The curse

Nothing felt particular about that morning. I woke up at 6am and quickly hopped into the shower. I'd never been a morning person and the hot water would soothe me, warm me up for the day. I'd dreaded early mornings ever since I was in kindergarten and spent the first half of my 20s as a chronic snoozer, always having to negotiate with myself to get out of bed in time, to not go back to sleep for the ever-elusive "five more minutes". But as my career took off, I decided I needed to do everything within my power to resist the temptation of late mornings.

All dried up, I slid back into the bedroom and picked a beige cashmere sweater with a round neck and a pair of black straight corduroy trousers. I was hoping to look relaxed, and casual, with a hint of have-it-all-togetherness and professionalism for my early breakfast with a potential client. I headed out feeling a mix of stress and familiar anticipation. I wanted the meeting to go well. But as I began walking through the parking lot, I felt something was wrong.

First, I felt a sudden, sharp pain in the back of my head. I instinctively reached my hand to check if I had been hit by something, but everything seemed normal. The pain then turned into a lingering headache. "Maybe it's because I didn't have coffee yet", I hoped, entering my usual coffee shop.

I ordered and walked behind the people already waiting for their drinks, quickly scanning them to get an idea of order in case someone else would reach for the same "Regular Milk Latte!" shouted by the barista. The people in front of me cleared out and, as I took a step forward to grab the cup from the till, a tall man rushed forwards and bumped into me. When he turned around, our eyes locked and I knew he knew he had stolen my drink. And for a quick second, the back of my head ached and I pictured myself knocking the cup out of his hands with a hard strike from below. The hot coffee would spill all over his sweater, maybe even on his jeans, and the cup would hit him in the face, flipping from my hit.

"Excuse me, ma'am, what drink do you have?" The barista's voice snapped me back to reality. "Why did I think that?", I pondered on my back to the car. "I could have thought about asking what his problem was, bumping into me like that. Or tell him that was my drink. " I pictured myself stopping him. "Excuse me", I would say, "We're all in a rush here, you know. " But that image didn't feel nearly as tempting.

I let go of this incident and started driving to the breakfast place near my office. On the way, a white minivan cut my way 50 meters before a stoplight. I honked shortly and slowed down, but the driver in front didn't appreciate me honking at him, so he honked back and put his arm out the window to give me the finger. A weird feeling came to me and all of a sudden I was honking for five minutes straight, continuing to drive behind the prick while other people in traffic were gesturing at me to stop already. Pedestrians started to point to my car, laughing out loud and I just kept on honking, completely consumed. No, I didn't really. But the image was so vivid it felt like I had. My cheeks flushed, embarrassed by the weird rage fantasy my imagination brought onto me.

Mr. Whit was already inside when I arrived at the restaurant. My heart was still rushing, as I did my best to walk confidently to his table. I introduced myself and he greeted me warmly. He had already ordered - his work friends recommended the blueberries and bacon buttered pancakes. I said I'd take him on the recommendation and, thinking about the coffee I'd finished on the way, I ordered a Breakfast Tea with milk. The first twenty-five minutes of the meeting went smoothly. I felt confident - "that girl" almost - and could see enthusiasm in Mr. Whit’s eyes regarding our product.

But then the first weird thought disrupted me. I imagined myself pouring steadily the entire content of the teapot right on top of my pancakes, letting the water drip out of the plate and on my trousers while holding Mr. Whit's eye contact. I wondered how he'd react. Would he just look awkwardly at me, unsure whether to say anything or just let me do my weird thing? Or would he grab the teapot and ask what the heck I was doing? I snapped out of it, frustrated, right when the waitress came to replace our water jug with a full one. The same image distressed me, this time the water ruining the entire tablecloth, wetting our phones and wallets and dripping onto the floor. I was flustered by how incredibly enticing it felt to break so many conventions, to put myself in a situation that was so unlike me and bizarre it excited me. Someone would have to bring a mop, and I'd just sit in my seat quietly, as Mr. Whit would pat his pants with a dry tissue, muttering "What the heck?!".

"Would you like some more butter?", the waitress asked. I pictured myself grabbing the creamy little cube of butter from her tray and rubbing it on my hands, massaging my fingers and my palms as I would with hand cream.

"No, thank you", I excused myself. In the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror and tried to set my mind straight. "I'm definitely having a rough, cringe, weird day", I thought. "But I can get through it. Once I'm done here, I can work from home the rest of the day, take it easy. But I need to make it through this meeting. I've already pitched the key elements." I thought I had pretty good odds and, after gently pinching my cheeks for some colour, I took an Ibuprofen 200mg and headed back to the table.

Mr. Whit was typing on his phone. He had taken off his coat and I noticed for the first time he was good-looking. He looked older than me, maybe five years or so. His white shirt and navy blue jacket were nice and perfectly appropriate for the setting, but what caught my eye was the small silver earring in his right ear. It was an interesting addition to his otherwise typical look, and it made his attractiveness all the more intriguing. There was no ring on his finger. "Texting anyone hot?" I fantasized of asking out of the blue.

He thanked me for the presentation. "It all sounds very promising", he added, "and I'd be interested in seeing a demo. Let's schedule another meeting soon."

Completely inappropriate thoughts started exploding in my head like fireworks. Among the least evils were saying "How about at my place tonight?" or "You sure you don't want out to bang this our right now?". A shiver of awkwardness went through my spine, as if he had just heard my embarrassing thoughts.

"Look, timing is key in our industry. So my firm's main requirements from your product boil down to that principle. Reliability and performance."

"Well put, Mr. Whit.", I said smiling. "Is our timing good?"

We didn't speak for much longer after that. Mr. Whit seemed pleasant, but not very chatty. I felt a shade of remorse for not trying to prolong the interaction, for not showing up as a chattier, nicer, funnier version of myself. But the weird, disruptive mood that had occasionally messed with me the whole day left no place for that. How could I focus on a normal work interaction when powerful hallucinations silenced my normal, rational mind for what felt like an eternity? How could I act friendly when my inner world was swept by a strong temptation to act erratically and out of character?

When the waitress returned with the POS, I accidentally dropped my wallet on the floor, almost knocking over a glass. As I bent over to grab it, I imagined letting go of the chair, falling slowly, head-first onto the smooth floor. Then, as in trying to lift myself, I'd grab Mr. Whit's calf from under the table. He'd probably say "Jesus, are you alright?", and then "What are you doing? Um, do you need help?!" as I grabbed harder into his leg.

I squeezed my eyes hard for a few seconds to shake the image. Once back to normalcy, I took the company card out of my wallet and offered to cover the whole bill. We left the restaurant together and I was happy to walk in silence through the cutely decorated backyard terrace, completely empty during the winter. Strange temptations started blossoming in my mind.

"Pleasure meeting you", he turned towards me. "I will email you as soon as I get a chance to speak to my team."

My mind was urging me to grab his keys, sprint to his car and start driving away. Or to start singing Jingle Bells, loudly and suddenly, not missing any word like I was a kid at a school recital. Would he get in the car and leave mid-way to my singing?

Back in my car, I watched him leave and started texted Lana. She was always quick to respond to texts.

"What do you mean by inappropriate thoughts? Was your client hot or something?", she replied.

I sent a voice note explaining that Mr. Whit was nice, but we'd mostly talked about work, so I didn't think it was about him. There was something absurd about all my visions. "Are you stressed?", she responded. Then, immediately after: "And it's not unusual for people to get bizarre temptations. Sometimes when I'm chopping onions I think about chopping my hand, and I feel like I could almost do it. A coworker told me that whenever she gets drunk, she is tempted to send nudes to strangers on the internet." "When asked, of course" she added with laughing emojis. "Are you repressed?", Lana continued, following up with a link to an article on pent-up emotions resurfacing in random or seemingly random moments. "Or maybe you're having some sort of premonition", she added.

The drive home was a nightmare. I was seeing myself driving straight into a bridge, accelerating through a red light, letting go of the wheel, or throwing the car off the road and into the muddy ditch. My headache had also returned and the pain shocked me at the end of each vision, accompanied by the relief that I was still safe and sound on the road. I got home shaking and sweaty.

Inside, I changed out of my clothes and decided to calmly wait for the unsettling temptations to return. In my own home, nothing could go too wrong. I began absently watching my favourite sitcom, but as time passed, nothing disturbing took place in my mind. I waited some more, quieting down the show to invite my mind to feel in the gap with weird images. But it didn't. I picked up my laptop, not yet entirely relieved and started reading through some documents, to see if work-related stress was behind all my erratic temptations. Everything felt normal and, one hour later, I received an email from Mr. Whit.

He had just realized he'd overlooked an important detail when drafting the requirements for our application. It was about a feature they hadn't launched yet. He proposed to meet at his office in an hour. I didn't have much time to think about it - Mallory was also cc-ed in the email, so she messaged me urging me to take the meeting today. "You stink", I thought of typing back, but I didn't count this as a weird thought. Mallory was shrill and entitled and put on a ton of noxious perfume.

However, as I was responding to Mr. Whit's email, I thought about lifting my top and attaching a smiling bare-breasted selfie from my living room. The idea made my cheeks burn up. "That Lana, she put the urge in my head with the story about her coworker", I thought, irritated.

I dropped by the store to get a sandwich and a snack. The desire to shoplift haunted me the entire time and I kept imagining my hand snatching up some chocolate bars and stuffing them in the inner pocket of my jacket. "You wouldn't get caught", a voice in my head whispered. The same temptations swamped me at the self-checkout machine. "I could just leave." And I was seeing myself, walking anxiously to the gliding doors, and then out in the street, my heart worked up by relief and a guilty thrill. "I could just do it." My hand hesitated. I couldn't know whether giving in to the thought would cure me or get me out of whatever this was. Maybe that was exactly what the evil temptations wanted from me to enslave me forever - to give in once. "I could just do it." I thought again. I tapped my card and left the store.

The address Mr. Whit sent was not far from my workplace, right at the border between the historical and the business district. I was expecting him to run his firm from one of those tall glass buildings, with a big reception and huge elevators zooming with people. Instead, I arrived in front of a large white mansion, with elegant iron gates and marbled fences. "I wasn't expecting him to be this rich", I thought. I rang the doorbell and Mr. Whit welcomed me inside a large living room. He explained that his firm was in the process of ending its tenancy because of conflicts with the real estate manager of the industrial compound. He'd already ended his lease on his personal office, so he would sometimes take meetings here while looking for a new place to rent. I didn't understand if I was at his home and found the entire arrangement unprofessional. But I was too consumed by exhausting thoughts to care. We entered a small en-suite office and I imagined excusing myself to the bathroom, only to throw the whole paper roll into the toilet and flush. After, I'd open his cabinet and put on a lot of his perfume, and slide back to the office room like nothing happened. I thought about going through his desk drawers, turning them upside down to empty their contents on the carpet. "Maybe you could make it look like an accident", a voice would tempt me.

"Sorry for being such a bad host. Before we get into it - would you like something to drink?", Mr. Whit asked. He stood up and said he'd be right back up before I got a chance to answer. Alone in his office, my thoughts went completely off the rails.

When he's back, ask him if he's single. No. Open the drawer and pour the drink inside without even looking. No. Interrupt him mid-sentence with complete nonsense. No. Ask him if he's ever been so sad he wanted to die. No. Startle him and punch the table like you were killing a spider. No. Seduce him. No...

I lost track of myself. I worried I would never experience a normal human interaction again, that someone had cursed me to be myself still, but within a mind that would keep tempting me into self-destruction. I started taking deep breaths as a voice was telling me "Don't exhale yet."

A trillion thoughts, feelings, and memories passed through me all at once. My whole body felt weak and numb like I was one drip of blood away from going completely cold. The excruciating throbbing in the back of my head made me wonder if I was, in fact, bleeding. I opened my eyes to see Mr. Whit sitting on top of me, holding my head in his arms and staring at me with big eyes. "I must have passed out", I realised. And without any warning, my mind was made up. I decided to give in to the curse, surrender my body and alienate myself from society.

"You're alive", Mr. Whit said. He was smiling, maybe a little too much. He strengthened his grip on my neck and that's when I heard the shouting in my head. Hit him. Hit him. Hit him in the face. I grabbed a stapler and stroked him hard, his hand letting go of me while he slipped onto his side on the floor. I checked his pulse. "He's knocked out", I reassured myself.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to drag him to the couch. The sound of a metal object falling on the floor startled me as I was struggling to move him. I looked around me and right next to his body, I saw a small metal knife. I patted him down in full-blown panic and found two more knives and a small gun in the inner pocket of his coat. I needed to get the hell out of there. The door to the office was locked. I opened his desk drawer: rope, tape, pills, blindfolds, another knife. With shaking hands, I found the key, got out of the room, and locked it from outside.

The police arrived quickly, and shortly after Mallory. Paramedics took care of Mr. Whit, and of my wounded head. A blunt hit with a sharp object, they said. Mallory offered to drive me home after I was done with the statements. While looking out the window into the sunset, I felt my head clear, normal, at peace. Later, wrapped in my blankets, I texted Lana: "I think it was some kind of premonition. You won't believe what happened today."