In his more guarded moments, when he was the least honest with himself, George never thought of them as victims. Like most humans, he had a curated version of his self-image; in it he was a trickster who used his cleverness and secret knowledge to make his way through the world, leaving those he interacted with feeling a bit foolish, but none too worse for wear.
Then there were moments like these, sitting on the stairs of the subway entrance, watching the morning crowd move by like fish in a fast river, and he knew what he really was. From the perch he made of the garbage can, he watched both the crowd and its individuals, parsing out the slow or the unlucky. Those were the easiest to grab secrets from, the distracted or those who wandered too close with something useful at the topmost of their minds, whether that was a PIN number or a stock tip or some other bit of personal information that could be turned into profit. George had found a long time ago that he could reach out and snatch these things from unwary minds just as he could shield his presence from the crowd on this busy Tuesday morning.
Today, though, with his rent paid and his bank account relatively fat, George was searching for something more intemperate. Fumbling attempts at bars and church socials, even equipped with the attendees’ secrets, he found he couldn’t establish a rapport with most people. After years of trying, he found that it was much more satisfying to watch a morning crowd and find a woman with a certain air about her. He tended to prefer young, blond, and pretty, but the most important thing was that they had a certain look about them; a smirk, a satisfaction, an impishness, that said last night had been fun, exciting, satisfying, or all of the above. Typically, these women still had the memories that were the seminal stimulus for this fulfillment at the top of their mind, often replaying them as people are wont to do.
And George would just slide himself in. He would insert himself into those memories and roll in them like they were luxurious new sheets. He’d do that until it became almost too much to bear and he had to take the experience some place private to enjoy it. After all, he couldn’t be caught causing a scene on the subway steps, could he?
Sure, from time to time whichever woman he chose would sense something was amiss. Perhaps she would note the recollection of her chosen partner was being replaced by the shadow of something else. Or maybe she would feel the memory slipping away, the details becoming thin until the experience evaporated entirely. He could see it on their faces when this occurred, the consternation that twisted their pretty features, the disquiet that resulted in a stutter in their step.
Watching them in those dreadful moments, George smiled. The theft was unaccountable. George would just get up and leave.
He pushed these thoughts to a dark pool in his mental recesses as he observed the morning’s crowd, his primary senses engaged in finding one such woman. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he spotted her; short, petite, and with a devilish grin on her face and a spring in her step.
Smiling himself, he focused on her, to the exclusion of all other things, till the cool of the pavement fell away, the subterranean odor wafted into nothing, and all the other people faded. In the moment, these sensory inputs were replaced with the softness of linen, the touch of skin, the mixing of perfume and sweat.
It was in entering that warm glow that he saw her mind’s eye swivel towards a bedroom mirror to see her pretty little face take in the scene of her and another young body entwined. George smiled, watching this young woman be a voyeur in her own moment. It was something he had seen before, so he assumed this was what was happening right up until her reflection asked him, “Just what in the Hell do you think you’re doing?”
George startled, sliding off the edge of the garbage can to land with his ass on the concrete. He shook his head violently and repeatedly, temporarily unable to process this new stimulus. He had never been subjected to the refraction of being observed while observing.
By the time George was firmly back in his own mind, the blonde he had been watching was bent over him, her lower jaw jutted out. “I asked you a question, jackass!” Despite the high volume of her voice and his own prone position, George sensed the morning commuter crowd swirling past them without so much as a notice.
Sitting there, with people rushing past, George fumbled for words. He had never had to justify his actions, so his faculty for developing excuses was like a stunted limb that left him sitting on the concrete.
As his mouth tried to form some useful communication, the woman leaned forward, one angry brow arching as the accompanying eye opened wide, the woman peering down at him as if from the top of a very long and exacting microscope. “Those memories don’t belong to you, asshole.” Her brown iris contracted around its pupil until it was all George could see. “But you know that, don’t you?”
Placing a hand on the wall behind George, she leaned in closer. “You’ve known that all along.” She paused, her eye darting around his face as if the topography of it afforded her answers. He knew that wasn’t the case, though, feeling the woman’s mental acuity dart in and out of his own mind like an acupuncture needle. “How long have you been doing this sort of thing?”
Snatching the answer to that last question before he could even think of a reply, Sheila (how did he know her name?) recoiled from him, standing up erect, withdrawing her hands into the folds of her coat and wrinkling her nose.
“Jesus wept,” was all she added.
Seeing her stand what felt like miles above him, George scrambled to his knees. “Wait, look,” was about as far as he got.
“Wait, look,” Sheila pitched her tone high and whining, “I didn’t think it was doing any harm, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, it’s not my fault, I’m so alone.” Before the words could leave his mouth she predicted any line of defense he tried to construct. He could only gape at her.
“Well, George,” Sheila took a step back, whatever invisible bubble that parted the crowd around them growing in turn, pushing the currents of Tuesday morning traffic a bit further back. “The good news is, I can’t rightly turn you into the police, can I?”
George numbly nodded.
“But I’m not going to let you walk away from here. The people you’ve hurt don’t even know you hurt them. You’ve left them with a mystery that’s a hole in their universe.” Sheila fixed him with a gaze that caused him to reflexively put his hands over his crotch. “So I’m going to neuter you.”
“What?” In a rising panic George felt himself steel his own mind, trying to somehow weaponize the stealth that he had only used against the defenseless till now.
“Don’t bother with that.” With a wave of her hand George felt something tear away, as if a protective hood had been ripped off him. From beyond the bubble that separated the pair from the multitude of commuters, George could now sense a growing pressure, as if only a thin wall separated him from the depths of an ocean.
“You know what telepathy is when you strip away control, George?” George shook his head rapidly from side-to-side as he felt the bubble Sheila created begin to thin, the psychic mass of every thought on the other side pressing against it. “It’s a venereal disease.”
The crowd behind Shiela became a blur, individuals indeterminable from one another, rushing past as she stepped back into her thinning barrier, folding into the morass as if sinking into a pool. “You wanted people’s memories? Well, have ‘em all.”
Sheila’s bubble popped and every stray thought from the Tuesday morning commute came into the space that George had thought of as his own. Thoughts of pet care, appointments missed, anxiety about tardiness to work, gotta catch that train, gonna be late, hunger, god what is that smell, does she love me, rent eviction, so packed in here, which train, public speaking presentation, rat on the tracks, cockroach cockroach cockroach.
Each thought rolled over George’s every crack and seam. He opened his mouth, but could not scream.
See the author’s published work here.
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