There were no thoughts on the car ride to Phoenix.
Anastasia stared ahead at the road, dark in the day’s waning sun, only her Outback’s headlights piercing the waxing gloom.
She’d succeeded, or so she wanted to think that much. She still had the file she’d stolen from Devin’s office in the passenger seat of her car, but she hadn’t pulled over to look at it.
Her foot remained on the gas, her hands on the wheel, her eyes forward, but every other part of her body felt numb.
There was a family of hares off the side of the road in a burrow.
A vulture flew up overhead, feeling hungry.
Somebody’s remains were buried in the sands beneath the ‘Now Leaving Globe City Limits’ sign.
Very few cars were on the road at the moment, so Anastasia steered her car to the side of the road and stepped out.
With the sun going down, a cool wind drifted over the lonely hills and tickled Anastasia’s face, carrying with it the scent of the dry desert. She walked out into the sand, her heels sinking an inch down with each labored step, but she stood, alone, and stared out across the terrain.
Her head throbbed as it absorbed everything around it.
More than just the sights, more than just the sounds, more than the smells, the feelings, or the tastes… she could feel it all, see it all again. She had to keep herself from focusing so she couldn’t even attempt to process every grain of sand within reach, she had to stop herself from seeking out the primitive minds of the hungry nocturnal beasts rising from their dens to go hunt.
Anastasia closed her eyes and sat down, not caring about the sand now clinging to her pretty cotton dress. She tried to pull it all back in, force her mind to sit on its proverbial hands and never stand up.
The pain of opening her mind wasn’t enough to dampen the exhilaration of using her psychic powers again, but along with it came the flood of memories.
Trev’s death was the most recent, the loudest, screaming in her head, stirring up a feeling of disgust with herself, but a secretive, sadistic joy at putting that rabid man down.
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But then came the others. The many people who wailed for release from within their own heads, begging to be freed of their imprisonment as their bodies obeyed Anastasia’s whims.
She once exalted in that fear and pain, but that was long past, well before something much more important entered her life.
Shakily, she raised her phone and went to her picture gallery. Two-hundred photos, ten times that back home, and well over three-quarters of them were Tasha.
Christmas presents, birthdays, playing songs, out at restaurants…
She was betraying her baby girl. She couldn’t even live up to her own standards, she backslid into a role she had long given up for something more peaceful, more loving, more… fulfilling.
Anastasia squeezed her eyes shut as the first tears began to roll down her cheek. Her little girl… both of her little girls fawning over their cookie cake with expressions of pure glee, Madeline standing at the edge of the frame, grinning and eager to dig in with them.
Then the next photo…
Anastasia nearly dropped her phone as it struck her straight in the heart. Her and Zi, standing side-by-side in front of a fountain, smiling. Zi took that night off of work to drag Anastasia out of her house and to a really fun play, and to eat at a really nice restaurant, all to try and cheer her up after Robbie had left.
It had been the first time Anastasia had really smiled since her break-up, and it was all because of her best friend.
She’d lied to Zi. Failed her.
She was hurting people again, making the world a worse place. All she’d wanted was to keep to herself and enjoy the few people she had in her life, and she was backsliding into a world of ruination and loneliness, but even worse, she had the ability to comprehend those things now.
Never again…
Never again…
Never again…
She had to pull, and breathe, and beg her mind to cooperate, to go back to normalcy, to reel in all this feeling, this power, this influence, and please please please let her live like a person again.
It hurt. It burned. It left Anastasia whimpering and weeping to herself as memories danced before her eyes of the wounded and enslaved, as her mind openly rebelled against her attempts to corral it, but eventually… eventually…
Eventually all she could feel was the wind stinging the wet trails on her cheeks, and her hands against her face. All Anna could hear was herself sobbing, all Anna could sense was her own darkened thoughts, and the upset realization that fears she’d had long ago, of never being able to live a normal life and fit into society, were brought back to the fore.
And it was all her fault, because Anna couldn’t trust her daughter, or her best friend.