Today's #flashfiction #ToReadTheInanimate

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Marty McFly* #quote

CJ's birthday party is this Sunday so yay. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

To Read The Inanimate

         As far as psychic powers go I didn't get the most typical of them. I can read minds, but only those of the inanimate as if they could perceive the world around them and had memories of all they experienced. I'd say one of the stupidest things I've ever done was read the mind of a toilet. Ew.

        “If walls could talk” really became my life. I became an adept eavesdropper. I learned about the many things that happened throughout decades as I read objects in buildings. Whether I eavesdropped on what people said in house last week out of petty curiosity and violation of their privacy or read the thoughts of the Constitution to get a glimpse of that day, the past was revealed to me from those items around me. Museums became my eyes into history.

       I grew to love peering into objects. Only getting my powers in my teenage years it started as a surprise, growing into a fascination, then into a hobby, leading ultimately to a compulsive part of my life. I couldn't go anywhere without doing a quick read of everything I saw.

       Years later I married. Despite how much I privately filled my life with my psychic visions of the minds of the inanimate I still interacted with the living. I loved her deeply, the wedding and honeymoon were amazing. And as we moved into our new home I read all our possessions. She brought many of her previous belongings to our new home. I learned about her life before, even her life with the husband she had before me. I couldn't help it. I built up a habit of snooping over the years.

      I even checked the kitchen set. I wanted to learn what kind of meals she could cook. She bragged about it but I couldn't be too sure. But when I read the knives on one of them I discovered unusual memories. One knife remembered being covered in blood. While I viewed its memory I looked around its perception that I created with my powers. The man it stabbed was her previous husband, I'd seen him pictures. I turned my view more. I saw that my wife held the knife with a sadistically happy look on her face. The story I heard was that he left because he was having an affair.

     I stood scared in place for at least a minute and then my wife hugged me and showed me one the wedding pictures we had brought along to the new home. “We're going to have a long, happy marriage aren't we?”