Like setting up shop in a haunted house. That’s what he said he felt when he was plugged in to my thoughts. Well, it was his own fault for choosing the Eternal Shine of the Mind option rather than the Eternal Shine of the Ass option. He could have had squeaky clean rear instead of a mind cluttered with disturbing ideas.

The problem wasn’t the technology. As usual, the man just couldn’t leave well enough alone and follow directions. He had to follow his own way. And that led him to my cobwebbed-brain. Scientists found you couldn’t completely erase memories or ideas (trying to ease the pain of trauma victims unfortunately turned them into Cuckoo’s Nest zombies). But you could “scrub them clean” and alter their content. The tricky part was inserting ideas that wouldn’t further upset the patient. Scientists found that scientists weren’t very good at coming up with soothing thoughts. Long story short, after researching, they began tapping into storytellers for ideas that could soothe or inspire.

That’s where I came in. I had the unfortunate talent of being able to write treacle for greeting card companies. I could churn out that crap like there was no tomorrow. Need a pick-me-up for when you’re sick? Missing a deceased pet? Got a new job? Having a baby? Proud of letting another driver pull ahead of you in traffic? I had the perfect words to put in a card for the occasion. So eventually I was tapped by the Eternal Shining Bodies scientists.

I supplied the teams with ideas of picnics and clouds and carousels. Then I met him. He was a charmer. (Like a snake charmer, now that I think about it). He was on the R & D team, looking into the possibility or inserting edgier ideas into willing subjects, the hopes being high for future filmmakers and authors to cut away from the mediocre offerings of Hollywood. But before long, edgier ideas became harder to come by. He found from our late night excursions my predilection for the dark, disturbed, deranged. (Don’t ask. This is not that kind of story.) He wanted to know first-hand what it was like to have that kind of mental edge. So we hooked up over some wires and some electrodes and some other stuff that’s not that important here and we opened a link between us. I saw mental images that would have been right at home in 1950’s Levittown. He saw things that could have existed on Elm Street (as in Nightmare, get it?).

There was a snafu with the electrodes and when we logged off, we found we were still connected. And not in a loving, mushy way of feeling joined with another soul but in a spooky, annoying way. I didn’t want to know how often he wanted to grab himself or how he wanted to know the number of marshmallows he could fit in his mouth at once. He didn’t want to know… well, do I really have to share my dark thoughts here? Can’t you just imagine a few? Remember, this story started with his comment about my brain being like a musty attic. Or something like that.

So my ideas sold, movies grew more textured and there were novels that read like literary snuff films. My deranged thoughts were in high demand with an ever-growing segment of the patient population. Not just creative bohemians but white collar workers who wanted a glimpse at danger without putting themselves at risk. What started as an elite group who could afford the high test thoughts (and coincidentally they were the same people with the largest space for rent mentally) became an addiction for those who dabbled. They wanted dark. Odd. Scary. Otherwordly. Little romances about vampires and adventures about wizards weren’t enough of an escape for many.

So I toiled and wallowed a bit on the dark side. Funny how keeping myself in a dark place mentally was so easy and how it actually helped me lighten up in my real life, recall my dormant sense of humor. But that was hard for him to take. He really liked his version of Pleasantville. Being connected to me brought him success yes but also to a place he felt left him adrift. He once told me that he couldn’t get the image out of his head of walking through a never-ending corridor with flames at his back preventing turning around but with rushing water coming straight for him, threatening to drown him. He said he got that feeling every time he was near me. Not exactly roses and endearments a woman waits to hear.

We thought physical distance would help sever our bond. We parted briefly but were brought back together by forces stronger than any fiction. Our senses dulled by distance, we could still read each other’s thoughts from across the state. I no longer knew his every thought but I knew when he felt anger or fear or arousal. He knew when I felt joy or despair. There ultimately came a day when our wayward thoughts led us rushing back to each other, speeding on the highways in the blustery early spring. It may sound completely absurd, but our cars barreled toward each other. I could see through his eyes the landscape rushing by. He could see my view of his oncoming car. We smashed into each other and melded and fused in as many metal, grisly pieces as you can imagine. But our conjoined thoughts… they’re still there, in the ether. You may pick up on them sometimes when you have an odd thought or get scared on a sunny day.