The Empath
SHORT FICTION
by Raquel S. Benedict
The stranger’s suffering called to her across a great stretch of wood and thicket. Its distance, its faintness should have made it easy to ignore, but instead it nagged at her like a scab one is advised not to pick.
The empath thought—then hoped, long after she could expect to be right—that it was residual despair from the grocery delivery worker the day before. They were never happy, not even when she tipped, not even when she complimented them and thanked them, not even when they smiled and told her to have a nice day. The empath always felt their aching feet and weary resentment underneath.
And so early one morning, she dressed, put on her backpack, and took to the forest. She walked for hours, following the scent trail of the stranger’s ever-mounting pain, until at last she came to a small clearing not far from a creek.
There she found a tent, and a bag of food dangling from a tree, and a set of clothing hanging out to dry on a branch, and a little fire pit with a pot of water simmering over it. The stranger squatted nearby with his back to her, weaving together what looked to be the beginning of a wood hut.
When the stranger turned to look at the empath, the whole of his suffering hit her. There was grief, and anger, and failure gnarled together, but beneath all that was an endless moaning chasm which had no name.
The empath struggled to speak. Though she fought hard to control herself, a little bit of the stranger’s pain sneaked into her voice and made it waver and warble. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’s public land,” said the stranger. His pitch was low and much more even than hers; how unfair of him to sound so calm when he caused her such turmoil!
He wanted her gone, and that made her want him gone even more. She took a deep breath and counted to ten to save herself from saying anything careless. “You’re not supposed to live here.”
How unfair of him to sound so calm when he caused her such turmoil!
The stranger shrugged. He turned away from her again and went back to work building the hut. Now he resented her. The empath knew that sense of resentment would follow her all the way home, if she let it linger.
The empath reached into her bag. Taking a few steps closer to the stranger, she drew out a pill bottle and shook it like a maraca. “Do you want any Valium? It’ll make you feel better.”
He didn’t turn to look at her. “No thanks.”
“I’m offering it to you.”
“Not interested.”
His irritation jolted her back teeth as if she were chewing on aluminum foil.
“I could call the police, you know,” she said.
The stranger did not react. Could he sense lies, the way she could? She didn’t think so; her threat barely registered emotionally. Anyway, she would not call the police. It only made things worse. It stirred overwhelming agony and fury in the detainee—pinched wrists, twisted shoulders, a face mashed into pavement, burning eyes and throats from pepper spray. And then there was the fearful contempt for the world that simmered in every police officer, standard issue with the badge and the gun. The last time she relied on the law, it left her sobbing for days.
“What are you going to do when it gets cold?” asked the empath. She felt his determination to stay. Soon, the two of them would shiver miserably through the winter. She would stumble about her empty house with the stranger’s frostbite in her feet until he died.
The stranger did not answer.
The empath reached for her gun. It was at the bottom of her bag, beneath the rejected pill bottle, a container of water, and a sandwich she’d been too agitated to eat, even though it was well past lunchtime and she’d been walking for hours. She wished she could bring a rifle to these things, but the sight of it always made others—and consequently her—painfully anxious. Anyway, she knew she could make the shot, even from this distance, even with her stomach aching from the stranger’s bile. She’d practiced at a range in town, learned to hit the target even with the other marksman’s marital bitterness and the instructor’s lecherous desires creeping up her neck.
The empath took aim at the back of the stranger’s head. He would not see it coming. There would be no fear. He would feel pain, yes, probably enough to make her faint, and perhaps a moment of shock and confusion, but it would pass with merciful haste. And then his suffering would end, and so would hers, and she could go home and eat her sandwich.
Raquel S. Benedict is the most dangerous woman in speculative fiction. Her fiction has appeared in The New Haven Review and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also has a podcast called Rite Gud.
Share:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I found your short story My English Name in the Dozois Anthology. I was riveted. In truth, I don’t recognize what part of me found such joy and wonder while reading it, as I consider myself heterosexual. Even so, I found myself getting – close to tears, yet also smiling- as I registered “unidentified specimen” Thomas’s feelings for Daniel. I finished it, and stared at the final page for a bit. Then, I combed through it, peering at the parts that stood out to me most. A true story of love, the timeless kind, tinged with horror. Rather than Daniel being terrified by what he saw, I found myself thinking… he is probably more terrified of the connection that he lost. No one understood Daniel more than Thomas.
Anyways, I want to bring that full circle. This short story was eerie, you have a terrifying gift with capturing emotions, discarding them in the next second, then drawing them back in close- like you have me, the reader, by the neck. Perhaps that does not seem apt, but it was my experience. Both with this, and My English Name. I look forward to reading more, and plan to sub to your patreon and twitter as soon as I find the energy for social media/funding content creators I enjoy.