I saw her that night, as she exited the building and headed to her car. As I was thinking to myself about what to do next, she stopped and looked around, almost like she knew I was nearby. When she continued moving to her car, she quickened her pace, which made me decide to pursue her. As I followed her, she hurried even faster, and I did the same to keep up.
It was when Jasmine pulled out her keys near her car when I finally yelled out for her to wait. She reacted like someone hit her in the back of the head, causing her to drop the keys under the vehicle. She seemed to immediately dive to her knees to look for them, but then turned around covering her eyes with her arm and screamed at me to stay back. I tried calming her down from a distance as I let her know it was just me, but it only seemed to stop her from screaming. It was then I thought to myself that thing might’ve been there with us, so I quickly looked around. Once I felt the area was clear, I told her that we were safe. Jasmine snapped back at me in confusion, saying that she had no idea what I was talking about, yet she was still covering her eyes.
I asked her why she was covering her eyes, even though there was nothing around to hurt us. She laughed and said to me, “Why are you so afraid? You’re the one who’s going to kill me!”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Could’ve been some misunderstanding, like that one time I misunderstood an immediate order of hers more as a request that I could do at my convenience. After getting kindly threatened by the manager on her behalf, I wanted to smooth over the issue, so I apologized to Jasmine. She didn’t even really properly accept my apology. She said nothing and instead, gave the Robert De Niro face and a nod. You know the face. The face stretched downwards by the dropping of the jaw, while keeping the mouth closed. Of course, I was still pissed about it sure, but I swear causing harm was the furthest from my mind. I just wanted to ask her questions.
I asked Jasmine to clarify, but to her it didn’t matter what my intentions were, because according to her, the fact that I existed meant that I was a danger to everyone and everything. “Great misfortune would befall whoever or whatever you held dear or with great esteem.” she said to me.
In fact, Jasmine said causing me distress and suffering can bring others fortune. It was how she was able to buy a house and get a raise earlier this year. I thought about all the horrible people and things I’ve heard about. It seemed like bad things grew, and bad people got richer, more famous, more successful. What’s that, famous entertainer with a well-known public history of abuse? You’re about to be convicted for taking advantage of these women and children throughout the years sexually? Well, we just so happened to find this technicality that gets you off scot-free! Enjoy your twilight years in your own bed! Before you go, care to advertise for our product so we can spill more forever chemicals into the environment? What’s this Mr. CEO? You were involved in an extensive money-laundering scheme that left hundreds of millions of poor people up Shit’s Creek without a paddle? This just in: Key witnesses and whistleblowers are either mysteriously dead or disappeared. You’re free to go on business as usual! Don’t forget your golden parachute in case some disaster does happen next time! One more thing, help us block making nuclear plants safer and more efficient. Nothing they did seemed to come back and bite them, like they were immune to whatever terrible thing they did.
I then thought back on all of which I truly liked. All the food, businesses, and shows I enjoyed would all either discontinue or heavily degrade in quality. Could be coincidental. Then I thought about the times how I felt that my colleagues at work have been trying to avoid or take advantage of me. I probably wouldn’t be as suspicious if they accepted my invitations to my weekend and holiday get-togethers, instead of having plans that day or had to cancel last minute because something “just came up”. It would certainly explain why they’d do obnoxious things to the point of driving me away. I then thought back on one of my more depressing memories. I was part of a social group once. Yeah, I don’t even believe it at times, but I managed. Ran into them at the only comics n’ cosplay convention I’ve ever been to, and we hung out a lot afterwards. They were almost like the family I wish I had. Then the pandemic hit. We tried finding ways to stay in contact, but things incrementally happened. One would be too tired to do anything, a few stopped answering altogether, one fell in with a group of incels, two stopped participating because of drama between one another, and the final two got arrested and sentenced to prison. Soon, the group ceased to exist, and I was alone yet again.
Was this the reason why so many people would either act aloof, feign friendliness, and not reach out, or be total dicks towards me? Was this the reason why my own parents would torment me? All the uncalled-for rudeness, disrespect, and hostility? Were they all trying to protect themselves from me?
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I thought of something at that moment and asked Jasmine, “If I hurt those I like, why are you so afraid then? I don’t like you.”
That was when she told me of two ways I’d hurt others, regardless of how I felt towards them. The first was by having no direct interaction with a person, place, or thing within several months. For example, if I moved away or died, and no others like me were within that vicinity to fill my role, that area and virtually everyone living there would suffer greatly after a time. The residents must manipulate me through occasional pleasantness or mishaps to keep me from moving away on top of the balancing act between my social isolation and required torment.
The second was by using my eyes. Jasmine said to me, “The strength and resilience of you freaks are outmatched by the amount of damage you can do with your eyes.”
Around this time, I got sick of her referring to me as if I was something other than human, and as if I was part of something that was abnormal. I yelled at her to stop othering me, and she reacted as if I hurt her ears before she screamed back at me that it was all true. I don’t know if it was from just wanting to humor her, or if I was legitimately curious, but I asked her, “What does my kind look like then?”
She described me as being, “…covered in patches of slimy or dried, cracked and bleeding, infected skin. Hairy with a lopsided posture, with a humpback and one leg shorter than the other. Paradoxically fat gut, yet spindly limbs and hands. Voice can’t settle one a standard tone and pitch, while a large tongue hangs out of a mouth that is nothing but a mess of flesh and nasty yellow teeth. Every thought is a loud whisper, every normal conversation is a shout, and every yell is a siren of nails scratching on a blackboard with the blunt force of a mallet.”
Thinking on it now, she never described the eyes, instead going on a rant about how “things like us” were brainwashed by a society that cared so much about reinforcing positive self-reflection and self-esteem that we can’t see how hideously inhuman we look. She also couldn’t stand that we are all not referred to as “it” or “creature.” To her, we had no business being among the general population and should just all die alone like the unlovable abominations we are.
I got so angry when she said that to me. I wanted to know the answer, but I refused to accept something as ridiculous as me being any less human than the typical person. I didn’t want to accept that I was somehow behind the ills of the world, and that I deserved a life of misery and stagnation. I wanted to not just prove to her, but myself, that she was wrong. So, as calmly and softly as possible, I said to her, “For years, my parents taught me that a true adult takes responsibility for their actions and admits to their mistakes. As I grew up and kept to that belief, I would’ve never guessed that so many – even my own parents – wouldn’t qualify. But you know what? For you, that’s going to change tonight. You’re going to look me directly in the eyes and tell me the truth, whether you like it or not.”
I never saw her so scared before when I said those words. Jasmine grabbed a chunk of broken concrete and lobbed it, hitting me on the side of my face, which set me off. She tried crawling away under her car, repeatedly telling me no and threatening to have me fired. While I pulled her out by the legs, off the ground, and held her still, I found myself trying not to laugh the entire time because she sounded like a scared chimp. She tried fighting me off, but I finally got two of my fingers on her eyelids and pried them open, making her give off one last big, shrill, terrified shriek. Afterwards, she didn’t make any more noise, nor did she fight anymore.
I began asking her a question, but her eyes became all cloudy, her hair began turning white, and a side of her face began to droop. It freaked me out enough to let her go, but she progressively worsened. Jasmine appeared to try heading back to her car, but she sounded as if gasping for air, like her skin becoming tauter was somehow making it harder for her to breathe right. Her bones were even breaking as she stumbled pass her vehicle and flipped over the guardrail of the parking garage’s view to the streets. I rushed over and looked over the edge with enough time to see her smash apart on the pavement below.
People on the sidewalks, who heard the noise, ran over to see what happened. They were all talking to each other, but one of them looked up saw me, then screamed and covered their eyes in a panic. Everyone else who gathered began running away. I still remember some of what they were screaming:
“He’s finally on a rampage!”
“Don’t look in his eyes!”
“Run or he’ll kill us all!”
I was backing up away from the railing, trying to piece together what I just did, wondering what to do next. That was when I saw it out the corner of my eye; the thing that haunted me during the late nights. This time I noticed that its shape, the one I’ve only just realized at that moment, resembled what Jasmine described earlier. I swiftly turned my head, hoping to finally get a good look at what was truly behind all the misery. Like all the other times, it was me alone, this time looking in the reflection of Jasmine’s car window. Always the reflection. All by myself. Just me.