The Kid Lich Awakens

The Kid Lich Awakens 16 Will P.

Music, Synesthesia, and Emotion

Initially, Billy and Iris really were just business partners, but as the saying goes, life had other plans. [But that's a story for another time.] Billy's reactionary mindset to life typically worked in his favor, but his stubbornness often got the better of him. It didn't help that Billy often believed he was the smartest person in the room.

Billy had once spent three months doing intensive out-patient therapy. The general idea was to get a group of people together, all with their own unique inner struggles and problems, and have an expert therapist lead them in a discussion towards enlightenment.

Billy had met a handful of people in these sessions who he never forgot for the rest of his life. He couldn't help giving them nicknames in his head, old habits die hard and all that, but he really did strike up some genuine friendships during these meetings. Occasionally he'd think about these people, and while Billy did believe thinking about one's past could sometimes be beneficial, like anything good in small doses, moderation is key.

So if he ever got too focused on the past he'd typically try to distract himself by doing something pleasant, like reading a book by an author he liked, or by listening to some music. Billy's music library was huge, and he'd categorized multiple playlists all under the same username. [For purposes of avoiding confusion during this story, this username will remain unstated.]

Billy had initially used pretty generic names for his playlists, but then he'd slowly but surely broadened his horizons on what he enjoyed listening to. He had two separate playlists that each had a variety of artists all under the umbrella of a specific record label. He also had playlists sorted by artist, because using the pre-set album option limited the listener to one specific album, and if one of his favorite bands or solo artists made more than one album (which was extremely likely), he'd make a custom playlist to include all their music.

Another thing about Billy a lot of people didn't know: he was synesthetic. Synesthesia is a fairly simple concept in regards to what exactly it is, but every instance of it was so unique that explaining the sensation of it to another person was next to impossible.

So what is synesthesia? The actual scientific term or definition for it is that it occurs when a person is born with two or more of their senses "crossed" or "combined". The term crossed came from the idea that if someone "has their wires crossed" they are confusing two separate topics. Whereas the term "combined" came from the idea that if one is synesthetic, two of their senses are combined and in some instances they can't be unbound.

This was the kind of synesthesia Billy had. Specifically, his senses of sound and sight were combined. When he had appeared to be a younger boy, it was only tied to his migraines. If he had one, and was laying down in a dark and quiet place, and he heard a sudden or abrupt sound, he'd get a flash of light behind his eyes that directly matched it.

Once Billy was much older (by human standards), in his late teens, he discovered that he could consciously use this ability as well. This was what one may call a "formative moment" in his life. He found he could put on a pair of high-quality headphones, and then choose a song and literally "see" the soundwaves of the song in his mind.

He then remembered some of the things he'd learned about Eastern medicine: the concept of the seven chakra pools and which emotions blocked each pool and which ones allowed the spirit to flow smoothly and freely through each pool. After some time, and a lot of practice, Billy found he could listen to specific songs to manipulate his own chakra.

To make an undoubtedly complex idea much simpler, Billy essentially could do a "tech rehearsal" of casting various spells depending on what type of song and what genre of song he was listening to. The thing about it was it always made him feel things with the utmost sincerity, and being a natural-born lich, he wasn't very used to emotion. Still, after some practice, he was able to get a handle on this well. Now he could visualize music in his mind and only feel emotion that went with it if he chose to.

This was because his kind was what some folks in supernatural circles would call "born of the black". This didn't mean Billy was African-American, but rather that his soul existed outside the standard spectrum of human emotion. [If you really want your mind blown, go check out the electromagnetic spectrum of human emotion from the Green Lantern comics. There are seven main colors each corresponding to a unique emotion, plus white, for all emotions, and black for none. Interestingly, that's a total of nine, the same number of archetypal moral alignments one can find in a Dungeons n' Dragons character creation handbook. Lastly, each core had its own leader, deity, symbol, oath, and cultural traditions. Just be warned: it's sort of like how watching one YouTube video will then result in the rest of your day being eaten up by other similar interesting videos, so make sure you're ready to spend some time on this.]

This didn't mean Billy couldn't feel emotion. His first ever emotion had been wrath. He couldn't really remember what had happened, but he knew it involved his parents treating him unjustly in an argument. He went to his room, and extended his right arm straight out with his palm splayed on the wall.

Billy remembered being so angry his soul was generating actual heat. He could feel it rolling off him in waves, powerful waves, and it lasted for at least twenty minutes, maybe over a half hour. He just stood there, letting it flow through him, finally getting his first real taste of what it meant to be human, something he'd never truly understood before.

Logically Billy knew people got angry. But he didn't know what it actually felt like. He always had to go off context like facial expressions and the actual words they were saying. He had also known that it was his soul generating the heat, not his body, because he hadn't exercised all day, and he hadn't been sitting in direct sunlight or anything like that.

Respect had been Billy's second ever emotion, something he began to feel as he studied the pagan gods growing up. He'd started to full a burgeoning baseline level of respect for them, and as he grew older and more powerful and experienced, he liked to believe they also respected him.

The most depressing part about all of this was the lie Billy had told most often in his life: that he felt loved. Again, pragmatically speaking he knew love was a big deal. He knew it was something one typically had to make with someone, and it had to be earned. He knew that it was an emotion that took many forms, brotherly love, sisterly love, the way a young child loves their parents and vice versa, the way a person loves their pet.

Ironically, Billy's own mother was a romance author. But throughout the years he'd had to tell more than one therapist, "Yes, I feel loved", when in a literal sense, he didn't. Billy had been able to logically figure out that his parents were very loving people, who cared for him. He knew how much his father worked and traveled in order to earn money for the family. He knew how his mother had quit her job so that she could help him with his medical endeavors and his schooling full time. He knew how certain teachers and administrators had worked hard to get him special legislation while he was in public school so he'd be better accommodated.

But the emotion itself? Nah. And that had been fine to Billy, since he didn't know what he was missing out on. Until he met Iris.

End of Pt. 16

- Will P.