The Empath

Fusion is terrifying to the inexperienced and very dangerous to the empath, because fusion with another person, if done correctly, is the same as perfect, total, idealized spiritual love, the thing we all search for all our lives, knowing instinctively that it's not only the utter and absolute final cure to loneliness, but pretty much as close as we have as a purpose to life.

The danger is, of course, that it's possible to get so close to a person that you lose your own separate existence. And suddenly you can't love them anymore because you are them.

But this kind of bumping of auras happens not infrequently, and I'm a skilled empath and my control is pretty good, and as soon as I felt that shock of fusion beginning, I shut down all channels and jumped back as if I'd been burned. I backed off and settled down to regroup a short distance away.

Even so, that split-second of fusion was enough to tell me pretty much everything there was to know about this woman and give me a taste of what it was like being her. The sexual current was strong, very strong, and I don't mean just horniness and a need to get laid. I mean that there are some people who are driven by greed, some people who are driven by honor, or love, or fear, or ambition. She was driven by sex: all the complexities and ramifications, all the different manifestations of sexual energy into love, beauty, sociability, triumph, trust, they were all powered by libido.

I could feel them. I could feel what it was to be her. And sex ran through her like a 100,000 volt cable as thick as her arm. And she didn't even know it.

Her name was Devorah and yes, she was a little buzzed and a little high, but only to a comfortable degree, not impaired at all. She was here alone (as I surmised), fairly new to the city and without much of a social network, totally broke but with a good job and good prospects and plenty of reasons to be optimistic. And she knew it. It was this realization that had brought her out tonight, with nothing special in mind but to bask in her own joy.

And right there I knew I had to have her. I had to get into her and plumb her depths, follow those cables down to the source and finally experience that pure undiluted female sexual energy. Devorah was one in a million. I might never have this opportunity again

I snapped myself out of this mushiness because I was still coddling my hard spear of sexual desire, still fanning that carnal flame. I was searching for a way into her horniness, a vision or image I could hook into and exploit, but Devorah's desire was unnaturally clean and deep. There was certainly a physical need, but it was all tangled up with tendrils of deep poetic sensuality and moon logic and an ache to feel herself taken and used, enjoyed and shared: a very female sense of wanting to be surrounded from the inside and feel a lover's weight upon her, his arms around her, his own hunger and closeness. Devorah was truly tapped into this kind of archetypal earth-mother consciousness and sense of fertility, the hunger to love and be loved.

And yet all around her was this army of mopes and dopes and incipient erections circling like a pack of hyenas who, even in their chemically impaired state, were probably snorking up on her vibe without even knowing they were doing so or where it was coming from. It would only be a matter of time before one of them just bumped into her at random, and in her open and addled state, that would be it.

So that decided it. I had to act and act fast.

Up in the castle I just blew off my guests, climbed through the kitchen window and stood on the fire escape, ready to swoop down upon her like some spooky shadow of the darkness on fluttering out-spread bat-wings that only she would see, and I could have. I've certainly done that before, and used that kind of attack many times on women in various states of sexual heat, and always with success.

Or I could just have locked my eyes on her and sent her falsely crafted thoughts that she'd mistake for memories, memories that told her I was some long-lost high school heart-throb or former lover who, in fact, may or may not have ever even really existed. I could use one of her memories or just made some up like I made up the guy. Planting false memories and perceptions is one of my favorite technique. It lets me cloud your mind, control how you perceive me, so I might be a bat, a cloud of mist, a cop on a motorcycle or a glowing angel of the Lord. They're all just memories, perceptions, and emotion, my very stock in trade.

But I stopped now and considered, because this was no quick Saturday-night victim to be stood up against a wall in an alley to be boffed behind the trash cans by one of my stock avatars (Rich Lonelyguy and Ernest Sincerity, for example). This was not just another piece in my never-ending quest to try and shake my chronic feelings of alienation and existential boredom. No. This woman demanded a special type of connection, one that would ensure that I got the time I need to really explore her before I sat down to savor this rare female essence. This was something new. Unknown territory. An adventure!

See, those of you who've never tasted another person's emotional aura might think that it's just a matter of grabbing them and holding them as you suck them up, in the manner of some vile, cold-fingered vampire. There are a lot of predatory empaths who operate just like that and they give us others a very bad name.

That's not me. Not if I can help it. In any person, their emotional aura is terribly complex, as I've mentioned. The sexual component is always strong, whether it's repressed or tamped down or outright denied or whatever. It's always there like a snake under a pile of leaves, and pretty much running the show. But it's all tangled up with strands of self-image and worry and fear, shame and embarrassment, and a lot of romantic fantasy and cliché images. And then deeper down there's a darker, more protected stream of taboo fantasy and secret thoughts, thicker, richer, and more pungent. For us empathic epicures, that's the pearl in the oyster, rich yet subtle with a texture like no other. That's human sexual essence, where the rubber meets the road.

And in Devorah that dark stream is running pure and true: no additives, no adulterants, no apologies. And that's what I want.

My problem now is how to dive into that stream without making a splash that might alert her to what was going on and make her cover up. I'm already thinking about what it would be like to slip into that stream of want and swim down into those the lakes of pure, pristine love; feel that primal female thrill of being used and plundered, her legs thrown open, body ripe and swelling with heat, turning my lonely anguish into sweet, thick, sexual pleasure.

So yeah, I got careless. I let myself get carried away by my own fantasies, and the next thing I know I have the sensation of dark leaves or fabric brushing my face as if I'm walking through the woods at night, and too late I realize that this is the sensation of entering Devorah's mind, crossing the barrier between us. And that's how she discovered me, her attention walking in on me and flipping on the lights just as if she'd walked into a dark woods and flicked on a flashlight.

"What!?" she thought. "Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?"

Mind-to-mind like this you feel out the other person instantly, and immediately know their mood and motive and whether they mean you harm or not. And Devorah was more puzzled than frightened, and even a little amused. She knew what I was up to, and she wasn't surprised.

You might think her reaction odd, but people often discover me poking around in their minds, and they rarely get too upset, because it never occurs to them that I'm real. Their first thought is usually that I'm just some really weird idea they've had or that they're just momentarily crazy, or maybe even that I'm some sort of angel sent by God to reveal their secret purpose to them at long last.

And me, well, I'm elusive and transparent and can disappear in an instant, tossing a few distracting memories over my shoulder as I go, to make people think they've known about me all their life.

In any case, I made no attempt to deceive her or hide my intentions, in fact I did a full-open to her so she could get an idea of my fantastic story and know just what I wanted. And as I said, mind-to-mind rapport can be almost instantaneous, and faster than it takes to tell, she was treating me like an old friend. And just to seal the deal, I put the feeling of holding a plate of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies in her head. That image is a great natural tranquilizer.

"Well why don't you sit down?" she asked, and gestured to a well-worn and comfy-looking sofa in her thoughts. "I'm sorry about the mess," she said. "I've been under the weather."

"Yes, I know, and I'm sorry about that. But doing better now, aren't you?"

She nodded happily and flopped down on the sofa, the plate of cookies on her bare knees.

We were in a space in her mind, a living room with a decidedly ancient look, Victorian or '40's or so. It was crowded with furniture and boxes and clothes, and I realized it was Devorah's idea of how she lived now, a pastiche of girl-on-her-own movies and TV romances. Most people's minds are similar.

I sat down and declined a cookie. Now this was tricky. I was quite frankly going to seduce Devorah and have what we call an "exchange" with her, which is what we empaths call a combination of mental and physical sex far more intimate and personal than a normal human can even imagine. But an exchange is much more easily done from a small distance away, to reduce the possibility of fusion as I've explained.

There's also the whole issue of emotional geometry and erotic dimensionality, because you can't just mount a lover like a bobsled and ride her around the curves. If you want the full erotic experience, you have to come at each other from the right angles and elevation so as to stir up the desire and fantasies, and feel that sexual tension and the atmosphere, absorb the full amorous potential of your lover. Never make the mistake of thinking it's the act that contains the eroticism. It's the prologue, the journey up to it, passing through mysterious seas of dark desire. There are billows of stars here, and fields of flowers, all sorts of moaning and gnashing of teeth and wild unimaginable imagery relating to the infinite facets of eroticism and desire.

And it pains me to say that most empaths aren't concerned with this journey or these fine points as I myself am, but I was fully conscious that, despite the amity and agreeableness between Devorah and me, I was still in the position of being a burglar caught going through her private thoughts and secrets. It was hardly a good place from which to begin a seduction. I was going to have to do some deft emotional footwork.

Devorah looked at me and actually beamed. "I just don't believe this!" she said. "But you know, I think I've known about you people for a long time, haven't I? You're an empath, right?"

Not a shocking statement, some sensitive people suspect our existence.

"Yes I am," I confessed. "And a very chagrinned one at the moment, that I let myself be detected and am now seated next to you on this sofa."

"And you feed on my emotions?"

I sighed. Once again I would have to explain.

"Well, 'feed' is such an ugly word, so predatory. And it's not quite true. I exist on human food very well, and even make a passable chicken paprikash. But that's all it is: existing. To live, to really feel life, I need the spice of human emotion, served strong and sipped in very small portions, barely noticeable. So maybe we could say I don't really 'feed' on emotions but rather 'live upon' them?

"And not just any emotions," I went on. "Or at least not the ones people assume. Hate, rage, jealousy, sorrow— Some empaths will gobble that stuff up, and I'll eat it if there's nothing else around and I'm too lazy to go out. But my real joy are the more noble feelings--wonder, awe, love, gratitude, beauty... These have a particular clarity and depth of flavor like nothing you can imagine, unsullied by the negative emotions. "

"Then I'm afraid you're going to be very disappointed in me, Mr. Empath," she said. "I'm really just a simple girl and not very deep. I don't think I have any of that to offer you."

"Well I beg to differ, Devorah. You happen to be emitting an intense aura of female sexuality of incredible purity such as I've rarely if ever encountered before. I in fact noticed you from half a block away, rays of your aura cutting like a beacon through the brown noise of all those people out on the street."

"That can't be!" she exclaimed. "I'm not like that! What are you saying?"

"Be serious now, Devorah. Who do you think knows you better? Me or you?"

She had a beautiful mouth—a cherub's mouth—with lips that would swell under the pressure of a lover's kiss into a mouth of obscene beauty.

But I couldn't afford to concentrate on that now, because I could feel her casting her attention back into her memory in a sudden search for any dark secret that might have attracted me. But I knew full well her brief introspection wouldn't find anything exceptional, not like I could find. There are techniques to unraveling hidden desires and making sense of them, and separating the want from the fear.

By now the mind-haze that first clouds an imaginary place such as the one we were in began to dispel, and objects and details became clearer. Devorah's clothes started to appear, coming into focus as her own conception of what she was wearing took shape in her mind's eye. The blurry, undifferentiated white robe or smock she'd first appeared in now resolved into a pair of well-worn, very brief denim cut-offs and a yellow cotton tank top, tight enough to reveal the topography of her nipples and give a good indication of the ripe mass of her thrusting breasts.

Of course, the clothes someone imagines wearing as they meet you in a dream is very revealing of how they want to be seen, and this simple outfit, although surely her notion of casual lay-about clothes, also allowed her to feel quite clearly her body's full sexuality and erotic potential, as, of course, I did too.

"In any case, Devorah," I really didn't come here for any of the eternal verities. I came here to fuck you, my dear. I came here to do what men always do, which is to pull that stream of almost spiritual sexuality down into the mud and mire or deep, dirty, deviant sex..."

She looked confused. "But why?"

I locked onto her eyes and lowered my voice. "Because it's what...I...do."

Rather than try to explain, I conjured up a few images and sent them her way. Not really images, they were more like vignettes of feeling. They were feelings of trust, and security, of freedom and abandon, of sensual pleasure and sharing and the openness of honest connection. I sent her the image of satisfied completion I would bring her, and the knowledge that the whole experience would be hers alone. I sent her the elaborate vignette of a lover's kiss, tender yet growing wild and obscenely thrilling, filled with rabid hunger and animal desire.

This last image seized her and I could feel her clinging to it unwilling to let it go, and I could feel her losing her resistance and letting herself start to dissolve in that kiss, like slipping into a pool of warm water, soft and caressing. I could have maintained and even deepened that image and drawn her right to me and had my way with her. But that would have been cheap and philistine, an abuse of my talents.

Her own horniness had been simmering just behind her pre-frontal lobes for hours now, and the tableaus of feelings I'd sent her had their effect. She took my blunt words and carnal intentions with surprising equanimity. She was already envisioning us together.

"But you're only a thought," she said. "You're not a real person. I'm standing out in the street in front of this bar and you're a thought in my head. How can you possibly--?"

"Darling, everything is a thought when you get right down to it, isn't it? A thought, a sensation, an emotion, a sense of being someplace: that's our reality. Here—"

I leaned across the sofa and caressed her cheek. She dropped her eyes and my hand slid down her face, over her throat, and around the mass of a breast. As I touched her, I could feel her skin and I could also feel her sensations as my hand slid over her body. She was warm, smooth, and soft.

"Is that real enough?" I asked, and smiled. "No, the physicality is the easiest part."

She asked: "Then what's the hardest part?"

"For you to accept your own desires."

She thought about this for a moment, weighing the risks against the possible rewards. I left her strictly alone to make her decision. I'd like to be able to say that I'm always so honorable, but the truth is different. I'm normally a predator, a violator, taking what I want and leaving them to deal with it.

But this one was different, almost like a different species. And when she spoke, I listened.

"It's always been a disappointment to me," she said. "It's always seemed like there should be more to it, more than just the feelings and sensations and the fear that maybe he didn't like me, maybe he didn't feel anything. There is more, isn't there? And you know it. You know what it is. And you can show me. You're going to show me, aren't you?"

"As much as I can. As much as you're able to understand."

She nodded. "That's fair enough. What do you want me to do?"

I brought her attention back to the outside world, the real world, where she was still standing in front of the bar, having this conversation in her head. I sent her an image of relaxing, of comfort, and then I guided her out of the crowd and across the street, down the block to the empath's castle.

She was in a state you might think of as sleep-walking or hypnosis, and offered little or no resistance. That's kind of unusual for a real-life body being transported through real-life 3D space. Usually there's some natural and reflexive resistance or panic at the sensation of them moving themselves without volition, and sometimes it can get ugly. I just chalked up Devorah's compliance to whatever faculties were responsible for her similarly unusual clean and pure stream of erotic desire.

Lord knows she had no reason to suspect me. I can be a nasty character, I admit, but she had me so entranced that I was on best behavior and didn't harbor any bad thoughts about her at all. I would be the last one to use words like 'love' or 'affection,' knowing as I do that they primarily describe the process I've described as fusion, but at the same time my own empath's sensitivity was dangerously entangled with her as a precious, rare, and delicate specimen, and I was terribly concerned with her safety and well-being.

I got her inside my place and sat her on the sofa and made her comfortable. The gang had cleared out long before, I'd seen to that. I took the liberty of pressing her down more deeply into the nest of peace and comfort I'd established in her mind so she wouldn't notice the residual mess in the place, then I sat myself down next to her and prepared to enter her mind once again.

I can't tell you how we empaths do what we do, but I can tell you there's technique to it, there's tricks, and we all seem to develop our own styles. An imagination is a dark and disorganized place, and it's even worse when you get down to the subconscious, where you never know what might come flying out of the dark at you at any moment.

My own usual technique is to envision my subject's mind as an old Victorian mansion or chateau of many rooms, hallways, galleries, stairways, and corridors. The front rooms and foyer are the most organized and sensible, because that's where most people keep their identities and ideas of themselves. But then when you push past those, you enter a surreal and shadowy zone where things aren't so certain. This is where the working mind begins, and memories and feelings go ghosting by like tumble weeds along with the dust of imagination, bits of undigested logic and strange impressions that were never quite figured out. Feelings and recalled sensations, voices and fantasies waft through the air like ghosts: some significant and important, most not worth looking at.