The Empath Thief

It was raining when Milo Branson left his office building with his shoulders hunched against the miserable day. He gave the sky a sour look and pulled the collar of his dark pea coat up around his chin. It had been one of those days where nothing went right; everything he picked up he seemed to drop or knock over, every task he was given seemed to come with an unforeseen issue, and every person he encountered was unhelpful or cranky.

As he walked along the busy sidewalk, Milo twisted and turned so as to not rub against people, and grimaced at the laughing, giggling, far-too-happy holiday shoppers. His discontent deepened until he was feeling downright criminal, and a desire to do something wicked was burgeoning in his unhappy chest. Milo looked ahead and saw a couple strolling along arm-in-arm, looking irritatingly content. Their clothing was high-end and tailored, their very appearance dripped of wealth and privilege.

A sense of anxiety and rushing adrenaline filled his veins and his fingers rubbed against each other inside his pocket, eager and nervous. He had to time it right. He had to get away with it. There was a small knot of people about to pass the couple; a loud and boisterous group of young people who’d clearly had a bit too much to drink. They were perfect.

Milo adjusted his speed so that as the group and couple came in contact, he slipped between them, turning his body to the side and murmuring an unintelligible ‘pardon me’. His hand slipped out of his pocket, into the woman’s slightly open bag, and then back into his pocket so swiftly that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually gotten anything.

He walked away as normally as he could; his hand clenched inside his pocket around what he could now feel was something. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the object, feeling slight ridges like a coin. It was definitely small, a bit cold, and metal. Milo’s heart was pounding and he could feel the blood rushing in his ears like excitement through his brain.

He hadn’t pickpocketed in so long, not since his youthful hoodlum days. The rush was what he needed; that shivery anxiety and thrill. Milo’s thumb rubbed faster along the edge of the item and then something strange began to happen.

A sense of contentment was stealing through him, calming the endorphins, dampening the thrill and slowing his pace. By the time he’d reached his apartment, Milo was feeling oddly at peace with life and himself. Everything was pretty all right…not great or wonderful, but just fine. He was content.

He lay down on his couch with his shoes still on and pulled the stolen item from his pocket. It was indeed a coin. Just a quarter, slightly oxidized and scuffed. Milo stared at the currency with no ill-will. It wasn’t the object that mattered; it was the act of petty theft. He turned the quarter over, his face void of expression. He hadn’t felt this unbothered by anything in such a long time, and the simple contentment quickly lulled him to sleep.

The contentment was gone by noon the next day, and Milo was in foul mood once again. As he left his office, once more in the gray drizzle and biting wind of the year’s latter months, he hunched his shoulders. Already he was looking for a target, and it didn’t take him long to find one. Another couple, this time arguing. The woman was standing with her back to a storefront, her arms laden with paper bags with expensive store names printed on their faces. She was crying and flailing her arms about. The man was shouting, his face red and his manner unembarrassed at the public state of his rage.

Milo slowed, waiting for the perfect moment. It came swiftly and he lurched forward to meet it. The man shoved the woman, and she shoved him back. His heel slipped off the curb and he would have fallen had Milo not hastened to stop him. He caught the man and steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder, the other dipping into his coat pocket and pulling out what felt like a small money clip.

“Steady on,” Milo grunted.

The man jerked his head in appreciation and said, “Thanks.”

The thief continued on without stopping and rubbed his fingers along the prize in his pocket. It was leather, and on further inspection seemed too small to hold money. As his fingers slid over the smooth, fine leather, Milo began to feel worried. Extremely worried, tense, and anxious. He didn’t know how he was going to pay for all this.

All this, what? He thought, scowling. I don’t have money problems.

But how was he going to pay the bills and pay for all these things she wanted? Didn’t she understand? No of course not, she had no clue. He didn’t want her to have a clue, he didn’t want her to have this worry.

Milo shook his head, trying to get rid of the foreign thoughts. What was he worried about? His fingers rubbed the soft material again and the worry throbbed within him.

Rushing into his apartment, Milo dropped his briefcase, shook his coat out onto the floor, and held up the item. It was a business card holder, made indeed of fine black leather. Inside were a half-dozen heavyweight paper cards with the name Baxter Owens printed in embossed blue ink and the details for his marketing firm.

As Milo stared at the paper, the worry and anxiety of money and an unhappy marriage filled him again. Horrified, he threw the cards and their leather envelope away from him with a cry. They fluttered to the ground and immediately he felt relief.

“What the…” he gasped as the sensation flooded him.

He pressed his open hand against his chest and sucked in a hard breath. Bending down, he picked up the leather case and the worry returned like a hammer blow. Milo dropped the case again and exhaled.

“That’s not normal,” he managed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “That’s not…right!”

He made himself a quick dinner and sat in front of the tv for the rest of the night, every so often glancing at the cards and case, which were still littered on his entryway floor. In the morning, he swept them up and tossed them in the trash, feeling ill. As he did, he spotted the quarter sitting on his counter and picked it up. Contentment spread through him again though it was more muted, as if it had become old.

Unnerved even through the contentment, Milo set the quarter down and headed to work, his mind reeling.

He avoided pickpocketing for the next few days, and made it through the weekend grocery shop without succumbing to the desire. Then came Monday, and another miserable day that had him craving the thrill, and the possibility of testing his theory. So as he left that evening he wandered around, eyeing the people around. Finally he found a pair of young women who were carousing and giggling, their inappropriate clothing doing little to keep them warm.

He approached them casually, lurking in the back of a larger group of shoppers. He knew he wasn’t unattractive, and he was still in his early thirties, so he took a chance. As he drew near the girls he flashed a cocky smile and greeted them.

“Heya,” one of them giggled and reached out to touch his lapel. “Wanna party with us?”

Milo touched her hand with his and tilted his head. “Maybe. What’s on the menu?”

She brought her body in close and he slipped in and out of her purse like a thought, his movements so smooth and swift her friend, who was watching giddily didn’t see a thing.

“Mmm…that’s up to you, sweetheart,” she murmured and went in for an alcohol-flavored kiss.

Milo dropped his prize into his pocket, allowed her to kiss him for a brief moment, and then pushed away. “Sorry girls, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. Sounds like fun, though.”

He twisted out of her grip and strode away, feeling ten feet tall. He didn’t dare touch the item in his pocket, for he didn’t know what would happen. He also didn’t bother to look back to see that the girl was standing there feeling more confident than she had in years and at the same time horrified at the skimpy dress that was barely hanging onto her.

Milo settled into the evening, had dinner and cleaned up, then tentatively reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a somewhat sticky tube of lip gloss. He turned it over in his fingers, excited and terrified at the same time.

It happened. His fingers began to tingle slightly and then it traveled through his arm and spread throughout his body; feelings of inadequacy and an over-abundance of lustiness.

Milo held the lip gloss in a tight fist and let his head fall back against the couch, allowing the sensations to rip through his body. He rode the wave of young female angst as long as he could take it, reveling in the unending desire and cowering from the shame. They warred inside him until he could take it no longer and shakily set the lip gloss on his counter beside the quarter.

He went to bed exhausted, unsatisfied, and thrilled at what he had discovered.

Months went by while Milo stole minor items from people experiencing heightened sensations. He spent his evenings in the grips of stolen emotion. Sometimes it led him to nights spent with strangers, attempting to slacken his looted lust, or to days spent in a gym learning how to box in order to beat out foreign fury. His work began to suffer as his addiction to purloined emotion began to take over. As the New Year came and went, Milo’s coworkers and friends began to worry at the change that was occurring.

He became thinner, and jumpy. Without other people’s feelings he couldn’t seem to experience them. His empathic thieving was slowly leeching him of his ability to have his own emotions.

On the year anniversary of his first empathic pickpocket, Milo stood outside his office building, box of his belongs in hand. He stared blankly at the building across the street, unable to reconcile with the fact he’d just been fired.

Eventually he moved off, shuffling slowly along as he walked to his apartment. He rubbed against people’s shoulders, itching to feel what they felt, whatever they were feeling. He didn’t care if it led him to a stranger’s bed again, or into a fight, or into a night of sobbing alone in his bed. He just wanted to feel. But with his box of stuff, he couldn’t get away with it.

He made it to his apartment and set his box down, then went to the wooden chest that now held all his stolen treasures. He opened it and got down on his knees. Milo riffled through the small, mostly cheap objects. Each time he touched one he received a jolt of muted emotion.

Rage. Fear. Concern. Lust. Joy. Jealousy. Annoyance. Love.

They flickered through him like afterthoughts, lingering only long enough to leave him wanting more. Milo dug through the hundreds of items, grabbing fistfuls of junk and becoming inundated with pilfered sensations. He collapsed onto his side, his body trembling as his mind was overwhelmed with emotions that didn’t belong to him.

Milo stared at the wall opposite him, his fingers clenched around coins, travel-sized hand sanitizer, receipts, eye contact cases, and more. His mind whirled desperately, trying to make sense of the myriad feelings. His eyes rolled upward and he let out an agonized bellow that belonged to no one but him. With enormous effort Milo shoved the objects away from him and lay panting on his side.

He stared and stared, his body shivering, until the wall became blurry from tears and he broke down into unrestrained weeping that lasted for hours. Eventually his body shut down and he lay unconscious on his living room floor until he came to and crawled into his bathtub, where he lay in cold water for hours.

Milo Branson never pickpocketed again. He took the stolen items that had transferred their rightful owners’ strongest emotions to him and burned them. He found another job. He found a woman that gave him stronger feelings than anything he’d ever stolen.

And he never forgot the contentedness of the woman, strolling arm-in-arm with her husband as she shopped for presents for her family, and the simple calm it had brought him.