Alice Henderson - Voracious

“I began to get completely absorbed with it. I didn’t have to fear death anymore and became obsessed with that fact. I even tried to kill myself in a few different ways, just to see if it would work. It never did. But I’ve longed to die a few times over these last centuries. I just didn’t want the responsibility anymore. I just couldn’t keep on hunting him fruitlessly, year after year.”

They sat together for several long moments.

“What is he?” Madeline asked at last.

Noah shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s either completely nonhuman, a creature all his own, or he’s a man like me-a man who was attacked by the same kind of creature, a long, long time ago.”

“Why long ago?”

“Because what you’ve seen me do-the claws, the eyes-has taken me two hundred years to develop. At first I couldn’t even do that. I’d try to grow claws, and instead freakish things would happen. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to undo them for a while. Like once I grew fingernails in my leg, and another time a finger sprouted out of my stomach. It was excruciating learning how to control the power, and I still know next to nothing. I think if I’d gotten a larger dose of his blood, I might have more power and be able to control it better, like him. He can shape-shift, adopt the features of other people, change his flesh to metal. If he was ever a man, he was so thousands of years ago.” He paused. “But there’s something else that makes me think he’s nonhuman.”

“What’s that?”

“He eats people. Has a terrible appetite for them. But I don’t feel anything like that. This change that’s happening-it isn’t bringing with it a desire to eat human flesh. And maybe that’s because I was human to begin with but he wasn’t.”

“Or maybe,” Madeline added, “it’s because that change hasn’t happened to you yet.”

“Don’t say that!” he snapped. “I’ll never be like him.”

She was taken aback. “I’m sorry,” she said after a pause. “I didn’t mean it like that… I know you never would have…” She thought of Noah cradling his love in his arms as she slipped away, and immediately regretted what she’d said.

“Whatever he was to begin with, creature or human, he was evil. I’m sure of that. And I’m not like that.”

“I didn’t think you were, Noah. I know you’re not. You saved me, remember?”

He closed his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so defensive. It’s just… I’ve asked myself that same question so many times. ‘Am I going to turn out like him?’ I have to tell myself no. And I have to keep believing it.”

Madeline looked at him intently. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for him… to be aging and not know how he’d turn out, if he’d become a beast, to lose someone so special and live hundreds of years without her. “I’m sorry for what you went through,” she said, and the words felt inconsequential in the face of such loss. But she could understand what it was like to be different, to be a social freak. And Noah was hiding it from her, just like she had hidden her own ability. But now he’d been honest with her. And maybe she should return the favor. “Noah,” she said, after they’d been quiet for a long time. “I lied before when I said I didn’t have any exceptional talents.”

He looked at her with surprise. “You did?”

She looked down. “Yes. It’s just that I came out here to get away from it… the negative attention, the imposed segregation. I just wanted to be normal.” She sighed, thinking about the traumatic experiences of the last two days. “It hasn’t been terribly successful.”

Noah arched his eyebrows with curiosity, watching her expectantly.

She was silent for a moment, thinking how best to tell him.

Finally he urged, “What exceptional talents do you have?”

“Well… give me your watch.”

“What?”

“Don’t say anything about it; just hand it to me.”

“Okay.” He began unbuckling it, and Madeline took in its physical characteristics. It was a digital watch with a green nylon band. He handed it to her, and she opened that door in her mind, letting the images flow. As each one came, she told Noah what she saw.

“You bought this watch in Missoula, Montana,” she told him. “It was a hot day, and you’d really wanted a watch with a built-in altimeter, but it was too expensive. After you bought this watch, you drank coffee in a little café called Cool Beans. Once you thought you’d lost the watch, but it turned out that you’d just left it in the net pocket inside your tent. The next time you pitched the tent, there it was.” She was quiet for a moment, still holding on to the watch. “Oh, and there’s something else… your grandfather…”

Noah’s face went white.

“That’s why you were so upset about losing the watch. You thought, ‘Can’t I have a watch without losing it?’ Your grandfather had given you a pocket watch, and you lost it. Just last year. You held on to it for two hundred years, and now it’s gone. And you resent yourself for it.” She paused. “It’s in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. You stopped to drink tea with an older woman, a relative, no, a descendent of your family. You left your pocket watch on her side table. She’s still got it. You just have to call her.”

Noah just stared at her. She handed the watch back. He didn’t put it back on, just held it with wonder as if it contained magic itself. Then he said, “Madeline, that’s amazing! How did you know all that?” He sat back and stared at her in astonishment.

“It’s a talent I’ve had for as long as I can remember. I get images, feelings, from anything I touch. I can tell who touched it last, what they were thinking about at the time, where they were, sometimes even where they were planning to go next.”

“It’s amazing!” Then with a thoughtful look, he added, “Up on the mountain, when I pulled you free of the driftwood, you murmured things about a house in Vienna. I thought it was strange at the time. But now I understand.” Then: “So my pocket watch is really in Scottsbluff?”

Madeline nodded, then had to laugh, a tired laugh. “It’s nice to have someone react positively to this. I’m not very… popular where I come from.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my parents noticed that I had this ‘gift’ when I was really little. My dad came home one night with a bottle of wine for my mom, telling her he’d had to work late. I was sitting at the kitchen table, and when he set the bottle down, I touched it. Instantly I got an image of him kissing this other woman. They’d bought the wine together but had a fight, so he came home. I was only six. I described it there on the spot. I didn’t know how it would tear my family apart. My mom was so hurt. It’s the first time I remember her crying. They got divorced shortly after that and took turns taking care of me. But I could tell both were spooked by me. They didn’t want me to touch their personal possessions. Some nights they’d fight about me, how they felt like they had no privacy around me. They hid my ability, told me never to reveal it to anyone. But it was a tough thing to hide. Back then I couldn’t control it well, couldn’t shut it off. Eventually word got around. I stopped getting invited places. People didn’t like the idea of me being in their houses, touching counters, fridge handles, whatever, and getting flashes of things that were personal.

“I had to teach myself to control it, to block out images when I didn’t want them. I didn’t want everyone’s life to be an open book. I didn’t want to know their sordid affairs or private longings. I hated it.

“But they never seemed to get that. I hate going into town, like when I need to go the grocery store. My town is so small that everyone knows who I am. They don’t want to touch me when they hand me change. Checkers will suddenly close lanes if they see me waiting.