Madness

• Madeleine Hooper, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

"Where are my keys?"

"I hate my school dress, it itches!"

"I have work in 10 minutes!"

"Tom is going down in the game today."

Everyone's thoughts entering my own and allowing me to hear them, every little word they think flies through my head and dissolves there. My dad, my step sister, my step mother and my younger brother all thinking completely different things and all unknowingly allowing me to hear everything. Long ago I decided this gift was really a curse. Of course the first day my ability arose I thought I was the luckiest person to ever live, I could hear the truth through someone's mind and not the lies that come out of their mouth. I could tell when a boy liked me or when someone was plotting to humiliate me. I would know every answer on every test and have the best grades my school had ever seen!
My excitement for my new gift had only lasted a day when I realised how awful it really was to hear every thought a person was thinking. Multiple minds mixed with my own and created a whirlpool of confusion and words that I could not decipher. I could hardly think my own own thoughts without getting a migraine or passing out from all the pressure in my mind.

It's the first day of school and I'm going into year 10. Maybe if I try hard enough I can block out all the immaturity, snide comments and nasty thoughts.
I slide into the backseat of my dads car and put my headphones on, hoping to hear music for only 10 short minutes. Thankfully my family's thoughts weren't too loud and I could enjoy the other voices for a while, the sweet voices, the voices I wanted to hear. Of course my happiness was quickly diminished the minute we pulled into the school parking lot. I pulled my headphones off and every thought crashed through my mind like an explosion. I could hear Mackenzie Brooke thinking about her sick cat, I could hear Alvin Nelson stressing over his math homework that was due yesterday, I could hear Mr. Price thinking about how he would rather be dead than teach us awful children one more day. I searched through every mind in the school until I heard my best friend, Sierra thinking about the new dress her dad had bought her over the weekend and how she couldn't wait to tell me about it. I laughed to myself and began walking in her direction when something strong barricaded through me. I fell back and held my hands to my head, the pain was the strongest thing I have ever felt. I felt something dribbling down my face and knew my nose was bleeding. Someone was thinking something dark and dangerous and it was going to kill me if they didn't stop. I saw black spots cloud my vision, a shrill scream escaped from my throat and the last thing I felt was my head impacting on the hard concrete floor.