You know me. I had to experiment. I considered getting online and asking people whether they had ever encountered something like this, but thought this was going to be useful later on. I can try and figure out the thing’s mechanics without the bias of knowing what other people did when they found out.

The guy delivering the paper had a birthmark over the left side of his cheek. It was large and conspicuous but the guy had a more or less pleasant face you wouldn’t really mind. His mind was a jumble of thoughts about getting his uniform dry on time and wondering whether the nieghbor’s kid could ever stop trying to kill Che-che, his now pregnant cat.

The neighbor’s kid wasn’t really anybody’s kid, he was living off of the vacant area in a couple’s little shack. The couple worked at the City Hall, a man in the Legal department and the woman processing voter IDs and other administrative stuff. They were always talking badly about their co-workers or the other neighbors or the government in general, came home late and often left early, leaving the kid to man the house and basically troll around the compound unsupervised.

This concerned the newspaper delivery guy a bit, because he knew Che-che was always fair game when the kid was bored. He hated that he had to worry about this on top of his tuition, his horrendous body odor by the time class ended, and the ever-present cloud of impending poverty hanging above him. But the other day, the kid trapped Che-che inside a cardboard box and started kicking it around.

I felt all this while he was waiting for me to come out with the week’s payment.

“Lando, eto,” I said. His thoughts smelled positively muddy, reminding me of street gutter. I wondered whether I can stalk him home to confirm the story I thought I heard from his mind.