matter? Wouldn’t it be better just to be me … good and bad … right and wrong?
Noah squeezes my hand and his magic kind of zings up my arm. He’s trying to help me calm down. I guess he can see me struggling. I open my eyes and his face swims into focus, all worried and puckered. He runs a hand through his dark hair, his lips moving, but I don’t care enough to hear what he’s saying.
I focus on the jackass across the room and make my thoughts kind of pointed, just push my mind towards his until I feel his subconscious give way. I’m in his head, rifling around, throwing nasty thoughts aside like the trash they are until I get to the memory of the day he ran into me. I pull that one out, make it big. Make it important. I watch it through his eyes and guess what. He totally saw me. In his memory, he hates me a little because I might be taller than him, and I look afraid. He ran into me to feel powerful. He ran into me to look big in front of his friends.
When I fell to the pavement, tears spilling from my eyes, he didn’t feel remorse, he felt vindicated.
I add my own personal memory of the day to his. My fear. My shame. The scrapes on my hands and the ache in my tailbone. I make sure he gets to experience that day from my point of view; I kind of juxtapose my memory on top of his memory.
When I open my eyes, I see he’s paused in his conversation with his friend. His face is pinched, kind of like he’s in pain and kind of like he smells something bad. He presses a hand to his forehead and clears his throat.
I make my thoughts hard. Angry. I let them expand and fill his mind and when he flinches I smile. My magic rolls into his brain, sick, purple fog and swirling with green venom and burning with fire, and it feels good. Sure, light magic feels good, too, but vengeance is sweet and his pain will make restitution for my pain, for the pain the girl in the bathroom is sure to feel every day.
I rifle through his head until I find thoughts of the girl he’s with. Funny thing is, he actually does love her. I take that love and I make it big so he can see it and feel it and know it. I fill him up with his love for her. Then I pull up all the betrayals, all the times he’s cheated on her, all the hints he’s dropped about all his conquests to make her feel uncomfortable, to keep her questioning how he really feels about her, and I make those even bigger than his love for her. Force him to feel the guilt he’s been ignoring.
And then I make my thoughts really tight, like a fist, and I slam them around inside his head.
The guy - Todd, I found his name in his mind - grimaces and drops his forehead into his hands, groaning a little. His friend looks worried and reaches across the table, only to pull back when blood starts dripping out of Todd’s nose. Like dripping a lot.
“Shit, dude!” Todd’s friend leaps to his feet and the coffee shop goes quiet for an instant before erupting into a different kind of sound. People are gasping and someone screams. There’s scrambling for cell phones and napkins, and the truly selfish rush for the door.
There’s the little pop inside my head that I’ve come to recognize as my magic and it’s like I can see through my own eyes again. Noah’s standing over me, leaning down so his eyes are level with mine. His hands are on my shoulder and he’s shaking me.
I really want him to stop shaking me.
Todd’s bleeding all over the place and right now, that feels just about fine. He’s also crying. Keeps repeating “I’m sorry” over and over, rocking in his chair like a child. Maybe that doesn’t feel quite as fine. Maybe now it’s starting to feel like I’ve become more of a jackass than Todd ever was.
Ok, maybe not more.
But definitely just as bad.
Shit.
I don’t want to be the kind of person that hurts people. The whole point of coming out here and stressing me out is to help me learn how to control my dark magic so I don’ t hurt people. I meet Noah’s
Noah squeezes my hand and his magic kind of zings up my arm. He’s trying to help me calm down. I guess he can see me struggling. I open my eyes and his face swims into focus, all worried and puckered. He runs a hand through his dark hair, his lips moving, but I don’t care enough to hear what he’s saying.
I focus on the jackass across the room and make my thoughts kind of pointed, just push my mind towards his until I feel his subconscious give way. I’m in his head, rifling around, throwing nasty thoughts aside like the trash they are until I get to the memory of the day he ran into me. I pull that one out, make it big. Make it important. I watch it through his eyes and guess what. He totally saw me. In his memory, he hates me a little because I might be taller than him, and I look afraid. He ran into me to feel powerful. He ran into me to look big in front of his friends.
When I fell to the pavement, tears spilling from my eyes, he didn’t feel remorse, he felt vindicated.
I add my own personal memory of the day to his. My fear. My shame. The scrapes on my hands and the ache in my tailbone. I make sure he gets to experience that day from my point of view; I kind of juxtapose my memory on top of his memory.
When I open my eyes, I see he’s paused in his conversation with his friend. His face is pinched, kind of like he’s in pain and kind of like he smells something bad. He presses a hand to his forehead and clears his throat.
I make my thoughts hard. Angry. I let them expand and fill his mind and when he flinches I smile. My magic rolls into his brain, sick, purple fog and swirling with green venom and burning with fire, and it feels good. Sure, light magic feels good, too, but vengeance is sweet and his pain will make restitution for my pain, for the pain the girl in the bathroom is sure to feel every day.
I rifle through his head until I find thoughts of the girl he’s with. Funny thing is, he actually does love her. I take that love and I make it big so he can see it and feel it and know it. I fill him up with his love for her. Then I pull up all the betrayals, all the times he’s cheated on her, all the hints he’s dropped about all his conquests to make her feel uncomfortable, to keep her questioning how he really feels about her, and I make those even bigger than his love for her. Force him to feel the guilt he’s been ignoring.
And then I make my thoughts really tight, like a fist, and I slam them around inside his head.
The guy - Todd, I found his name in his mind - grimaces and drops his forehead into his hands, groaning a little. His friend looks worried and reaches across the table, only to pull back when blood starts dripping out of Todd’s nose. Like dripping a lot.
“Shit, dude!” Todd’s friend leaps to his feet and the coffee shop goes quiet for an instant before erupting into a different kind of sound. People are gasping and someone screams. There’s scrambling for cell phones and napkins, and the truly selfish rush for the door.
There’s the little pop inside my head that I’ve come to recognize as my magic and it’s like I can see through my own eyes again. Noah’s standing over me, leaning down so his eyes are level with mine. His hands are on my shoulder and he’s shaking me.
I really want him to stop shaking me.
Todd’s bleeding all over the place and right now, that feels just about fine. He’s also crying. Keeps repeating “I’m sorry” over and over, rocking in his chair like a child. Maybe that doesn’t feel quite as fine. Maybe now it’s starting to feel like I’ve become more of a jackass than Todd ever was.
Ok, maybe not more.
But definitely just as bad.
Shit.
I don’t want to be the kind of person that hurts people. The whole point of coming out here and stressing me out is to help me learn how to control my dark magic so I don’ t hurt people. I meet Noah’s
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