You can read minds but it 's too noisy in the city . You move to the mountains to learn what silence was . Then you heard something deep beneath the ground . [ WP ]

It began when I was fourteen. Shelly Henkle could only think about Jason Brown and how much she wanted to run her hands through his longish, slightly-curled dirty-blonde hair. A week later during an Algebra test, I yelled at her to just ask him out already. The whole class was stunned. Being a middle child, I was fairly adept at lying and fabricated a barely passable Sherlockian story about the obvious signs of her crush on Jason. They got married after high school, moved to the suburbs and had two kids. 
 
 Like any teenager with power beyond their wildest dreams, I used it to my advantage. I found if I focused my mind, I could hone in on one person and drown out the rest. Timing and networking quickly became necessary skills, ones I learned to master. By the end of high school I had mastered my gift and felt on top of the world. Unfettered access to peoples' innermost thoughts and desires opened up the world to me. In college, I met privately with professors to learn their secrets and become a trust confidant. I dated some of the most profoundly interesting girls as well as the most attractive. Every guy I met wanted to be my friend and I had VIP access to any party I wanted. After graduating college I found myself an extremely well paying job in mergers and acquisitions. 
 
 But my happiness was short-lived. While I had learned to control my gift to some extent, drowning out the city was nearly impossible. Screams of the homeless echoed down abandoned alleys. Cries of fatherless children playing gangster on the streets broke my heart nightly. The nightly existential crisis of hookers drove me to the brink of insanity. Sleep was nearly impossible. After a year, I had filled my coffers plenty and decided to move to the mountains, somewhere quiet. Many people think their coworkers like them, I had the rare pleasure of knowing how much they actually did. On the drive to Wyoming, for the first time in a little over two decades, I found peace. 
 
 My cabin was small, but well furnished. During the day I hiked around the area, taking pictures of anything that caught my eye and at night I read by the fireplace. Everything could not have been better. I slept deeply each night and was constantly lost in my own thoughts. For six months, I was in heaven. That was before I heard the voice. 
 
 Sun shot proudly through the openings in the trees and crisp cool mountain air filled my nostrils as I hiked to my rock. I found it my second week while trying to find a good vantage point. The rock protruded from the earth like a throne and had one of the best views of the sunrise. Because of the early morning wake-up required to catch the sunrise, I limited myself to only going once a week. As I unpacked my book thermos of coffee, I heard it. 
 
 Sometimes, when it's deathly quiet and you're by yourself alone in the woods, you feel something move just beyond your field of vision. Sometimes, you hear your name whispered in hushed tones behind your back. You tell yourself your mind is playing tricks on you, that it was a deer or squirrel in the forest. You tell yourself you're acting childish and berate yourself for such an irrational fear. Yet, your guard is heightened and you are the tiniest bit more on guard. I think it's an evolutionary trait from before recorded time, before anything dared challenge our might as a race. 
 
 Most of the time when I hear people's thoughts, I hear them from where the person is standing. Their voice in my head matches their speaking voice. This time, however, none of that was true. 
 
 *Devour... you whole* 
 
 The voice was deep, but not alone. Shrieks I had only heard from the maddest of street denizens reverberated against empty chasms beneath my feet. When I read minds I can almost feel your brain in my grasp while I search for what I need. Now, I tried to search for what the voice desired. As I tried to dig deeper, I suddenly realized it. I was n't just searching the voice for answers, it was also searching me.
