Empathic Echoes, Ch.1

Empathic Echoes

by Quiver

Chapter 1: Feedback Loop

“I know what you are,” said a voice.

Sienna glanced up from her phone looking to see who had spoken. It was some guy, mid-twenties, long dark hair, unkempt. He was sitting at a nearby table watching her, his feet propped up on an extra chair. He had this ineffable kind of sleezy charm that she couldn’t quite describe. He definitely stood out. He was wearing a tight black band t-shirt, black jeans and combat boots. It was July. Who wears combat boots in the middle of the summer?

“…what?” Sienna responded, looking around the coffee shop for anyone else he might be talking to. But aside from this new guy, it was just as empty as when she had arrived. Old man reading the paper in the far corner, a couple of employees shuffling behind the counter, no one remotely close enough to be the target of his declaration.

“I know what you are,” the odd young man repeated. “I know your secret.”

“I think you might have me confused for someone else,” Sienna replied. This dude is really pushy, she thought.

He stood up and came over to her table and pointedly straddled the chair opposing her. “I don’t think so. We can see it in each other, I think. It’s easy to spot after a while, like an echo. You see bits of yourself reflected back at you. Though, I gotta say, you’re doing a pretty good job of hiding it.”

“What are you talking about?” Sienna was getting a little annoyed, and her anxiety was starting to peak. She could feel her face warming, and knew that her cheeks would be fully flushed in seconds. She hated that. She hated that her emotions were so visible to anyone and everyone, which was actually more than a little ironic. She brushed her auburn hair behind her ear, growing more uncomfortable. None of what this guy was saying made any sense. But… it was coming dangerously close.

“You’re a reader, an empath. Like me,” he said quietly. “Well, kind of like me. I’m more of a writer, myself. I think you’re a pure reader though. Must be tough, feeling all that stuff and not being able to change any of it.”

Sienna had never really had a name for what she was. But she knew it was a secret, and she knew she didn’t want it. Hearing that word… empath. That word struck a chord deep down inside and it just felt true. She knew she had always had an uncanny ability tell when someone was upset, or excited, or any intense emotion. But it was more than ‘reading’ people. When she was near people in heightened emotional states, she experienced those heightened emotional states. And it was really fucking disruptive. And sometimes, terrifying. She winced as a brief flicker of a memory passed by, which she quickly and reflexively pushed away.

Thankfully, she hadn’t had to deal with all that in a while though. Years ago, it all shut off, went numb. When it happened. But she tried not to think about that. At least all the intrusive feelings had gone quiet. Even though her own emotions were pretty blocked off too. It seemed that these days the only emotion Sienna really ever felt was embarrassment, and the occasional stab of blind panic.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, dude. Sorry,” Sienna replied, trying to stay outwardly calm.



The man shifted forward, placing his elbows on the table and crossing his fingers below his chin. He stared at her intently. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” His eyes lit up with something Sienna couldn’t quite place. And then it started.

Sienna felt a pressure at her temples, and a bubbling rage fomenting in her chest. She was so angry, it was all she could do to keep from screaming. It was the kind of primal rage that triggers instinctually after being hit in the head from behind, intense and completely unrestrained. If she had been able to move, she might have actually punched someone.

The man cocked his head to the side and gave Sienna the most faux-innocent smirk she had ever seen.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Sienna couldn’t speak. She had never, even before the numbness started, experienced a tidal wave of emotion that intense before, especially without any warning like that. And she was fairly certain that this anger wasn’t entirely hers. Probably. She had no reason to be angry, right?

“How?” she managed to get out.

“Like I said, I’m a writer. I’m an empath just like you, but for me it tends to… work the other direction. I feel what you feel, but I can push the feelings around. I find the seed of a feeling inside you, and then I take it and build on it, and then watch it grow and morph as it becomes yours again. It’s usually not quite that intense, though. I’ve never done it to a reader before. Pretty heady.”

As he was talking, the anger had quickly subsided, and Sienna felt like she could breathe again. She felt like she could think again. She realized what had just happened. And then the anger bubbled up again, but this time it was definitely hers. A much subtler seething anger at the idea of being violated.

“How dare you,” she whispered. “How dare you go inside my mind and take or build anything. It’s not yours. And you have no right to make me feel those things.”

Sienna could feel tears forming, that painful tingle at the tip of her nose and the quiver in her jaw signalling that her resolve wouldn’t last much longer. She had to look away. She brushed her hair back in front of her face in an absent motion.

The man’s expression softened a bit, and he looked slightly ashamed. “Hey, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you cry. I just wanted to show you, remind you. And I guess, have a little fun, since you seemed so intent on feigning ignorance. I didn’t know it would be so… loud.”

“What do you mean, loud?” Sienna asked, still trying to get a grip on what she had just experienced. It had been a long time since she had felt anything remotely like that. And honestly, even her own anger at the violation was pretty new. It felt like some kind of hole had been punched in her armor. She felt more than a little exposed.

“Well, usually, I can only start a chain. It’s like lighting a match in someone else and watching it burn from really far away. I do feel it, but it’s kind of a vague feeling, just enough so that I can play with it and then watch it go. I like watching from afar like that. It’s exhilarating.” He shook his head to bring himself back on topic. “But anyway, with you, it wasn’t like that at all. I guess it’s because you’re an empath too? You can feel me feeling you feeling things, and I feel that, and so on. It’s like it creates some kind of emotional feedback, and yeah, it got really loud. Sorry about that.”

Sienna was still reeling, and part of her wanted to run away, but her curiosity started to creep up despite herself. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. But how did you find me? Why did you start talking to me in the first place? What do you want? And who even are you?” she asked, her questions growing more rapid with each word.

The man sat back in the chair. “Reasonable questions. I’ll start with the easy one. My name’s Jasper. We actually met briefly a few years back.” Sienna tilted her head in confusion. She had absolutely no memory of this guy. “Remember that all-girls summer camp you attended? Camp Artemis?”

“Yeah, I went there for years,” Sienna responded. Camp Artemis. That brought up some memories. She quickly pushed them away. Jasper paused for a moment, noting her reaction.

“Well, I spent a summer at the brother camp, Camp Apollo, a few miles away. I saw you at the camp mixer maybe… ten years ago. You were older than me, so you probably didn’t notice me. Three years was a big age difference at that age,” Jasper said. “Anyway, I was just coming into my abilities at the time, just starting to recognize that I could even sense what other people were feeling. And you were like a mirror to everyone around you. The excitement was amplified and I could see just by looking what you were feeling,” he continued, somewhat wistfully.

Sienna remembered that dance. She remembered the surging of teen hormones that had surrounded her, and how she had been able to flit from one thought to the next, party to the experiences of so many people at once. It was indeed exhilarating. She had been so free, so… untouched. Those damn tears again started to well up at the contrast with her current self. Something was definitely different. She didn’t normally get nostalgic about her empathic abilities. She didn’t normally think about her empathic abilities.

“If it was so easy for you to notice me, why didn’t I notice you too?” she asked, trying to stay focused on her questions.

“Ah, I think it’s because our gifts work a little differently. From what I can tell, you mirror the emotions of the people physically close to you. That night, you were dancing around the room, and you always seemed to match the state of the people around you. It was really beautiful to watch,” he added, trailing off again. “But that’s not how mine works,” he quickly followed. “I don’t think I feel emotion as strongly as you seem to, and I don’t really feel it as my own like you do. It’s duller, more like a window into what others are feeling, but very little translates to me. I just get to see what people are feeling, I don’t really feel it myself, so you probably wouldn’t even have noticed anything special about me.