Intrusion
The worst part about being a telepath is waking up in the morning. This isn’t the case for everyone, of course; if one is skilled enough or just plain powerful enough, one could put up psychic walls strong enough to last throughout the night while one is asleep. If this happens, one can wake up to a few moments of blessed peace inside one’s head before the daily struggle begins.
Audrey wasn’t so lucky. Like most telepaths, she awoke every morning not to an alarm clock or the smell of coffee but to the firehose blast of thoughts from every living soul within the sweep of her mind’s eye. She spent her first conscious moments fighting to shove everyone else out of her head, clawing back her own self and throwing up her barriers. Audrey hadn’t lost yet, although she knew telepaths who had. She sometimes sat with them in the hospital, just to keep them company.
On that particular morning, the usual battle in her head took her a few seconds longer. There was no apparent reason why. It was a Tuesday, but not a holiday or anniversary. No one new was in the house. They didn’t have pets. Audrey took a breath and tried a slow mental scan. Within seconds she’d found it. It was the next house over. The couple who lived there were arguing, going at each other with such vehemence that their psychic intensity bled over into Audrey’s own head.
Under other circumstances she might have tried going over, politely introducing herself, and perhaps suggesting some peaceful conflict resolution techniques or basic meditation exercises. Today, however, it was early morning, she hadn’t had coffee yet, her psychic walls were down, and her head was splitting with shouts of “How could you DO that, I don’t underSTAND you” and “Well if you would just LISTEN for a second I would EXPLAIN” and then of all things the phone rang and he could’ve just let it go but nooo he just had to answer it and of course it was a telemarketer and you know you don’t talk to those people they’re scammers you MORON but it could’ve been someone important you never know and anyway whaddya mean moron you
and Audrey snapped.
“Shut up!” she blasted.
They did.
So did everyone else.
Note: this was inspired by the below prompt from :
This was so fun 😂
Just wow, man.