"You have to tell me if there are side effects."

"Then what will happen?" I asked my father.

I already knew the answer. Guessing first, and then hearing it confirmed as a muffled echo in the back of my thoughts. It was disorienting listening to someone speak, and feeling their thoughts at the same time. I tried not to listen to what I didn't want to hear. What I had no right to hear.

I was back home again, sprawling to take more than my fair share of the couch. My father and I lived in a two bedroom apartment that looked too small for two people, and felt half the size. The hospital cleared me within forty-eight hours of taking my father's miraculous injection. I wasn't having trouble breathing anymore, and I've had more energy than I can remember.

"If there are side effects, then we'll stop at once." His severe stare, his expression inscrutable and stoic behind his mustache. I am quite sure he grew it simply to hide behind. "Are you having symptoms, Martin?"

"Nothing worse than being dead. Nothing that will stop me going back to school now."

"What are you feeling exactly? Describe the sensations in your muscles, using specific language such as burning, tearing, stinging, as well as an energy indicator compared to benchmarks of last week, last month, one year ago..."

I should have been a better liar. I owed him more than words could say, but I could not afford the truth. I knew his medication targeted the ion gate channels in my muscles, without any intended neurological effect. My father would take me off the medication, or lower my dose, and somehow I felt embarrassed by how badly I wanted to live now. I knew what being stronger felt like, now that I wasn't just lying to myself, clinging to the mirage of hope in the desert of death. Now I felt myself become a feral animal, desperate in my will to protect this fragile life.

I wanted to live so badly, that anything which jeopardized my recovery was a threat and an enemy. So it was, staring at my father standing over me on the couch. The man I owed everything, the only one who could take it away. I loved and feared my father, not one at a time, but both at once and always. My mother long gone, I've always depended on him. My dependency felt too great to bear now.

"I have no other symptoms," I lied.

A calculating silence. My guilty mind probed the emptiness for relief. I couldn't help but distinguish my father’s thoughts:

Martin is lying to me.

His thoughts in my head.

"Thank you for being honest with me,” father said instead. “I know it is personal information."

I swallowed hard. He didn't need to read my thoughts to know what that meant. Defensive, I tried to turn it back on him:

"You sound disappointed. I wasn't a guinea pig to test anything else, was I?"

My father stared. No thoughts at all that I could hear. The mustache smiled.

"We should be celebrating. This cure is the best news we've had in years. I think we may have really reached a turning point in your disease."

My disease, he calls it. My cure. Had my cure become a new disease? But surely I wasn't really hearing thoughts. It was my own mind playing tricks on me. Maybe it had nothing to do with the medication at all. Maybe I just went a little crazy from all the stress. I think I handled everything pretty well, but I also buried and internalized a lot of pain and fear that must leak out into madness from time to time. There was nothing wrong with being a little mad. Some people even take medication to get there on purpose.

Besides, I really was excited about how healthy and strong I felt.

I’ll be back in school next Monday. A new school, where no one will know how weak I used to be. But I will know them, hearing their most secret thoughts, their guilty desires. I will know what the girls want, whatever that’s worth. I’ll know the answers to the tests. My heart raced with exhilaration, a frantic and unsustainable pace. I started taking deep breaths to calm myself, always conscious of my father’s eyes studying me like one of his specimens.

“I’ve got so much more energy now. I’m going for a walk.” Bolting from the couch, flying to the door, the air around me blurring, my heart threatening to leap from my chest. I could feel my face flushing, and hoped my father didn’t see.

“Don’t test yourself too much. You still need to rest.”

And I was gone. The door of the apartment to my back, heaving breath. Test myself — that’s exactly what I needed to do. I needed to test whether I was hallucinating these voices, this presence, or whether I had tapped into something new. I hurried down the gray hallway before my father could follow me. I hadn’t gone a dozen steps before the dull intentions behind closed apartment doors began leaking out to me.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I paused in front of number 241. I knew the boy inside. Al Weezey, I think. A year younger than me, always playing video games. I could feel his presence now, his agitation. He must be losing.

Go left go left go left — not that far! His thoughts wailed.

“Better luck next time,” I shouted through the door, only realizing after how crazy that must appear. I didn’t wait for him to come. I bolted down the stairs and into the night, outrunning everyone’s thoughts but my own.

Standing outside on the curb, I couldn’t hear Weezey anymore. Not a hint of my father.

There was a range that I could detect thoughts. Sometimes it was an emotion, like an empathetic link, sometimes it was words. There were rules to how this worked. I had to learn them, practice them. Master them before they mastered me, the flushed heat still burning my face in the cool night.

I didn’t find my peace though. There was some kind of art fair happening on the street tonight. The ends of the road were blocked off to traffic, and stalls were being setup along the sidewalk. The street lamps were just coming on, and I could tell it was going to get busy soon. A young crowd: men in collared shirts, slick hair, eager grins. Women in tight dresses, clip clopping along the sidewalk in their heels like parading horses. I felt their presence in my mind as they approached, and then passed me by. I must seem out of place in my pajama pants and baggy T-shirt, but I was used to being the odd one out.

The first rule: I had to be within about ten feet to hear someone’s thoughts.

The second rule: the less people there were around, the clearer their thoughts were.

Here on the busy street, I could barely distinguish one word from another, even as the people passed right by me. I tried to concentrate on them individually, but it was no use. Hunger, lust, grief, excitement, all leaking from their minds without their knowledge. Pouring into me, filling me, overflowing me. I felt my heart racing again. It was too much. I felt like I had overdosed, drunk on their emotion. I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing. It was no use — a dozen breaths inhaled with me, the sensation of their breath exiting with mine.

“Out of the way, man!”

I froze. I thought the words were in my head at first. I reacted too slow. Large hands grabbed me by the shirt and hauled me to the edge of the sidewalk. Two big men in white collared shirts, maybe brothers, born from the same ox. The rough one had a diamond earing.

“Look at the idiot! What’s he doing? Put him back where you found him, or he’ll never find his way home!” the second man taunted. Both laughed.

The big hairy face of the one who grabbed me lurched forward, swaying drunkenly. He was only inches from me, and I could feel his buzz lifting me and mixing through my thoughts.

“What’s wrong with you?” the big lips slurred and sprayed.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I said, pressing myself back against the apartment wall. “You’re the one getting drunk to forget getting dumped. But it’s not working. She’s all you can think about, isn’t she?”

I could only read his thoughts, not see the future. I didn’t see his fist until he slammed me up against the wall.

“What did you just say to me?” His bristled beard was close enough to scrape my face. The stench of alcohol and cheap cologne was nothing compared to the weight of his rage. I felt like a bull seeing red, ready to put him in the ground. I wanted to hurt him in a way that made everyone know not to mess with me. I wanted him broken and weak, so I would feel powerful. And I knew I didn’t really want that at all, but was feeling all that overflowed from the man who held me.

I scrambled away under his meaty arm and ran. My feet churning under me, bellowing laughter behind me, my heart rebelling against its nature. Winds whipping past my ears, tears wicked away by the wind of my speed. It took me about fifteen seconds to understand what was happening to my body, my legs as alien and miraculous as any other new symptom. I was running! One fluid motion, one foot in front of the other, finding its place without direction.

The strain on my heart mounted as I went, but I couldn’t slow down. The exhilaration of freedom was too great. Down the street, past the stalls, colorful art and jewelry and trinkets flying by. A thousand thoughts snatching at me, but none loud enough to be heard over my own joyous spring. I knew I shouldn’t push myself so far. The muscle of my heart protested, but the will within it demanded more. I ran from the busy street and the maddening thoughts pounding at my brain. I ran from my crippled body, ran from who I was, ran from my old world, out the familiar street and into the woods beyond. I ran until I could hear no thoughts but my own, and hear no sounds except the thunder of my blood. And then without quite knowing why, I took all the air remaining in me and let it pour out as a wild animal howl at the trees.

Ten — fifteen seconds, one continued note. A challenge, a welcome, a grateful prayer, I howled at the rising moon. I only understood why I had the impulse when I heard the howls answering me in return. It hadn’t been my idea to howl into the dark forest. The howls which returned were close enough to send the hairs of my arms on end. I only felt the urge to howl because the wolves around me wanted to howl, and now they must know where I was too.

There weren’t wolves in these woods though. Never that I’ve heard about, not for a hundred years since the suburbs came. But there the sound came again, long and satisfied, and there the unearthly chorus rose to bless the moon.

The beast drifted through the trees toward me as gentle as the morning mist. Its thick fur coat swirled around it; strange distortions in its fur, which was in constant motion like moonlight playing through the water. It stalked towards me with perfect dexterity, each balanced step ready to launch the predator forward at a moment’s notice. It rose about as high as my waist, and if we stretched out, it would be longer than me. And if it ran, those powerful legs in effortless motion, those jaws and yellowed fangs, inevitably finding satisfaction in my skin.

More padded footsteps behind me. From the howls, there were at least three of them in the woods around me. I could not turn my head to look after seeing the first though. I was transfixed, mesmerized by those wild golden eyes which stared into my soul.

“I would feel it if you were hungry,” I said softly. “You want to tell me something, don’t you?”

At the mercy of nature’s grace, I did not feel the same fear I did when at the mercy of Doctor Warmal. I felt at peace with it, and knew it was the feeling the wolf and I shared. When the wolf rose its throat to howl at the moon, I followed its motion, and let forth such a cry as to wake the moon from its sleep.

I felt no words from the wolf, but was beginning to understand the message it had to tell.