Whispers (Feathers and Fire, #3)

by Shayne Silvers

Like all men seemed to think, I needed to finish this fast and hard.

Or she was angry, and trying to bottle that up like any proper woman did.

I had the prerogative and natural right as a woman to not have to explain myself – even to myself.

“You can church it up as much as you want, but slapping lipstick on a pig doesn’t make it a whore.”

“But good little boys and girls don’t do drugs. We’re Catholic. We drink,”

She’s like alcohol. Fun at first sip, but the longer you spend time around her, the worse your hangover will be.”

“Yeah,” I argued, folding my arms across my chest to back him up like a good minion.

The truth was that I was beyond caring. I had no sympathy left for them. I had entered that critical stage in a woman’s life – that place when emotion starved to death and the only two options left to fill that void was to become a serial killer or to take a long, hot shower.

And a woman never forgets. She may forgive, but she never forgets. Where men, on the other hand, forget, but never forgive.

In fact, one way to find a sociopath or psychopath was to see how they reacted when you yawned. If they didn’t yawn back, it might be indicative of a sociopath. If they grew suddenly alert, they might be a psychopath. This wasn’t a certainty, but studies had been performed, and it was at least a mildly accurate indicator of disposition towards a certain personality type.

Being a sociopath just meant you could block off your emotions more easily than others. That you weren’t controlled by feelings, sympathy, or empathy. Surgeons, doctors, lawyers, and engineers were all typically sociopaths or had sociopathic tendencies.

Psychopaths typically had zero concern for the general population. If they wanted something, and it didn’t directly hurt someone they cared about, they didn’t really understand why anyone else cried about the loss of innocent life that had stood between them and their goal. They just took the shiny they had wanted. What’s the big deal? So, a dozen innocent people died. Why is everyone freaking out? Didn’t you see this new pretty shiny I got?

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that high fives didn’t explode. Only fist bumps. Everyone knew that. “Exactly like that.”

I skipped through the halls in the natural gait of a bimbo – the massive vacuum of air in my head giving me the ability to almost float between steps.

As we walked, I noticed there were many fine restaurants open for service in Rome. Naturally, Roland took me to a dirty food truck.