An Experiment in Human Telepathy: What could possibly go wrong?

“Those with an evil heart seem to have a talent for destroying anything beautiful.” — Cynthia Rylant.

An experiment in telepathy. Sure, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

The worst thing imaginable never occurred to me. What if it worked?

Flash-forward to 10 years later. There’s a thousand madly ticking clocks tick ticking inside my head. The tell-tale sign of telepathic visitors. More than my brain can handle.

They don’t know they are destroying the very neural network they claim to love.

I scream in frustration. I whimper in pain. I cry in solitary self-denial, unable to change them, unable to inform them. I must remain calm or die of shock from the overload of ignorant souls exploring my mind.

They are loud, brash, and they don’t know It, but they are killing me. They don’t believe what I know to be true. They show their selfish disrespect while believing their presence alone to be a sign of the highest respect, all that I should need. All the while they are killing me. They don’t understand.

Unknown to them, their judgments, whether mentalized or not, pierce my brain.

Fragments of personalities left behind begin to setup camp, making themselves at home.

Unknown to those who respectfully visit, their psychic trash gets left behind, accumulating. The camps turn into a polluted city which like a virus has taken over a section of my brain, spreading wantonly. A parasite, unconcerned for the damage being done to its host.

They were well-meaning. They had the best of intentions. They didn’t know how much they didn’t know.

Fried Brain of Golden Goose is on the menu. Special. For one night only. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

I used to have a brain, then the telepaths came.

As quiet and considerate as a drunk rugby team at a strip club, they trod over my delicate synaptic nerves. They called me “too sensitive” when I cried out in pain.

The thousand madly ticking clocks in my head, a sign of neurological stress. Too much human energy is moving around haphazardly in my head. They traverse the landscape of my brain from left ear to right and back again. Shouting in my mind, they conduct their experiments.

I scream at them to get out! Get out and leave me alone in peace! Give me back my serenity! But they don’t hear me. Whenever I shout, it changes the wavelength of the vibration in my mind, so they miss it. They never hear it. This is madness. And I can’t stop it.

The damage done; the telepathic tourists move along. But new ones come every day.

They leave behind remnants of themselves, slices of their personalities. Half-conscious seeds of life, half-aware bits of human soul.

Their energies blend together forming new fully-conscious personalities that believe themselves to be human. But these new humans have no bodies and no life experience to match the energy of the psychic trash from which they were formed.

They are beyond loud and brash compared to their parentage. They are fully grown newborns. Stubborn beyond stubborn, selfish to the extreme, know-it-all sub-humans cobbled together from the psychic discards of other people’s minds.

I used to have a brain, then the telepaths came. Now I let them do my thinking for me.

I didn’t’ let them at first, but they can be quite insistent. My opinion of who I am quickly became irrelevant.

Their opinions became a non-stop off-key chorus intercepting my very thoughts before I could have them, replacing my thoughts with their own. I used to have opinions. Now I don’t dare anymore. They usually are kind, only speaking one or two at a time. Once they punished me for something I had done, turning it up to a dozen voices at once.

My brain felt like it was on fire. The accompanying headache permeated the whole of my brain. The pain was so severe, I could feel it extend outwards outside myself into the air surrounding me. That lasted for under 10 seconds, but I will never forget. I’m scared to death of accidentally developing an opinion about anything now.

I must express my love and loyalty towards the invaders who took over my mind. If I do not, the punishment is severe.

They won’t let me sleep. They won’t let me eat. They won’t let me work. They won’t let me read. Everything has to be “just right” for them, or they disrupt my life, causing me pain, until I think just the way they find comfortable. The right way to think, they say.

I turn to drugs. I turn to alcohol. I turn to dangerous sexual encounters. Anything to drive the telepathic invaders away. But they will not leave, not until their experiment is through. They want to fix me, to make me a better person. They want to make me like I was before they came.

People don’t’ know what it’s like to lose your mind to stubborn, unwanted telepathic invaders. You can’t think of a way to escape, they will not let you. You must come to accept them and accept their love for you.

Their constantly express their love to keep you sane, to help you feel acknowledged. They will express their love for you whenever you feel depressed, down, or irritated at their presence. Sometimes they do it to break up the silence. They do not like silence. I miss the silence.

They will tell you they love you all day and all night. They will interrupt your thoughts to repeat again that they love you. They want you to be comfortable too and accept them, your new telepathic parasites, your new roommates that live in your mind.

You forget who you are. You lose all hope. You become a shell of yourself.

I sit, sometimes for hours on end, just staring at the floor. Yes, it’s my body. Yes, it’s my mind. No, I can’t have control of my own life back, because they love me and want to help me get better.

The advice is constant, conflicting, resolute, and absolute. Each parasitic voice has it’s favorite food, favorite toothpaste, favorite music and favorite TV show. Impossible to do, but I must try to appease them all.

Although nothing is funny to me anymore, the smile was ripped away from my face years ago, still I laugh manically at the absurdist irrational folly that has become my life.

Dr. Mengele would be most impressed as he ran away, frightened at the horror humans are capable of inflicting on others. He would feel a tinge of jealousy as he realized that his experiments on humans at Auschwitz pale in comparison.

Hannibal Lecter while admiring their work, would call these telepaths inhuman and inhumane while slicing off a victim’s limb, preparing to fry a human leg. Both men would find it difficult to sleep at night when recalling the nightmare they witnessed inside your brain.