Empathy for the Devil: Chapter One

Chapter One is open to the general public - anyone wanting to read further (as I create), please comment and I'll add you to a special filter. Thanks to everyone who replied to yesterday's poll!

Empathy for the Devil: Chapter One
I cannot sleep

The truth of it is – well, it’s complicated. Actually, it’s simple, but the telling of it is complicated. Which is why I’m awake in the end of dark, just before the sunrise, trying to decide how to explain the truth of it when it’s so simple and yet so complicated.

I cannot sleep. That’s certainly true. I doze off at inappropriate moments – when I’m sitting across from someone and hearing their tale, or looking at squash at the markets – but when I go through the evening routine, settle myself down in my cozy hammock and close my eyes … I cannot sleep.

This has been going on for weeks, now.

See! There. It happened again – I paused for a moment, reread the words on the page, turned to take a sip of my cooling green tea – and now it’s five minutes later. I should be grateful, as it gave me time to marshal the many threads tangling through my mind. But it is terribly disconcerting.

Where to begin? I could start with the first night that Sandman eluded me, leaving me lying comfortably with eyes closed and mind spinning spinning spinning. Or I could start with the events of earlier that week, when Karole first came to me with his tale of death and destruction. Or I could go yet further back, begin with exposition and general history, all of which leads to Karole’s tale, and hence to my sleeplessness, and now to these pages.

But instead I shall begin with me – begin with why I am the one now trying to separate truth from non-truth and simplicity from complication. My name is Jill Child, and I’m known as an Empathic Counselor. Note the capitals, there. It’s not just a description, but a title, and one that pays me a quite liveable stipend. Enough to keep me in fresh vegetables and cool ales (when it suits me to partake). Enough to support my kitties and myself.

You’ve never heard of an Empathic Counselor? You’re missing out on something important then. Counselling is what I do – many people do it without the Empathic component, I suppose, but then how do they delve into the actual issues and work through the heart of the matter? Counselling isn’t about merely listening to your patient (none of this ‘client’ nonsense for me, thank you), it’s about healing. And it does no good simply to talk talk talk. You’ve got to find those spots of pain, bring them out into the sunshine, and heal them up. Otherwise you just find the same problem showing itself down the track, in a slightly different way.

So that’s where the Empathy comes in. It’s hard work – and it’s skill as well as talent. Even a Counselor with no natural talent for Empathy at all can eventually get the basics of it down. (So why don’t more take the opportunity?) But I had scads of natural talent – it was pretty easy for my folks to tell, when I was in tears every time someone jammed their finger in a drawer or spent too long in the little room with bowel problems. So I was sent to my own Empathic Counselor when I was two – too young to talk much, but old enough to channel my pain and fear. Maria showed me how to create a barrier between others’ pain and my feelings of it. Not to shut it out or let it right it, but to create a small distance. Initially it was just to keep me sane, but as I grew older and more intuitive, she worked with me, and showed me how to look inside the emotions.

Some natural Empaths go into quite esoteric fields: Empathic Constructors, who work with architects and builders to create peaceful and harmonious dwellings; Empathic Facilitators, who work with the councils and assist in minimizing misunderstandings between groups and cultures and countries. And there are the Empathic Explorers, out there in the ‘ships, expanding their minds and opening their inner ears as they travel to new systems.

So, really, Empathic Counseling isn’t all that esoteric. But it’s important, it’s useful, and it’s what I do. I love it, except for when I don’t. But that’s the nature of Empathy.

Karole isn’t a usual patient of mine. Oh, like medical hospitals there are both the regular visitors and those who only need it for treatment of slips and trips. Karole is pretty well-adjusted. No major issues, a happy homelife, an interesting job. So while I see him around the city at times, he’s not in my office on a regular basis. Hence, when I saw his name in my appointment book for later in the week, I was most curious.

“Irina,” I asked the receptionist (not my receptionist, as she does stellar work for all five of us here at the clinic), “I know Karole. Did he say why he wanted the appointment?”

“Sorry, Jill! Just that he wanted to see you in particular, for as long an appointment time as possible, and as soon as possible.” She was always so cheerful – which was partially why we chose to hire her. Her emotions were like a beam of bright sunshine between stormy patients, and being around her helped to clear my aura and re-settle me. I know that the others felt much the same. “So I booked him in for Thorsday, because there was a two hour gap just before lunch.”

I nodded, and soaked up the happy. “Thanks Irina. That makes sense, I suppose. But I do wonder what he wants to talk about.”

Walking home much later that afternoon, I contemplated calling Janice, Karole’s companion and my long-time friend. But I discarded the notion pretty quickly – whatever Karole had to talk about, he could tell me himself.

I slept well that night, and the night after. And, in fact, I slept the night after that, even after talking with Karole. But not well. What he had to say stirred up my subconscious and flung me into nightmares.

***

Thorsday was generally one of my favourite days. For some reason there were always less appointments, so all five of us (along with Irina) knocked off at midafternoon and went for an ale. It was a good opportunity to cleanse ourselves with both cheerful company and good food, and also a chance for us to empathically compare notes and pick up useful concepts for applying in later appointments.

The five of us shared the business – we had set it up together out of E.C.U, and worked well together. We had been grouped together in our first day of university, and never looked back – our tutors knew what they were doing in the exhaustive initial empathic interviews, obviously!

There was me, Jameson, Andrew, Morag and Indiana. Jameson always had the most exciting mind, with thoughts blowing hither and thither like thistledown on the wind – he had to chase them to keep up when counseling, but just let it blow when it was relaxing. Being around Jameson was like walking into a stiff breeze, which blows out the spiderwebs – and the spiders! Oh – and he was the tallest of us as well, which made him easy to spot in a crowd.

Andrew was Andrea until he hit his late teens and was able to begin sex-change surgery. Anyone even slightly empathic could pick out the masculinity in him, and his parents knew from as soon as he began his own counseling that he was a Changling. They’re very respected here, and he spent more of his time counseling other Changlings than any other type of patient, although he was also very popular with the Hermaphrodites and the Asexuals. We’d been companions for quite a few years, but now settled back into a comfortable friendship – with occasional benefits!

Morag came from the upper country, where Empathy isn’t really well-regarded. As such, she grew up quite the outcast, and never learned to channel and protect herself until well after she learned to talk. She ran away when she was seven, and lived at Jameson’s house once she had made her way here. They’re partners – in crime and in work.

And then there’s Indiana. She’s an enigma, she is. But one of the best Empathic Counselors in town. She was the final-year student assigned to the four of us when we began E.C.U, sharing rooms with us. While she had her own work, she’d been chosen as her final year component to work with fledgling counselors – and thank the heavens for that! She was the glue that bonded the four of us together, making us a five.

We’d had our clinic running for near on eight years now, and while often we could spend much of the week only seeing each other in passing – or as we paused to chat with Irina – Thorsday afternoon was our time to come together, reconnect, and make sure we were all on even keel.

It’s safe to say that this Thorsday I was capsized, to coin a phrase.

***

Karole was prompt. He arrived a few minutes early, and was waiting uncomfortably in reception when I came out. We have special baffles in the reception area, to stop patients leaking into sessions in progress, but when I walked out his roiling feelings thumped into me – it was like a very large tree collapsing onto me. Thankfully Irina is completely non-empathic, which is another reason we hired her. She would have been blown away like a scattered dandelion if she could read him.

He stood nervously, and I gathered him into my arms for a hug. Not something I do for every patient, but Karole was a friend, and friends get hugged (one of my golden rules is hugging). “Come in, my friend, come in,” I said, clamping down mentally on the buffeting emotions in the room. “It’s good to see you, though I didn’t expect to see you here!”

We walked to my office – third door on the left down the corridor – and went in.

He gasped. I smiled. One of the lovely things about our building is the view, and new patients are always surprised by it. While reception is enclosed (those baffles I mentioned), each of our offices has a view, with one entire wall made of glass. Karole’s mind settled somewhat, and my smile widened to a grin. “Do you like it?” I asked, full-well knowing the answer.

He nodded, and sat down on the couch, which was carefully positioned so that one could sit down without having to look for it. I sat across from him in my easy chair, and pulled my legs up next to me. The advantage of being small is fitting better into furniture.

Up until now Karole hadn’t said a (verbal) word, and I was desperately curious as to what had set his mind roiling. I paused, pushed an errant strand behind my ear, and pondered how to approach this.

He beat me to it.

“I don’t need – I don’t need all the introductory stuff, the how Empathic Counseling works and all that. I just need someone to talk you. And I know you. So I thought I’d come here. At least you might believe me, and not think I’m addlepated or cracked in the noggin or been sniffing ozone or something.” He stopped, considered. His mind kept going for him, though, pushing out a mass of fear and worry.

“I’m just Jill,” I said. “Not a miracle worker, but not a judge, either. I’m here for you to talk you, and you’ve got plenty of time. But part of what I’ll be doing in that time is Reading you – I’ll be sifting through your emotions and feelings, working through to the truth of things. Not that what you say verbally is necessarily not the truth, but often there is more too it. It’s why Empathic Counseling works, though – we get on down through the layers and find the problem and help you to heal it.”

“Well, it’s quite simple, except it’s not. On Moonday, I saw the Devil.”



01 Nov 2005
2021/50000 words


Please note the following:
1) All writing copyright © Deb Mudie, 2005
2) This is a first draft. Feel free to point out spelling and grammatical errors, but expect nothing be changed until after November.
3) All comments and constructive crit. welcomed.