Dark Elements: Psychosomatic Voodoo

Psychosomatic Voodoo

Written by Matthew Ryan Fischer
Illustrated by Michelle Joy Montrose
© 2015

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.

Additional stories are available here: Dark Elements.