Thanks to Faith Adeline for reviewing

Empath’s Curse

Pain

God, why me? What did I do to deserve this? I dedicated my life to helping people with their problems and whoever it is that controls this world decided that they would take away everyone and everything I have ever cared about. If I stopped using this gift/curse, would they stop doing this? Is that what they wanted?

Fine, if that’s what they wanted, I would do it. I’ve realized that I can’t deal with too much of this anymore. It hurts too much. I just want to be normal; I don’t want to feel the emotional baggage of everyone around me.

“Anna?”

I jolted up from my bed. Ryan! What was he doing here? No, no, no, no, no; he couldn’t be here…not right now. I don’t want to do this. “Go away,” I cried. “Just leave me alone!” A glance at the door reassured me that it was locked; he couldn’t get in here. I clutched Sydney into my chest and the tears continued to fall. Why? Why did this happen? What, if anything, could be gained from this?

“Anna, please, I just want to talk to you,” Ryan answered, his voice soft, comforting. Part of me longed to reach out to him, to gain some sort of comfort from something other than a stuffed animal. Then again he was Caleb’s twin brother. Seeing him would just open up the old wounds, the ones that still hadn’t closed completely. This was not working at all; it was time that I did what I should have last year, move somewhere else, somewhere where I can make an attempt at forging a new life where people don’t know me or my situation.

“Anna, I’m not leaving until you let me in. We’re all worried about you. Please, just let me in.”

“God, please, just leave Ryan. I want to be alone right now. Is that too much to ask?” The words came out strained, almost as if I had been yelling all day. What would it take to get him to leave? I did not want to deal with him right now. I had enough emotion to deal with on my own and I did not need his as well. But as I looked at the door, trying with no success to sense him, I felt nothing. Had he left? Slowly I walked over to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open to see that Ryan was still standing on the other side. His slightly curly black hair was no longer perfectly groomed as it had been hit by the wind outside. Those usually warm brown eyes were tear-filled and seemed to be overflowing with worry. Even his suit showed signs of him leaving the service in a hurry.

I tried to slam the door shut but his foot was in the way and the door bounced off it and stayed open. I turned away from him and walked over to my bed, still clutching Sydney. Why was Ryan here? He didn’t need to be; I didn’t need him; I didn’t need anyone. I listened as he stepped into the room, closing the door and locking it. “You can’t keep locking yourself up like this, Anna. It isn’t healthy and you’re not helping yourself. We both know Caleb would want more than this for you.”

“How can you say that? This hasn’t been easy for me. Do you have any idea how I feel, how I’ve felt since…since Caleb…?” I sat down on my bed and pulled my legs up into my chest, unable to even say the words. They were true and I knew that but somehow I could not vocalize them.

“I know my brother. He would not want you to be wasting your life away like this, just because of him. It hurts, I realize this, really I do, but you can’t keep beating yourself up like this.” As he said that he walked closer to me, kneeling down on the floor to better look at me. He sighed. “Anna, Caleb’s gone and he’s not coming back. Please, just stop doing this.”

I shook my head and looked down in my lap, avoiding his piercing green eyes. “Stop doing what Ryan? Stop mourning, stop feeling, stop thinking? If you want me to stop with what I’m doing then that’s what you would be asking me to do…to stop living.”

He groaned. “You aren’t living and that’s my point. Locking yourself in your room and crying when you aren’t in class is not a way to live. You miss my brother; that much is completely obvious but this isn’t the way to honor his memory.”

I could feel tears falling again. This wasn’t something I had wanted to do or planned on doing, being around Ryan. I already thought of Caleb constantly and practically avoided the rest of the people I used to spend time with just because I couldn’t handle all the references to Caleb. Having his twin in the room made it feel as if I were suffocating and I wished I could run away from him and find somewhere to hide from the world.

I tried to move out of the chair and run, but found that my body wouldn’t obey. Slowly I looked up at Ryan once more, noticing that he hadn’t moved from his position on the floor. His large worried eyes met my gaze and I felt trapped there, unable to look away. “I…I can’t,” I whispered. “It hurts.” Looking away from him, I closed my eyes and began to sob into my knees.

“Please….please just go,” I said weakly. It was a painful cycle I put myself through, one I had been in for years. When I needed people the most and needed their support, I would push them away. Even despite it all I still wanted people to see me as strong…and that almost made me laugh hysterically. I couldn’t even see myself as strong anymore. It was all because of Caleb; he was the one that did this to me, left me wishing for the pain to stop. Oh how I wished I could end it all.

Suicide had sounded like a way to make my misery end but the more I thought about it, the less I felt I could pull it off. Some people cut themselves but I hated the sight of blood; even worse than the blood would be the sensation of the blade sliding across my flesh. Another option would be to blow my own brains out. That would be out of the question as I would need a gun. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger.

Drowning, well, my lungs would beg for air and I wouldn’t stay under. Overdosing on pills would fail as I have never been a person who could swallow a bunch of those things. I wouldn’t be able to plummet to my death either as I wouldn’t have the guts to jump from a great height. I love food so starvation would be out of the question. Hanging would involve finding something to use as a noose and then not think long enough to jump. Even then, I would have to hope that the fall broke my neck; otherwise I would slowly strangle myself to death.

Not exactly the greatest ways to die. No, death wasn’t the right path to follow; I had to stay, to fight, though I feared I no longer possessed the endurance needed to see this through to the end.

Then I felt arms wrapping around me and it was then I noticed that Ryan had moved from kneeling on the floor to sitting next to me on the bed. He moved my head so it rested on his shoulder as if signaling that I could use his shoulder to cry on

“Shh…it’s all right Anna,” he murmured. “You’re not alone.”