Someone once said, ‘The eyes are the window to the soul’.
For many, that is a cool phrase to describe how you can learn a lot by just watching someone. Most can’t hide their feelings and thoughts, if you look hard enough.
For Charlotte, it was so much more. She can open those windows, and get inside your soul.
Like breaking into a house.
Her parents didn’t know how she managed to learn to read and speak so quickly. Before she could properly pronounce, she had a grasp of the language that most children three times her age didn’t have. Her parents would look at her, and she would crawl right in. They figured she was precocious. As she grew older, she found that she knew when they were telling a fib. She also learned how to lie and not get caught.
First, she might go through that window to see what they were thinking, to figure out what the best thing to say might be. Then, with time, she noticed that she had the ability to adjust what they thought, to a small degree. Just enough to influence how they might decide on small things.
She also learned early on that this was not something people understood, and she might get in trouble. It was her secret never to be told.
Most of the time, she merely played tourist. Someone might be interesting, so she would get them to look in her eyes for long enough to crawl in. Once she did, she would look around at their memories, feelings, secrets, and their base personality.
It was a simple step to go from tourist, to souvenir-taker.
If someone were gifted in music, she might take a memory of how to play an instrument. She didn’t think of the possibility that it might remove that memory from its original owner. She just took what she wanted. Not that anyone could stop her. By the time anyone realized there was a problem, she was long gone. Even her victim didn’t know something was missing. It just ceased to exist.
The ease at which Charlie, as she came to think of herself, was able to do this got better as time went on. It became a game for her. See how fast she can get in the window, rummage around, and get out before anyone noticed them staring at each other. She started to pull little bits from people as they went by. Some small things, like a favorite color. Others were bigger, like passwords, accounts, and pin numbers. Thanks to this, she didn’t need to work. Just go to the library, use the computer to move money so she could cash it, and then erase the memory of her being at the library from anyone she passed. Those days left her with a bad headache. Like she was spending too much energy to get into each soul and taking too much information in at once.
Lee started to get more headaches. But it was hard to stop, once she found out she didn’t need to put much work into learning, or even interacting. Just pop open the ‘window’, see what that person wants her to be, and give it to them. She dated who she wanted, and if she got bored, which often happened after a little while, she took those memories back.
Time passed, and E started to lose track of what were her memories, and what were the
souvenirs. She would find herself going into a concert hall, and trying to get on stage to play the instrument of the memory she took. Passersby would be talking to each other, and she would respond to a name called, thinking they meant her. But she was not ‘Edward”, ‘Julie”, or ‘Roberto”, for example. She was… umm… It started with the letter ‘E’, right?
‘-’ found herself unable to distinguish between who SHE was, and everything she took over the years. In fact. It was so confusing in there, she had to go steal memories to remember how to do the simplest things. She forgot how to walk. Slowly at first, just very unsteady, then she had to hold onto something to stay upright. Finally, she could only crawl. Her speaking worsened as well. So many languages stolen, she stopped being able to keep them straight. It just became gibberish.
But she was still in there. Lost. Frustrated. There was no space left to fit new memories, like recording on the same piece of paper, over and over again. No way to differentiate between what was written yesterday, and what she learned 20 years ago.
Her family managed to find her, homeless, and starving, and brought her home. She had to be fed, bathed, and dressed. But she could recognize them. They say that the bond between a child and the parents is unbreakable, no matter what time may bring.
She smiled when she saw them, cried when they left the room. She cried when she was hungry. Laughed when they played peekaboo.
The psychiatrists and neurologists could not figure out what happened, but they always felt like they were missing something inside when they left.
The hope was that, over time, she could learn how to talk and walk again.
But, to Charlotte, that window may have closed forever.
Remember, be safe out there. Keep your windows locked. Someone may try to break in and take something.
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