#i physically hate the specific doctors who empathically told me to

[goldlightsaber]

i’ll be enjoying myself and then get stopped in my tracks by the knowledge that for four years this joy was inaccessible to me mostly because of a stupid fucking drug doctors told me to take. the grief just knocks the wind out of me every time

[inanawesomewave]

FIVE MINUTES INTO SHERLOCK AND CHILL AND THE EMPATH GIVES YOU THIS LOOK

I write a lot on this post about self diagnosis, the aspirational notion of sociopathy, sociopathy as wish-fulfilment, and the danger and offence that comes with throwing the term around and applying it to you or anyone else based off some deeper darkness you feel you or someone else has. But things are serious. I want to go into depth, so we really know where we are. It feels ASPD is one of those things that people need, and people hate. But I want to remind you, it’s still a mental illness, and it still comes with pitfalls. We’re not just spending all day languishing in our own seductive power, or having perfect control over every aspect of our lives. We’re not working on Wall Street, devastatingly attractive, hitting every target and charming everyone we meet from the word go. I talk a lot on this blog about the real pain of it, and I hope that this is a place people come for real discussions about the disorder. In that spirit, it’s time for another rundown on what ASPD is and what it is not, and the easiest way to do that is to rely on the criteria in the DSM-V, the diagnostic guidelines that clinicians in the Western world have to follow for this diagnosis to be made. Because that’s how it works, there’s a list of things and if you do the things then you have the thing. If you don’t do the things then you don’t have the things. It’s not as easy as watching Sherlock and admiring Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance, or identifying with other villains in fiction -- they are written for you to empathise with them. The best villain is created with just enough humanity that you want to feel for them, see the good in them, and the purpose of this in good fiction is to make you question yourself, your motivations and your limits. Emily Bronte wrote Heathcliff in such a way that whilst he is motivated by only vengeance, obsession and hate, you want to like him, and you want to rescue him. Feeling that way does not make you a sociopath. It makes you a human being who is responding to art in the way the art hoped you would. So let’s run through.  1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. So this one basically means, you’re committing crimes, disrespecting authority in an outward manner, refusing to accept any kind of dominant law or force, and violating legal boundaries in however way you see fit. It’s not something you switch on and off, nor is it something exclusively motivated by personal gain. It doesn’t mean “I once stole a lipstick from a shop”, it is a pervasive, repeated pattern of behaviour that doesn’t ease off when the motivation disappears. It’s not the same as thinking it. Just because you think that in a certain situation you’d behave psychopathically, it doesn’t mean you are. If your sociopathy or psychopathy depends on a special set of circumstances to function, then it doesn’t exist.  2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure So again, this doesn’t mean isolated incidents. It’s not about sometimes talking someone round to something. Psychopaths tend to lie and con, and anecdotally I’ve found that sociopaths do one or the other in excess, mine was always conning. What this meant for me was the conning was the game, and the success of the conning was the goal. If you are only doing this every so often and it has a clear motivation other than just doing it for the sake of it, you are not a sociopath. 

3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead This is quite a universal symptom that can apply to a lot of mental illnesses, so fair enough. There’s many reasons why someone would have no motivation to plan ahead. And the impulsivity we’re talking about here, again, is pervasive. It’s not the impulse to do something slightly out of the ordinary for a change, and whilst addictive behaviours are often comorbid with ASPD, this criterion means that your impulses are ongoing, hard to control, and are causing problems in your life. Impulses may be violent or disruptive, they may come from anger, they might be harmful. The impulse to spend an extra £20 on clothes isn’t a personality disorder. It’s treating yourself, and it’s nice to treat yourself. 

4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults If you don’t understand rage, you don’t understand ASPD. I’ve written a lot on here (and, disclaimer, I’m not fitting the entire description of ASPD on my own personal experiences exclusively, I’m going off research, speaking with other sociopaths, case studies, etc.). It’s not a very well controlled rage. It’s not sensible. It’s not considerate. It’s not clever. So a recent article I read said that sociopaths and psychopaths live with two different kinds of rage: there’s baseline rage, and then rage that has been provoked. This means that naturally, if a situation arises where conflict could exist, we will take it. But it also means, we’re angry as shit all the time anyway. It’s pathetic, I know that, but it’s there. We’re just angry. It’s exhausting. It’s physically tiring, and we would stop it if we could. You can walk away from it, that’s fine. You don’t have to understand it. But this is, for me at least, the cornerstone of ASPD. It’s simmering, endless, impotent rage that stems from a deep held belief that conflict is everywhere, that conflict is safer than no conflict, and that we have to come out on top at all times. No sociopath is sitting there thinking, “I’m sure it’ll work out for the best”, or “I wonder what a morally good person would do?”. We are (see above) impulsive, quick to react, easily provoked, and lacking in empathy. Rage is real. It’s constant, and sharp.

5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others Getting drunk every so often or taking a bunch of cocaine is called enjoying yourself. Inviting dangerous people into your home and involving other people in a dangerous lifestyle because you have no will to help or protect them because you don’t care about yourself and you also have no empathy is ASPD. 

6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations We can’t keep jobs. We wish we could. We’re impatient jerks who don’t know what a good thing is, because we’re cynical. Don’t go to work because you’re anxious? See a doctor about your anxiety. Don’t go to work because you have no respect for your boss and the mere fact they told you to answer to them has spiked that rage again? Maybe you have ASPD.

7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. I’m not going to labour on this one too much but for Christ’s sake, everyone says and does hurtful things from time to time and when we do those things, it makes sense to rationalise it, because that’s a human way to protect yourself, it’s normal. Going out of your way to cause harm, to push people away from you, to watch someone hurt, and to feel extremely justified in that with no room for, “but what if...?” is ASPD. If someone’s pissed you off but you know that arguing with them would make them feel worse, you don’t have ASPD.  I’m writing this because I cannot fucking hear it any more. I go to therapy. I am exhausted by myself. Anger has worn me down, I look tired, I have a suspected overactive adrenal gland that my therapist agrees is what happens when you spend your whole life on edge. It’s isolating, we get lonely, we don’t know how to have normal relationships, we’re unable to show the ones we care about that we care, then we trick ourselves into not caring. We make ourselves lonely, we’re in pain. And that’s not to say that if you don’t have ASPD you’re not in pain, but remember what a personality disorder is - it’s something that gets in the way of you living your life. If you’ve not received a diagnosis, and you’ve not done anything where a diagnosis had to be made, and you’re not getting arrested, or pushing everyone you love away, then don’t worry. You’re not living with ASPD. And you know this pro-self dx, “well not everyone has access to a psychiatrist” argument? Well I don’t have access to an oncologist, and that’s because i’ve never needed one. That doesn’t mean I can diagnose myself with cancer, it means the lack of an oncologist in my life is a pretty big clue that I do not have cancer.  It’s still a mental illness, and you’re still appropriating someone else’s struggle. You can’t have bipolar disorder without mood swings, and you can’t have agoraphobia if you’ve never had a panic attack, and you wouldn’t try to shoehorn yourself into these diagnoses because they’re not cool or sexy. If you’re trying to redefine sociopathy so specifically you fit into it, worse -- if you’re trying to tell diagnosed sociopaths how they should be experiencing their sociopathy based on your wishful thinking, ask yourself if you would sit down with a schizophrenic and tell them that, despite having never hallucinated or experienced a delusion, you’re really just like them. 

[punishandenslavesuckers]

Hiatus AU: Mark drags Damien back across the country in what amounts to the most karmic reverse kidnapping in history, but stopping to take hipster pics of scenic overlooks will not protect you from the scary stuff lurking in the liminal space behind highway truck-stops. (A03)

Damien stopped talking as soon as they got in the car and started driving.

That was almost twenty-four hours ago.

Mark Bryant – age twenty-eight, atypical mimic, fugitive, and uproariously done with this guy’s shit – does not give a single damn. (He doesn’t. Fuck you. He doesn’t care.) Mark has static under his skin, buzzing between the bones of his skull and the muscles in his face. Somewhere in the subcutaneous sinews, humming in the roots of his teeth. (That’s probably bad. Tastes like rage. Feels like he’s on the razor’s edge of bursting into… tears maybe. Or violence. Or a Ramone’s song. Something big and loud and…)

He turns up the volume on the radio.

Mark was (is) riding the high of victory. (He is!) He’s won. He’s in control. He’s going to see Joanie! He’s pulled over to pet at least three dogs and take pictures of whatever scenic overlook he wants. He has a souvenir bobble-head stuck to the dashboard, a disposable camera in his pocket, and nothing can stop him now. Not time, not distance, not shadowy government agencies, and definitely not the dude in the passenger’s seat.

Damien’s curled up like a wounded animal, one knee pulled up, his arms tucked in around his ribs, staring blankly out the window at the passing freeway signs. He looks kind of sick. A perpetual nausea in the slack lines of his face. There’s something… Mark doesn’t want to say satisfying about the weird gutted passivity on his former captor’s face, but he feels some kinda way about it. He’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a piece of him that... clenches a little, like a fist.

Like fuck you.

Fuck you, I win.

But then that goes away and he just feels shitty for feeling that way.

Mark leans over, picks a water bottle from the cup holder under the dash and holds it out. When Damien doesn’t notice, he bumps the guy’s elbow with the plastic.

“Drink something.”

“I don’t want to.”

Mark sighs. “Don’t you?”

Damien says nothing. Then he takes the water bottle, takes a single sip, screws the cap back on and goes back to staring out the window. Mark refuses to pity this motherfucker. He goes back to watching the road. The tiny hula dancer stuck to the dashboard jiggles happily, its little grass skirt bobbing. Somehow, that helps.

Mark used to cry a lot as a kid.

He doesn’t anymore, but he does feel the impulse to cry beneath his adult sensibilities sometimes, there like a raw nerve for poking. He doesn’t poke it. He does not think about Joanie who is five states away at least. Days of driving between him and a fucking hug.

(God that sounds pathetic.)

Mark cannot articulate how much he wants to hug his big sister. He pictures it: They’re in, like, a parking lot. No. A park. It’s sunny. He’s going to sprint and tackle her. He’ll pick her up and swing her around in that way she hated when they were in high school. He imagines her punching him indignantly even though she hasn’t done that since she was sixteen. This is his familial hug fantasy and it won’t be spoiled by the fact Joan is over thirty and an adult now. By the fact they drifted. Nothing is going to spoil… to spoil…

He comes back to himself when his palms start to ache suddenly. The steering wheel creaking slightly in his white-knuckled grip and he relaxes. Breathes in. Here. Now. Breathes out.  

“I really missed having a body,” he says, because it’s not as though Damien can complain about his choices in conversation. “Like, I don’t think I can articulate how bad it was not being able to touch anything for two years. Standing around and breathing feels incredible. Do you know how weird that is? Dude. It’s so weird. I have lungs and that’s a highlight. That’s how low the bar is for me to be thrilled right now. My fingertips are blowing my mind.”

Damien says nothing. It’s vaguely petulant at this point.

Mark glances at him.

Damien’s age is a little hard to pin down, but Mark would say they’re about the same age. Damien’s a white dude… or a mostly white dude. At least half a white dude. He doesn’t look like he gets sun. Shorter than Mark. Kind of lanky. This dark moppy kind haircut that looks like it was expensive before it went to weed. Everything Damien owns looks expensive by the way. Mark noticed really fast. This is probably because he walks into high end stores and tells them to give him things for free and that just…

Mark looks at the road again.

“Look, I know you basically just kidnapped me because you wanted me to be your sidekick minion or whatever, but I don’t hate you or anything. You’re a dick, but you’re not dangerous. I mean… maybe you are a little, but proportional to how dangerous you could be, you’re not that bad.” Mark tries to let that stand. Fails. “I mean… I’m not giving you credit for not being as big of a bastard as you could be. I’m just saying you can talk to me if something is wrong.”

Damien drops his forehead against the passenger side window and exhales through his nose.

“Are you trying to say something? You can say something.”

Damien shakes his head once.

Mark can sense that the level and degree to which Damien’s sulking is… muted. Mark tries not to think about that. How Damien should be flipping out, should be screaming, but he’s not. Like Mark’s holding the guy’s head under water. No. That’s too violent. It’s like… it’s like… like he’s drunk, kind of. Thoughts murky and pliable. Yeah. Like he’s walking a drunk guy home from a bar and gently suggesting they go left. Except he’s not… he’s not always consciously suggesting… Jesus it feels slimy…

“Your power is really messy,” Mark says to the silence. “I can’t think of a metaphor. I’m usually great at metaphors. Or similes! I’m good at describing other people’s powers in layman’s terms. Yours kind of defies me.”

That gets Damien’s attention. He glances at Mark using just his eyes, but Mark can feel that… specific thread of heat. Interest. It always stands out. Want always stands out now. Mark turns the volume down on the radio.

“I can’t tell when I’m using this thing. It’s just… it’s always on. I mean… there a definitely moments where I can feel myself trying to push something specific… but I can choose not to.” He lets that hang, pointedly, for a moment. “But it is there, like, low-grade. All the time. You’ve had this since you were a kid and you never learned to turn it off completely?”

“No.”

“You ever tried? Like, really, really tried?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“I’m not lying to you right now.”

“Oh… right. Sorry.” Mark, privately, still does not believe that Damien’s ‘try’ is the same as the average person, but he lets it go. “Anyway, it’s funny. Empaths, telepaths, Class A powers – they all dig right past everything into people’s raw unfiltered stuff and it’s still possible to feel like people are incomprehensible. You physically cannot lie to me right now and I still… can’t trust anything you say. It’s like talking to someone under the influence. So… it’s like a lot of telepathy in that way, actually. It’s weird, but not totally off the beaten path for Class A abilities.”

Damien mutters something.

“What was that?”

“So… do you think it could be more common?”

“Well, I’ve told you before that I’ve never met anyone else with your ability. Class A powers are a pretty limited set and mind control is… well, it’s not possible according to the AM. Manipulation, mental suggestion, tricks… sure, but all that requires trickery and social manipulation too. Like mentally screaming in someone’s head to buy you a coffee will probably work, but not because you actually changed their mind. You… you definitely get in there move things around without notice sometimes.”

Damien stares out the window for a moment before rejoining. “Doctor Bright said I was a low level manipulator.”

“I mean, technically. I don’t think you could convince someone to kill themselves.” A beat. “Uh, right?”

“No. I can’t do that.”

“You tried it?”

“No. When I was fifteen fell off a pier. I couldn’t swim so I panicked and called out to a man on the dock to dive in and help me but… he couldn’t swim either. He knew he would die if he did so he just stood there.” Damien shrugged. “I can’t make someone choose me over their own safety. Not if they know the danger.”

Mark grimaces. “That must have been scary.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you swim now?”

“No.”

“What? Really?”

Damien just shrugs again. “Yeah. I’m scared of deep water actually. S’why I don’t travel much. Gotta go over oceans.”

“So you almost drowned once… so you just avoid water now?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“I feel weird,” Damien says suddenly. He’s staring at the water bottle in his lap, long fingers slack on the plastic. “It’s not going away.”

“I know. I’m sorry. When I find Joan we’ll get you back to normal. It’s just temporary.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No. You’re right. I don’t. But I’m not gonna ditch you like this so relax.”

“Why won’t you ditch me?”

“Because I’m not an asshole.”

“Doctor B would tell ya to ditch me.” Damien leans hard on the consonants when he says ‘Doctor B.’ “If she had to choose between you and me –”

“Stop it.” Mark speeds up a little. “That’s not fair and Joanie doesn’t like bullies, but she… she wouldn’t…” He looks out the driver’s side window. “And it doesn’t matter what she thinks because I would feel like an asshole for doing that, Damien. So I’m not going to. Stop trying to get me to feel sorry for you.” Mark straightens the rearview mirror. Not because it needs it, but because he’s restless. “There’s a rest stop in a mile. I’m gonna pull over there and nap for a while.”

“Kay.”

Mark tries to ignore the crawl of goosebumps when Damien responds like that.

“This is temporary.”

“Okay.”

“Damien. Seriously. I don’t like this. I don’t want you to be… like this.”

“That’s, uh, manifestly untrue.”

Mark sighs. “Okay. You got me: My desire to survive is overriding my ideal ethics. Sorry. I want to be in a reality where you’re not a zombie and also would let me go see my sister, but in this reality I think you would tie me up in a trunk if you got your powers back. So I’m not that choked up about it.”

“Okay.”

Mark turns the radio volume back up.

Mark manages to get comfortable reclining the driver’s side seat all the way back and closing his eyes. He is aware, faintly, of Damien’s restless dozing a few feet away, of sudden startled surges of… not want exactly, but something. Fear maybe. He keeps jerking awake. Eventually, he pops the passenger door and leaves to use the dimly-lit public restrooms across the parking lot. Mark, left alone in his head, sinks into the warm quiet and –

He wakes up.

Someone is tapping a knuckle against the driver-side door, rapidly, with knuckles, then palm. He sits up. There’s a black woman, pretty, in a baseball cap and a big bomber jacket. A trucker maybe. She taps more furiously.

He rolls down the window. “Uh, hello?”

“Is that your friend?” She points at the restroom building.

Mark sits up. Across the rest stop parking lot, Mark can make out figures. He scrubs his eyes and blinks. Beneath a pool of yellow streetlamp light, a tall, solid man in jeans and a large jacket is talking to Damien. He’s so tall he has to very conspicuously look down to speak with him. Which is weird. Damien’s not that short. Mark register’s it’s weird because the tall man is standing way too close. He’s standing way too close because he has his fist closed around Damien’s right forearm and he’s using it pull the other man toward a blue pick-up.

Mark jolts wide the fuck awake.  

“Oh Christ.”

Mark busts out of the car, scrambling a bit, his still noodley legs giving out beneath him as he bursts into an ungainly sprint. The trucker woman follows close behind. Mark notices, belatedly, that she has a long steel baseball bat in her hand and a spike of adrenaline jots his system wide awake.

“Hey!” Mark flail-sprints, gasping unattractively. “Hey! Back off!”

The tall man looks at Mark and the trucker girl with the baseball bat. “Oh, I see.” The man’s voice is… weird. Like there’s reverb in it somewhere. He turns to face Mark, pulling Damien around as an afterthought. “You’re the beneficiary here. My mistake.”

“Look, just… leave him alone, man. You don’t wanna do this. Right?”

“Hmm, that’s not going to work, friend.”

Mark swallows. “Uh, really?”

“Yes, really.” The tall man’s grip on Damien’s forearm tightens and he pulls up, yanking Damien closer so they’re standing side by side and Mark feels viscerally aware of how Damien is not a big dude. Suddenly he seems tiny. Or rather, the man beside him seems fucking enormous, an unmoving shelf of a human being smiling down at him. His teeth are crooked and a little yellow. “I was curious why his thoughts were… bent. Now I see, you’re bending them. You can’t bend me though.”

The woman with the bat says, “That’s enough, asshole. Let the guy go.”

The man smiles. Somehow, his smile seems too big for his skull. “I can tell you don’t like him very much. I could take him off your hands, kid.”

Which is about when Mark realizes he’s being way too flip for what this man is trying to say. Mark glances at the trucker girl with the bat and realizes she is taking things exactly the right amount of serious. He turns back to the stranger and raises one placating hand, lowering his voice.

“Look, you don’t want to do that.”

“I just told you, that won’t work on me.”

“Mark?” Damien lifts his head like he’s been dazed until just then. “What’s… going on?”

“Damien. This asshole’s a telepath or something. Get away from him.”

“Huh?” Damien’s brow knits and he turns, sluggishly, staring up at the tall man like he just noticed him there. Registers the grip on his arm. “What… the fuck?”

The tall man just laughs. “No. You’ll need to do better.”

Then he reaches down, grabs Damien’s other arm and starts pulling him toward the pick-up again. Damien, awake now, immediately panics and starts yelling. Trucker girl doesn’t hesitate. She charges, swinging. The bat hits the tall man right across the face, full power, a killing swing that freezes Mark where he stands, stunned immobile at the cracking ‘whunk’ and ring of the alloy hitting skull. The tall man though… the bat hits him and he doesn’t even move, the length of metal rebounding off his head like she swing into a flesh-padded brick wall.

“Ah! Fuck!” She staggers back, the bat humming with the impact.

“She gets it,” says the tall man. “She’s been on the road long enough to get it.”

Trucker girl looks at Mark. “Do something! I’m not joking. Fight. Right now.”

“Oh. Go away. This is between us boys, yeah? You know you want to get back on the road, right?”

“I…” The trucker girl blinks in confusion. “I do.”

“Well then… go.”

She nods, then looks at Mark, “Stay off the roadsides around here. Keep driving. I’m sorry.”

Mark, dumbfounded, watches her calmly drop the baseball bat and walk toward a giant semi-truck with the words Bay & Creek Shipping on the side. She can’t seem to hear Mark when he calls out, wild, pleading for her to come back, to help him, please, don’t just go. She climbs into her cab and the lights come on. Mark gives up as the wheeze of the hydraulics brakes fills the parking lot.  

“Let’s play a little game,” says the tall man.

“No thanks. I love games. Board games, but I don’t have any of those so let’s not,” says Mark, more than faintly panicked now.

“It’s your only fighting chance, I’m afraid. If I make this a physical contest, I’ll win over both of you. Now, here’s the game: The power at play here seems to be a… projection of want. You want your companion to come with you and I want him to come with me. So let’s you and I each try to get what we want. How about it?”

Mark’s entire nervous system rolls over on itself. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If you lose,” says the tall man patiently, “then your friend comes with me.”

Damien, hearing this, redoubles his efforts, rearing back from the tall man’s grip and thrashing. But even as he starts to wrench away, the tall man simply pulls forward slightly, twisting Damien’s forearms inward and down and it’s only now that Mark can see the size of the man’s hands are wrong. They are too big for his body. So large they encircle Damien’s forearms from wrist to elbow. His squeezes, slightly, deliberately and Damien screams. Damien’s knees hit the concrete. He just keeps screaming.

“Stop it! STOP!” Mark throws both hands up in surrender. “I’ll play! Just stop!”

The tall man releases his hold and Damien collapses forward, drawing his arms in against his stomach, shuddering and hunched through the aftershocks. He’s shaking like he’s been shot. Mark would bet a billion dollars Damien’s never been physically hurt by another human being in his life. Mark wills him with every particle of focus he possesses to get the fuck up and turn around.

Damien doesn’t react. He just starts hyperventilating.  

“Damien, not to rush you or anything, buddy, but how about you get up and get over here? Now?”

“I don’t wanna go with him,” Damien says dully, but rapidly. “I don’t. I don’t wanna go. Mark. Please. I’m sorry. I’m fuckin’ sorry, okay?”

“Let’s see who wants him more,” says the tall man. “Damien, is it? You want to come with me don’t you?”

“No!” Damien goes down, doubled over, head pressed between his palms. “No! God. Stop.”

“Damien!” Mark raises his voice, gesturing in big arms swings, trying to get Damien to just look at him, stop freaking out and focus. “Damien! Just come over here. Okay? You wanna go home? Let’s go. Right now. Just get up and come here.”

The Tall Man says, casually, “I want you to come with me.” He smiles. “I want to split your head open.”

Damien stands up, slowly, the way someone stands trying to carry something heavy. Then he starts walking toward the Tall Man.

Mark, for a horrified second, freezes. In that same horrible frozen eternity he projects the immediate future into the now and watches the monster man grab Damien by the back of the neck and smash his fucking skull open like a watermelon on the hood of that shitty pick up. He watches the gory explosion of it – the crack and spill, less blood than you might first expect, then more than he could have ever fathomed. A starburst of red and gray painted up the windshield and –

Mark snaps back. “DAMIEN! GODDAMMIT! DO NOT GO WITH HIM!”

Damien’s entire body convulses like an electric current jumped up his spine, the sole of his left sneaker scraping a stuttered step on the pavement. Then he twists and sprints away from the Tall Man straight at Mark, running faster than Mark might have thought him capable – a wild just raw fucking terror on his face. He gets ten meters. Then he convulses again and hits the ground, falling forward onto his hands and knees, jean’s ripping, palms skidding on the asphalt. He shouts in this strangled way that puts a shunt of terror in Mark’s gut. Sweat runs a visible line down his cheek.

“This is fun,” says the Tall Man.”

“Damien, listen to me. Okay? You want to not die? Just come with me.”

“I think you want me to snap every bone in your body,” says the Tall Man, his impossible hands impossibly in his pockets. Damien’s gasping now. He’s on his knees, fists pressed white knuckled and bleeding into the top of his thighs. He’s shaking so hard his teeth chatter. “I think you want that more than you’ve ever wanted anything else in your life, right?”

“Damien.” Mark doesn’t remember holding his hands out, but he is now, palms up, arms open. “C’mon. Just… just walk to me, man. C’mon.”

“Or come with me,” says the Tall Man, shrugging. “I’ll kill you.”

“Mark!” Damien’s half kneeling, frozen halfway through the motion of getting back up. “Mark, I want to go with him. I wanna –”

The Tall Man laughs. “I want to kill you more than your friend wants you to live obviously.”

Damien squeezes his eyes shut. “No, no, no…”

“Don’t feel bad. It’s more common than you think –”

But Mark is already moving. Mark sees red. Mark sees white and red and Mark is darting forward. He’s grabbing the trucker’s bat from the pavement and he’s sprinting like it’s not the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’s not strong right now. He’s not. His lungs burn, his legs throb, the aching sinew of his formerly comatose body completely ill-equipped to the task of fending off some atypical serial killer, but in this moment: he can’t imagine doing anything else. He lunges forward, grabs Damien’s jacket and yanks him forward, kind of roughly tossing him around behind his knees.

“That won’t help you,” says the Tall Man.

“Fuck you” Mark points with the bat, one fist in Damien’s jacket. “JUST BACK OFF!”

The Tall Man tilts his head. “That’s it. Put your back into it.”

“I’m warning you!”

“How about this? What if I want to kill you if I can’t kill him?”

Mark’s intestinal tracts twists. Damien, sensing this, says, desperately, “Mark, please…”

“I’m not leaving you!” Mark backs away from the Tall Man. “Get up. Get up, Damien! That’s it. C’mon.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the Tall Man, keeps the bat up between them. He feels Damien’s hands on his arm, pulling himself upright, gripping his shoulder for support. Mark backs up, slowly. Damien’s breathing like a stabbed man behind him, ragged, painful sucking breathes. “We’re gonna get in the car and go. We’re going. I’m gonna see my sister again. We are going together because that’s what I fucking want you miserable evil fuckface.”

The Tall Man follows them, but slowly, at a stroll. ���There you go, kid.”

Mark’s legs bump the front fender of their car. “FUCK YOU!”

“I still think that power is interesting.”

“Mark!” Damien’s in the car already. “Mark, let’s go!”

“I think I could do interesting things,” says the thing that looks like a man but might not be. “I think I’ll come looking for him later. Eat it out of him.”

Damien makes a choked panting noise of terror.

“You’ll never find us!” Mark snarls, getting into the car.

“I think you’re interesting too.” The Tall Man’s tilting his head. He’s tilting it too far, like it’s rotated and hung on broken vertebra. “Always good to see family. You know, like-kind. Mark, right?”

Mark puts the car in gear and guns it out of the parking lot, fishtailing around and hitting 80mph up the ramp, hitting 90, then 100, then 110 and they are screaming up the freeway so fast the whole vehicle yowls and rattles with the velocity. Mark floors it, two-fisted on the steering wheel, staring straight forward – too terrified to look over his shoulder and see, somehow, the Tall Man monkey-clinging to the back of the car or, nightmarishly, chasing them up the road. The fear possesses him physically. Holds him hostage at high speed.

They drive for a long time.

They end up at a Denny’s because of course they do.

Usually Mark would be opposed to using Damien’s borrowed power to freeload, but three plates deep into a pancake platter makes the crushing darkness of freeway truck stops seem far away. Disproportionate eldritch horrors can’t get you in the middle of a Grand Slam with maple syrup. You can’t be gutted by road-side creatures while you have hot chocolate in hand.

The super nice night manager is operating under this warm cloud of sympathy and good-hearted generosity that keeps refills of warm sweet things continuously coming their way. Mark knows it’s definitely his influence when one of the waitresses gently pats him on the head as though he were the most miserable looking stray dog on the planet.

Which just says pathetic things about his core desires right now.

Damien responds to all this doting by stooping over his coffee in their corner booth. He hasn’t said a word since they got away from the truck stop, only communicated in shakes of the head and vague body language. He’s wearing a hoodie and he’s got the hood up. He looks like a heroin addict that Mark picked up off the street at this point. His hand curled on the table top shakes slightly, even resting. They taped up the scrapes on his palms a while ago but the shake stays.

“You need to eat.”

Damien jerks his head slightly.

“You look really rough.”

Damian looks up from the coffee. His face alone says, No shit, Sherlock.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Let’s just sit here in silence except I’m gonna just keep talking because if I don’t I’m gonna think about how this is some Jeepers Creepers shit. I don’t even like scary movies. I like dog movies. Are there are good dog movies? Did good dog movies come out while I was in a coma? God, I’m gonna watch so many dog movies. You seem like a cat person probably, honestly, that’s my guess. No need to confirm or deny. I’m just speculating.”

There’s a single beat of silence.

Damien clears his throat. “He, uh, made me want to die.”

Suddenly the Grand Slam breakfast doesn’t seem like much protection against that crushing dark.

Mark says nothing. Then, softly, “What?”

“That’s what he was doing. I… I could feel how badly he wanted to… and then I wanted to…”

“You don’t have to explain –”

“He didn’t even make me feel sad. Like I didn’t feel suicidal, I was just really… I just really, really wanted smash my own face into the pavement. Like that was a great idea.” Mark says nothing because he doesn’t know what to say, so Damien adds, horribly, quietly, “That’s not really the worst part.”

“How is that not the worst part?”

“I can still kind of feel it.” His eyes tighten a little. “It’s not… compelling anymore, but it’s there. Like when you think about stepping off a tall building or something. You’re not gonna do it, but you… think about it.”

“Intrusive thoughts.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what’s that’s called when you imagine doing something awful, but you’d never do it. Like pink elephants. Don’t think about pink elephants. Don’t think about stepping into oncoming traffic. Intrusive thoughts. They’re really normal. If this… guy put a violent thought in your head then it’s not super weird to get hung up on it. Doesn’t mean he’s still influencing you.”  

“No. Just you.”

Mark reaches for the butter. “I can’t help that, Damien.”

“That’s not bad. Not… right now. It’s fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Better you than… It’s better. Feels normal now.”

“You can tell when I’m projecting now?”

“Sort of. I can feel… you wanting me to be okay. I think.”

“Is that surprising?”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

“Damien, I told you, I don’t hate you. I just… think you’re messed up.” He fidgets. “And really selfish. And an asshole. And you need a haircut.” He thinks Damien almost smiles, or at least looks not awful for a second so he pushes on. “Also, like, do you know you can wear colors not in the grey-scale?”

Damien sighs. “Doctor B was right.”

Mark blinks. “What?”

“I asked her once,” says Damien, “why she wasn’t afraid of me. You know, because I was threatening her at the time. She told me there were things way scarier than me out there.” He makes a thoughtful little ‘huh’ sound that is 100% disproportionate to their reality. “I just thought she was talking about the AM.”

“Stop talking about threatening my sister, Damien.”

“Sorry.”

Mark eats a few bites of pancake.

“That… guy seemed really interested in your power. I think he was using Class A and C abilities at the same time. That’s not… nobody is a mix. Not even me. I can only use powers one at a time. That thing was strong. And it was telepathic and I think he was a shapeshifting? Like, for a second there it almost seemed like he was mimicking your power. I don’t… I don’t know what just happened. It’s impossible.”

Damien’s staring vaguely into the middle distance at this point.

“Do you think he was like me?”

“What?”

“He was using my power, right? He made me want what he wanted.”

“I… I don’t think so, Damien.  I thought he was more like me. A mimic. Like, an advanced one. Maybe if I live long enough I’ll be able to keep other people’s powers. I don’t know.” A beat. “I don’t think he was like that because he had your power. If that’s what you’re worried about. He actually seemed like he’d never seen something like it before.”

“Yeah… but he really seemed to, you know, dig it.”

“Powers don’t make people monsters. Choices do.”

“You think I do that though. Choose bad stuff.”

Mark sighs. “Yeah, man, I do. Maybe think a little harder about that. You know, in case you don’t aspire to be a deranged truck stop murderer.” Mark scrubs his face with two palms. “Christ.”

Damien tilts his head. “Are you okay?”

“No, Damien, I’m not okay. I haven’t sleep in days and I fought off some serial killer on a highway.” A beat. “Why aren’t you freaking out more? Why are you so fucking calm about – oh.” Damien, through the forced sieve of telepathic zen, just blinks at him. “Right. Of course. Uh, how about you? Are you okay?”

“My arms are a bit sore.”

“Wait. Did he hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“What? Damien, where?”

Damien calmly rolls his sleeves up over his elbows. In the cheerful Denny’s lamp light, the length of his bare forearms are an ugly rug-burn of purple-red bruising, massive subcutaneous bleeding, vivid and hot to the eyes. Like someone put Damien’s arms in a vice and crushed. He twists his wrists a little just to give all angles, then starts to pull his sleeves down again.

Mark, horrified, blurts, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I thought you might freak out and try to pull over. I didn’t want that.”

“Do we need to go to a hospital? Is anything broken? Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think –”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Some whackjob tried to Sophie’s Choice us on the road. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I got out. I’m free. This was supposed to be –” Mark stops because the waitress is looking at him from across the room, her arm bent in the attitude of pouring coffee. She’s spilling it on the table, not paying attention. Listening to him. “Sorry. What do you want to do, Damien?

“Let’s just keep driving.”

“Heh. God, I can’t even tell if that’s what you really want or just my fear.”

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t would you?” A beat. “Fuck. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. Okay.” Mark runs a hand over his face. “I’ve got some Aspirin in the glovebox or something. You can take that. I can ask for a first aid kit or something…”

There’s a silence.

Then: “Mark, thanks for not leaving me with that guy.”

Mark’s head comes up. “What? I wouldn’t… do that to you.”

“No, I’m not saying you would. I just… that guy said he was going to kill you. You didn’t have to help. Anyone would have run.”

“Well, I didn’t. Not my style.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“We… should box this stuff up and get moving. We have a long drive still.”

“Sure.”

The car smells like breakfast for the next 300 miles. The sun rises in warm beams from beyond the mountains, illuminating the curves of the country side in impossibly beautiful swathes. Mark snaps a picture one-handed with the Polaroid. He doesn’t stop the car though.

 Fin.