"The Gathering" - Prologue

Prologue

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to be normal. Middle-of-the-road. Average. It should’ve never registered to me to be afraid—literally—of my own shadow. A harmless idea shouldn’t be a weapon. And each person is entitled to their own secret fantasies and venomous thoughts.

            But it was not the normal route for me. Each thought renders itself indelibly in my mind. Each emotion is amplified. I wake up screaming sometimes because my neighbours’ nightmares somehow wormed their insidious fingers into my somnambulant brain.

            An empath’s curse, I suppose.

            I was fourteen when I first felt its spark. Back then during those random twitches that nudged me unconsciously towards its demands, I followed it unknowingly. I’ve always fancied myself an intuitive sort, and acting on hunches didn’t trouble me greatly, especially when dealing with people.

            Little nudges. He’s angry, or she’s nervous. And it helped me avoid several complications on several occasions.

            Then those little nudges became more and more frequent. And the cues deepened from broad generalities to pin-point accuracies. He’s angry at his mother because she withheld his allowance. She’s nervous because she told her father she was supposed to be at her friend’s house for a study group—not out at the movies with her boyfriend.

            Even then, I’ve always found myself amused by those insights that somehow sparked in my mind like a tell-tale sparkle of a child’s toy.

            Unfortunately, even by the time I was sixteen I was too naive—or too foolish—to realize that even a toy could be dangerous. He’s angry at his mother—for some random thing or other—and he wants to kill her!