Trevor had been going to doctors since he was a child. He felt
unexplained intermittent pains. He developed strange intermittent bruises and
cuts. There didn’t seem to be any direct cause or explanation. Some people
chalked it up to boys being boys and that he must have been roughhousing and
unwilling to admit it. Others took it more seriously and tested him for an
array of issues, psychological, physical and neurological. Fibromyalgia, lupus,
chronic pain. No one had a decent answer.
The pain went away as Trevor got older, but the mental scars were
harder to heal. Trevor had been lived a life of fear all throughout his youth.
He never knew when the attacks would come. Never knew what new torture he would
suffer.
It was hard to be brave under those circumstances. It was hard to
live a challenging and full life.
But he was learning to.
And then one day in his young adult life, the second strange
affliction struck.
There was no pain. Trevor suffered no pain. He didn’t know why. He
used to suffer pain. But then something switched. He didn’t have congenital
analgesia, or at least not that the doctors could find. But his symptoms were
the same. If he hurt himself, he never felt it. A very dangerous proposition.
He never knew when he was getting sick. He never knew when he had stubbed his
toe or burnt his hand or stepped on something sharp.
Trevor was learning to be very careful. But he didn’t want to be
careful. He wanted to live his life.
Trevor walked down the street with a sewing needle in his pocket.
Occasionally he would stick his hand in his pocket and stick himself with it.
Sometimes he would poke his hand. Sometimes he would poke through the pocket
into his leg. He was waiting. Not for the pain to return. He never expected for
that to occur. He had made his peace with the idea of never feeling pain again.
No, Trevor was waiting to see if someone else would ever react.
Trevor considered himself an anti-voodoo doll. He figured that at
one point he was receiving someone else’s injuries and now he was returning the
favor and sending his own along to someone else. He didn’t know if he was
victim or torturer. Perhaps he was both. But he was determined to find his
voodoo connection, one stab at a time.
Every time he saw another person, he did something to hurt
himself. Just to see if they would react. Just on the offshoot chance they were
someone nearby. He had pricked himself countless times with the needle. He had
bled and scabbed over and bled again.
He didn’t know what he would actually do if he ever found the
person he was connected to. He hoped there would be some simple solution. He
hoped they could separate themselves, either with medicine or magic, which ever
proved most potent. Perhaps he would find his nemesis who had cursed him. Or
maybe it would be his doppelganger from a sister universe.
Trevor didn’t have a backup plan in case this one didn’t work.
One day Trevor was walking down the street and across the street a
man dropped the bag he was carrying when Trevor stabbed himself in the leg with
the needle.
Was that him? Was that his voodoo brother? Trevor studied the
other man. He looked like a boring, ordinary man. Nothing special. Nothing
venomous or sadistic. Certainly nothing magical or otherwise extraordinary like
a clone or evil twin. What was he going to say to this man? How was he going to
explain what was happening to them both?
Trevor stabbed himself again, just to test and confirm the
connection.
The man across the street didn’t react. Apparently his first pain
was unrelated to Trevor’s actions.
Trevor walked away, a little sadder for the experience. What
little hope he had carried with him was suddenly gone, and his emotions began
to deaden just as his tactile senses had once done. Perhaps this was just
another affliction. Maybe one they would name after him. Somehow he found no
comfort in that thought.
DIRECTOR
TURNED ACTOR
