(Inspired by The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, "Soul Mate" by Lee Sutton, and "Two Heads Are Better Than One" by Spider Robinson)
I was born with a curse, but it wasn't until I hit puberty that it kicked in. Doctors have told me that it's almost certainly genetic, and is probably similar to epilepsy. But they can't tell me more without examining the "attacks" I have, and if they're unlucky enough to be near me when I have one, they never want to see me again.
When I have an attack, all of the psychic boundaries between me and other people break down. That is, I experience their psyche as intimately as they do. I know everything they do, feel everything they feel. I know their darkest secrets and their most disturbing fantasies. And they know mine. Suffice to say that it is infinitely worse than the dream where you're naked in public.
Also, when it happens in a crowd, it's absolutely horrific. I experience each person's psyche from the inside, and they experience mine ... as I experience everyone else's. In other words, there are suddenly dozens of other people in your head with you. You'd be surprised how many people have sexual fantasies involving torture, mutilation, and murder. Fortunately, there are warning signs for a couple of hours before I have an attack, kind of like before migraines (yes, I get those too), so I haven't had an attack in a crowd since I first started having them.
And again, I first started having them when I hit puberty, the very worst time to have your thoughts and feelings broadcast to your peers. Once everyone in school knows "what evil lurks" in your heart you can't really go back the next day.
As you could have guessed, it was impossible for me to have personal relationships. My parents kicked me out and told me never to come back once they discovered what a jumble of horrors they had raised. I've had several nervous breakdowns. Pretty soon I realized that if I stay in rural areas I can more easily get to isolated places when I feel an attack coming on. I've gotten better at it, but "getting better" entails trial and error. That can be hard when each error is a little glimpse of hell.
Eventually I was able to settle into a pattern. I managed to save enough money to buy some isolated land that no one in their right mind would ever want, put barbed-wire fences all around it, and built a little shed in the middle. When I feel an attack coming on, I drive out there. As long as no one comes inside the fence while I'm having an attack, then I don't experience anyone else's psyche. I just experience a kind of draining, as if my mind were melting away. It's actually very unpleasant, but compared to what happens when other people are nearby, it's nothing. This works out pretty well. I have attacks every couple of months or so, they only last for a few minutes, and my "range" appears to be about 500 meters; that is, if no one is within half a click of me, they're safe. And before you ask, it only works with people, not animals.
Once I was able to get into a more normal style of life, I started getting to know people the old-fashioned way. I earned enough money to get by, and started taking night classes to finish high school. Once I had that done, I started working towards a college degree. That's where I met Moira.
She wasn't beautiful, but she was almost pretty. That sounds bad: what I mean is that if you just saw a picture of her, you wouldn't think she was attractive; but when you actually saw her walking around, talking, doing things, there was something about her that was very appealing.
I had a class with her in one of those big stadium-size lecture halls. I noticed her on the first day because she came in late. The next class session, I sat in the spot next to where she had sat in the first class, and fortunately my scheme worked: she came in late again and sat in the same seat. During the second half of the class, she nodded off for a bit, then startled herself awake. She looked around, then at me, so I said, "You didn't miss anything." She smiled, and after class we walked out together, talking.
After that we started hanging out together -- not really dating at first, but just spending time at various places on campus. Eventually, though, I told her I wanted to buy her dinner. My heart was beating very hard when I asked her this (and still was several minutes later), even though it was pretty obvious she would say yes.
I fell in love with her fairly quickly, but I always had the nagging idea that if I had an attack near her, I would discover things about her that would horrify and disgust me, not to mention what she would discover about me. This really isn't in doubt, because everyone has things in their mind like that. Getting to know people by talking to them only allows you to know what they want you to know; to think about them the way they want you to think about them. They're filtering out what they don't want you to know, and trying to make you have a certain opinion about them. My curse has made me very cynical about human nature.
But with Moira it was different. She was very open, not ashamed or embarrassed about herself. Her personality just made it impossible for me to believe that she had a dark side that she was trying to hide. Well, not impossible, but difficult. After a few months, I was in a quandary: I wanted to know her more and more, yet I didn't want to because I knew what I'd find. And with all of this came the knowledge that the longer we were together, the harder it would be to avoid her when I have my attacks.
So I decided to break up with her. I took her to a restaurant where we'd never been to before so she wouldn't have bad associations with the places we went to more regularly. Although I did allow for it to be a Mexican restaurant, since both Moira and I love Mexican food. I think everyone loves Mexican food.
While we were eating dinner she suddenly put down her utensils and looked at me. I thought maybe she could tell that something was up because I was acting funny or something, but when I asked her what was the matter she surprised me by saying, "I have to tell you something about myself." I very cleverly responded, "Uh, OK, go ahead."
She paused for a while, and I could tell she really didn't want to tell me. Then she said, "I have a curse, and I can't keep going out with you unless you know about it and are willing to accept it."
I'm pretty sure that my mouth fell open after she said this. My first thought was that she had the same curse I have, but immediately discounted it as absurd. She probably means something much more normal, like she wasn't able to have children or something. So I said, also very cleverly, "Could you explain exactly what you mean by 'curse'?"
She sighed and looked back at her food for a few minutes. I waited patiently, since it was obviously very difficult for her. Then suddenly she raised her head, looked right into my eyes and said, "I time travel."
I blinked a few times while I tried to figure this out. Then I said, "You time travel? You mean in the science-fiction sense?"
"Yes."
I thought about it for a moment, then I asked, "Why is that a curse?"
"Because," she said, "because." And she started to cry.
Then she explained to me that she had no control over it. When she was in a particular place with someone she cared about (and it only worked with people she cared about, for whatever reason), she would somehow travel to that person's death. The particular place was different for each person: it was, or would be, the place where that person would die. So somehow, being with a loved one in the place where that person would eventually die, would send her years, decades -- or sometimes only days or minutes -- into the future to see that loved one die. She had seen the death of nearly everyone she had ever cared about. One time, she told me, she arrived and her sudden appearance actually caused her loved one (an uncle) to have the heart attack that killed him. The worst was when, as a teenager, she was talking with her mother in the kitchen, when she suddenly "skipped" ahead in time. But everything was exactly the same, except for the fact that she was a few feet closer to her mother, who was looking at her, surprised. Then she heard her own voice behind her say, "Oh God, no, not again." She turned and saw herself, wearing the exact same clothes she was wearing, except with tears on her face. Then, as she slowly realized what was about to happen, she turned back to her mother, her mouth opening in horror, to see her suddenly gasp, grab her head, and collapse on the floor. The two of them ran to her, crying, and tried to perform CPR, but her mother had died of a brain embolism. And then, before she could even call her father downstairs, she suddenly disappeared, and found herself standing in the kitchen, looking at her mother, alive as ever. Then suddenly, another "her" appeared a few feet in front of her. Moira said, "Oh God, no, not again," and then you already know what happened. She had to experience her mother's death twice.
I was a little skeptical about this, but not as much as some people would be. For one thing, I knew Moira, and she was obviously not making this up; she really believed this happened to her. For another, my curse has made me a little more willing to accept that other people have bizarre problems that I can't imagine. But of course, it made me immensely curious. I asked her, "So I assume that you're not able to warn that person about their death when you return to the present, right?"
She looked sharply at me, thinking I was making fun of her. "I can prove this, you know. I have several sworn statements at home from people that have seen me suddenly pop out of existence. Or you can ask my family; nearly all of them have seen me do it. And I've seen plenty of doctors about it, and I've had brain scans which determined that I have several severe abnormalities, but nothing they can do anything about. I'm actually the subject of a study back home, with several doctors trying to figure it out. But I've asked them to keep it quiet until they find a cure." (until? Even with a curse, she was optimistic) "I have most of my medical records at home too you can look at."
"It sounds like you have an awful lot of verification of this at home."
"That's because I find myself having to prove it on occasion, and even then nobody ever believes me." Pause. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"No, I believe you."
She looked shocked. "What? How could you? Nobody's ever believed me when I just told them."
And with that, I realized that I'd opened myself up. In order to explain why I was able to believe that she had a curse, I'd have to tell her about my curse. I remembered that I had originally planned to break up with her tonight, but now that seemed far away. She had a curse too, and when she realized we were getting close, she didn't run away like I was planning to. She told me about it.
So I told her. I won't go into it again, since I've already explained it. But then I said -- this was part of her affect on me, I was completely honest -- that I had been thinking that we should break up because if we experienced each other's psyches it would shatter what we have. She dismissed this immediately as ridiculous, and I realized it was. But then I asked, "What do we do about it then?"
She responded, "Well, I don't know off the top of my head, but we'll figure something out." And I knew that I loved her and that I was going to marry her.
Our wedding took place ten months later. I sent an invitation to my parents, along with a letter, but they didn't respond. For all I know they had moved away. Moira's family was slightly kinder, but not by much. They lived in a fairly big city, and couldn't understand why we couldn't get married there and move back there. We didn't tell them about my curse, and Moira took full responsibility for wanting to stay in the small town where we lived, but it was pretty obvious that they blamed me for it. I was terrified that I would feel an attack coming on the morning of the wedding, but I was fine. It wasn't until after the wedding that I saw one coming, and left the reception by myself to head out to my shed, leaving Moira to explain why her new husband had to leave for several hours.
Because of Moira's curse, she had to fly back to her family's city every two or three months to see the doctors working on her case. We had been married for eight months when she came home and told me that the "severe abnormalities" in her brain had moved beyond the curse, and had begun spawning tumors. She was going to have to go back in one month for exploratory surgery.
This terrified me, but she was my strength through it all. She knew the doctors and trusted them. I guess what scared me the most was that if something went wrong, I wouldn't be able to come see her. If she died, I wouldn't be able to be with her.
But she came through it all right. They'd been able to remove a few of the tumors, but many of them were in places where it was just too dangerous to cut them out. While she recovered in the hospital, we talked on the phone every day. It was hard for me to be apart from her. We had only known each other for a couple of years, and when she wasn't with me I felt like I couldn't breathe.
Before she left the hospital, they did another brain scan and discovered several new tumors that hadn't been there before. She was healthy enough to leave, but whatever was happening to her was spreading. She came home, but had to go back in two weeks for another brain scan. All the tumors were growing, and there were a few more new ones since her last scan.
Over the next year, we spent more time apart than together. She had to go back and forth to the hospital in the city for various tests, treatments, and occasional stays of one or two weeks. The doctors finally told her that the travel was making her condition worse, and that she had to stay nearby. Then she asked them, "And if I do, will I get better? Or will I just live a few days longer?" They hemmed and hawed, but finally admitted that there really wasn't anything they could do for her condition -- they still had no idea what was causing it, or even what it was.
So she made a command decision: "I would rather die at home with my husband." When she told me that she had chosen me I just broke down and cried. No one had ever cared about me before, not that I could remember. And yet I only had a little time with her. They guessed that she had between one and four months left.
She surprised them -- not to mention me and herself. It wasn't until seven months later that she was no longer able to get out of bed. We talked together, quietly, and she told me she knew this was the final stretch. I just couldn't imagine living without her, my life was just a house of horrors without her, but she wouldn't let me get depressed. "No matter what happens, we've had the time together that we've had. Nothing can take that away, nothing can change it."
"I can appreciate that when you're here with me, telling it to me. But what do I do when I don't have you and I can't bring it to mind?"
"You can if you try."
I had no response to that. But then she said something that terrified me. "I want to see your shed."
"What? No! I go there all the time, what if I eventually die there? You could travel to my death! I don't want you to have to go through that. Why in the world would you want to go there?"
"Because it's a part of who you are, and I want to know you completely. It's a place that you know intimately, but that I've never seen. I've always felt that it's a barrier preventing me from knowing you, and I want to know you."
"No you don't. How can you say that? That's where I go so that I don't have to know people completely. Knowing someone completely is a hell that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy."
She shook her head, and then took my hand. "Please," she said. "I want to understand you more, and that place is something that's always stood in the way. Please."
I couldn't deny her. Later that day, I carried her out to our car and drove out to the property. The shed is very small, one room, with a bed, a chair and a desk (which I almost never use), a few books, and some dried foods. I parked the car, carried her inside, and put her on the bed. She looked around and smiled. "What are those books?"
I looked over at them. "Oh, nothing. Just some novels in case I forget to bring anything with me when I come out here."
She nodded and continued looking around. It didn't take too long for her to see everything there was to see. Finally, she looked at me and smiled. "Thank you. You don't know what this means to me. To be able to see this place where you've spent so much time."
I nodded and smiled at her. "Well, the time I've spent here hasn't been pleasant, you know."
She laughed. "I know. But I wanted ..." She stopped talking and her eyes opened wide.
"What? What is it?"
She looked over at me, her face contorting, like she was about to cry.
Then she disappeared.
I sat there, staring at the bed, the pillow still indented by where her head had been moments before. She had traveled to my death. And if I die here, in the shed ... then it probably means that I'll be having an attack when it happens. She would experience the depth of my psyche, the horrors that make me up. And I would experience hers, and have all my love for her boil away as I see the terrible depths of her soul.
Basically, it was the worst thing that could ever happen.
I continued sitting in the same position, staring at the bed, for at least an hour and a half, though it felt like days. Suddenly, without any warning, she was laying on the bed again, in the same position, her eyes wide open, but looking exhausted and drained.
I spoke to her, but she didn't respond. She was in shock. I carried her out to the car and drove home. She didn't say anything for three days. I couldn't believe it. Undoubtedly, she now hated me, having learned what a horrible person I am, but she only stared straight ahead, allowing me to spoon food into her mouth on occasion.
On the morning of the fourth day, I woke up to find her already awake and looking at me. "Are you OK?" I asked.
She continued looking at me for a few seconds, and then gently nodded her head.
My voice quavering, I said, "Can you speak?"
Another pause. Then, "Yes."
I was afraid to ask her the next question: Do you still love me? But before I could she said something that seemed a complete non sequitur. "I want to go to church."
"Church?" We had never gone to church. I think her parents took her there when she was young, but it didn't take. One thing we discovered fairly quickly about each other: when you have a curse, you simultaneously disbelieve in God and hate him.
But if I couldn't deny her before, I certainly couldn't do it now. "Yes, of course. This is Friday, so we can go in two days. Or do you need to go now? To talk to someone?"
She smiled. "No. Two days is fine. I want to start going to church." The look on my face must have been easy to read, because she said, "I know I'll only be able to go a few times. But I want to."
I nodded, but before I could say anything else, she put her hand on my face. "My true love. You'll be OK. Trust me on that."
Of course I broke down again.
Church was unimpressive. There was no flash, boom, no voice from heaven. The sermon was boring, at least the parts that I listened to, and it certainly didn't "convert" me. But Moira just drank it all in, like someone coming home after a long time away. We went the next week, too, to much the same effect.
It was the following Wednesday when I felt an attack coming on. I was overdue for one, but I didn't want to leave Moira alone, especially when she obviously didn't have much time left. I walked into our bedroom, and told her, "I'm sorry, but I have to leave for a few hours. I going to have an attack pretty soon."
She was barely able to move her head to look at me. Then she said the last thing I expected. "Take me with you."
"What?"
"Take me with you."
"Moira, no! Not again! I don't want you to have to go through that again!"
"I need you to take me with you."
"Please, please, don't ask me to do that."
"I'm not asking, I'm demanding."
It was almost funny hearing her say that, since she was too weak to move. But, of course, I gave in. I've always been a weak person, but at least with her, it was safe to be weak.
When we arrived, I put her on the bed again, then sat in the chair. But then she said, "Lay next to me here." It was a small bed, but I moved her over and lay on my side, looking into her face, stroking her hair.
"Moira, I don't want you to have to go through this."
"I don't want you to have to go through this either, but it's not something we can avoid."
"Well, we might have been able to avoid it, if we had tried harder."
"No, you don't understand. I don't want you to have to experience me dying. But you are, and that's why we're here."
"You mean ... right now? You're dying now?" She slowly nodded her head. I held her to me and just wept like a baby. This was the only person who cared for me and I was losing her. But even that thought showed me how selfish I was: she was dying, and I was concerned about how it would affect me.
She turned her head to look at me and smiled. "Don't worry. It's beautiful."
Before I could ask her what she meant, my attack began, springing into full force. I was with her in her own mind, and she was with me in mine. I saw all of the horrors about her that every person has, the things that make them horrors themselves, and she saw mine. But, somehow, those things didn't seem to define her. She was who I always thought she was, infinitely deeper of course, but still the same person. And she saw who I am, and loved me the same.
Do you understand what we were given? We long to be with our loved ones when they die, to comfort them and hold them. But all we can ever hold is their bodies. We can never hold them in the innermost part of their being. But my curse allowed me to truly be with her, to really hold her, as she died. We were given something everyone who has ever loved has wanted.
But that's not all. When someone dies, you can be with them, but then, of course, they can't be with you when you die. But her curse allowed her to travel ahead to be with me when I die, and for me to be with her when she died. And since I'll be having an attack when I die, she'll be with me in the innermost part of my being when I die, just as I was with her when she died. I know this because as we lay there, I could see in her mind, her experience of a few weeks prior, of traveling to my death and being with me. And from that, I could see my experience of her death, as I was experiencing it. I could have followed it infinitely, like looking into the mirrors on opposite walls of a barbershop, but it seemed unimportant at the moment. We held each other so intimately, it's almost profane to even mention it.
And then slowly, slowly, she turned and entered into eternity. I was suddenly alone on the bed with my wife's dead body next to me. The attack was over after a few minutes, but I didn't want to leave. I just held her body in the same position, but knowing that it wasn't really her. Wanting that closeness that we had experienced to go on. I was too exhausted to cry. Eventually, I carried her body back to the car and drove to the hospital. We buried her a few days later.
I almost stopped writing there. But there was something about her experience that I didn't mention, something even more intimate, more sacred than what I've described so far. It is this: when I had the attack, and experienced her very psyche as intimately as she experienced it herself -- she wasn't alone. It wasn't just her and me: there was a Third.
The Third held the both of us, encompassed us, intertwined himself with us, while we held each other. He knew the depths of our depravity just as surely as we knew each other's, but he loved us with an undying love. Looking into her experience of my death, I saw that she had the same experience when I died. That was how she first experienced the Third. Which is kind of strange, since I first experienced the Third when she died.
She entered heaven, and for a moment, I experienced the unlimited joy and peace with her. The direct line was open. But then she smiled at me one last time, turned away, and she was taken from my awareness. But for a moment, just a moment, her body was still alive and I was aware that the Third was still there. And then he died in her place. He died for her, so that she wouldn't have to experience death. He will do the same for me when I die. And he will do the same for anyone else who asks him.
I'm only in my 20s and I'm already a widower. I know that I'll live into my 80s and that I'll never marry again, because I saw this as part of her experience of my death. So I have a long wait ahead of me, a wait that I wish I didn't have. But now I know that I won't have to go through it alone. I know the Third is with me, knowing me as intimately as I know myself, seeing every horrific thing about me, and yet His love for me is not diminished in the slightest. I'm not usually aware of Him, but when I have my attacks, there he is, never having left, holding me, protecting me.
I have been given the greatest gift of all.