Tuesday, you tease me.

Here is a small excerpt from my short story "Push Me" which I just completed at 3 a.m. (I'm still struggling to sleep if I have a story idea. I wrote from 10-3 last night.) The story is about a woman at a government agency that specializes in empaths. She has a hard enough time with everyone being psychic. She can "wipe memories" but that's the extent of her abilities. She's sent to wipe a specific memory from someone and discovers that not only is he hiding how strong his abilities are, but he is a pusher (someone who can induce compliance with the power of suggestion.) I'm really tired or I might have come up with a better summary than that... maybe... possibly.

Here it is:

As she stared at the steel grey lake with its early morning fog, Brenna was thinking of the predominance of grey in her life. There was the small office she was currently in with its grey walls. The government facility itself--its stacked-block, grey, concrete building marred the landscape like only government facilities can. There was her pin-striped grey business suit. While she looked good in it, and it offset her copper hair and green eyes nicely, it was still grey. Grey. Grey. Grey. Even her car was the regulation non-descript grey. Drab, very drab, Brenna. Who would have ever guessed you’d grow up to have such a drab grey car and work for a secret government agency cloaked in the grey space on budgets and administration?

Then, there was him… and he wasn’t drab at all. His eyes were almost the same color as the lake right now, and that’s probably why she was thinking of him. Though it might be his white grey hair—prematurely grey despite his age of thirty-one. They said it was stress, but if she’d ever seen Harris Dumont stressed out then he hid it really well. He always seemed to appear when she was stressed out however. They’d started meeting regularly when she was on a quick walk to clear her mind. If her walks were at all predictable, she’d think he was purposefully doing it. As it was, he was either incredibly lucky—or he could read her mind. His file, of course, said it was the latter but, damn, how could he read it without being near her? He had to be the strongest telepath in the compound, and that should scare the crap out of her, but it never had.