American Goth by J. D. Glass

world. Hazes, like the waves that drip up off the asphalt and through the air in heat of summer, surrounded different items in the room.
    “Can you see the channels?” she asked, waving her hand along her body.
    I could, I could see where the energy flowed, the path it took, the centers where it gathered, and the greater areas of exchange. The centers shone brightly, were concentrated masses about the size of a tennis ball that flared in my sight over her head, her heart, slightly below her navel, and if I focused in just the right way, I could see almost through her body to the glowing exchange center that parked almost at the base of her spine.
    “What do you remember of overload?” she asked.
    God, what I knew I wanted to forget. Not more than a week after the session where I’d had the opportunity to stop but chose to go forward, I learned very painfully what overload was.
    A human body couldn’t withstand extreme heat, extreme cold, the vacuum of space, radiation—and in the same way, the body could be damaged trying to handle, or channel, too much energy, no matter how pure it was.
    It had been a few days, just a few, of slight overload. It had been enough to delay my period. Had that been it, it would have been no big deal, but it also made me cramp like I’d never had before, shot my blood sugar and blood pressure down so low I’d been left unable to do anything but curl up into the fetal position, thrown into a world of mind-numbing pain where all that existed was a world-wrecking nausea that made me heave, a throbbing ache that tore through the center of my spine to my gut, only to pit through the heart of my thighs, and it left me open, wide open to every single thought, being, imprint on the Aethyr, all a chaotic shout in my head and body. Uncle Cort found me on the hallway floor where I’d curled up before I could get to my room.
    “I’ll monitor,” he’d told Elizabeth, the only voice that was clear to me through the haze. “You clear the channels.”
    The contact of his mind, his energy, on mine, sent the tear of pain into a scud down my body and back up to my throat and suddenly, Elizabeth, her hands, her face, so very clear before me, the concerned expression so familiar …It was a combination of physical and mental massage along the lines of my spine and kidneys that discharged the overflow, set the world to right again, and sent the pain and turmoil down to levels that were manageable. I slept for almost twenty-four hours straight afterward.
    I may have winced at the memory and Elizabeth nodded.
    “I know…I really truly do. That aspect wasn’t pleasant. Shut the channels for now,” she suggested, “so we can avoid a replay.”
    It was easily done and I waited with an almost nervous anticipation to hear what would come next.
    “There are several ways of avoiding a lot of that, though not all of it. Methods to discharge the extra energy, ground it out,” she said, “and the most effective can result in a binding.”
    “Really?” I asked with interest.
    “Do you have an idea of what any of those grounding methods might be?” She studied me with interest as I shook my head.
    “No clue.”
    She cocked her head to the side in a way I had come to recognize meant she was considering what to say even as she studied me. “Sex, Ann. Are you a virgin?”
    Well that certainly distracted me from whatever I’d been thinking. However, the rather pointed question caught me short, and I choked on my tea as Elizabeth gracefully waited for my answer.
    “Um, what exactly do you mean?” I asked in return when I could finally breathe freely without the danger of fluids pouring into my lungs. I was certain that the heat I felt in my neck and head were a very visible shade of red on my face.
    “That’s what I thought,” she sighed as she took off her glasses and rubbed her temples.
    “Is that something that matters?”
    “In fact, it is. You know how to work on your own Astrally, you know how