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policy, making it a point to look but not touch. I wish I could say
the decision was because I didn’t want to disturb anything given
that the scene had apparently not yet been cleared. However, noble
as it sounded, that idea had become moot the moment I pushed open
the door. I had broken the seal, so if the police needed to return
in search of further evidence, I had already rendered anything they
might find inadmissible because I had contaminated the room,
thereby breaking the chain. I wasn’t really certain whether what I
had done was a misdemeanor or a felony, or even what penalty it
carried. But, I was definitely hoping I wouldn’t be finding out
anytime soon.
    To be painfully honest, the real reason I was
keeping my hands to myself was self-preservation because I feared
my inherent predisposition for uncontrolled psychometry. Simply
being in this room had already bombarded me with more than I was
sure I could handle, the most recent sensation being a case in
point. Actually touching something could put me into a spiral,
sending me through an ethereal event from which I might not
recover.
    It’s not like it hadn’t happened before. Over
the years I’d almost died more than once while channeling homicide
victims. I wasn’t too keen on it then, and I definitely wasn’t
interested in becoming one of Miranda’s fatalities by proxy
now.
    Squatting down, I brought myself to eye level
with the bed. I don’t know what I thought I was going to see from
that angle, but one never knows until he tries, so I did. I panned
my gaze across the tableau and tried to visualize what had gone on
here one short week ago. Having had what amounted to my own
firsthand experience, I expected it would be relatively easy to do.
What I didn’t expect, however, was the visualization coming upon me
with a vengeance.
     
    In front of me, there is a nude man tied to
the bed, a standard clothesline rope criss-crossing beneath the
metal frame and securing tightly to his wrists and ankles. An extra
loop of the rope is visible around his neck. The reason for it
becomes clear as I watch him struggling against the bonds. Each
time he pulls against them, the noose tightens and he begins to
choke. I can actually hear the distant echoes of him gagging,
muffled though they are, as his mouth is covered with a wide swath
of duct tape which is wound about his head and lower face.
    I watch as, with each desperate twist or
pull, the rope bites deeper into his throat, forcing him to cease
his fight. A look of suddenly realized terror is filling his eyes,
and between each bout of choking himself, he lets out a nasal
whine.
    I know that seeing this should disturb me,
but it doesn’t. Not in the way that it should.
    What actually does disturb me is that I feel
no compassion as I watch him. No empathy. But, even that isn’t the
worst of it. If I was feeling nothing at all, perhaps I could make
sense of my uncharacteristic disregard by attributing it to a
forced clinical detachment.
    But, unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
    I am feeling something.
    I am amused.
    Worse than that, the tickle has returned,
and I am becoming increasingly aroused by his plight.
     
    Though the immediate feelings I had
sensed upon entering the room had been a combination of both killer
and victim, my primary concern for my own safety had been in regard
to him. Not her . While I’d had
my brushes with channeling killers, they were always alive when I
had done so. Though I knew that this one, or at least part of her,
wasn’t, I hadn’t considered it as fully as I should have, and now
that changed everything.
    The dead were the ones who spoke loudest in
my head, and they were the ones who most often tried to pull me
deeper into their world in an effort to make me understand. I
suppose I couldn’t blame them for trying to get their points across
any way they could. Dead or not, everyone has a story to tell, and
it helps if someone will listen.
    But, this one didn’t just want