Telepathy

A monologue for an 18-year-old Laura, Telepathy, is addressed to an older man who is burning a book he has worked on for years.  Laura says she knows, a lot of the time, what the man is thinking.  She says that just before she goes to sleep she hears the voices of other people in her head.  She wonders why the man has been drinking so much lately and asks if he is upset because she is leaving for college.  She says she is grateful to him for looking after her when her father left and her mother went crazy.  She says she learned from him that truth was a lie and that telepathy is not a rational thing.  She says she dreamed that she looked in the mirror and saw a praying mantis looking back at her.  She remembers another dream in which she is wandering, covered in blood, through a house of mirrors, and sometimes she dreams that Death comes to claim her and he has her father’s hands.  She remembers that her father once put his hands around her mother’s neck, strangling her after she tormented him verbally for hours, and then walked out of their lives.  She says the stepfather never touches her even though he wants to and suggests that her mother left because she knew of his desire.  She says she is going to bed but will leave her door open in case he needs something in the middle of the night.