Echo in Her Mind

Four.

"Excuse me?"

Bethany couldn't believe the words that she was hearing; it was as if they were coming from a parallel universe as opposed to this man standing in front of her.

"You heard, correctly. Whenever I withdrew your emotions from you, I distributed them to others around the world to those that have similar gifts as you. Whenever you rid of them, the emotion of yours that they are holding will be returned to you."

She stood there, taking in his words, wondering how incredibly messed up all of it sounded.

"There is a catch, however," he said.

Of course, there is, she thought.

"I cannot return your gift to you, until you have completed each task. You must do it on your own accord. Although I will be able to return the one emotion that I decided to hold to myself, the one that got you here in the first place: your anger."

The Watcher's eyes lit up as he told her this; as if it were some sort of game he had been planning since the beginning. And maybe it was, but Bethany wasn't sure if she wanted to play. She might have been able to kill people in her mind, but to do it with her hands seemed completely impossible.

"I, I don't understand," she stuttered. "What's the point of all of this?"

Surely this couldn't be for his simple pleasure. He had to be getting something out of this. A normal person doesn't just take someone's emotions and then expect them to kill the people that have them to get them back. Then again, he definitely wasn't normal.

"I, my dear, have been planning this day for a very long time. Each of the people that I have given your emotions to, have something I need. Their gifts, such as yours, are not as entirely powerful, but useful to me in some way. However, they, like you previously, do not know they have those gifts.

"The emotion of yours I provided them with is the strongest emotion they can feel. And that helps them subconsciously use that gift. I cannot just simply take it away from them. In order to obtain your emotion, and for I to obtain their gift, they must be killed."

Bethany tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind, and in an abnormal way it all made sense. They each needed something those people, whom she had no idea are, had, but of course The Watcher and his almighty power, needed someone to do the dirty work for him.

"But why me? Why did you choose me over the billions of other people on this planet?"

He seemed to be taken back by that question, apparently not expecting her to ask that. But if that were the case then he wasn't as bright as he came off as. If he expected to feed all of this information into her head, and expect her to not ask why, then he must not have thought this all the way through.

"That is something you will find out at the end of your task, Bethany. You are not ready for such information."

But I was ready to be told you stole my emotions, and that I need to kill people to get them back? That makes sense, she thought.

"Well I guess I have no choice but to complete it then, now don't I?"

If she could still feel something, she would be terrified right now. So, in a sense, she guessed it was a good thing.

"Good, your training starts first thing tomorrow morning. I will return your anger then; you're going to need it. Ruben will be your instructor."

And with that, The Watcher disappeared into thin air, and if it didn't seem like Bethany just got punched in the stomach, she would've thought it had all been a dream.