Be Careful What You Wish For

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. For Jacqui, this was her time of solitude, of tranquility. She was never sure if the maelstrom of voices in her mind was silenced by some quality of the violet hue or simply because most people were asleep at that time.

Her mother always told her to be careful what she wished for. As a young child, even as a naïve teenager, she had not understood what was meant. Now, at 23 years of age, Jacqui fully understood why we should all be cautious about wishing for something we lacked.

Six long weeks ago, Jacqui had been at a party. Now, the fact that she had been invited to the party in the first place was unusual. She was not part of any “in” crowd. She had no close group of friends. Jacqui, to all intents and purposes, was a loner.

A lone wolf, she often labelled herself, prowling the city watching, listening, observing. Jacqui called herself a writer, although she had never had any work published. She would wander the neighborhood, notebook and pens in her satchel. She would find a likely spot to sit and watch the world go by. She was a voyeur . . . an observer of society . . . a lonely, awkward, young woman with thin blonde hair and a ruddy complexion.

Nevertheless, she had been invited to the party by a colleague at the second-hand clothing store she worked in on Saturdays. Jacqui, perhaps suspiciously, wondered whether she had been invited simply because she happened to wander over when Trish was inviting Yvonne to the party.

At the party, Jacqui had been helping herself to some more nibbly bits and pieces when she noticed Trish and Yvonne whispering in a corner. Jacqui, with her best voyeuristic hat on, decided that their demeanor suggested secrets were being shared. Catching a surreptitious glance in her direction, she was forced to consider that perhaps it was she who was being discussed. As she stood at a distance, plate in hand, she struggled to catch a word or two of their conversation.

She was interrupted by a voice in her ear. “Who are they talking about, do you think?”

Startled by the unexpected interruption, Jacqui’s plate leapt from her hand, completed a triple somersault, then floated to the outstretched hand of the stranger. The woman’s hands were beautiful, Jacqui decided – smooth, creamy skin; long tapered fingers; perfectly shaped nails painted a deep crimson. Jacqui took the proffered plate from the mesmerizing hands and carefully laid it to rest on the table.

“Do you know them?” asked the woman quietly.

Jacqui turned and found herself lost in elongated green eyes that reminded her of a cat . . . a beautiful cat with long black hair and a perfect heart-shaped face. Jacqui blushed and stammered a response, “I work with them. Oh, I wish I could hear what they’re saying.”

“Do you, my dear?”

“Yes. They’re always whispering in corners together.”

“And you want to hear their whispered thoughts?”

“I really do.”

“Then you shall.”

Jacqui was never sure what happened next. The nurses told her the next day, before she was released from hospital, that she had passed out at the party and that an ambulance had been called. She had remained unconscious through the night.

Heading home on the bus, she was aware of a strange sensation in her head. There was a noise in the background of her mind that reminded her of a wind vigorously rustling the leaves of a tree or the distant thunder of waves crashing onto the beach. As she focused on the sounds, she wondered if she’d developed tinnitus. Is that what it’s supposed to sound like? The murmur in her mind’s ears was growing louder as more people got onto the bus. As the bus approached her stop, Jacqui got up to move to the door. The bus braked suddenly and she was thrown off balance. Colliding with the arm of a man behind her, she was vaguely aware of his drink spilling.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized, offering him a tissue to mop up the liquid.

He frowned and shrugged, ignoring the tissue in her hand.

Great galumphing elephant!

She opened her mouth to object to what he had said, then closed it and gulped. She was watching him the whole time and he had not opened his mouth at all. Had she caught his thought?

Focusing on the man, she listened for another thought.

Stop staring. Go away.

Excited, intrigued, Jacqui turned to focus her attention on a couple sitting two seats back.

Will she say yes? God, I hope so.

He’s being too nice. Is he cheating?

Jacqui, eyes glistening with moisture, face flushed with excitement, hurried off the bus as it stopped. She couldn’t wait till next Saturday when she could finally hear what the other two girls at work were talking about. She wouldn’t tell a soul about this.

All her life, she’d heard stories about people developing superpowers in puberty. Sure, she was a little older but she’d been playing catch-up all her life. Surely hearing people’s thoughts was a superpower? Think of the possibilities it brought with it. It would help no end with her writing. It would dramatically help her characterization. Dialogue was super important to a story after all . . . super important. Good one. And maybe she could assist the police with their enquiries . . . hearing and reporting the innermost thoughts of nefarious super criminals. She could solve unsolved cases for them . . . suss out the guilty, protect the innocent. This was gold!

Over the next week, Jacqui practiced her new “listening” superpower. What she heard was not always interesting or useful or, indeed, nice. Another problem was that she wasn’t always clear as to who was generating what thoughts. Easy if there was only one person present, but not always so easy if more people were there. Sometimes she could focus on particular people and be relatively sure that the thoughts that were loudest were originating with them. Some people were thought shouters, others whispered incessantly, their thoughts reminiscent of the hissing of snakes.

Practice did not always lead to perfection either, she realized. In this case, practicing served to strengthen the range and volume of her ability. In other words, the thoughts she was hearing were getting louder and more numerous as time went on.

Three weeks post party, Jacqui was on a train into the city to catch a movie. Movie theatres in the city in the middle of the day tended to be fairly quiet . . . a relative haven from the constant overwhelm. Closing her eyes as she sat back in her seat, she let the motion of the train sooth her. As she relaxed, the buzz of thoughts in her mind blended into the background. She breathed deeply and consciously relaxed her shoulders. Okay, good, she was learning to live with this gift . . . this curse . . . this not-so-super power.

Suddenly Jacqui’s peace was shattered as an image coalesced in her mind.

Pictures? What the . . .?

Jacqui’s head popped up as she scanned the carriage for the sleazebag. Suddenly she saw the woman whose naked body was lodged in her mind’s eye. Long dark hair, big breasts swelling over the top of the low-cut red T-shirt, long legs in tight jeans. She was standing holding on to one of the overhead straps, her breasts perkily on display and attracting a fair amount of attention from the men, and some of the women, around her. Jacqui blushed as the image in the man’s mind, in her mind, laid itself over the reality. Shaking her head to try to dislodge the image, she looked around to see if she could identify the pervert.

Suddenly she saw him, hooded eyes focused on the woman’s breasts, thick lips damp. Although the carriage was full, no one shared his seat. She watched as he licked his lips again, his hand moving rhythmically under the paper on his lap.

“Eww . . . really?” Jacqui exclaimed, her mouth tightening as a shudder ran through her body. The man looked up at the sound and saw her watching him. He smirked as he held eye contact with her. His eyes roved over her, and Jacqui felt her body react to his intense gaze. As his eyes focused on her breasts, her nipples hardened. She shuddered as a wave of nausea threatened to overcome her. He was no longer thinking about the dark-haired woman. A different image appeared in her mind. The woman was on her knees, naked, offering herself to blubber-lips. She was on her knees in front of him. She felt a wave of satisfaction – his satisfaction – burst into her mind.

Horrified, she struggled to drag her eyes away from his. It was disgusting! Her mouth went dry as he licked his lips and blew her a kiss. Her skin crawled and burst into goose bumps. Her mouth fell open and the blood fled from her face as she couldn’t stop the images, the sensations, swamping her mind . . . like a cesspit.

Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms protectively around herself and pushed herself as far back into the relative safety of her seat as she could, she struggled to shift her eyes from his glistening lips and hooded eyes. His eyes roved her body as his hand continued to stroke his erection. The image in her mind became even more X-rated. His smile widened at her response.

Her mind exploded and the world went black.

The next morning she again awoke in a hospital bed with her mother sitting beside her.

“Well, my girl. How are you feeling?”

“Fuzzy.”

“Hmm . . . the doctors want to know what you’ve been taking?”

“Taking?”

“Drugs.”

“I don’t do drugs, Mum. You know that.”

“That’s what I told them.”

“Thanks Mum.”

“Then they asked me about psychotic episodes.”

“Psychotic episodes.”

“Yes, Polly Parrot, psychotic episodes.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are they asking about psychotic episodes?”

“Because they think that’s what you may have.”

“Oh.”

“It sounds as though you made a right spectacle of yourself.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Apparently you were shouting at people on the train.”

“Shouting?”

“Telling them to get out of your head.”

“Oh.”

“The doctors think that sounds like a psychotic episode.”

“Oh.”

“Hearing voices and all that.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“Were you hearing voices?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mum.”

“So why did you yell at them?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Maybe you’ve got that amnesia bug?”

After much toing and froing, Jacqui was released home in her mother’s care. After the episode on the train, she seemed to have lost all ability to put the voices into the background. The slightest whisper startled her. To make it worse, thought pictures and emotions also came with increasing frequency.

More and more, over the next couple of weeks, Jacqui isolated herself through the daylight hours, coming out only when the purple clouds of midnight threw their spell over her mind. It was the only time she knew she could breathe the air of the outdoors and relax her mind with impunity.

As she stood in the garden, her mind wandered back to the fateful party and the stupid, stupid wish she so thoughtlessly made. She did hear the whispered thoughts of Trish and Yvonne. They were such shallow, boy-hungry creatures. They hardly even knew Jacqui existed. It was her own insecurities that had caused her current crisis, had brought about the ruination of her life.

Another thought wafted through her traumatized brain. The green-eyed witch . . . I wonder if she can break the spell? I wonder whether I can track her down?

As the clock ticked close to 1am, the purple clouds of midnight gave way to a star-spangled blackness. Startled by a shape moving across the sky against the starlight, Jacqui became aware of a single whispered thought, “Be careful what you wish for.”