The Strangeling Part VI - (Freewrite #132 - plaid)

Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my ninth 5 minute* freewrite. The prompt is "plaid".

*Not 5 minute this time, 30 minute ;)

This piece is a continuation of yesterday's freewrite, and the third installment in an ongoing story. Let's see how long I can keep this up, using the prompts provided!

Part I: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/freewrite-129-fingernail

Part II: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-ii-freewrite-130-wasps

Part III: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iii-freewrite-131-solitude

Part IV: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iv-freewrite-132-gardening

Part V: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-v-freewrite-132-the-attic

Freewriting is a daily practice for most poets and fiction writers, designed to loosen up and get things flowing, like stretching before exercise. Visual artists, especially those who draw or paint from life (figures, landscapes, still lives, etc) do something similar in "gesture drawings". After reading several of @poetrybyjeremy's freewrite posts, I got excited to try these again. Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this daily freewrite! https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-134-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-plaid

https://pixabay.com/en/medium-psychic-female-fantasy-woman-goth-1726601/

For a moment I was speechless. If she knew who I was, why hadn't I been incinerated? She knew how to do it. I'd seen her do it, through the one-way glass, before they'd sent her out into the field. This was not an eventuality I'd planned for.

I did my best to keep the fear from my eyes, but I knew it wasn't working. Even a Chameleon like me, trained to present whatever the situation demanded, could only hide so much. I took a breath, closed my eyes for a moment, steadied my voice:

"How did you know?"

She looked at me, and for an instant I thought I saw something like pity flash across her strange eyes.

"When your defenses dropped", she said, "in that split second I got fear. And that you were hiding something. That was all I got. It could have been anything. But it was enough to make me curious. I may not be able to Feel you, and I suck at reading body language, facial expressions. I'm out of practice. Fifteen years out of practice. And The Feeling is so much easier, you can't be lied to, you know exactly what everyone's thinking, what their intentions are..."

Suddenly she was sobbing. I'd never seen her cry, at least not like this. A tiny tear slipping down her cheek, like an escapee from sadness prison, was the most she'd ever shown me. She felt everyone else so strongly, without even trying, couldn't help but feel them. She had no implant to help her, as I did with my Sensing. Implants had never worked with Strangelings. Their bodies, or something in their bodies, inevitably rejected them, always killed the subject in the process, so the company had stopped trying. Which meant that her emotions had to be carefully controlled at all times, even in sleep... she could so easily do such incredible, irreversible damage to those around her if she let herself slip, let herself lose control, and she knew it. All she had was her own strength of will, her determination to control what she knew would destroy her if she let it. And now that was slipping...

I felt the wave of it wash over me. It swept me along with it. I was powerless. Tears streamed down my face, all of the anguish of the past eight years, and the pain of the years before that, the pain that had brought me here, to work for them. I fell to my knees.

Vaguely, I was aware that she was standing up. My own grief was a storm and I was lost in it, battered and broken by it. She walked over to me, stood closer than she ever had. I felt the touch of her fingers on the back of my neck, stroking the hair of my head. And then... she sank to the ground, her arms around me, holding me. She was still sobbing.

And everything broke. I didn't know who I was anymore. There was no me anymore. Only this.

Twilight was eating away at the day when I came back to myself. She was still holding me. I looked up into her strange eyes, glowing silvery in the fading light, swollen with crying, her face streaked with tears, now dry.

"You know what they'll do to me if I don't bring you back", I said.

"I know how to remove it" she whispered, her voice barely audible, stroking the place just above my collarbone where the implant raised the skin ever so slightly. "I couldn't feel you, but I could feel everything around you. After you left, I focused on you for days, weeks. I took the risk... allowing myself to feel around The Attic... I knew they might catch me. But I was careful. And lucky. No one did. And I learned a lot."

"I wouldn't be able to control the sensing with out it", I objected. "I can't live like that. Nobody can. It would drive me over the edge, just like the first few test subjects..."

She smiled at me, a lovely warm smile, one I had never seen on her face before. Her fingers cradled my head. "You didn't die" she said. "I let it out... and it didn't kill you". Her face lit up with an innocent excitement that I felt as strongly as if it were my own. And not just, I thought, because of her mods.

"It isn't so hard she said" taking my hand and standing up, pulling me up to stand with her, "I'll teach you". She started walking, pulling me along.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"We're going to pay a visit to The Plaids".

©2018 Bennett Italia