THE EMPATH

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES

"Hello, it's me, Nancy, I mean Alice's mother. Your mum said I could get you through this number so I will just leave a message and hope you will get it. Aaah, where do I begin? Well...Alice passed on earlier today," Nancy said. Her shaky voice sounded more confused than grief-stricken but one could tell that she was trying to be strong. "See, I told you she cared about you. You owe me one huge pizza and since I can't eat it, you will have to eat it exactly how I will tell you to," Alice said and we both laughed for a while. For a moment there, I had felt like it was just another typical day with my floating friend, but then it hit me. Alice was dead, which meant there was no hope that she would ever recover. I always knew that day would come, after all, there was no cure for her illness, I however still hoped that she would be around a little longer just in case a miracle d**g was discovered. "Come on men, you always knew this was coming. Of all people, I don't expect you to be sad," She said after noticing the bid forming in my eye. "No, it's not that I am sad about you being dead, I mean, can talk to you whenever I want, or rather whenever you want. It is just that I hoped that somehow you would wake up one day and things would go back to the way they were before you became..." I was gonna say something but then I realized it was not the best probable choice in that case. "A vegetable...You were going to say a vegetable," her face changed for a while and I thought she was going to blow over. I was trying to work up an apology but then she smiled. "It's okay, I was a vegetable," she added I felt like a load had just been lifted off my shoulder. I couldn't even begin to imagine what she would have decided to do to me seeing that she had been around as a spirit for quite some time then and she knew more than just a few tricks.

Being haunted by two ghosts was getting exhausted. They were always giving me their different opinions and that kind of made it hard to concentrate on my own crap. I was supposed to be asleep so that I would get to my task earlier that evening but the two kept waking me up with their "new insights" at a certain point, I even tried making salt circles around the bed to see if it could keep them away but of course, it didn't work. As it turned out, salt only worked with long-departed angry spirits, not the fresh ones whose bodies hadn't even been buried yet. It took me a while to embrace the fact that I was never going to sleep and I decided to leave the house for a while. I was hungry and my fridge was empty since I was never really around that much those days. I also missed Lily a lot and I thought that eating at her favorite place was going to make me feel better. Without her to drive me around, it was a thirty minutes walk and along the way, I had to act like I was on the phone so that I wouldn't look like an addict who had just crossed over to crazy people's world. Alice and Oscar were having an argument over what was more stupid, me walking for thirty minutes to a restaurant just because I missed a "stupid" girl, or me not just doing some shopping and getting back to the house which was easier and more economical according to Oscar. They were discussing me as if I was not right and at times it was hard for me to just keep quiet as they said really mean things about me or about each other.

I got to the diner a few minutes after one and it was already time for the special treat Tuesday. Lily loved the special treat Tuesday as it was the only day that she could eat her favorite meal and get a second serving for free. She would eat, and take some home. Being in there on such a day would never make me feel better, in fact, Alice was right, it made me feel infinite times worse. I was hungry though and eating there meant having some take-out for dinner so I decided to suck up. I sat at our favorite table and waited for the waitress. By then, she knew me all too well and she didn't have to come all the way to the table to take my order, just a wink, and she knew I was having the usual so she got to it. "This Lily girl must be very special to him," Alice said to Oscar pretending that I was not even around. "Yeah, you should hear him on the phone talking to her with a kitty soft voice. They even do the kissing over the phone crap and God, is it annoying," Oscar said. For a moment, I found myself wishing I was just another normal human with no special abilities. Listening to those two go on and on about how it was to be a spirit, gossiping about people passing by, and criticizing peoples eating habits among other crazy crap made me wanna grab the chicken knife on the table and cut my own head off my shoulders. It was hard to put up with them while they hated each other's meatless guts but now that they were getting along, it was actually impossible.

"Will you just stop it! I can't even hear myself think with all your crazy talk. So, what if you are in a better place? our lives should stop because you feel much better and you pity us for being stuck in this horrible hell hole?" I just couldn't help but shout myself crazy and these two young, seemingly rich couples from the table right next to mine thought I was telling them. They both turned toward me, said sorry, and promised to keep it down. As it turned out, the other people seating close to them had also had enough with their bragging and were thankful to me for "helping them out" this old lady with her grandkids even offered to pay for my lunch. If only they knew I was talking to a completely different couple that had just called all of them a bunch of mindless savages. Anyways, my two haunting friends shut up and I could finally eat in peace. I would have even naped a little on the table were it not for the rude interruption from angry and scared Eddy. "We need to talk to you for a moment," he had said. He then went on to seat right next to where Oscar was and I figured that was a bad idea, I could not tell him though. "Look, we are off the record. In fact, we are not here as cops. We are just three really scared guys who think you can help us," Eddy said and showed Bob to the seat right next to mine. The other guy had just taken up the seat next to Eddy and the table was then full. Oscar was starting to show some anger and Eddy felt the chill but I signaled to him and he cooled off.

"Well, now that you are here, it is an STS and the best you can do is order some food, otherwise we will just be idling about," I told Eddy while pointing towards a sign on the wall that was written in bold red letters, "NO IDLING".Of course, there were also other words at the bottom of the sign about a fine if anyone was found. The three ordered some of the most expensive specials and Bob even had the extra special donut which was tiny, sweet but impossibly pricey. The huge man really loved his suger. "Okay, how may I help you, officers," I sat upright ready to listen and I could tell that Eddy was getting ready to lie his a*s off. "Well, I know you remember me and Ross here from the station. First of all, I want you to know that we are both sorry for how we treated you that day. It is just that it is our duty to do whatever it takes to keep everyone safe and sometimes we kind of get lost in our jobs. Anyway, that's not what brought us here. You may have heard about the three officers who have died in the last week or so, those are our colleagues. We work with the task force that was put in charge of finding the killer who killed the three guys we were questioning about. We fear that he may have found out about us and now he is coming after us. You understand that if we are not safe as officers, the general public is not safe either, right? That is why we need you to tell us anything you think could help us find a trail as to who this killer is. Please, no matter how small, we will appreciate it," It was hard to keep a straight face throughout the mixture of well thought and planned lies.

"You mean three officers are dead? How come they just talked about the two, you know the overdose one and the other one who was found in the stadium earlier today? who is the third one?" I asked just to see the look on his face as he tried in vain to fake a thousand different types of emotions in pursuit of anger and grief. "Oscar, he was the most gentle officer I had ever worked with. The only reason they never talked about him was that, unlike the others, the killer did not stage his body. he was shot," he said finally finding anger but grief failed him. "Oh, I am so sorry for your loss. I already told you everything I know that day at the station. I never saw the killer or even heard him talk. However, from what you just said, I would take it that the killer is someone who knows all about the task force you just told me about. There is even a possibility that it is a cop. Maybe even one from your station, otherwise, how could they have known about a secret task force...that is, not unless you are not a secret task force," I saw his face light up for a while and he looked at his two friends as if he expected one of them to burst out into a confession. They both looked at him and I could tell they were suspicious of him as well. "Wow, I never looked at it that way. You know what, for a moment there I thought that we had come all this way for nothing but from what you just said, I think you may have as well turned us towards the right direction. We have been looking at this the wrong way all this time. You know what, your lunch is on me," he said and reached into his pocket to get some money. "Actually, that good lady over there already paid for it. You could help me tip the waitress though," I said and smiled a little.

"That son of a b***h! he was so totally lying with a straight face. He even faked grief for a moment while he was talking about me. Give me one reason why I should not just get into that car and freeze them to death," Oscar suggested and Alice backed him up. I couldn't engage in a conversation with the two at the moment so I just walked out of the diner and headed home. The two were quiet along the way, probably trying to work out what I was playing at and the moment of peace never went unappreciated. However, the moment we got into the house, the two burst out into countless questions that I could probably answer but I didn't want to. "Did you honestly just kill two people, opened up their guts, and staged them?" Alice asked and that was the only question that got to me. I didn't want her to think that I was a psychopath. In fact, I wished she would never know about me and the killings. "Please, don't take it the wrong way Ally, It was not like I enjoyed it or anything, it's just that I felt like a message needed to be sent..." I started to explain but she cut me short. "You even dipped a guy's legs in acid. That is so sick, I wish I was there to see it," she was impressed, she was actually impressed! that was a relief as I expected her to go all, that is not like you crap, just like Oscar and my guardian had done. Instead, she wished she were there and she even asked me to explain to her how I went all about it. It was hard not to show excitement as I narrated the story but luckily, I managed.

For the next few minutes, the two argued over my morals, and of course, at some point, I couldn't take it. I left them to argue in the seating while I went to my bedroom and turned on my computer. Just as I expected, Eddy and his 'clan' had gotten together in the warehouse to talk about what I had told them earlier. I was just glad I got to watch it from home and that made me feel like the two endless hours of hacking earlier that morning were worth it. I had needed to know more about the mysterious Ross who seemed to be much of a ghost than the two meatless bastards still arguing in the seating room. It was hard to find information, but it was impossible to find any info about Ross. In fact, I did not know that his name was Ross until Eddy mentioned it earlier. If I was to be his executioner, I needed to be sure that he deserved the death sentence. I could however not have done without info and so I came up with a plan. I had to make the three doubt each other, I also needed a plan to make that happen so I had left a clue on Tiger that would remind Eddy about me. I knew he was desperate to find answers and I had then figured he would come looking for me, and he did. That was when I planted my idea in his head knowing that he would doubt his friends and start investigating them. The next part of the plan was me following his routes so I could find out about Ross but by them coming to the diner together, the next part of the plan kind of worked itself out. I had just found the one thing I had been looking for and from the comfort of my house. All I needed was popcorn, beer, and my eyes to watch as old friends become new enemies.