The Mind Between
The Mind Between
It began, as these things often do, with a misunderstanding.
They were in a café, waiting for their order, when the barista said, “Flat white?” and they said, “That’s me,” just as the barista was thinking, The one with the blue scarf. It was odd—he hadn’t said it aloud, but they’d heard it, clear as any word. They brushed it off.
But it kept happening. On the bus, the driver thought, Hope this one’s got change, and they, without thinking, said, “Yes, I do,” before realizing they hadn’t been asked anything. At work, when a colleague mentally cursed about a broken printer, they brought over the right part before a word was spoken.
For a while, it was delightful. They felt like the universe had finally granted them backstage access to humanity. They aced job interviews, won pub quizzes, and never showed up to a surprise birthday party empty-handed. Once, at a dinner, they pre-emptively offered someone water just as the person was thinking how thirsty they were, and everyone laughed about their “sixth sense.”
Their friend circle expanded. People said they were “remarkably intuitive.” They got promotions, invitations, dates. It was all so easy. The world seemed suddenly transparent, like glass that had been wiped clean.
But soon the shine dulled.
The first time it felt wrong was with a stranger on the train. The person sat across from them, smiling politely. They smiled back. Then they heard, What’s wrong with them? Why are they staring like that? They hadn’t realized they were. Embarrassed, they looked away—but the thought lingered, echoing like feedback.
At work, the buzz of minds became unbearable: a low, constant static of half-formed fears, irritations, and private cruelties. They tried to tune it out. It didn’t work. They stopped meeting friends for drinks—the laughter masked too much worry, too much envy. Even hugs grew painful: proximity amplified the noise.
People began avoiding them, subtly at first. Conversations would falter when they entered the room. Friends would say, “You always look like you know something,” and then fall silent, uneasy. Strangers gave them wide berth on the street, without knowing why.
They tried to stop listening, but the thoughts came uninvited. They tried to explain to one friend—“I think I can hear people thinking”—but the friend just said, This is getting weird, and never called again.
Eventually, the only voice left was their own. Even that one began to fray, tangled with echoes of what others had once thought about them.
One night, walking home through quiet streets, they realized that the hum of human thought had faded completely. Not because they’d lost the power, but because no one was near enough to think around them anymore.
They paused under a streetlamp. The air was cool, empty. For the first time in months, there was peace—and it was unbearable.
They whispered into the silence, just to hear a sound: “Anyone there?”
No answer came, not even in their mind.
Generated by GPT5.0 from the prompt: “Please write me a short story about a person who over time realizes that they can read people’s minds. For a while, their life goes really well, obviously because they can read peoples minds! And this first half of the book include some humorous anecdotes where the person gradually realizes their skill and then leverage, is it in a few situations. In the second half of the story, things go worse for the person because everybody else begins to shun them. Others do not consciously reject the person because they formulate the idea that they can read their minds, but they are aware of something being off in their interactions with this person. The person end up sad and alone and isolated. Write the story with the lead character, gender neutral, where it is never revealed what their gender is. I’m happy with the single they pronoun.