XI.

While Romel ran home, his body deflated of its supernatural strength. The voice, too, had departed from him. All that remained were the emotions of the library patrons embedded jagged in his head. The child and his grandma, the librarian at the counter, the man in red, the couple, the homeless man, and all the others, everything they felt, the panic, the terror, the pain, their dread at the onset of death, these were his lasting gifts from ‘the Calling.’ He was interminably linked to them for what could be, Romel feared, forever.

And it wasn’t just their emotions that he felt. It was those of every person he passed on the streets. A man in the midst of road rage. A woman nervous to walk the streets. A husband cheating. A teenager in love. Every extreme of the human experience bandying Romel about like a tennis ball. He held his skull as he ran, frightened all the while that it might burst like a bomb.

And now, sitting before his girlfriend, her confusion at his words transmitting at him and compounding his own confusion, what else could he do but blather?

“One of them, while they were dying, instead of concerning themselves with their own life, actually felt guilty at leaving behind their wife and kids. And another, they regretted that they’d never confessed to a woman they liked that they wanted to be with her. And there was a kid there…he barely knew what was going on…he thought it was a game…” Romel’s tears here spilled. “…and he…he…wondered why his mommy wasn’t fixing things…”

“Romel, you’ve got to stop this. Stop this right now and make sense,” Medina Jade said to him, emotional herself.

“I…” Romel said, then grabbed her and held her to him. He thought this might make him feel better. Contact with her usually did. But it didn’t, since his feelings were not his own. 

Medina Jade, on her end, didn’t know what to say. She lay pressed to him, silent, wondering what had gotten into her boyfriend. Eventually, the two could do nothing but break away. 

They shared an uncomfortable silence, staring at each other with questioning eyes.

Romel knew he had to be the one to break it. Knew it, but didn’t know how. His psyche was a jumble, a fragmented mess, there was no centering himself. He couldn’t find his words. Couldn’t find his thoughts. And compiling his stressors, his body was wearing down, like a laptop at the limits of its processing power. He and no human beside him was made to intake this much stimuli.

“Can you…” he said with difficulty, “can you help me …to the bed?”

“Of course, baby,” said Medina Jade, standing up, offering him her hand.

He took it and got up. She held his arm as the two walked gingerly to the bed. He lay down and immediately closed his eyes.

“Do you want me to get you anything? Some aspirin or something?” Medina Jade asked.

“I’m not…not sure that would help,” Romel said.

“Well, what can I do?” asked Medina Jade. She felt helpless and she hated it. Like some cancer patient’s wife waiting to see if the chemo would take.

Romel took her worries into himself. He groaned. Was there no escape from this? Was there really to be no relief? Was he, for the rest of his life, cursed to be tapped into the sufferings of the entire freaking world?

“AHHHHHHHH!” he screamed, suddenly. And then, again. And then, without stopping. Like a demon victim hit with holy water, he thrashed about and threw his tantrum and wailed up at the roof.

And once he’d gotten all of it out, he fell deep into a sleep.

Medina Jade just stared at him aghast as all of this went down. With a trembling hand she touched him to make sure he hadn’t died. Relieved he hadn’t, she went over to her desk. She pulled her chair out from under it and arranged it to face Romel. She sat upon it cross-legged then went back into a stare.

Her brain was beating like a heart. Never before had she been so concerned and so confused. She’d left her apartment that morning paired up with a boy who, yes had his faults, but was in complete control of all his faculties. Some hours had passed, she’d done the routine she did every day, and then she’d come home to a lunatic raving. Where was the rulebook meant to tell her how to react?

“I just don’t get what you see in him,” said Aniyah’s words from somewhere in Medina Jade’s mind.

This caught her off guard almost as bad as Romel had. How could such a thing have come to her in the midst of all this? What kind of cold and calloused brain would produce that thought now?

Shockingly, it didn’t stop. More words from Aniyah’s voice came, only these words, they weren’t Aniyah’s. They were original: “Maybe this is the Universe’s way of telling you to finally throw the dude out on his ass.”

Oh, no, she thought, what was going on? She loved Romel, had loved Romel since the two were nineteen. And here they were, three years later, still together, still passionate about one another, and she was being called upon by her brain to end things based on what? Him acting strange and erratic as some cosmic sign? No, girl, no. You were raised better than that. You better lock those thoughts away.

She did, of course. Shoved them right down deep and away from her conscious self. She was a good girlfriend. And while Romel slept, she kept vigil over him, the way a good girlfriend would.