This is another entry from the Vines short fiction contest...came in second this time. It's a bit of a flash fiction, written in one draft and completely unedited, stemming from a picture of the Thames. I'm not usually one for happy endings, but in this case, it feels right.
It was only through meeting Marietta that Jacques learned the meaning of intimacy. He had been different from the rest for most of his life, since the latent power he held had manifested itself, allowing him to pick up and understand every stray thought, every seething emotion, in those around him.
That understanding made him hold back from normal human commerce, and made him hard and old before his time.
But late one night, sitting on his customary bench overlooking the Thames, considering ways and means of ending his days so that the nightmare would end, a small bright mind peeped into his.
"Don't go," he heard in his mind's ear. "It would be a mistake."
Not quite sure he had "heard" right, Jacques nevertheless replied. "Why a mistake? I understand all too intimately the avarice and loathing of the human race. The ill feelings have been burned into me, over and over, and I can take no more. Few and far between are those that mean well, and I am weary of the thoughts that are of me, and are directed at me. Am I such a freak? Must I eternally be kept apart from the rest of my species?
"Why is it my lot to remain alone, ever friendless, yet familiar in the extreme?
"The pain of living is unbearable. I CAN TAKE NO MORE!"
Jacques rose, and made to plunge into the icy waters.
"STOP!" came the voice in his head, with such force that he did indeed halt. "You are no longer alone. I am here with you. I am the same as you. Don't leave me behind. I would be so alone..."
The impression came to him of a mind, so bright, so shiningly forgiving, a heart so full of love that the daily uglinesses of life were forgiven, and taken in stride, and forgotten.
He sat on the bench again. "All right. I will not reconcile myself to the water just yet. I will bide awhile. Make your case..."
The voice in his head told him of a life lived much as his, with the thoughts of people echoing through the corridors of a mind unbidden, that mind so crowded with the thoughts and fears and dreams of others that it hardly was able to assume its own identity, and the long years of learning how to control the access until the personality formed.
Long years spent searching for one such as Jacques, who could understand the singular burden, the joys and nightmares, of access to the hidden paths of the population. One who could help to ease the burden.
The voice spoke now not in words, but in impressions, images jostling with images, as an entire life was transmitted to him, and he returned in kind. Lost in the reveries, he did not register the closeness of another being until that being kissed him softly on the lips, and then leaned her forehead against his, the proximity exponentially increasing the connection.
"We," said Marietta aloud, "shall be the greatest love the world has ever known. And the world shall never know."
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