Her mother knew what she could do. The first time she showed her abilities she was six years of age. It all happened one rainy day in Chicago, Illinois.
Ellisa watched the bum picking up cigarettes from the street, his tatty clothes hugging xylophone ribs.
Once or twice in a generation someone is born who can effect the world in this way. Someone with empathy at such levels that it inverts into a kind of energy emanating out into the world.
He fumbled those cigarette butts into his pocket and looked up to meet her eyes. Tears shone along the lids of crinkle cut eyes. Tears shone in her eyes, too young to understand the random cruelty of the world, or have that understanding settle into her soul like tar.
There were too many compromises to be made. He even had to change his name and hated that. After getting out of the slammer he'd found out that scumbag had been taking out credit cards in his name, loans out on the legitimate concerns and washing houses. Finally that stupid fuck had gone all in with the triads leaving the organisation exposed. His name was mud, he had lost the power of anonymity.
The streets ran like a river with the morning's torrential downpour. These Chicago streets were his. He walked like a hyena, looking for any weakness, looking for a mark.
He raged silently as he walked! His name, stolen and destroyed. Ten years of fighting, clawing his way up from the filth of the piss-stained gutters... all gone.
A wind blew up from nowhere as he squinted through the downpour. In front of him on the sidewalk stood a girl, eyes locked with those of a bum. The degenerate's fingers clutched something as he shivered in the rain just staring at her, tears flowing in a quiet cascade.
What the fuck was this weakness? He grabbed the woman by the throat.
"Give me your bag." The girls tear rimmed eyes turned to look at him as he forced her mother against the wall.
These people are going to pay for every bit of shit I've had to deal with the last month.
A hot tide started to rise in his mind as bile hit the back of his throat. Time for some violence.
Suddenly everything stalled. Time lost its grip on the world and the heat subsided as he stared at the reflection of himself in the girls pupils.
The scent of tangerines wafted up his nose from the woman's perfume, a memory took hold of him, possessed him and grew inside like cancer.
A beach. The sound of waves. His mother shouting at him to stop as he smashed the jellyfish with a piece of driftwood he'd found in the surf.
The memory drained away as he stared down at the rain water running into the sewer grate. He looked at his thin hands covered in veins. He opened up his fist to look at what he held there, five lone cigarette butts and a few dimes. He retched as he felt a need rise up in him that he didn't recognize, thoughts flashed through his mind of a baggy of brown powder and the thick treacle smell of heroine.
He looked up from those hands and saw himself crossing the road, fists clenched. On the sidewalk a girl cradled her sobbing mother who stared vacantly at nothing in particular.
His own fists rained blows down on him as he shivered in the dirt and shat himself.
The End
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