The human mind is an ugly place to be, especially when it isn’t your own. You have no idea how many disgusting little thoughts that people think in the day, how many murders are plotted or lies are told or how much cruelty hides behind a pleasant smile and affable demeanor. One percent of the population. That’s how many people live with my gift. Most become cops, secret agents, or judges, using their abilities to stop crimes and right wrongs.
I enrolled in police academy but failed the entrance exam too many times to be considered as a future candidate again. So, instead I work as a mall security guard. It’s not like there’s much crime to begin with, so the police and counterintelligence can stand to be incredibly selective. People are less likely to commit a crime if there’s a chance that a telepath is in their midst. But that doesn’t stop them from thinking about it.
To be arrested, you have to have already committed the crime, so we telepaths cannot prevent anything. You have no idea how many people have walked past me during my rounds at the mall planning to kill their wives that I’ve ignored only for their faces to show up on the evening news. Stopping shoplifters and thieves is easy because the stolen merchandise is constantly in the back of their minds, but when it comes to murder, you never know who’s actually planning on doing the deed and who’s just thinking about it. It’s frustrating because legally, there’s nothing you can do to prevent this, especially if you aren’t a cop.
Case in point: my neighbor. When not on duty, we wear Mufflers. These hearing aid-like devices allow us to tune out the thoughts of everyone around us, giving us a break from the constant cacophony. But they’re not very comfortable, so we usually only wear them when we’re in public. If we live alone, we can just enjoy the quiet in the privacy of our homes.
I live on the corner of a set of shitty townhouses because I can’t afford much better than that. At least it means that I only have to deal with one family instead of being sandwiched between the constant chatter of two households.
Sabrina Marlowe is a young stay-at-home mom who lives with her wife, Helen, and four-year-old daughter, Janie. She bakes for the local LGBT+ friendly church’s prayer group and volunteers at her daughter’s preschool. Outwardly, she’s pleasant. They’re a picture-perfect image of a modern family. But Sabrina isn’t the name her parents gave her. She was assigned male at birth, which I usually have no problem with. I met someone else before and after his transition, and he seemed much happier now than he ever was as a woman. It doesn’t seem right to me, but he wasn’t hurting anybody.
Sabrina, though, I suspect is one of the perverted ones they talk about on the news. She has some of the loudest, darkest, most sickening thoughts of any person I’ve ever met. I’ve heard her think about violating and murdering her wife and daughter. I’ve heard her plotting the mass murder of preschoolers by baking rat poison into cupcakes to feed to her daughter’s classmates on her birthday. I’ve heard her thinking about stabbing the priest at her church, a harmless old man, while screaming “Hail Satan!”
So far, none of that violence has actually occurred, and these thoughts are brief, but it’s inevitable that she’ll snap. What kind of monster plays nice with others while fantasizing about breaking their neck? What kind of sick person imagines, however briefly, putting their child in a heated oven? Sabrina must be stopped before it’s too late. I regret it’s come to this, but I see no other option.
I overheard that tomorrow evening, Helen and Junie will be spending the night at Helen’s mother’s home. Sabrina is staying behind to prepare for the church bake sale. It’s the perfect opportunity to take care of her without anyone else getting involved.
I’m not cruel or sadistic. Not like her. I’ll make it quick. Take her by surprise while she’s sleeping and slit her throat. No muss. No fuss. And she can never hurt anyone else.
I spend the next day gathering what I need. As night falls, I cover my hair in saran wrap. It’s a crew cut, but I don’t want to risk leaving any DNA evidence. I don my gloves, ski mask, and practice with the lockpick kit I bought at the mall after work today.
Once I hear her thinking about her nightly routine, I slip out the back of my house and begin the process of picking the lock of their basement door. In minutes, it clicks open, and I slip inside with my flashlight.
The basement is unfinished and full of tubs holding Halloween and Christmas decorations. In one corner, they’d laid out some rugs and beanbags in a sort of play area lit by fairy lights. Dolls, costumes, and Duplo bricks are strewn about on the floor, haphazardly discarded wherever Janie must have dropped them. The sight makes me think of my own sister as a kid, the way she’d tear through the house, her thoughts dedicated only to mischief and how to avoid getting caught. I always told on her before she could do it, though. It was for her own good.
Pausing at the end of the staircase, I listened for Sabrina, but her thoughts seem focused on whatever guided meditation she used to fall asleep. Good. Hopefully, this will be painless for the both of us. Slowly, I make my way up the stairs, pausing at every creak and listening in case my footsteps alert her to my presence.
Heart pounding in my throat, I reach the top of the stairs and shut the door behind me. I cannot hear any thoughts, so she must have entered the early stages of sleep before R.E.M. Her last coherent thought was of her wife and daughter, and how the house felt empty without them.
The kitchen is homey and adorned with crayon scribbles of the small family taped to the wall and held to the fridge with magnets commemorating family vacations. There are fresh daisies in a vase on a kitchen table, and knickknacks on top of the kitchen cabinets. I grab a sharp steak knife from the wooden block and make my way upstairs.
Halfway up, one of the floorboards creaked and I froze. No thoughts from her bedroom. Good. She didn’t hear it. With any luck, I won’t even wake her up when I slit her throat.
In the master bedroom, she lies curled up with her back to me. For the briefest of moments, I hesitate. From what I had heard, she has never acted on those dark thoughts. Neither Junie nor Helen have any hidden traumas from her actions. But that doesn’t mean that she won’t one day fulfill her darkest fantasies. For all our sakes, she has to be stopped before it’s too late.
Steeling myself, I slowly approach the laundry strewn room. One quick slice across the throat and I’ll have saved them. I’m so deep in my own head that I don’t hear Sabrina’s thoughts as she wakes and hears someone in her room.
When I reach her bedside and raise the knife, her eyes open, and with a shriek, she grabs something from under her pillow and rolls off the opposite side of the bed. My blade buries itself in the mattress where she had been seconds ago. The knife she unsheathes glints in the moonlight.
Thank God Helen and Junie aren’t here, she thinks.
“I’m not here for them,” I reply, making my voice deeper. “Only you.” She assumes that it’s because I found out that she’s trans, so I add as I slowly approach, “It’s not because of your gender. I don’t give a shit about that. It’s because of your thoughts.”
“My what?” She pauses, genuinely confused, so I take the opportunity to lunge at her. Moving just a few seconds too late, my blade lodges her shoulder instead of her chest like I intended. With a cry, she falls to the ground and crab crawls away from me. I grab the weapon she dropped and approach slowly. “Why?” she begs with tears in her eyes when her back hits the opposite wall.
I’m standing over her, practically straddling her as I hold the weapon to her throat. “I know what you think about your wife and daughter, all those atrocities you plan in your head. One of these days, you’re going to go through with it, and I won’t be able to live with myself if I knew what you were planning and did nothing.”
Her fear and confusion melts away as she begins to laugh high and hysterical. “Are you serious? You’re killing me because of my intrusive thoughts?”
Not expecting this response, it’s my turn to hesitate. “Your what?”
“I have OCD, you moron.” The tears in her eyes almost appear to be tears of mirth as her bitter laughter rings through the empty house. “My brain is constantly making up stupid atrocities that I might commit just to remind me that I shouldn’t do it. You can hear my thoughts, but you can’t feel my reaction, right?”
“I—uh—” I reply, suddenly finding myself on my back foot. This isn’t how I planned for it to go in my head.
“Because I hate these thoughts. They make me feel sick.” She is telling the truth, but that isn’t possible.
“But you don’t fight them,” I protest. If she doesn’t enjoy it, why doesn’t she seem to hate herself for having them? I certainly would.
She rolls her eyes. “The first thing you learn when treating OCD is to not try to fight it. Just accept it and move on. You’re a telepath, Greg, you have to have learned some of this shit in therapy.”
“I’m not—“ I begin to lie, but she kicks my shin.
“Come on. You’re barely disguising your voice. I know my neighbor when I hear him.”
She knows who I am. If anyone finds out about this, I’ll lose my job and all hope of joining police academy. If she didn’t know my name, I would have let her go, but now, if I do, the bitch will ruin my life. I have to kill her. “I’m sorry,” I reply, “but I just can’t take that risk.” I raise my knife, but before I can stab her again, she kicks me in the groin. Pain flairs from my crotch all the way through my body as she crawls out from under me. She pulls the knife from her shoulder as I lunge at her with an enraged howl.
The air leaves my chest like I was punched, and all the strength drains from my body. She pushes me off her, and I see the steel blade of her kitchen knife sticking out of my chest.
Sabrina staggers to her feet and grabs her phone.
Thank God Janie and Helen aren’t here. She dials 911 and gives her address and a brief account of what happened. Looking back at me, her thoughts become a swirling mess of, Oh God, I’ve killed a man. I didn’t mean to. It was self-defense. He broke into my house and would have killed me if I didn’t. No jury would convict me. Would they? Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, but you left me no choice. Oh god, what do I say to Helen and Janie? They’ll never feel safe in our house again.
The world fades around the edges for me as the thoughts in her mind become less coherent. Or maybe it’s my sluggish brain that doesn’t fully comprehend her is as I choke on the air in my lungs.
I failed. Sabrina is free to do whatever she wants to whomever she wants, and it’s all my fault. My world fades to black as the sound of sirens fill the air, bathing the world in alternating red and blue. The last words I hear are from her. Oh God, I’m so sorry.