When Vic was younger he would walk past folks who had got beaten up and left for dead in the alley. He could always feel his stomach churn. They were dying, or were dead, and it left him feeling shitty for the rest of his long walk home from Perchester. He was not supposed to do anything to help them, nor did he ever really want to anyhow, but he could certainly feel them. He assumed everybody could, the same way you assume everybody has a voice in their head– until one day at recess you realize your friend Jack’s head is empty, and you leave him at the bubbler. Later, during English, when he asks why you left, your voice tells you to lie again, so you tell Jack you’ve no clue what he’s talking about. Jack, with no voice of his own to tell him you’re lying, accepts this and turns his head back towards Ms. Harris.
“Should I have stayed pals with Jack?” Vic reflected as he passed another unfortunate soul. Vic had actually been testing this theory of his for the past month, you see. He reckoned he could tell if the folks were dead or alive without even looking at them. Tuning into himself, into his body, he listened. His stomach dropped, and he could feel his heartbeat hasten through his temple. “Alive,” he knew, “barely”.
Vic had noticed, through his various trials, that when someone was in serious pain, his sensation of them would be much more excruciating than if they were dead. It was the absolute worst when Vic had passed that man and woman being kicked last week. Oh god– he shuddered at just the thought of it. Each kick had sent a razor-sharp pain into Vic’s eyes. He felt as if they’d explode. Then it had shot down his spine, each vertebrae forcibly pushing itself into the next in a sensation Vic only imagined was felt by those on fire. His fingers and toes had seized up and he could not separate them. It had been so unbearable that Vic hit the pavement.
As that man and woman continued to get kicked, Vic had his inner voice screaming for help (he was not supposed to shout in public, nor did he want to). With each kick the agony crescendoed, he’d sworn to himself that he could take no more, but it was relentless until–
His stomach dropped, his heart relaxed. Vic looked to his right. “Dead”, he knew. He dare not look though. The kicking stopped and Vic withheld eye contact from the kicker. He hurried home. “You’re not supposed to do anything to help them” his mother reiterated when he had explained what had happened. Vic sometimes forgot that his mother had known him when he was just a baby, found it hard to believe somehow.
Vic’s condition, as he had begun to call it, worsened. He was most displeased to find that even when he’d only just passed Galast’s grocer –a whole three blocks before the alley– he could not even breathe. His lungs would collapse and the air would force its way out, terribly straining his throat and sinus. All the other students on their way home from Perchester would take careful steps around him without ever looking. Even Jack ignored Vic’s writhing, although, this was fair; Vic hadn’t spoken to Jack in several years.
Vic latched onto Jacks leg and pressed his nails hard into Jack’s skin, and a yelp of pain pierced Vic’s mind. For a moment there was nothing– and then there was vomit. Jack and the other students were suddenly so far ahead of Vic. It was no use, he deduced. Jack could not feel Vic the same way Vic could feel Jack. He wiped the vomit off with his sleeve, seething with envy for their apathy. “Don’t you know, just three blocks from here, a man is dying!”, he yelled out as he crawled back onto his knees.
Each time he made his way home now, Vic desperately hoped the folks in the alley would be dead. He even waited thirty minutes after school had ended before going, catching up on some homework or staying after class to ask questions to Ms. Harris. This was smart of Vic, and it worked for a time. But soon the radius of Vic’s condition consumed the school. He’d have to run out the classroom and find a spot to have a migraine, vomit, and faint quietly, as to not receive detention. Vic did receive detention, and then expulsion. This hardly seemed fair.
He had not been to the alley in months, nor to school in weeks. He’d toughen out even the worst of days, when he could feel every man and woman of the city being beaten and stabbed. He’d occasionally be blessed with a peaceful moment, using it to refuel his increasingly wary soul. His mother thought he was dying. Vic knew that he wouldn’t, but he couldn’t stand the city anymore. It all got to be too much when Vic and his mother were invited to a dinner party at Jack’s house. Vic had refused, telling his mother he was more likely to vomit than eat these days anyhow. This is what he told her, but the truth was he didn’t want to see Jack.
Not a second after his mother had left though, Vic stuffed three pairs of underwear, as much money as he could find from the office, and a waterbottle into his backpack and snuck out the backdoor. He hobbled his way to the nearest trolley and passed out on the second row from the back. On and on Vic drove. As the city grew fainter in the distance Vic felt better than he had in months. Other than the occasional car accident the bus would passed that would made his throat burn, Vic had the most relaxing drive.
Vic had been living the most perfect life imaginable, going to door to door, farm to farm, switching families at a whim. He realized the absurdity of the fact that, up to this point, he had lived every single day with just his mother. Vic’s life now possessed some variety. Occasionally, one of his fathers or mothers would get hurt, perhaps fall off a ladder or cut themselves on a pair of shears. Usually he’d just leave and find a new family, though there was always a second option, saved for prolonged periods of pain like the time one of his fathers fell ill.
Vic continued this lifestyle for quite a while. If it hadn’t been for Jack – “ooh bloody Jack,” Vick thought – he could have lived the rest of his days this way. You see, one day years down the line, at the farmer’s market, Vic was searching for a new mother and father when he caught a horrid sight. Jack was wandering through the market, all alone, trying strawberries. Vic tried to duck out the way but it was too late. “Victor!” Jack yelled, chasing after him. Vic managed to outmanuever his foe, and the last thing he heard was “I won’t tell on you!” but that must’ve been a lie because later that day the police came down to one of Vic’s houses and escorted him back home, back to Perchester.
Why had Jack tattled?
Vic suspected this was because Jack had developed a voice in his head, a voice telling him he must lie to get his old friend back home, back with his mother. He felt proud of Jack, thinking that if his condition ever cured – which it wouldn’t – he wouldn’t mind being pals with Jack as an adult.
Vic passed out several times on the way back into the city. When his eyes adjusted to consciousness he noticed he was right back at the alley, the alley he’d always avoided all those years ago. For the first time he’d questioned why people always seemed to be getting beaten up and dying in the alley? Was it mob related?
Perhaps it was because Vic no longer looked like a child, but the police slammed him against a car. The mobsters (were they mobsters?) took him from the police and no sooner than the police car’s engine started had they begun beating him senslessley. It only seemed fair after all the times Vic had passed by this alley without helping, though Vic did not think this himself.
Vic tried to focus on the pain of being beaten to death, but he felt nothing. All he felt was a man being stabbed in an apartment four blocks over, a woman drowning in the river in downtown, an elderly person passing on in the hospital, and so much more– and all at once too. He wished he could feel his own death but his mind was a wreck.
He tried to focus on anything else.
Oh.
His mother had cut her finger. Vic sensed this, and honed in on it. He could feel everything, but his attention was on her. The cut worried Vic, as the household knives were always kept very sharp, and he knew his mother was in great pain. It hadn’t occurred to him that he wouldn’t see her again, that the next few minutes of his pummeling were his final few. He tried very hard to keep her pain the only object of his attention. He held on.
His mother must’ve washed the wound and bandaged it up because her pain relaxed, and so did Vic.
