Telepathy isn't at all what you think. You can't just open someone's mind like a book and read it left to right, top to bottom. It's more like...well, imagine being in a big room where every wall and the floor and the ceiling is made of TV screens, all on different channels with the volume turned up on each one as loud as it will go. Imagine trying to make sense of all that input coming at you from every single direction, and you've got some idea of what happens when I 'probe' someone.

I know the word probe' is a weird one to use. It conjures up images of doctor's offices and uncomfortable things going places they shouldn't go. But really, that's pretty much what I'm doing. If I do it well, the probee only gets a mild feeling of something being a little screwy. If I do it badly, they get a splitting headache. If I do it really badly, they end up dead. But that only happened once, with Todd. Todd was the really, really, really bad one.

As soon as I walked in the door, I knew this was going to be one of those places I usually tried to avoid. The music was ear-splitting, the lights were dim, the people were sweaty and vacant. "Sam, let's go..." I said, turning to the so-called friend who had brought me there.

"C'mon Lisa, give it a chance. I mean, it's not like men have been beating down your door recently." She replied, flashing her perfect white teeth in a mischevious grin. I swear, sometimes I hate her, as much as I can't live without her. Blonde hair (a natural blonde! In L.A.!), these big blue baby-seal eyes, little bobbed nose, teeth that could be on Aquafresh commercials, tiny waist, big boobs...and she's all natural. What a bitch.

"All right..." I rolled my eyes and allowed her to pull me into the sweaty, musty cave below us. We sat down at the bar together, but before I had finished my first daquiri (four bucks, plus cover...why did I let her talk me into this?) she was out on the tiny dance floor frantically pressing her pelvis into some muscle-bound jerk's crotch. I kept reminding myself that she was my best friend as my sternum began to vibrate sympathetically with the beat from the jukebox (which was playing one of several hundred impossible-to-tell apart techno "hits"). I ordered another drink -- Sam dragged me in here, let her drive home -- and felt sorry for myself. I mean, I can't compete with her. I'm not fat, or anything, and I don't think I'm ugly, but she's just so fucking perfect. She's pure Baywatch material. I can't compete -- I'm naturally pale, my eyes are sea-green, my hair's mousy brown and probably far too short, and my figure is more Winona Ryder than Cindy Crawford. Even when I'm all dressed up in my party-girl outfit (which I loathe, by the way) and she's still in her work-out clothes, when Sam and I stand together the attention defaults to her.

So I was surprised that when she came back and sat down, out of breath and smelling like some asshole jock's aftershave, and Todd finally made his move, it was on me and not her. Come to think of it, that might have been the final compelling reason why I brought him home.

Don't get me wrong, he definitely wasn't last-ditch lay material by any means. He was cute, even behind Buddy-Holly glasses and the trademark Generation-X goatee. And his pickup was at least one I hadn't heard before: "Hi, my name's Todd. Can I slay a dragon for you?"

"What?" I responded, giggling in spite of the fact that I absolutely hate grown women who giggle.

"Well," he said, pushing his glasses up and tossing tangled hair (mousy brown, like mine) out of his eyes, "I was going to ask if I could buy you a drink, but you've already got one, and I was going to ask you to dance, but you look way too nice to get all sweaty out there, and I was going to ask if you'd like to go somewhere and talk, but you're here with a friend, so...do you have a dragon that needs slaying? Or a giant to be humbled? Or a bed that needs to be made?"

I was impressed that he managed to make his entire speech audible above the robotic dance-music in the background, and he did seem to have some flicker of intelligence in his almond-brown eyes, so I motioned to the stool beside me. "Have a seat. I'm Lisa."

"Todd Lufgren, at your service, milady." And he kissed my hand! Once he did that, I was sold. Well, that, and, like I said, he chose me over Sam.

"Why don't we go somewhere a little quieter?" I shouted at him.

"What about your --" he looked towards Sam's stool, which was empty. She was back on the dance floor with a different asshole jock, flirting and teasing for all she was worth.

"I think she'll be fine." I waved at her, motioned towards the door. She waved goodbye, and we were off. We took a cab to a coffee bar that Todd described as "having an atmosphere conducive to actual conversation, rather than shouted pick-up lines and scripted rejoinders." It was a small place, nearly empty, the kind that has chess boards on the tables and the occasional open-mike poetry night. The coffee was great, though, and Todd held up his end of the conversation admirably well. So well, in fact, that I was pretty sure he wasn't my type even before we left the cafe. He was sweet and honest, but he seemed a little too...something. Intense, maybe.

But when the cab dropped me off at the apartment and he opened the door for me and sort of stood by the cab expectantly, I invited him up. He commented on my paintings, admired the taste of my CD collection (which is mostly Beatles, Queen, and The Who with a little modern stuff thrown in at random), and before I knew it we were sitting on my puke-green couch together. And before I knew it we were kissing. And his hand was on my knee. I put my hand over his, but he steadily moved it up my thigh anyway. I knew what he wanted, but I didn't know if I wanted the same thing. After a night's worth of conversation, I didn't really know him, didn't know if I could trust him...so I pushed, very gently, into his brain.

I always visualize my telepathy as a soft pink tongue pushing out of my forehead and burying itself into the head of whoever I'm trying to read. My Aunt Zowie taught me to see it that way so that I would be as gentle as possible to my subject. He didn't resist at all, absorbed as he was in the intricate workings of the buttons on my silk shirt. I looked around at his mind, his room full of televisions, blocking out the unimportant input (sexual arousal, of course, his grocery list, the sensory input from his skin, that sort of thing) like Aunt Zowie had taught me. Once I had everything that I wanted to see in focus, I nearly screamed.

His head was full of dead women. Fully clothed, half naked, naked; slashed, burned, strangled, decapitated, eviscerated, shot, mutilated...hundreds of women of every race, age and type. All with their empty eyes open, staring. As I recognized one face (well, one half of a face, anyway, the other half was...gone) as my own, I felt from somewhere very far away -- on the physical plane -- his hands move from my breasts to my neck. And start to squeeze.

NO! I screamed, but not out loud. I was too far into Todd's mind to get anything out of my throat, and he was cutting off my windpipe anyway. Instead it was a mental scream, and louder than anything I could have made with my lungs and throat. It echoed through my head and Todd's (at that point I was having trouble telling which was which), and I saw the screens that were my visual representation of Todd's mind begin to shatter.

I pulled myself out of his head as quickly as I could, not caring if I hurt him. The switch from mental to physical was so abrupt that I was disoriented and nauseated and nearly started puking. But it passed quickly, and once I was sure I was breathing again I was able to focus on Todd. He had fallen from the couch to the floor and was bleeding from his nose, ears, and eyes. He was shaking and spasming, his head whipping back and forth, a thick rope of drool hanging from one side of his mouth. From the look and smell of things, I knew he had pissed himself, and might have done something more serious on the backside. I fell on my knees beside him, more scared than I had been in a long time. What if he died, right here in my apartment? What the hell was I supposed to do with him?

"TODD!" I screamed, my voice scraping my bruised throat. "TODD! Don't you die on me! Don't you fucking die on me, you asshole!" I thought about probing him again, seeing if I could repair the damage done, but I didn't get the chance. His eyes bulged, his back arched, he beat on the floor with his hands...and then he was gone. I probed him to be sure, and it was like I was trying to probe the couch. There was nothing left. I searched him for I.D., but he didn't have so much as a driver's license. After I went through his pockets, the awfulness of it all (a dead body in my apartment...and I helped!) hit me and I sat down hard on the floor, puking between my legs all over the carpet.

I stayed up all night worrying about what to do and wallowing in self-pity and guilt. I mean, even though he was a creep, even though he probably would have killed me, I had still taken someone's life. With nothing more than the power of my own little brain. Finally I called the police, and when they arrived I told the officer that he had attacked me and tried to kill me, but had stopped suddenly and started going into seizures. I suppose the bruises on my throat, my voice, and the fact that I probably looked like death just barely warmed over had some sort of impact on the guy, because he only took a statement and then left.

He called later that week to tell me that the cause of death was officially a massive stroke, adding only "you're a fairly lucky lady, Ms. Grant. If he hadn't gone down like that, he probably would have killed you."

Aunt Zowie always called our telepathy "The Gift." I can still see her as she was the day we first talked about it; the sun slanting into her gleaming white-and-chrome kitchen as my no-nonsense great-Aunt, a vivacious grand dame with short, spiky white hair, told me that she could hear what other people were thinking, too. She had said "we are very lucky to be blessed with The Gift, Lisa, and we must always be careful how we use it." The way she said it, I could even hear the capital letters: The Gift.

And I guessthat it is a gift, because without it I'm sure I wouldn't have survived Todd. But I still think about him sometimes, late at night, see how horrible he looked as he was squeezing the last little bit of life from his brain, and I shiver a little to think that me, little Lisa Grant, has that much power at her disposal. I don't think I deserve it, I don't think I'll use it well, and I sure don't think I want it. But I have it, there's no changing that, and it does come in handy when I least expect it...