Read Online Consequences by Elyse Draper - Free Book Online Page A

the smooth
river rocks at the base of the waterfall. I watch the tips of the
surrounding aspens sparkle, while their leaves sway and twist in
the breeze.
    Letting my heart rate match the patterns of
motion and sound, I start rocking back and forth; closing my eyes I
can almost feel the pressure of Ellie’s back resting against my
chest. Keeping my eyes closed, I wrap my arms around her, feeling
her warmth swaying with me. I know she is gone, at this moment far
away, probably touching others’ minds … I wonder if she dreams
about me.
    Michael is here this time, mumbling in the
background about Lilly. At first I am angry about the intrusion,
but when I open up my slumbering eyes, I realize he isn’t talking
to me. I was listening to his dreaming mind, while I was asleep.
This is a first; I guess not living under the same roof with
another human, for almost a year now, changed my ability to deflect
others’ thoughts. As a defense mechanism, when I was a little kid,
my mind naturally filtered most people’s thoughts from invading my
own. When James and I talked about the development of our talents,
he thought they were probably strongest when we were born. Then as
time went by, we learned to suppress them for the sake of sanity
and conformity. He told me he remembered his mother’s moods
changing, coinciding with his own. He learned quickly that he could
force emotions on those around him. The problem with his particular
‘talent’ was his strongest emotions tended to be negative ones,
especially when he was little. A tantrum from him would result in
his mother angrily breaking his arm. Then he figured out that he
could share the hurt she caused, and that was when he would make
her feel the pain she had inflicted. Later he discovered how to
control, and focus, his manipulation of others … but in turn, his
mind had to learn to not feel … and a sociopath was born, or so he
thought.
    Ellie is a different creature altogether;
instead of retreating from emotions, like me, or suppressing
emotions like James, she yearns to touch others so that she can
understand what they, and in turn, what she is feeling. Kind of
like: calmly forcing yourself through a maze, because it's the only
way to find the exit. Ellie is the strongest person I’ve ever met,
just for embracing her own vulnerability.
    The voices of loss, always here, start
yelling again from within my dream forest… “She left you, promises
broken, pain left behind; she is just like everyone else in your
life. A LIAR!” The voices are so much more pronounced now that I am
not enveloped in my typical obsession with Ellie. I can hear it
clearly; it isn't just one voice, but many voices speaking together
… a legion built within the loss, anger, and pain, coming from
trusting, and being let down. I can hear one voice above the others
… James.
    Focusing on his voice leads me to memories of
the night he was killed by V.
    Gothic, Colorado disappears and I find myself
standing in James’s penthouse apartment facing the wall of mirrors
in his bedroom; subsequently, an unknown sensation waves over me
from James: admiration and jealousy.
    “I almost think you look better in Armani
than I did. It would be a shame to let my wardrobe just collect
dust; even though you’re a loser, you’re better than nothing.”
James’s backhanded compliments were about as annoying as a fly
buzzing; at first they were like listening to fingernails down a
chalkboard, but with time and desensitization, I simply stopped
noticing.
    When another sensation drifted into the room,
emptiness and frigid hatred, I heard the sound of James’s voice
again, “What can we do for you, Sir?”
    V’s presence always brought about fear and
regret in James. Luckily for us, V’s ego kept him from
acknowledging James’s outpouring of emotions as a form of lie
detector. If V actually had cared to look closely at the
unintentional feelings that James forced into the air, all of our
withheld information