K. Banks

It was a curse. That’s what Yiαyiά Rini called it. A curse that meant my sacred duty in life would be to direct others in theirs. And yet, if you know anything about old Greek women, what she really meant was we were martyrs, and should be revered. I personally didn’t care too much for veneration. If I could’ve been just another nameless, faceless, person in the crowd, I would’ve died content. 

There was a short period where I used the curse as a sort of parlor trick, telling friends which boys were lying scumbags that would empty their bank accounts, or flirt with all their friends then end up taking off with an ex. I suppose I thought I was helping people, you know, saving their time, money, and self-esteem. Inevitably that ended badly, though. People get weird when you know too much about them. 

My bαbά said it wasn’t a kindness to tell people things they’d rather not know, even if you think it will help them. He said it ruined the journey of a life because it only showed the possibilities–people and life should be able to surprise you, chryso mou. I know he wanted that to be true. They all want that to be true. Baba wanted to believe that my mother would come around, that her love for us would one day bring her running back, begging for our forgiveness. Yes, my father was a beautiful idealist. And so, I would never tell him how she really felt before she left.

Truth be told, it was my mother who taught me the most about life. Through her, I learned the harshest truths were really only harsh when you didn’t know them. Understanding how a person feels right up front is easier. I did not suffer when my mother left, because her hatred for the family curse (and thus by extension, me) was impossible to hide. Even if I couldn’t read her, I would’ve known by the coldness in her eyes. My baba, on the other hand (being that the curse only affected the women in his family), had to suffer through the standard subterfuge humans too often engage simply to keep from telling the truth. It’s bizarre, actually. But lucky for bαbά, he had me, and I would keep him believing in sunshine and rainbows, and terrible weak wives returning as long as I could, because his touch was the only proof that the world may contain more than just monsters.

My mother also taught me that long-sleeves and gloves would be a necessary accessory in my daily life. I suppose that lesson was more of a disservice. If I hadn’t been so keen on constantly insulating myself from the horror of people’s inner thoughts, I would’ve known what Jerimiah was before it was too late. But alas, there was no way I would’ve survived to the ripe age of twenty-six, had it not been for insulation. Surly depression would’ve got the best of me long before good ol’ Jeremiah! 

Anyway, be it curse or what have you, I opted for something between Yiαyiά  and bαbά, and never read a person until I knew they would be a fixture in my life. And then, I would only read deep enough to know if they were a decent person. However, business was different, I used my abilities daily where work was concerned. A girl’s gotta live! Yiαyiά  would roll over in her grave if she knew how I’d leashed up my curse, only allowing it off the chain for my own good. But I had no interest in the life of a sideshow freak, nor would I deny myself my genetic right. 

So, yes, I capitalized on it. As I said, I had no interest in sainthood. And that’s how I met Jeremiah. I thought he was no more than a self-important PA . I didn’t read him. He wasn’t staying long. He was at best an acquaintance, a friend of a friend of a friend–so no one, really. I needed a discrete hook-up for some pharma-grade ketamine. Not the two bit, self-administered nasal spray. I needed the real deal and a lot of it, for a client. 

By trade, I was a concierge to the elite, ie. I acquired things–mostly information–for very wealthy people. It was completely legit…well, mostly, and highly specialized. This particular job was more of a favor. My client had a daughter who was diagnosed schizophrenic. They’d heard about some promising research involving very high doses of the drug in combination with shock therapy. Very experimental. Who was I to argue, I mean, I probably could have taken a look inside the girl’s head and been more successful than any experimental drug, but I’d never mind-melded with a schizophrenic before, and I wasn’t willing to blow my cover on a thrill ride.

Enter Jeremiah. I’d been given his name, like I said, from an associate. He worked at a Beverly Hills psychotherapy clinic that specialized in very mild, non-intrusive guided ketamine sessions. It was all very above board, and not at all what my client wanted. But Jeremiah was said to dabble in a little off the books ketamine sales, and that’s what I needed. I set up a meeting time and location, and figured the job was going to be the easiest money I ever made. I’d pay for the stuff, drop it off to my client, and boom-bam, twenty grand!

I met Jeremiah at the designated time and location as discussed. He was a pretty handsome guy, with a witty charm a girl doesn’t come across very often anymore. Not flirty, but funny–a good change in a sea of overaged frat boys. And intelligent, which was why when he told me he’d only brought a 1mg vial, instead of the fiver we’d discussed, I was instantly suspicious. But damn if that pretty smile didn’t do exactly what I’d later come to know was its job. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and I followed him back to his abandoned Hollywood stash-house. 

Yes, an eye roll would be appropriate, especially considering I had the best BS detector on the planet. But that was just it. I was the weirdest thing I’d ever come across. In 26 years of having this ability, I’d learned that people were liars–certainly; dirtbags–definitely; sad and broken–always; but pathological murders with a taste for a terror-high–nope, that one never came up. In my defense, while I had no idea what I was dealing with, he didn’t either.

We arrived at this abandoned building and took the stairs to the fifth floor. There was a locked rolling metal door that he convincingly explained was for his protection in this terrible neighborhood, and led me into a beautiful flat, tricked out with LED lights and inviting furniture. 

“Stash spot, huh?”

“Well, yeah, and my apartment.”

“Nice, how’d you score this?”

“If I tell you, you’ll steal my tricks.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.” I wouldn’t be caught dead in this neighborhood.

“Oh yeah, well it’s 100% free. I don’t pay for water, power, trash, or rent.”

“How’s that possible?”

“See, I can already hear those wheels turning. Water?”

“I only drink sealed water from strangers.”

“Of course, no problem. Here.” He walked to his fridge and returned with a sealed plastic bottle. I accepted it and smiled. “So, what’s with the gloves?”

“I don’t like to leave my fingerprints anywhere.”

He laughed. Most people liked that one, made me seem both funny and mysterious. Of course he laughed for a different reason, one with a more ironic nature of which I was presently unaware.

“Let me go grab the stuff. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

I cracked the lid on my water, and walked to the window. As I sipped, I marveled at the fact that he had new double-paned windows in this chic chick-trap. I took another sip and pondered that further…how on earth did he get new windows installed, and wait, were they even glass or something else? I tapped on them. Didn’t respond like glass. I slipped my glove off, perplexed, and laid my palm on the window. 

Terror exploded in my chest. The vision hit me with so much force, I staggered and yanked my hand back. My brain was swimming with the images. I put my fingers to my temples to slow the vision down and concentrate. The terror wasn’t mine. It belonged to a hand that had previously touched the window. I studied the darkness behind my closed eyes and brought the images back. In the plexi material of the window, I saw the image of a girl. Her hair was matted with blood. I looked down at the hands that were, from the perspective of the vision, my hands–blood as well. I looked back to the image and saw the horror filled expression, but only in one eye. The other eye was an empty socket.

“Hey, are you leaving your fingerprints on my glass?”

His voice jolted me out of the vision. “I gotta go. Sorry. My client called. He changed his mind.” I turned, momentarily afraid he would see my missing eyeball, but then remember that wasn’t me.

“Geez, what happened? Are you okay? Is something wrong with the water?” He didn’t sound concerned like the question should have implied, but more like he was mocking me.

Oh no…the water. I looked down at the bottle in my hand, half gone and cursed myself for  my overconfident idiocy. He’s a PA. He has access to syringes. He has access to drugs. I was here to buy drugs, illegally even! How could I be so stupid?

As the tally of my mistakes mounted, I tried running for the door anyway, but he easily stepped in front of me. He laughed and cuddled me like a lover, stroking my hair and shushing me. I could hear my own breath in my ears, a wild panicked sound and imagined I would soon look like the girl in the glass. 

But I was not her. I was me, and I wasn’t wearing my glove. I drew my hand up to his face and placed it on his cheek. Unafraid of me, he rubbed his face across it, as visions assaulted my mind. 

I saw myself as him, standing over a girl strapped onto a surgical table. Not the same girl from the window. She cried and I could feel his pleasure. Feel how powerful he felt, as she begged him to let her go. His vision words echoed as though I was hearing them underwater–gonna play a game, he told her. He brought up a syringe and pricked the skin where her carotid would be, then plunged the entire contents of the needle straight into her artery. The girl’s body heaved upward. Flopping, gasping, she spasmed then calmed, and her eyes rolled back in her head. The vision me moved to prepare an IV, but not an IV…it was a needle attached to an empty bag. 

The vision jumped, and I was looking down at the girl as I ran the scalpel around the edge of her face at the hairline. I could hear the underwater voice explaining patiently, I’m going to remove your face and make a mask out of it, won’t that be fun? The girl tried screaming and thrashing her head away from the blade, but a ball gag was in her mouth and her head was clamped in place by blocks and straps.  Her wild eyes darted madly in their sockets and one of her teeth snapped off as she fought desperately against the impossible reality. 

Pleased, he turned his head and checked on a line attached to her stomach. A white delicate tube had been inserted there and was drawing blood slowly into a bag. This was what he wanted. The hallucinogenic quality of the ketamine he’d injected in the girl, mixed with physical and psychological torture, caused the brain to release an irreproducible hormone of such singular quality, one tiny vial would go for millions on the black market, if he was even remotely interested in selling it. No, this was his private stock, his paix transcendante. And every ounce of torture he milked from this maiden, made the nectar all the sweeter.

Lost in Jeremiah’s reverie, I never even felt my feet leave the ground, and I wouldn’t have felt the ties around my wrists had my bare hand not been pulled from his face, severing our connection.  I lay on my back, a cold hard table beneath me that I instantly placed as the surgical table from the vision. My brain moved slowly, but my awareness was sharp. Apparently, whatever drug he’d given me had a very quick onset. Movement was difficult, but it felt like my mind was clear, like the way people describe lucid dreams. 

I watched Jeremiah move from his work station back to me, then back to his work station, most likely preparing all the goodies he had in store for me. This is when the thought occurred to me that I could’ve very simply shook his hand and avoided this entire situation. But thanks to Yiαyiά, and  baba, my mother, and basically my whole damn life, I was stupid enough to believe that I’d been cursed… My life echoed like a glowing golden tapestry around me. I could see choices, relationships, feelings all represented by radiant strings woven together. Every thought, touch, tear, was a musical ensemble that brought an ache to my chest. I imagined myself floating through this tapestry, a ladybird with giant butterfly wings, and if I moved my wings a certain way, I could erase every pain, every bad decision, everything I didn’t say, and see the life I would’ve had if I’d done it all this different way.

I felt a tug in my brain, and opened my eyes. Jeremiah was standing over me. My shirt was opened, and my stomach swabbed with iodine. The same white tubing from the vision girl was sticking out of my stomach as well. Jeremiah looked at me and smiled. 

“Enjoying the ketamine, huh?”

I tried making words but only bubbles came out of my mouth.

“I gotta say, that’s a little different. You should be a little more panicked by now. I’m sure you’ll get there once we get started.”

I attempted a curious face towards whatever he was doing with my stomach, and felt the tug in my brain again.

“Oh that? Yeah, that’s a cerebral angiogram. It’s a tiny catheter that runs all the way up to the base of your brain. That tugging sensation, it’s the nerves in your spine. That little tube is going to gently extract a serum from the base of your brain while I torture you. Fascinating, right?” 

His eyes were focused on something off to the left of my head, while he moved the little tube where he wanted it. He looked back into my eyes and smiled that brilliant smile that exploded into a hundred brilliant smiles floating off of him like balloons.  “You see, the brain doesn’t really know how to respond to terror or extreme pain, so it floods the body with a very special dopamine-enriched oxytocin. The combination only happens during two very specific events in the human body–giving birth and dying. One extremely painful, more than a body should naturally be able to take; and two, extremely frightening, the unfathomable finality of life coming toward you with no escape. During both events, the brain sends every bit of help it can in order to calm the self. It’s really quite impressive, and the serum… well, would it be bad form if I said it was worth killing for?” He laughed and winked, so I smiled back.

I knew I should be having a completely different reaction than I was, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t muster the fear. Instead, I imagined my ladybird, butterfly self flying straight into Jeremiah’s giant pearly smile. 

His mind was chaos. Fragmented, dislocated reels played in loops, overlapping one another like a hologram funhouse. He’d taken life, and it haunted him. Dismembered girls lay in dark corners, with broken laughter playing over and over like a scratched album. Huddled Jeremiah figures roamed down corridors with hypodermic needles sticking out of their arms, necks, and the webbing of their fingers. I flew past these tortured memories and over to his eyes, I looked out and saw myself strapped to his table, his plans laid out on the work station next to me. A scalpel was his favorite instrument, that and a mirror. Making his victims watch as pieces of their faces were removed. Spiders were another. Ketamine psychosis played havoc on the mind, but mix that with spiders, ants, or rats, and he could obtain the terror levels he needed. Today would be blacklight, rats, mirrors, and the scalpels.

 Jeremiah was preparing the next dose of ketamine. This would be the one to enter the artery and send my mind into the irretrievable depths of  insanity. Here, I would lose myself forever, buried under the physical and psychological nightmare he would construct, until my eventual departure from this life. Or so he thought.

What Jeremiah did not know, however, was that I was unlike his other victims. Prey are afraid because they lack the insight of the hunter. They live in timid states of ignorance, always wondering when or from where the deathblow will come.  This fear robs the mind of the ability to problem solve and thus, victims are only ever ineffective. Knowledge, on the other hand, can turn prey into predator.

Another unintentional level boost was the ketamine. Give a victim the drug, and they will create a reality of the most horrific nightmare they can imagine. But give a telepath a little special K and you’ve just granted them free reign over your mainframe. 

“So this next dose is going to get a little rough. It’ll probably feel like your heart is going to explode, but hopefully it won’t, or you won’t get to see all the fun stuff I have planned for you. If you make it through, the high is going to get quite intense, I’m afraid. You won’t be able to talk or scream, and I won’t be able to let you get up and roam around. I used to let the girls do that, but it just got so messy. A couple times they even ripped their catheters completely out, which will almost always cause a severe embolism, so they basically wasted my entire extraction. Plus, I really don’t want the rats running around chasing you down. So it’s strapped to the chair with a ball gag, I’m afraid; but good news, you get to watch the whole thing! Won’t that be awesome?”

I nodded my head and smiled, and made him do the same.

He didn’t even notice. He just looked at me, confused. “Hmm, you know, I’ve never seen a reaction like yours before. Are you a regular ketamine user?”

I laughed and shook my head no this time, and again made him do it too.

Still completely oblivious that he was following my actions, he continued troubleshooting, “That’s really weird…I think maybe, we should start with a little cutting before the next dose, see if that gets you more in the mood. Sound good?”

Yes, we both nodded again, and this time I made him giggle.

He reached for his scalpel and drew it down the side of his face. He didn’t wince, didn’t yell, didn’t flinch. He just bled and looked at me to see my reaction. 

“Do you like that?” He asked

I laughed and said, “More, please.”

He looked at me, genuinely baffled, then must have felt the blood running down his face. He wiped at it, but I instructed him that the blood was mine. Still without the reaction he wanted, he decided on another tactic. “How about we let the rats get started?”

I opened my eyes wide and nodded rigorously. 

This angered him. “Stop that!” he shouted, and slashed wildly with the scalpel. I screamed as pain burned across my cheek, my own blood splashing across his face. 

“That’s better. Now, enough misbehaving.” He regained his composure, stood up, grabbed a towel, and must’ve moved to a mirror to wipe away my blood, because I heard him exclaim, “what the hell?” 

I couldn’t see anything he was doing with my body strapped down the way it was, and for some reason my connection with him left when I was no longer able to see him, but I heard what must have been his baffled rage as he slammed, what I could only imagine, were his fists onto his stainless steel tabletop. Tools clattered as they flew, and I might’ve heard glass break, but my mind was reeling from the ketamine, which had suddenly decided to turn all sound into waves.  

Jeremiah came back, a towel pressed to his face. He was talking to me in very angry tones, but I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying with all the echoing. It seemed pretty important that I fly back into his brain, so I did. The Jeremiahs in his mind were freaking out. Apparently there was a consensus that he needed to go to the hospital for stitches, but a violent disagreement that I should be killed sooner rather than later. The Jeremiahs desperately wanted their fix and would not be satiated with a loss of this magnitude. One single Jeremiah tried to reason with the others. He explained that something was clearly wrong with this girl and she should be given no more ketamine, she was unstable, it was a waste of the drug… a lethal dose of barbiturates would be best, then stitch up our own face, and get rid of the body.  

This calmed all the others and one by one they disappeared. I was left with rational Jeremiah who took three steading breaths then faded as well. 

I jolted back into my own body. The ketamine was at its peak. My mind kept trying to retreat into memories, kept trying to puzzle out the golden tapestry that felt both tragic and cathartic. I could feel tears on my cheeks, that, and blood. I tried to remember where the blood came from, but all I could conjure was a giant jack-in-the-box Jeremiah bobbing on a spring with a scalpel in his hand, grinning at me with that perfect smile. 

The part of me that wasn’t my mind and wasn’t my body, became sharply distinct. This was my gift, my knowing, and it could think without my mind and move without my body, but only so long as the whole of me lived and breathed. I needed to calm myself. I was not prey. And this lame-ass psycho was not my end. 

I breathed calm into my body, as Jeremiah had done. I could see that I was battling the ketamine and that was my problem. I needed to embrace what the drug could do for someone like me. 

I sensed Jeremiah moving, and I could see without seeing that he was readying another vial. This, I assumed, was the lethal dose of barbiturates he had been thinking about.  I conjured my ladybird and attempted to enter his mind, but he’d become a fortress. Apparently being unversed at victimhood and having seen the unexplainable scalpel wound on his face, his confusion created a hyper-focused vigilance that made his mind impenetrable. I would have to try a different tactic, but what? My only play so far had been my accidental infiltration of his mind. What else could I do, and do I even have time to even try?

He faced me, cradling a giant cartoon needle. The hilarity of the image struck me and I burst out laughing. Jeremiah was inflamed. He stamped his foot, which was suddenly adorned with a giant clown shoe, and I laughed even harder. This made Jeremiah’s face turn beet red and caused steam to shoot from his ears. I might’ve died of laughter right there, but instead Jeremiah drove the needle into its target and emptied the entire contents. I stopped laughing, and he smiled. 

“Not so funny now, huh?”
“Yeah, still pretty funny,” I looked down and he followed my eyes to the syringe, his hand still curled around it as it protruded from his stomach. I watched as the emotions played across his face–confusion, realization, horror, and finally fear, all beautifully exaggerated by my ketamine perception. 

I lay there enjoying the symphony of his screams until they, and I, faded.

*

I came to some time later in a bed. A terrible brightness flooded the room, interrupted by the silhouette of a male figure that hovered within the glare. I pulled my arm up to shield my eyes but found that it was tethered to a tube in my arm– “NO!”

“Shhhh, Ms. Poulos, it’s just an IV. You’re safe. Everything is okay. You’re at Cedars-Sinai hospital.”

“What?” My brain felt slow and mushy, and my tongue was plastered to the roof of my mouth.

“You’re in the hospital. My name is Brodi Rask, Detective Rask. Do you feel okay to talk?”

I looked around for the standard plastic jug that seemed to accompany the rolling patient tables. “Is there any water?”

He poured me a glass and handed it to me.

I took a sip, then prepared myself for the tiresome dance that was about to occur, “What happened to Jeremiah? How did I get out?”

“Your father says he tracked your phone. He said you had plans and when you didn’t show up, he went to your location, broke in and found you strapped to a table. He’s been detained until we can straighten out what happened.”

“What? What the hell for? He told you, he tracked my phone and saved my life. Why the hell would you detain him?”

“Well, because your phone was nowhere to be found, making his story slightly…implausible. Or at the very least, incomplete.”

“Hmm, yeah, sounds about right. Look, detective,” I struggled to pull myself into a sitting position, too tired and hung over from the mix of drugs and adrenalin to accomplish the task properly, much less entertain a fool, “if I told you the truth, you’d rather I would’ve just stuck to the lie.”

  “Try me.”

I laughed as much as I was able, “He says, as though he’s a man who likes a dare… Listen, I don’t care what you believe, but what I know is you can’t hold my father for anything. So who cares how he found me, he did, and Jeremiah’s dead, right?”

“Yes, your attacker, Jeremiah Pierce, is dead. A lethal dose of pentobarbital, seemingly self-administered to the peritoneal cavity. An extremely strange death for a man who has most likely killed before and was absolutely committed to doing so again.” 

“Mmm, strange indeed.”

“Look, your father is a really nice man, very cooperative, but the case can also be made that the scene was staged to look like a suicide, and–”

I didn’t have much more energy left and the whole tired conversation of my ability had been played out too many times in the past to think this conversation would go any different. Plus, there’s something about almost dying that makes you see social niceties as an absolute waste of time, “Detective, shhh. Here, give me your hand.” 

He squinted and kind of cocked his head, but complied. I closed my eyes, breathed peacefully and let the information flow in, “You’re 32. Made detective at 29. You’re pretty proud of that being that you did it on your own, not a legacy. Your family means everything to you, Scandinavian, old-country, but you don’t want a family of your own. How ‘bout deeper?” 

I didn’t wait for his reply, “You hate monogamy, think it’s stupid, you enjoy rough sex with strange partners, and you’ve fantasized about the perfect murder–” he yanked his hand away, “but you’d never do it…” 

I opened my eyes expecting to see the same denial they all have, but instead he stared at me in the most peculiar way, not angry, not confused, maybe amused but also guarded. It was intriguing, but I was too tired to care.  “Anyway, detective, no one wants to know what I know. No one wants to be connected to this, but my father is. It’s in his blood. He found me, because he will always find me. He doesn’t have the touch, but he is my blood, if you can understand that.”

He continued to stare at me. I could see his mind working, and some newly awakened part of me wanted the drug; it wanted the power to go where I hadn’t been invited, and do what I hadn’t been given permission to do. I closed my eyes again.

“Thank you, Ms. Poulos. We’ll speak again. Get some rest.” I listened as he walked across the room and heard him stop, probably at the door. “By the way, your father was released this morning. You were right, we didn’t have enough to hold him.”

I opened my eyes, and looked at him, confused that I hadn’t seen that. He smiled, looked down at his hand and said, “We’re definitely gonna have to play that game again sometime. See ya.”

I smiled to myself, I hope so, Detective Rask.