I woke up one Saturday morning and realized that I could read people’s minds.
My head was aching, so I popped three painkiller pills before dry swallowing them. It would be a lie to say the painkillers worked, to be honest. They were only effective on my physical headache, but not the one caused by the pure chaos of people’s minds.
I barely made my breakfast, but couldn’t eat much because the headache made me nauseous. I got dressed and stormed out of my rented apartment. As I got on the bus, I could already hear people’s thoughts; some were complaining about their boss, some had a song stuck in their head on repeat, and some were just thinking about what they would eat for lunch.
I arrived at my boring job and sat at my desk before opening my laptop and filling in some documents—just like usual. After a while, my boss, Steph Harrison, suddenly slammed his hand on my desk and started yelling at me because I had accidentally forgotten to put a comma. Everyone was looking at me, and their thoughts hit me in the head like daggers:
“Why is he yelling at her?”
“Chicken jockey!”
“I don’t like her anyway, that’s so hilarious!”
“What’s happening??”
“Ugh, boss is the worst.”
“If I were her, I would punch him in the face.”
The thoughts were filling my head. I couldn’t think straight, so I just stood there and took his words. When he finally stormed away, muttering about incompetence, I slowly sat down. My hands were shaking. I could feel sweat on my back. I tried to remember where I was in the document.
Then a thought broke through the noise.
“She can hear us.”
I blinked. Looked up. No one was looking at me. Everyone was pretending to work.
“She knows. You know, don’t you?”
I glanced toward the direction of the disgusting smell of a tuna sandwich. I saw Dennis. Weird guy. Always microwaves tuna. Always humming some sci-fi soundtrack. Never talks much. His thoughts went silent the second I made eye contact with him.
Dennis walked up to me and tossed a book at me without saying anything, then walked away. The book was titled “How to Read Electrical and Chemical Signals Through the Body with Telepathy?”
…
I had that book. The exact same one. I had gotten it out of curiosity a week ago, but fell asleep while reading it. I glanced at Dennis and shrugged, silently asking what it meant. Then, I got a notification on my phone—it was from Dennis.
I frowned at what Dennis had texted me.
Now I knew why.
I stood up and went outside. I placed the book on the ground, got some gasoline from my car, and poured it all over the book. Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out a match, and glanced at Dennis before tossing the lit match onto the soaked book. I watched the book burn, then looked at Dennis to see what would happen.
He seemed better than before—his pale and dull face had gained some color. He smiled and nodded, signaling that it had worked.
I quickly got into my car, not even bothering to put out the fire, and drove home. I rummaged through my bookshelf… bingo! I found the book and burned it as well.
It was like a dream. All the chaos in my head slowly died down… into silence