onto a surgical table. Not the same girl from the window. She cried and I could feel his pleasure. Feel how powerful he felt, as she begged him to let her go. His vision words echoed as though I was hearing them underwater. “Gonna play a game,” he told her. He brought up a syringe and pricked the skin where her carotid would be, then plunged the entire contents of the needle straight into her artery. The girl’s body heaved upward. Flopping, gasping, she spasmed then calmed, and her eyes rolled back in her head. The vision-me moved to prepare an IV, but not an IV. It was a needle attached to an empty bag.

The vision jumped. I was looking down at the girl as I ran the scalpel around the edge of her face at the hairline. I could hear the underwater voice explaining patiently, “I’m going to remove your face and make a mask out of it, won’t that be fun?” The girl tried screaming and thrashing her head away from the blade, but a ball gag silenced her and her head was clamped in place by blocks and straps. Her wild eyes darted madly in their sockets and one of her teeth snapped off as she fought desperately against the impossible reality.

Pleased, he turned his head and checked on a line attached to her stomach. A white delicate tube had been inserted and was drawing blood slowly into a bag. This was what he wanted. The hallucinogenic quality of the ketamine he’d injected in the girl, mixed with physical and psychological torture, caused the brain to release an irreproducible hormone of such singular quality that one tiny vial would go for millions on the black market if he was even remotely interested in selling it. But no, this was his private stock, his paix transcendante. Every ounce of torture he milked from this maiden made the nectar all the sweeter.

Lost in Jeremiah’s reverie, I never felt my feet leave the ground, and I wouldn’t have felt the ties around my wrists had my bare hand not been pulled from his face, severing our connection. I lay on my back, a cold hard table beneath me. The surgical table from the vision. My brain moved slowly, but my awareness sharpened. Apparently, whatever drug he’d given me had a rapid onset. Movement proved difficult, but my mind felt clear, like the way people describe lucid dreams.

I watched Jeremiah move from his work station back to me, then back to his work station, most likely preparing all the goodies he had in store for me. This is when the thought occurred to me that I could’ve very simply shook his hand and avoided this entire situation. But thanks to Yiαyiά and bαbά, my mother, and basically my whole damn life, I was stupid enough to believe that I’d been cursed. My life echoed like a glowing golden tapestry around me. I saw choices, relationships, feelings all represented by radiant strings woven together. Every thought, touch, and tear was a musical ensemble that brought an ache to my chest. I imagined myself floating through this tapestry, a ladybird with giant butterfly wings, and if I moved my wings a certain way, I could erase every pain, every bad decision, everything I didn’t say, and see the life I could’ve had.

I felt a tug in my brain and opened my eyes. Jeremiah stood over me. My shirt hung open and iodine covered my stomach. The same white tubing from the vision girl stuck out of my stomach as well. Jeremiah looked at me and smiled. “Enjoying the ketamine, huh?”

I tried making words but only bubbles came out of my mouth.

“I gotta say, that's a little different. You should be a little more panicked by now. I’m sure you’ll get there once we get started.”

I attempted a curious face towards whatever he was doing with my stomach, and felt the tug in my brain again.

“Oh that? Yeah, that’s a cerebral angiogram. It’s a tiny catheter that runs all the way up to the base of your brain. That tugging sensation, it’s the nerves in your spine. That little tube is going to gently extract a serum from the base of your brain while I torture you. Fascinating, right?” His eyes focused on something off to the left of my head while he moved the little tube where he wanted it.

He looked back into my eyes and smiled brilliantly. Then, his one smile exploded into hundreds and floated off him like balloons. “You see, the brain doesn’t really know how to respond to terror or extreme pain, so it floods the body with a very special dopamine-enriched oxytocin. The combination only happens during two very specific events in the human body—giving birth and dying. One extremely painful, more than a body should naturally be able to take; and the other, extremely frightening, the unfathomable finality of life coming toward you with no escape. During both events, the brain sends every bit of help it can in order to calm the self. It’s really quite impressive, and the serum…well, would it be bad form if I said it was worth killing for?” He laughed and winked, so I smiled back.

I knew I should be reacting differently, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t muster the fear. Instead, I imagined my butterfly-self flying straight into Jeremiah’s giant pearly smile.

His mind was chaos. Fragmented, dislocated reels played in loops, overlapping one another like a hologram funhouse. He’d taken life and it haunted him. Dismembered girls lay in dark corners with broken laughter playing over and over like a scratched album. Huddled Jeremiah-like figures roamed down corridors with hypodermic needles sticking out of their arms, necks, and the webbing of their fingers. I flew past these tortured memories and over to his eyes, where I looked out and saw myself strapped to his table, his plans laid out on the work station next to me. A scalpel was his favorite instrument, that and a mirror. Making his victims watch as he removed pieces of their faces. Spiders were another. Ketamine psychosis played havoc on the mind, but mix that with spiders, ants, or rats, and he could obtain the terror levels he needed. Today would be blacklight, rats, mirrors, and the scalpels.

Jeremiah prepared the next dose of ketamine. This would be the one to enter the artery and send my mind into the irretrievable depths of insanity. Here, I would lose myself forever, buried under the physical and psychological nightmare he would construct, until my eventual departure from this life.

Or so he thought.

What Jeremiah didn’t know was that I was unlike his other victims. Prey are afraid because they lack the insight of the hunter. They live in timid states of ignorance, always wondering when or from where the deathblow will come. This fear robs the mind of the ability to problem solve, and thus, victims are only ever ineffective. Knowledge, on the other hand, can turn prey into predator.

Another unintentional level boost was the ketamine. Give a victim the drug, and they will create a reality of the most horrific nightmare they can imagine, but give a telepath a little “Special K” and you’ve just granted them free reign over your mainframe.

“So this next dose is going to get a little rough. It’ll probably feel like your heart’s going to explode, but hopefully it won’t, or you won’t get to see all the fun stuff I have planned for you. If you make it through, the high will get quite intense. You won’t be able to talk or scream, and I won’t be able to let you get up and roam around. I used to let the girls do that, but it got so messy. A couple times they even ripped their catheters out, which will almost always cause a severe embolism, so they basically wasted my entire extraction. Plus, I really don’t want the rats trying to chase you down. So, it’s strapped to the chair with a ball gag, I’m afraid. The good news is you get to watch the whole thing! Won’t that be awesome?”

I nodded my head and smiled, and made him do the same.

He didn’t even notice. He just looked at me, confused. “Hmm, you know, I’ve never seen a reaction like yours before. Are you a regular ketamine user?”

I laughed and shook my head no this time, and again made him do it, too.

Still oblivious that he was following my actions, he continued troubleshooting, “That’s really weird. I think maybe we should start with a little cutting before the next dose, see if that gets you more in the mood. Sound good?”

Yes, we both nodded again, and this time I made him giggle.

He reached for his scalpel and drew it down the side of his face. He didn’t wince, didn’t yell, didn’t flinch. He just bled and looked to see my reaction.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

I laughed and said, “More, please.”

He looked at me, genuinely baffled, then must have felt the blood running down his face. He wiped at it, but I instructed him that the blood was mine. Still without the reaction he wanted, he decided on another tactic. “How about we let the rats get started?”

I opened my eyes wide and nodded rigorously.

This angered him. “Stop that!” he shouted, and slashed wildly with the scalpel. I screamed as pain burned across my cheek, my own blood splashing across his face. “That’s better. Now, enough misbehaving.” He regained his composure, stood up, grabbed a towel, and must’ve moved to a mirror to wipe away my blood, because I heard him exclaim, “What the hell?”

I couldn’t turn to see anything with my body strapped down, and, for some reason, my connection with him broke when I could no longer see him, but I heard what must have been his baffled rage as he slammed what I could only imagine were his fists onto his stainless steel tabletop. Tools clattered as they flew. A glass may have broken, but my mind reeling from the ketamine had decided to turn all sound into waves.

Jeremiah came back, a towel pressed to his face. He was shouting at me, but I couldn't understand him with all the echoing. I flew back into his brain and found a collection of Jeremiahs freaking out. Apparently, there was a consensus that he needed to go to the hospital for stitches, but a violent disagreement as to whether I should be killed now or later. The Jeremiahs desperately wanted their fix and would not be satiated with a loss of this magnitude. One single Jeremiah tried to reason with the others. He explained that something was clearly wrong with this girl and she should be given no more ketamine. She was unstable and giving her more ketamine would be a waste. A lethal dose of barbiturates would be best, then stitch up our face and get rid of her body.

This calmed all the others and, one by one, they disappeared, leaving me only with rational Jeremiah who took three steadying breaths then faded as well.

I jolted back into my own body. The ketamine was at its peak. My mind kept trying to retreat into memories, kept trying to puzzle out the golden tapestry that felt both tragic and cathartic. I could feel tears and blood on my cheeks. I tried to remember where the blood came from, but all I could conjure was a giant jack-in-the-box Jeremiah bobbing on a spring with a scalpel in his hand, grinning at me with that perfect smile.

The part of me that wasn’t my mind or body became sharply distinct. This was my gift, my knowing, and it could think without my mind and move without my body, but only so long as the whole of me lived and breathed. I needed to calm myself. I was not prey, and this lame-ass psycho was not my end.

I breathed calm into my body, as Jeremiah had done. I could see that battling the ketamine was a problem, and I needed to embrace what the drug could do for someone like me.

I sensed Jeremiah moving, and could see without seeing that he had another vial ready. This, I assumed, was the lethal dose of barbiturates he’d thought about. I conjured my ladybird and attempted to enter his mind, but he’d become a fortress. Apparently, being unversed at victimhood and having seen the unexplainable scalpel wound on his face caused him to create a hyper-focused vigilance that made his mind impenetrable. I would have to try a different tactic, but what? My only play so far had been my accidental infiltration of his mind. What else could I do? Do I even have time to try?

He faced me, cradling a giant cartoon needle. The hilarity of the image struck me and I burst out laughing. Jeremiah became enraged. He stamped his foot, suddenly adorned with a giant clown shoe, and I laughed even harder. His face turned beet red and steam shot from his ears. I might’ve died of laughter, but instead, Jeremiah drove the needle into its target and emptied the entire contents. I stopped laughing and he smiled. “Not so funny now, huh?”

“Yeah, still pretty funny.” I looked down and he followed my eyes to the syringe, his hand still curled around it as it protruded from his stomach. I watched the emotions play across his face—confusion, realization, horror, and finally fear, all beautifully exaggerated by my ketamine perception.

I lay there enjoying the symphony of his screams until they, and I, faded.

********************

I awoke later in a bed. A terrible brightness flooded the room, interrupted by the silhouette of a male figure that hovered within the glare. I pulled my arm up to shield my eyes but found that it was tethered to a tube in my arm. “NO!”

“Shhhh, Ms. Poulos, it’s just an IV. You’re safe. Everything’s okay. You’re at Cedars-Sinai hospital.”

“What?” My brain felt slow and mushy, and my tongue was plastered to the roof of my mouth.

“You’re in the hospital. My name is Detective Brodi Rask. Do you feel okay to talk?”

I looked around for the standard plastic jug that always seemed to accompany the rolling patient tables. “Is there any water?”

He poured me a glass and handed it to me.

I took a sip, then prepared myself for the tiresome dance that was about to occur. “What happened to Jeremiah? How did I get out?”

“Your father says he tracked your phone. He said you had plans and when you didn’t show up, he went to your location, broke in, and found you strapped to a table. He’s been detained until we can straighten out what happened.”

“What? What the hell for? He told you, he tracked my phone and saved my life. Why the hell would you detain him?”

“Well, because your phone was nowhere to be found, making his story slightly…implausible. Or at the very least, incomplete.”

“Hmm, yeah, sounds about right. Look, detective—” I struggled to pull myself into a sitting position, too tired and hungover from the mix of drugs and adrenalin to accomplish the task properly, much less entertain a fool. “If I told you the truth, you’d rather I would’ve just stuck to the lie.”

“Try me.”

I laughed. “Listen, I don’t care what you believe, but what I know is you can’t hold my father for anything. So who cares how he found me? He did, and Jeremiah’s dead, right?”

“Yes, your attacker, Jeremiah Pierce, is dead. A lethal dose of pentobarbital, seemingly self-administered to the peritoneal cavity. An extremely strange death for a man who has most likely killed before and was absolutely committed to doing so again.”

“Mmm, strange indeed.”

“Look, your father is a really nice man, very cooperative, but the case can also be made that the scene was staged to look like a suicide, and—”

I didn’t have much energy left, and the whole tired conversation of my ability had played out too many times to think this conversation would go any different, but there’s something about almost dying that makes you see social niceties as an absolute waste of time. “Detective, shhh. Give me your hand.”

He squinted and cocked his head, but complied. I closed my eyes, breathed peacefully and let the information flow in. “You’re thirty-two. Made detective at twenty-nine. You’re pretty proud of that being that you did it on your own, not a legacy. Your family means everything to you. Scandinavian, old-country, but you don’t want a family of your own. How about deeper? You hate monogamy, think it’s stupid, you enjoy rough sex with strange partners, and you’ve fantasized about the perfect murder—” He yanked his hand away. “But you’d never do it,” I finished.

I opened my eyes expecting to see the same denial they all have, but instead he stared at me in the most peculiar way. Not angry, not confused—maybe amused but also guarded. It was intriguing, but I was too tired to care. “Anyway, detective, no one wants to know what I know. No one wants to be connected to this, but my father is. It’s in his blood. He found me, because he’ll always find me. He doesn’t have the touch, but he’s my blood, if you can understand that.”

He continued to stare at me. I could see his mind working, and some newly awakened part of me wanted the drug, wanted the power to go where I hadn’t been invited, and wanted to do what I hadn’t been given permission to do. I closed my eyes again.

“Thank you, Ms. Poulos. We’ll speak again. Get some rest.” I listened as he walked across the room and heard him stop, probably at the door. “By the way, your father was released this morning. You were right, we didn’t have enough to hold him.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him, confused that I hadn’t seen that. He smiled, looked down at his hand and said, “We’re definitely gonna have to play that game again sometime. See ya.”

I smiled to myself. I hope so, Detective Rask.