Snippet 2 of Born of Air

To read Snippet 1 click here. Sorry, I’m unable to record an audio clip for you, I have a cold, trust me, you don’t want to listen to me read right now. I hope you enjoy the snippet!

 

 

Chapter 2 (unedited)

“Sorry,” Noel laughed. “I thought you said you could read minds.” He coughed uncomfortably into a closed fist. “I must’ve misunderstood you. Could you repeat that please?”

“You didn’t misunderstand,” I said.

The air grew thick between us as we sat there looking at one another, me fighting the urge to dig at his thoughts. How was he reacting inside? Noel’s face had become impassive. It was the kind of expression I’d seen on him before. He trusted me and knew that I wasn’t a liar, and yet he wasn’t sure he could believe me.

“You’ve never encountered mind-reading before?” I asked.

“Petra,” he said, his face very still. “Telepathy is a pseudoscience. It has never been proven to exist.”

I frowned. “I know that. I have done my research. I was just hoping that maybe you had access to information that I don’t. So, you don’t know how I can get rid of it?” Great. I had spilled my secret for nothing. “Do you have any experience with telekinesis?”

He blinked rapidly like he’d gotten dust in his eyes. “Telekinesis is also a pseudoscience.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose where his specs sat, like they were pinching him. It was a tell. He didn’t believe me. My heart felt heavy. The one adult left in my life that I thought I could go to with anything was probably now questioning my sanity.

“Have you been under a lot of pressure lately?” He asked hooking his interlaced fingers over a knee.

“No more than usual,” I sighed. I went to get up from the chair. “I guess we’re done here.” As far as I was concerned, if Noel couldn’t offer me any additional information about my condition, then I wasn’t going to find what I needed here.

Noel got to his feet as well and rather quickly for a portly chap. “Petra, please sit down. You can’t drop a bomb on me like that and not explain. I promise I will try and help you.”

I sank back into my seat, hesitantly. “I knew it could be a mistake telling you,” I said. “But I thought that you of all people might have some idea how to stop it. After all, you see all kinds come through here. People with all sorts of mental health problems.”

He gave a chuckle. “Not like this,” he said. “Why do you want to stop it?” Now he was mining for gold. Keep the patient talking. Psychology 101. I was game. It was what I’d come here for.

“Because it’s annoying,” I cried. “The movies make telepathy out to be some sort of great power, something that’s supposed to give you a one-up in this world. The reality of it is much different, let me tell you.”

Noel scooched forward on the couch and propped an elbow on the arm of his chair. “What is the reality of it?”

I made a face and crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you have any idea how unintelligent most of humanity is? How selfish, simple, and vapid? I have no interest in sharing my mind–space with someone else’s idiotic thoughts.”

As a child, it had been agonizing, before I had a strategy in place to protect my mind from other people’s self-talk and mental images. The wall I had put up was stronger than it had ever been, but sometimes random thoughts not of my making would leak through, usurping my own thinking. “Other people’s thoughts are almost never enlightening. They always take me backwards. Do you have any idea how quickly I’ll devolve if I go around picking up other people’s mental garbage? It’s like…” I paused, searching for the words to explain how it felt. “Pollution. Noise cluttering up a library that’s supposed to be a serene place. When I was a kid, I thought I was crazy. I was 7 years old when I finally figured out what was wrong with me.”

Noel was leaning forward in his chair. “What happened to make you understand?”

“I was able to match up a random image that had popped into my head with the thoughts of the caseworker who was interviewing me,” I explained. “We were supposed to be going over my report cards and talking about how well I was integrating at school. She’d ask me questions and I’d answer them. But whenever I began to talk, the image of a man wearing a navy uniform, and black horn-rimmed glasses would materialize in my mind and completely derail me. I didn’t know who he was, I had never seen him before. It was frightening.“

I didn’t say it out loud to Noel, but it got even worse when the man began to kiss me passionately, and then swept me off my feet. Somewhere in the midst of my shock and distress, I could sense an underlying urgency and pleasure that didn’t belong to me. I was too young to understand it. “It wasn’t until after the session was over,” I continued, “and I watched the caseworker greet her husband in the parking lot, that I understood what I had been seeing,” I said. “He had just gotten back from overseas and she has missed him terribly. She couldn’t wait to see him, and her mind kept drifting to him during our conversation.”

“That’s very sweet,” said Noel.

“Not when you don’t know what the hell is going on,” I snapped.

He put his hands out. “Fair enough. Do the thoughts always come through in images?”

“Not always. Sometimes they come through like voices, speaking words. I guess it depends how the person thinks.”

“Could I ask you to show me?”

I knew that this would have to be part of it. I nodded. “Give me a moment.”

Lifting the wall I had placed around my thoughts was a strange feeling, unpleasant. It was like my eyes had been focused on something very close to my face for hours, and when I finally lifted them to the horizon, everything was horribly fuzzy. It might take a second or two for eyes to adjust, and there might be a little vertigo to go along with it. But it took my brain longer than that to home in on his thoughts. I closed my eyes as my vision blurred, and the old familiar pain throbbed low at the base of my neck. “Are you ready?” I asked, opening my eyes.

Noel looked relaxed, interested, unconcerned. He still didn’t believe me. “Okay,” he said leaning back against his chair. “What am I thinking about?”

I received his stream of consciousness and images began to form in my head. The images crept in at the edges at first, then blew up like balloons in the middle of my skull, fully formed and in technicolor. Apparently, Noel was a visual thinker.

“A rose garden,” I said and closed my eyes. I couldn’t help but smile at the beautiful image. “Looks like tea roses, mostly in pastels. They’re at their peak and they smell amazing. At the edge of the garden is an old stone railing with curved spindles and carved faces sitting on top. About a dozen of them, all with their backs to a very blue ocean.” I opened my eyes. “Some of the faces are cracked and worn, missing their noses.”

Noel’s complexion had gone pale, dewy with sweat. He had to believe me now, and he was clearly shaken.

“It’s a beautiful place,” I said. “Where is it?”

He tried to reply but it came out as a dry wisp of a word. He coughed to clear his throat and tried again. “Ravello,” he said. “The Terrace of Infinity. It was once owned by Becket, the poet.”

“Lovely,” I murmured. I was about to congratulate him on how steady his imagination held the place he was thinking of. Most people’s minds skittered from seemingly random image to random worry, out of control like a runaway elephant. But just as I opened my mouth, the image of the side of a black handgun came flying at my face and seemed to bounce off my forehead. The weapon was gripped by a meaty hand and as the gun made contact, there was a flash of red. While I didn’t feel any physical pain, I jerked backwards, startled, as I picked up the violent memory from Noel.

“What was that?” I said, alarmed. Fear riddled the image with wavy lines, like heat coming off asphalt on a summer day. I had never seen terror warp a thought so badly. So, even Noel had trouble controlling his thoughts, as that was definitely something he wouldn’t have wanted me to see. Thoughts were a strange thing. If you try not to think of a giraffe, the first thing that will pop into your head is a giraffe. Obviously, Noel now believed me and the fear of me seeing one of his worst memories came rushing to the forefront of his mind where I’d plucked it like a ripe apple.

“Stop, stop!” cried Noel, putting a hand out. His eyes were wide with dismay.

I slammed down the gate between my mind and his, the feeling of it was so violent it jarred my teeth. The images filtering into my mind ceased. The dull pain at the base of my skull eased and disappeared, but my heart was pounding. The last thought I had picked up was the most disconcerting one I had ever picked up from anyone. Why was my mild-mannered therapist being beaten by a man with a gun? Fury flared hot and hard inside me and I had to take a deep breath. Noel wouldn’t hurt a fly. This was another reason I didn’t like to know other people’s thoughts, especially if it was someone I cared about. If they were in some kind of trouble, I couldn’t help but get involved. For all I knew that thought was thirty years old and had long since been resolved. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

He shook his head as he pulled at his tie, loosening it from around his neck. “Don’t worry about me,” he wheezed. “It’s you we’re discussing.” He was a little out of breath and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” He said this while shucking his suit jacket. Sweat circles darkened the fabric of his purple shirt. “Would you like a drink? I need a drink.”

“Yes, please,” I said. Now that my mind was sealed, my heart was slowing down.

Noel went to the sideboard under the window and poured two glasses of water from the pitcher sitting there. I watched his hand shake and the water slosh. He returned to our little circle of furniture and handed me a glass.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it and drinking. I set the glass on a coaster on the coffee table between us.

“Can you still read my mind?” Noel asked.

I frowned. His voice had a tremor I didn’t like. He was afraid of me. “No, you asked me to stop and I did.” Reading minds was an invasion of privacy at the deepest level. Doing it made me feel sick, not physically, aside from the dull headache, but emotionally. I felt like a criminal, a voyeur, someone with a serious mental health problem.

He settled back in his chair, his shirt damp and his necktie gaping. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone. His eyes met mine for the first time, narrowing as he stared at me.

“I’m not,” I affirmed. “I can tell by your face that you don’t believe me. But I’m not. I swear on Beverly’s memory.” I put a hand over my heart.

“You don’t have to do that. I believe you.” His face relaxed and he took a kerchief from his chest pocket and mopped his brow. “How are you able to control it?”

“Years of practice,” I answered. “Mostly it involves not thinking about the fact that I can do it, and genuinely not wanting to know what people are thinking. If I do find myself wanting to know someone’s thoughts, that’s when it takes real effort. It’s like holding up a dam with your bare hands. It’s tiring, and if you have to do it for a long time eventually some water will leak through. If that makes any sense.”

Noel nodded, still pale. “It does. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why now?”

“I don’t like being looked at like I’m nuts. Not that you would,” I put up a hand. “But most people would. And I’m not interested in having to prove myself. I just find I still have leakage sometimes, and as I prepare to go into University, I’d like to get rid of it. You can imagine the battle of will that ensues during an exam,” I said. “It’s the reason I always studied so hard. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I’d be tempted to cheat.” I shrugged. “I was hoping you might have some experience with it from other patients. But I guess not.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Petra,” Noel said. “This is a first for me.” He took a breath. “And the telekinesis you mentioned?”

“Yes. What about it?”

Noel looked uncomfortable. He adjusted his glasses. “You have this ability too?”

I nodded. “It’s not as much of an issue, but I brought it up because I thought the two might be linked.”

“Can you…” he made a gesture with his hand, like an invitation to dance.

I nodded. Another demonstration. I picked up my glass, drained it of water, swallowed and set it back on the table. On the glass this time, not the coaster. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my stomach. Without taking my eyes from Noel, I gave the glass a gentle mental shove at its base so it didn’t tip over.

My glass slid across the table and clinked into his.

Noel’s hand flew to cover his mouth.

“Cheers.”

My attempt to lighten the atmosphere failed. Noel’s eyes flew up to my face. I watched him make an effort to get his gaping under control. But his complexion was still waxy, and he was still sweating. He tugged on his chin and closed his mouth. The sound of his palm scraping against his stubble was loud and filled the room.

I glanced at the clock on Noel’s desk. “We’re out of time,” I said, getting to my feet. “I hope I haven’t ruffled you too much. I know you have another patient right after me.”

“No, no,” Noel said. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t. It was plain on his face. No one needed telepathy to see how much I’d shaken him.

“I’m sorry, Noel,” I said quietly. “If I had known…” I bounced a fist off my thigh, feeling awkward. “I wouldn’t have…” I sighed. What else could I say? My hope that he’d seen someone else like me in all his years of helping patients dissolved into mist.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Noel intoned, getting to his feet as well. “I’ve just never seen anything like it. Would you like to make another appointment?” He followed me as I walked to the door. I plucked my jacket off the coatrack and picked up my purse. “There would be no charge. I’d really like to help you with this.”

But he couldn’t. He’d already shown me that. I gave him a smile, but it felt stiff and unnatural on my face. “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway.” I reached for the door handle.

“Wait, Petra-“ But my therapist seemed to be out of words for now. Couldn’t blame him.

I opened the door. “Nice to see you again, Noel. I wish you well.” I stepped out onto the landing and closed the door quietly behind me. At least I had some comfort knowing that he could never share my secret with anyone.

 

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