Page 81 of Stitches

Sin frowned. “Like, you touched it?”

“No. Like Ifelt it.The emotions this man had in his life. It was all around us. I seemed to be the only one affected though. I felt his fear. His sickness. Everything. I still feel that when I’m around people. It’s probably what made me who I am. I become what’s around me. I feed off emotions.”

“Like…an empath?”

I smiled at him and took another hit. “I’m surprised you know that word, Sinclair.”

“I’m not a fucking idiot. I read,” he scoffed, taking a hit off his own. “So you’re like this magical unicorn?”

“Complete with wings,” I said, chuckling. “But I guess that would make me a Pegasus?”

“I don’t know. Do they have horns?”

“Fuck if I know.” I smoked some more.

“And Mirage?” Sin ventured after a moment of silence.

“I don’t tell his stories. Ask him yourself.”

“I would if you let him come out more. You seem to enjoy keeping him locked up in whatever cage you keep him in.”

“We have an arrangement,” I said, not giving more away than that.

“So this empath stuff. It doesn’t explain how you know the shit you know,” Sin continued.

“I just know it.”

“The voices? Do they tell you?”

“Sometimes.”

“What’s it like hearing them?”

I considered his words. “Well, you know that little voice you have in your head?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like having a hundred of them and they’re all arguing and yelling at me. They want me to do different things.”

“So you really are schizophrenic?”

I shrugged and took another hit, blitzed out of my fucking mind. The silence was golden. “That’s what the doctors tell me, but I doubt I am. I don’t do what the voices tell me. Usually. I run this fucking freak show. They’re just the participating audience.”

“It’s not normal to hear voices in your head.”

“Maybe it’s not your normal, but it’s mine. Besides, I don’t think they’re made up, random shit in my head.”

“You think they’re real? That’s schizophrenia, my dude.”

I chuckled at him. “No, I mean I think it’s like the fates or the dead or some shit because I see stuff too.”

“Again, schizophrenia.”

“Poor Asylum is a little crazy. Don’t let him procreate. Don’t let him make babies. But babies I will make and souls I will take. A little firefly mommy and some sugar baby zombies.” I grinned over at him, making him roll his eyes.

“You think you’re going to make babies with Sirena?”

“Someday,” I said. “Why not bring more crazy into the world? I like to shake things up. I’d make a terrible father though. Imagine me as an old man, teaching a kid to throw a football?”

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