SHORT STORIES VOL 1 INCLUDING: ROMANCE, COMEDY, DRAMA, SCI-FI, HORROR & MORE

Chapter 7: I see Auras

My name is Jake, and I can see auras. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. I see auras. I’ve been able to do it for as long as I can remember. My mom has told me that when I was a baby, I would scream when certain members of the family would pick me up or try to hold me. The reason is simple. I could see how miserable they were inside and wanted nothing to do with them. That would include my brother.

My brother Mark is eight years older than me. He was happy to be an only child, and when I was born, he wore his disgust and hatred for me like a neon sign. I mean, he literally glowed red when I looked at him. It was always there, and when he would get close to me, or my parents would insist that he do something with me, it would pulse and get brighter as the anger grew. It has changed over the years. The red faded and slowly turned to green. Now, when we are together, his green aura glows. Green auras are love and growth. It is so much better than red. Plus, green really is his color.

My father’s aura is orange, flecked with yellow. That makes sense because he is still a firefighter and one of the most courageous and easy-going people I know. His aura has never changed that I can remember. Not once. There's not even a flicker of another color in it. He is stable and never changes. That is a rare thing because most people change their aura colors depending on what is happening in their lives. But not him.

My mom might be the reason why blue-aura people are my favorite people. Her aura is a swirl of blues depicting her personality and inner self. She is caring and sensitive, along with being very open and spiritual. When I was young, I told her that I could see auras. She confided that she has the same ability but only if the person is having a strong emotional response to something. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have someone who understands what I see.

My friend Angela has an aura like no one else I have ever met. Hers is like rainbow glitter swirling around her. We have been friends since grade school. Everyone else in my school had their auras change and become darker as they had more stress and challenges in their lives. Angela’s has gotten brighter as she has gotten older.

Of all the auras I can see, brown aura people are the worst. I have never met a brown aura person I have liked. It doesn’t matter what shade of brown they are. All of them have been self-centered, close-minded, arrogant, self-absorbed, greedy, and just plain distasteful. I cringe when I see a brown aura because I know what is coming.

Why have I spent all this time explaining the auras and how they look and change over time? Because you need to know what is normal for me so you understand how disturbing and dangerous what I saw last week truly is.

Angela owns a little shop in town that specializes in the metaphysical. She has everything you could ever want. She even makes soaps with essential oils that are amazing. The shop is a corner building at one of the busiest intersections in town. This lets me take part in my favorite hobby of people-watching when the store isn’t busy.

Last week, a man walked by who terrified me to my core. His aura looked black at first, which isn’t that uncommon, but it wasn’t black. Grief, physical pain, or if someone is trying to protect themselves from something are all things that can often make an aura black, especially in the affected area. If someone has a headache, they will have black in their usual aura where they have physical pain. That happens all the time. His aura wasn’t black, though. His aura was more of an absence of light and color. It was like a black hole sucking in everything around it. It was so dark I could barely see the person through it.

This guy looked in the shop window, and the look on his face just made my blood run cold. It was like he could see me and was staring right at me even though where I was standing, I don’t think there was any way he could have seen me. There was an emptiness in his eyes that I can’t describe. I have seen dolls with more emotion in their eyes than him. I could feel the evil emanating from him. To make things even weirder, this guy stopped right in front of the store, looked in, and smiled at me. But he couldn’t see me from where he was, so how could he smile at me?

I turned toward the storeroom and yelled for Angela so she could see him, but when I turned back, he was gone. When Angela came out and joined me, I watched her shiver. I mean, her whole body shook when she shivered. She got this weird look on her face that wasn’t exactly fear, but at the same time, it sort of was. It was like a big mix of emotions all at once that confused her.

I asked her, “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she answered. “That was so weird. I can’t explain it, but I feel heavy and like there is this negative energy that’s from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” I told her.

Angela’s aura had dimmed as soon as she had stepped into the main room of her shop. I don’t mean it dimmed a little. I mean, it looked as if it had almost gone out. Think of when you have the flame high on a gas stove and then quickly turn it down, so it is barely lit. That is what her aura looked like as soon as she crossed the threshold from the storeroom into the shop's main room. It looked like someone had turned it down to almost nothing.

“I think I’m going to sage this place,” Angela said. “Do you mind?”

“Of course, I don’t mind,” I said. “If there are other things you can do to make this place feel better, do them. I am all for it.”

“I think the sage should be enough,” she said with a smile.

As soon as Angela smiled, I saw her aura begin to brighten. She lit the sage bundle, and as she worked her way around the room, her aura kept getting brighter. By the time she was finished, she was back to her brilliant, glittery self.

“I never asked. Why did you call me out here?” Angela asked me when she was finished.

“Oh, I, uh, just wanted you to have a look at someone who walked by. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him,” I lied.

“If you say so. Next time, take a picture, just in case they are gone by the time I get here,” Angela said as she returned to the storeroom. “And, uh, don’t lie to me. You know I can always tell.”

I know I should not have lied to Angela, but I didn’t know what to say to explain what I saw. What was I supposed to say? “Come here and look at this guy who exudes pure evil.” Of course not. And after seeing her reaction just from him looking in the window, I’m glad Angela did not see him. Unfortunately, that didn’t last because guess who showed up at the shop today? You guessed it! Creepy, evil guy in the flesh.

I was tidying up around the register when the bell above the door jingled. I looked up to see the man walk into the shop. His aura hung around him like a thick black fog. I could see tendrils shifting as if his aura had a life of its own as he moved.

“Can I help you?” I stammered.

“No, thank you,” the man said smoothly, his voice like silk. “I’m just looking around. I’ll let you know if I need any assistance.”

I managed to muster a half-smile and a nod in response. The man’s mere presence rendered me nearly incapable of forming words for some reason. I have never felt the level of intensity from another person like I felt from him.

I watched him as he walked around the shop, looking at the various crystals and items on each shelf. To tell you the truth, if I hadn’t been able to see the swirling mass of darkness around him, I would have thought he was just another customer. That void around him, though, set my teeth on edge.

Don’t get me wrong. I have seen some bad people. I mean the worst of the worst, like rapists, pedophiles, and abusers, even a murderer once. The kind of people who should not be walking among the rest of us but are. For those of you wondering, the auras of those people are a mix of red, brown, and black. Each one varies due to the quantity of each color based on that individual's pain, personal traumas, and emotions that drive them.

This guy, his aura, wasn’t that. His was…nothing. That is the only way I can explain it. But that changed as soon as Angela walked in.

Angela had gone to the coffee shop next door to get us our daily caffeine fix. As soon as she walked back, she stopped in her tracks. She locked eyes with the man, and briefly, the man’s aura flickered to an iridescent pink—that particular shade of pink means lust.

“You’re back!” I exclaimed with far more excitement than warranted for coffee.

That broke the man's concentration and let Angela escape his gaze. His aura flicked back to the empty void as he continued to watch her as she walked behind the counter and handed me the coffee. I looked at the man, and he returned to browsing the shelves in front of him.

“You okay?” I whispered to Angela.

Angela answered, “I don’t know. I’m going to the back.”

I nodded to her before she hurried to the back storeroom. It’s clear that whoever this guy is, he affects both of us and not in a good way. And his immediate response to Angela made me very uncomfortable. Truthfully, I’m not sure which one of us was more upset. She picked up on the darkness that surrounded him, but she didn’t know about the urges that he had when he saw her.

I kept an eye on the man while he worked his way around the room, finally reaching the counter where I stood. The man placed a single citrine crystal beside the register.

“Will that be all for you?” I asked him, trying to hide the repulsion I had for him.

“Yes. That will be all,” the man told me.

He noticed the flyer on the cash register counter about the available tarot card readings. I internally cringed as he looked at it. If he wanted one, that meant Angela would have to be around him more.

The man smiled as he spoke this time, “Actually, I think I would like to have a tarot card reading. I have never had one. It might be fun.”

“Uh, yeah. Let me go ahead and ring up this crystal. Then I will get Angela for you. She is the one who does them,” I told him.

“Angela? Is that the young lady’s name?” he questioned.

“It is,” I answered.

I glanced at him as I wrapped his crystal and put it in a bag. His aura had switched back to the glaring pink again. The last thing I wanted to do was get Angela. I should have made up an excuse to get him out of the store, but I was stupid and already blabbed.

“That will be $15 even,” I told him. “The card reading is billed separately.”

“Of course,” he answered as he paid with his credit card.

The pink aura had changed back to the black void as soon as I told him how much the crystal would be. The rapid changing of color was something I had only seen a few times, and each one of those times involved someone who was extremely dangerous. They had killed people.

I could not let him hurt Angela, so there was no way that they were going to go into the room where she usually did readings. I had to convince her that she had to do it on the counter so I could make sure he didn’t get the chance to hurt her.

“Give me just a second. I will get Angela for you,” I told him.

I hurried to the storeroom where Angela was. She seemed to have recovered from her encounter with the man and was doing inventory. She looked up at me as I walked in and tipped her head to the side.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I told her, “That creepy guy who was out there when you came in wants his cards read.”

“Ugh, seriously? He feels icky.”

“Yeah, well, he looks icky too.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked me with confusion. “I think he’s kind of handsome. He just gives off this bad vibe.”

“No. It's not his body that looks icky. His aura looks icky,” I tried to explain.

“Icky aura?” Angela asked, near disbelief. “That’s a new one, even for you. Could you be a little more specific?”

“Yes, but we don’t have that kind of time. He is waiting for you. You have to do it at the counter. Do not take him into your reading room. I think he is going to hurt you if you do.”

“His aura is really messed up, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. I’ll explain everything after he leaves. Just do whatever you have to do to get him out of here as fast as you can,” I told her.

“Okay, I will give him a quick reading and not even charge him,” Angela answered.

“Great. Let’s go and get this over with.”

We walked back out to where the man was patiently waiting. As soon as he looked at Angela, his aura did it again; it flipped back to that same blinding pink. It was a color that was so bright it was physically uncomfortable to look at, and I hated it. I'm sure if I could see my aura, it would have been flaming red because of how angry I was that his man was targeting my best friend.

Angela, being her sweet self, did her best to act as if nothing was wrong. She told the man that she wasn’t feeling well, so she would not be able to do a full reading, and she was not going to charge him. The last thing Angela told him was that she would do it at the counter and not in the reading room, which made his smile waver ever so slightly.

The man said that would be fine and gave some nicety about how he hoped Angela felt better soon, but he didn’t mean it. His aura gave it all away. The black void became even darker than it had been. Red streaks that looked like lightning shot through it as he spoke.

As Angela began to place cards on the counter near the cash register for the reading, his aura continued to stay black with flashs of red. The problem was, the longer she spoke to him, the more pink and red filled it. I don’t remember most of what she told him. I remember how his emotions and feelings toward Angela changed. He was so angry with her for not being along with him. I do remember a couple of cards. Those were the devil and the emperor.

Don’t panic if you have a reading and get those cards. They rarely mean anything truly bad for most people. But this guy isn’t like most people. For him, those cards were as bad as they could be.

The reading was the shortest I have ever seen Angela do. I will give her credit. She faked a migraine flawlessly, probably because she has them often. I know she was faking because when she has a migraine, she has a black spot in her sparkly aura on the right side of her head and over her right eye. There were no black spots. What did happen to her aura was that it again dimmed gradually. I think she could feel the drain this man has on her.

When the reading was finished, Angela apologized to the man and excused herself. I watched her walk into the storeroom before turning back to the man to see him staring at me. His aura was still a mass of red and the black void as he stood glaring at me.

“I am so sorry about that,” I told the man, trying to make him believe I was sincere. “Unfortunately, Angela is the only one who gives readings, and if she has a migraine, it interferes with them. I’m sure she would be happy to do another one later.”

I knew the last part was a lie, and I hoped he didn’t. The last thing either of us wanted was for this man to be anywhere near us or the shop again.

“That’s alright,” the man said to me. “I have had my share of headaches. I understand how unpleasant they can be. I do hope your friend feels better soon.”

The man’s aura slowly began to return to its empty black state. The flashes of pink disappeared in an instant as he focused on me. It was taking longer for the red lightning bolts to go away. He was still angry with both of us. He nodded as he picked up the bag containing the crystal and strode out of the shop.

When he was safely out of earshot, I sighed and called out, “He’s gone.”

“Are you sure?” Angela asked as she peeked her head out of the storeroom.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I told her.

I went over to the computer in the corner behind the counter and started searching for his name. The first thing that came up sent a shiver down my spine.

Angela asked, “What are you doing?”

“Searching for that guy. His name is Patrick Collins. He paid with a credit card, and I made a point of remembering his name.”

“What did you find?”

“You’re not going to like it,” I warned her.

“Just tell me,” Angela insisted.

“There are quite a few people who have died around him or who have been in mysterious accidents. Christ! His fiancé died two weeks ago when she fell from her balcony on the twelfth floor of her apartment building.”

Angela gasped as she covered her mouth. “What did his aura look like? Tell me everything.”

“Okay, first, let me say I’m sorry because last week, he was the guy I wanted you to see outside. When you felt that heaviness, it had to be from him. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Alright, apology accepted. Now tell me what you see when you look at him.”

“It’s weird. I have never seen anything like it before. His aura is not a color. It looks black, but it’s not. It is this empty, hollow, absent of everything, and it moves. It is like it swirls or reaches away from him.”

I paused and looked at Angela. The look she was giving me wasn’t one of disbelief. It was one of confusion and concern.

I continued, “When he first saw you today when you came back with coffee, his aura flared to this blinding pink color that means lust. But only for a moment. It went right back to that dark, swirly thing.”

“What about during the reading?” Angela asked. “I feel completely drained, and I should not feel that way from a normal one. Especially when it is that short.”

“Yeah… that’s where it gets weirder.”

“Weirder? How could it get weirder?” she blurted.

I sighed and said, “The guy’s aura stayed mostly black at the beginning, but it changed. It started to get these lightning bolts of that pink color and red. Angela, he was lusting for you and furious at both of us. His whole aura was, I can’t even explain it.”

“That’s scary,” Angela said quietly.

“It’s terrifying,” I said. “And from what I see in this search, Angela, I think he has killed a lot of these people.”

“That makes me feel sick,” Angela told me as she glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only a few minutes early for closing, so I am going to go ahead and lock the door. I’m not feeling up to dealing with more customers right now.”

I helped Angela close up the shop for the evening and walked her home. I even waited with her until after her takeout was delivered. She wanted me to stay and eat with her, but I had something that I had to do.

-

That all leads to now. I am at home, sitting at my desk, learning everything I can about the man, Patrick Collins. So far, everything I have found makes me feel nothing but repulsion for him. I’m not sure how he is not in prison. The number of people around him who have died from freak accidents and natural causes is staggering.

The most recent one is his fiancé. That was the first one that popped up at the shop with my first search. The police report claims this poor woman fell from the twelfth-floor balcony of her apartment. I say there is no way that is what happened. She was terrified of heights, according to her friends and family. They all said she had taken the apartment only because her fiancé, Patrick, had insisted that she had taken it.

Patrick Collins is not only evil; he is a sociopath. He is going to keep killing people. He isn’t even killing bad people, where it might be justified. His fiancé was a kindergarten teacher. Everyone loved her. She volunteered at the animal shelter on weekends, for Christ's sake.

I told you there are people who walk among us who should not be. Without a doubt, Patrick Collins is one of them. I hate taking matters like this into my own hands, but he keeps getting away with it.

As a rule, I find information or evidence that would incriminate someone like him. With him, that won’t work. The police keep having everything handed to them, and they still do nothing. All because he looks like a nice guy and has some high-power job. Those things mean nothing about whether someone is a good person or not. Patrick Collins is not a good person and never will be. That leaves me with no choice. I have to kill him before he kills again.

I know. You think that makes me a bad person. But does it? Tell me who is the bad person. The person who protects the bad guy or the person who keeps the bad guy from hurting others? I bet you never thought of it like that, huh?

Don’t freak out. It is not something I do all the time. Like I said, usually, I just make sure they go to jail. That won’t work this time.

I won’t get into details about how I do it. I will tell you that it is always easier when it looks like an accident or they die from natural causes. There are fewer questions and less paperwork that way.

Well, I guess that’s it for now. I need to get some sleep. I need to be ready for tomorrow. I have to get this done as soon as possible to ensure he can’t hurt Angela. I would never forgive myself if that happened.