He’d been practicing lately. This time last year, he was only clinging to fragments of events, with no inkling of when or who they came from. He had no control of them. They began with physical sensations: the texture of clothing, heat from the sun, euphoria, sadness, tension. Always little pieces of long repressed memories making their way to the surface of consciousness, but not his own. Never his own.

He developed the ability to peek into other peoples lives at the age of 19. He didn’t know why, never believed such a thing to be possible. He chose not to share his gift with others. It was his escape. His father had spent too many parenting years beating a brutal reality into him. He was an inconvenience. He needed the distraction. He preferred living in the happy memories of others to dealing with the issues he’d neatly tucked away in the back of his mind.

He was finally beginning to grasp the idea of a technique he coined time-marking. He still invaded the minds of random strangers, but at least now, he had some control over the general time and date he experienced their lives. He could find peace in the backseat of their consciousnesses by invoking memories having to do with generalized world events. But not without trial and error.

Three months ago, from the safety of a park bench, he’d made a discovery about his ability that forced him to proceed with a bit more caution, inspiring the very technique he was currently mastering.

—————

A woman, in her mid to late 30’s stared at her reflection in the mirror at an outdated vanity. Various pill bottles were strewn across the limited space around the basin. The bathroom was small, black and white tiles adorning the floor. A grubby green claw foot tub sat behind her. She was a stranger. They were always strangers.

As she fussed over the wrinkles beginning to form around her mouth and brows, a tear loosed and rolled down her bronzed cheek. She wore a melancholy scowl that didn’t suit her smile lines. Only the sound of her even breathing filled the room.

She turned to face the tub and lingered a moment before she crossed the tiles in two bounds. Her legs felt like they had been filled with sand, stiff and reluctant to move. He watched quietly as she lowered herself down into the tub, fully clothed. She didn’t turn on the faucet. He felt a sharp pain in his hand. Her hand.

She peered down, sight blurred by the tears hazing the lower rim of her eyes, to a razor blade which had already bitten into the palm of her tense hand.

He anticipated what was to come, and attempted to see his way out of her mind. He’d never before been able to see the memories of someone who’d died, and he wasn’t keen on witnessing a failed suicide attempt. He’d witnessed painful memories from all walks of life, and wasn’t fond of reliving others’ traumas. He already had enough of his own. He preferred happy memories, but he’d never been able to control what memories he coerced from others. In defense of that, as soon as he began to grasp the nuances of his sight, he developed a technique that allowed him to exit painful memories at will.

As he subconsciously moved for the exit, he found something blocking his path. A mental ward of sorts. Something was holding him hostage in this memory. Nothing like this had ever happened before. When he was learning to walk in and out of memories, he’d had resistance, but none that wasn’t of his own ignorance to the limitations of the ability he possessed. This time, it was as if some foreign presence was disavowing his escape. A third party.

If he was in his body, his palms would have been sweating, but there, in her body, he felt blood warming his palm as it dripped down onto her bare thigh.

She steadied the hand that contained the blade. She grasped it between her thumb and forefinger, and slowly dragged it across her opposite wrist. It was a clean swipe. Blood began running, pulsing lightly to the rhythm of her slowing heartbeat, coating the wall of the tub. He felt her become light headed, and her vision blurred as darkness edged around her peripherals. She fought death as it creeped into her veins. Her body remained tense. She twitched and thrashed even as her faculties left her. A minute later, the picture was completely dark.

It wasn’t the sort of darkness that exists in a room with no light, it was the sort of darkness that suggested the absence of light entirely. It was nothing.

He was alone there, with only his thoughts, floating into oblivion. He couldn’t even conjure his own voice within his mind. Again, he attempted to break free of the memory. Again, he failed. He tried to reach for the entity preventing his exit, but he couldn’t find it. He began to think he’d become trapped inside this woman’s death. He began to panic. Would he never break free? Would he never feel light on his face again?

A moment later, he was back in that bathroom.

The same green tub and black and white tile reflected from the mirror behind her. They looked newer. Cleaner. The pill bottles were gone and had been replaced with a hair brush and silk scrunchies in rich berry shades.

The woman who had ended herself before his eyes was no longer there. No, it was a girl. She couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. She stared herself coldly in the eyes, unrelenting, as if she were trying to pry open her soul with the gaze. Mascara streaked her cheeks, but that was the only evidence of crying. Her expression whispered icy rage. Her hands gripped the sides of the vanity with a force that would surely break her fingers.

When she spoke, he tumbled from her mind back into his own. It was the most uncomfortable transition he’d ever experienced. Even in the beginning, he’d never felt like this; it was as if his soul was cleaved from the other, unwillingly, and violently.

The words the girl spoke still rang sharply in his mind, piercing through the wall he’d built between seeing and feeling.

“Get out of my head.” She’d seethed with level tone, through clenched teeth.

He envisioned the portrait of the girl who’d cleaved him from her mind. She looked like she could have been the daughter of the woman who came before her.

He vomited in the garbage can next to the park bench he’d been daydreaming on. A woman with a stroller hurried herself and her sleeping child across the brick pathway, jarring the baby awake. It began to whimper. She asked him hurriedly if he needed help. He waved her away with nothing but a flail of his arm.

That girl wasn’t looking at herself in the mirror as the woman before her had been. She was looking at him.

That girl wasn’t the dead woman’s daughter.

He’d seen her death. She must have seen it too. That’s why she sucked him into her present. That’s why she forced him to look her in the eyes when she tossed him out.

Had they all sensed him in the shadows of their consciousnesses? Had he always been sitting shotgun on their memories, or had he been giving them a front row seat to their futures? The question lingered.

He wasn’t willing to let go of his curiosity with strangers’ memories, not even close. He needed them as much as their owners did. But seeing the future created a pit in his stomach. He knew that the future wasn’t something he was ready for.