Ainsley Miller flips the vanity mirror open in her pristine, bulbous vehicle. She’s been parked out front of a nondescript apartment in a rundown Westside neighborhood, trying to psych herself up for what’s to come. A thin mist coats her windshield, each raindrop a sphere of flaring purple sunset in the distance.

It’s just a job, she tells herself, staring out at the world, the tension so thick it buzzes throughout the entire dusty suburban beach town.

Two cops are waiting outside of the arched entrance leading into the apartment complex. They’re waiting on her, the local forensic officer.

She’s not ready to confront them yet, lest they see her sparkle.

When she opens her phone, her squat goober of a dog Burl smiles up at her from the Lock Screen, blissful ignorance in his eyes.

The sparkles shine bright, spilling out the corners of her mouth.

Cut it out, she tells herself, forcing herself to seal her lips and stop the sparkle of love. She glances up at her reflection, satisfied.

She opens her glove compartment to get her pen. Layered within the residual grease of leftover McDonalds napkins are a few old sticky notes from lost loves. She smiles, and sparkles stream from her lips and race from her eyes. The mark of an empath. She knows her place in society, amongst the general public out here in the salty coastal skids.

Ainsley coaxes herself to stay stoic and steps out of her spaceship of a car.

“Hello,” she says, greeting the two officers flanking the main entrance to the decrepit courtyard.

She tries her hardest not to smile, the dimples in her cheeks punctuating the profane difference between folks like her and folks like the cops.

One of the cops smirks. The other raises an eyebrow in suspicion. Neither of them smiles in the same way that Ainsley can. Smiling makes them weary.

She shrugs it off. “The victim is in Unit 2C, correct?”

“Yes ma’am,” one of them says, voice uptight. “Arj Madrigal is his name. Another fucker running interference.”

“Another overdose,” Ainsley says despondently, off-the-cuff. She must be careful here too, for her sparkles can seethe through her nostrils thick as prismatic blood if she empathizes too much with any of the victims she inspects.

She shuffles past the cops in their matching white linens. This is the modern officer: a couple of baton-wielding sycophants wearing starched, bright white onesies.

She winks at a young girl peeking through the blinds of a nearby unit, and the girl smiles, her hair twinkling from her scalp to her rugged split ends. Ainsley looks away before the warming sensation in her heart causes her to sparkle too. She can’t risk smiling back, with the surly first responders still only a few feet away. It’ll only complicate the situation.

The cold sadness of the outside world sighs itself out as she closes the door of unit 2C behind her. Of course, she’ll write overdose in the corresponding box for her official report. But chances are the cops are right about Arj Madrigal running interference.  

She stares straight ahead into the dusty misfortunes of the man’s life. He’s lying on his bed, clustered with a couch and a coffee table all in the same cave-like room. The stuffy apartment is so silent her ears riddle her with static.

His vitals easily confirm the diagnosis. Arj Madrigal’s peaceful surge of slumber expands and contracts with life. His eyes scarcely register a thing when she flashes her light in them. A definite overdose. But this has all the signs of being intentional. This was caused by interference drugs.  

Before she reports to the officers outside, she allows herself the honest moment she needs to process her feelings. She weeps for the man snoozing in a drug-addled stupor before her. Each crashing sparkle down her eyes catches the cool filtered light of his apartment.

#

“Well, ma’am? Guess we were right?” taunts one of the cops when she steps back out onto the courtyard landing for fresh air.

“Your demigods have failed you!” he continues, calling up to her. “Seems every sad sack of petulant shit wants to run interference these days, eh? Don’t you think there’s something wrong about that?”

“This is a pandemic, officers,” Ainsley says quietly. “Can’t you show some respect?  This man needs help.”

“Fuck that!” the other cop interjects. “The stitchers are out in full force! Those mind-reading freaks are amongst us. We don’t know who they might be!”

Ainsley doesn’t bother engaging with the officers any longer, instead pivoting back to the apartment to resume her duties. Inside, she lifts the OD victim’s right arm and lets it drop limp back to the mattress. She needs her sterile kit. And Epinephrine.  

First, she swiftly draws blood and seals the sample, then jabs the adrenaline into Madrigal, his whole body spasming. She tries to block out what the cops said. Not too long ago, everyone used to smile at strangers. It’s just not worth the risk anymore.

After dressing his wound, she waits, listening to the lowest ebbs of his heartbeat. His breath is ragged, and he’s in clear agony. But he’ll be fine.

Madrigal never meant to knock himself unconscious while running interference. He just took too much, mixing paranoia with prejudice, conviction with pure compulsion. All to escape the so-called stitchers. The cops are talking about people who sparkle, of course. Folks like Ainsley and the little girl across the way have been accused of this shit for years. Some people don’t have the sparkle, and to them, those that do aren’t to be trusted.

Ainsley drafts her report in thirty seconds and nestles the vial of his blood away.

The Epinephrine hasn’t yet fully revived the victim, so she’ll stab him with another dose in a few minutes, then maybe another after that. It takes a lot to jumpstart folks like Arj.

In the cramped kitchenette of Madrigal’s unit, she finds the scattered paraphernalia of the different drugs he uses. A syringe rests by a furrowed rose of used alcohol wipes. Next to it is a spoon, its bottom burnt black.  A pharmaceutical orange pill container is tipped over on the cheap laminate cutting board. A mystery of science, something with too many syllables.

Chances are Arj will go right back to shooting up and dropping out in his effort to escape the stitchers.  

But there’s no such thing as a stitcher. The government has recognized it. Common sense has recognized it. But some people still believe that people who sparkle can read minds.  

Ainsley stands at the end of Madrigal’s bed, ignoring another patronizing query from the cops shouting from the courtyard below. Of course, the cops must actually know that nobody can read another’s mind. The myth of telepathy amongst those who sparkle is just aggressive hatemongering. Those that still care about others have the capacity to sparkle. Those that practice self-love. Forgiveness. Empathy.  

She administers another dose of Epinephrine. She knows she can’t sparkle when he wakes up.  It’s too risky with the cops outside. My sparkle alone can’t cull your demons, she grieves, desperate to be wrong.

Arj Magrigal’s eyes shoot open and his whole body spasms upwards. He’s staring blind daggers straight at Ainsley, his brow furrowing as the outline of the doctor materializes before him.

“Who the hell are you? What’s happened to me? Tell me what’s going on!”

Ainsley keeps her voice low, pantomiming ease. She tries her hardest not to sparkle.

But she can’t help it. The innate desire to empathize with the man kicks in, despite what has become routine forensic fieldwork for her. She smiles, and in that split moment, she sees it in his eyes, the swelling black void of hatred glistening.

“Easy, Mr. Madrigal. I am with the state,” she says soothingly, trying to return her face to neutral. But the shimmering droplets of empathy drip from her ears no matter how hard she tries to conceal it.

“Stitcher!” Arj hollers. “Help! Someone get this filth out of my apartment! She’s one of them! Don’t let them get me—”

The man bounds over his bed and sprints to his kitchenette.

Standing in the corner, he pinches a tiny pipette in his fingers. A drop of liquid hits his tongue. He falls toward his flatpack coffee table and grasps at his TV remote.

The nation’s flag flutters across the television screen. A bloated talking head mouths nonsense through plastic lips. A banner reads across the faux news program:

STITCHERS: IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, IT MAY BE TOO LATE

Of course Madrigal’s glued to the station. It’s just what they want.

“You don’t get to play around with my mind!”  he screams.  “You can’t stitch my memories with my nightmares! I know you’re one of them, you goddamn devil worshipper, I fucking know it.”

Ainsley backs away as he escapes reality once more. Madrigal is on his knees, his defiance serving as his benediction.  He sinks to the floor, the powerful narcotics taking him to a place where his echoes grow louder and his creed crystallizes. Ainsley shuts the TV off and silently walks out, his blood in her bag.

#

The sky is a dark shade of gray by the time she gets home, the mist of the day long burned away. She’s deposited Arj Madrigal’s blood at the bank already, a small win to prove that the misguided fear of stitchers has become a global pandemic, and now she lingers in her car, trying hard to process her day. Sparkles clog her nostrils and plug her ears. She tries to smile but can’t find the light. Has the world finally taken me down with it?

She exits her vehicle and plods through the carport to her apartment. Inside, she hears the pitter patter of Burl’s paws racing across the hardwood floor. She throws her keys and wallet on top of a pile of neglected mail, ignoring the final notices, the paper bills, the dead letters. On the way to her bedroom, she smells last night’s dinner festering on the stove.

Will they ever believe us, Burl? she thinks, collapsing on the bed. Burl hops up in pursuit, his eternally loving eyes staring up at her. She scratches him beneath his muzzle as he nuzzles closer to her in comfort.

When he barks, her heart starts beating again, and a thin stream of sparkles seeps from between her lips.

Will they ever learn to shine like me? she wonders, tossing her pants to the floor and curling up beside her dog, who licks her face, lapping up the light that is leaking out of her.

The dull glow within her room is growing brighter, and she forgets all about her grim questions, too busy giggling at Burl’s coarse tongue on her cheeks and his big, expressive eyes. The sparkles aren’t just dripping out from her face anymore—they are exuding from her entire body, a million flickering sparks swirling around her and filling the room. Burl wobbles back in wonder, wagging his tail at the foot of the bed until all at once he dives into the fantastic gleaming vortex and rolls around in the brilliance of her love. It is a radiance that saturates everything, eddies of shimmering joy that coalesce with the waves of her empathy.

From bed she gapes at all she’s capable of, of all the love that still remains to her, then rises to throw open her curtains and shine her sparkles at the world.

© Eric Farrell