The Strangeling Part XVI - (Freewrite # 151

Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my 20th "5" minute* freewrite. The prompt is: "medium", to which I attributed the following definition: "a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the dead and the living."
(source: Google Dictionary https://www.google.com/search?q=medium+definition&oq=medium+definition&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4625j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

*Not 5 minute this time, 90 minute ;)

This piece is a continuation of my last freewrite, and the sixteenth installment in an ongoing story. Let's see how long I can keep this up, using the prompts provided!

Part I: @bennettitalia/freewrite-129-fingernail

Part II: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-ii-freewrite-130-wasps

Part III: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iii-freewrite-131-solitude

Part IV: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-iv-freewrite-132-gardening

Part V: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-v-freewrite-132-the-attic

Part VI: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-vi-freewrite-132-plaid

Part VII: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-vii-weekend-freewrite-3-3-2018

Part VIII: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-viii-weekend-freewrite-3-3-2018-apricot

Part IX: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-ix-freewrite-137-witches

Part X: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-x-freewrite-138-syrup

Part XI: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-xi-freewrite-139-artichoke

Part XII: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-xii-freewrite-146-monkey

Part XIII: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-xiii-freewrite-147-witch-with-apple

Part XIV: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-xiv-weekend-freewrite-03-17-2018-crazy

Part XV: @bennettitalia/the-strangeling-part-xv-freewrite-150-sizzling

Freewriting is a daily practice for most poets and fiction writers, designed to loosen up and get things flowing, like stretching before exercise. Visual artists, especially those who draw or paint from life (figures, landscapes, still lives, etc) do something similar in "gesture drawings". After reading several of @poetrybyjeremy's freewrite posts, I got excited to try these again. Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this daily freewrite!
@mariannewest/day-151-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-medium

https://pixabay.com/en/medium-psychic-female-fantasy-woman-goth-1726601/

First the dead came to me. A little girl with blood on her hands. A guy in a suit with writhing tentacles where his head should have been. An elderly man holding a baby doll to his chest, cooing to it and rocking it back and forth as if it were flesh and blood and not made of plastic. A woman dressed like a dominatrix who mumbled and buried her face in her hands anytime she noticed me looking at her. A middle aged woman covered in dirt from head to toe, her hair made of worms. A young man clutching an empty syringe. My parents, pale and silent, their eyes tracking my every movement like hungry dogs hoping for a treat, tears slipping down their faces. One after another, relentlessly, they appeared, and with each new arrival fresh levels of pain, tenderness, entreaty, horror, murderous fury. The world was crowded, too crowded for anyone to possibly fit, each ghost a world of its own, each world haunted by further ghosts.

And then the living came. The secret life of every boss and employee and secretary and orderly and test subject in the building, in the surrounding buildings, the streets, the city, country, world... exposed, flayed alive, hearts beating in the open air. Billions of psyches crying out, and nobody to hear them but me. I couldn't help hearing them.

The only person I was unable to hear was The Handler. The space where I knew her to be standing - just outside the unlocked door, watching me on her phone screen from the safety of the hallway - that space was empty. Every time.

With that one exception, that one blank spot, the world was a crowd of ghosts, people, animals, plants, inanimate objects. The pain was unbearable, vicious, a torture without visible source or target, mercilessly stretching everything I knew, everything I thought I was, to make room for... what? I was afraid to know. I thought that it would break me, half wanted it to, before whatever it was had a chance to be born. But something in me wouldn't be broken, regardless of what I wanted. Bent, yes, into an inhuman shape. But never broken.

My own inner life surged forward in response to this, obliterating and at the same time enhancing everything it touched, feeding their own anguish, hope, grief, pride, exhaustion back to them, the force of every emotion becoming exponentially stronger every second, feeding back again to me, a resonance loop, forcing me to feel yet more. All of my most painful memories, shame, fear... all of it was here, becoming bigger than me, more powerful than I could control. My inner demons come to life.

Any Company employees (except for The Handler at the door) were watching from a safe distance. She and I had The Attic to ourselves.

Almost.

In the adjoining room were "volunteers" that some lackey had pulled in off the street, with promises of God knows what.

They died.

The Strangeling Part XVI - (Freewrite # 151 - medium)