It was a proletarian introduction. They had many ideas but no beginning, this group of foul mouthed teenagers that sat staring past each other. Their collective thought rebounded around my head. It felt like the start of an earthquake. The few seconds before all life breaks into a charged chaos. No words flashed into my head, the words I hoped could tell me where they intended to go. Only emotional noise hit me. This sort of energy I'd only felt twice before. Both of those times someone had died.
I had the strong urge to yell at them, 'Shut up! Fucking with reality isn't a light pastime.' I knew they wouldn't understand. Any group casually building that much energy didn't have enough experience to be aware. Then I felt it.
She looked at me. Their trollop. Every few seconds she looked again and a small jolt of energy stung me. I looked over just as another one hit. At first she looked surprised that I'd noticed, then interested. Her look screamed 'Make me feel like a woman. I'm want to be your mistress, pliant and willing.' I felt sick and uncomfortably hard.
Black spots appeared in front of her face as the energy congealed around them. My head hurt, but all I could do was sit there. Drink your coffee, I thought. The cup in my hand began to shimmy. I put it down. In my other hand the donut I had been munching on crumbled. My fist lay surrounded by it's remains. The cool Formica table top sweated under this same fist as their energy came to me. It felt nauseating against my skin, and then coursing through my body. The response was instinctive. I couldn't stop what I did. If I hadn't they might have killed an innocent bystander. They felt me. Each childish eye focused in my body.
Then silence. No babies cried, no cars sped by, nothing. All the people in a ten mile radius choked on their own breath. It was a freak accident. Two strangers meeting in a dank cafe some time before midnight. Their power and my knowledge collided, but only for a second.
The air around my body hurt. Now I saw words. I could practically hear their confusion. Only she knew. The rest were too caught up in details to notice. I felt myself slipping off the barstool. I thought 'I could die now. There is nothing else.' Her arms were about me, then sleep.
This was the scene still in my mind as I awoke. The blond vixen holding him as he fell. Her dish water hair brushing his face as she grasped him closer. Him, the disappointed looking scholarly man. While all her young male friends hovered over them. It was almost funny, if I though about it hard. Then I noticed my surrounding's.
The psychedelic wall paper and thick air of sandalwood incents were not in the least familiar. I felt sick to my stomach looking at the wall paper so I closed my eye's. Not one inch on my body felt, a side effect of focusing all that energy. My finger tip's and toes should be purple by now, all the surface vessels having popped. How stupid could I be? It wasn't my responsibility to save some half-witted children from the fate they deserved.
Of course the answer was simple, it was her. She had made it personal. I had to stop them from hurting her.
"Are you awake?" Her voice even sounded angelic, but those word's weren't coming from my head. I opened my eyes.
That cornmeal beauty really did exist, and I stared at it dazed.
"I thought you might like some help sitting up. D-do you feel up to it?"
"You could have left me there. I would have found my way home." I tried to look menacing, but my face hurt. So I just stared at her harder.
She walked to the side of the bed and patted my hand. "You would have ended up in the hospital. I don't know what your financial situation is, but I don't think the bill would have set well with you. Also, I.....I wanted to ask you what happened. None of us are quite sure, but we thought you might know. "
I wanted to stare at her face forever but this was getting out of hand. If they didn't know what had happened it would never 'happen' again. No one had been hurt. I'd done a good deed and now it was time to go home. I told my feet to move.....move feet......nothing. I tried again with the same result. She must have noticed my panicked look because she bent down closer.
"Do you need some help?" I grunted and she pulled me into a sitting positioned.
Only the ceiling was psychedelic, the rest of the wall was covered by a bright pink wallpaper. It only made me feel half as sick. She held a cup to my lips. The sweet tea tasted foul but it soothed my sore throat. Next she placed a piece of white bread on my lips. I ate that and a few spoon's of Jell-O. Then exhaustion. I slept for another three hours, woke to the sound of people talking, and sat up with a newly found energy.
They all sat in a circle around an obnoxious neon coffee table. She sat next to a blond beach bum, fawning. If I had felt a little more myself it wouldn't have bothered me, but some part of me had claimed her. She owed her life to me. True, she didn't know it but I couldn't stop feeling like she should. He looked at me. Dank blue eye's took me in and rejected me. Children disgust me and this young man definitely fell under the child roster.
"The mystery man's up. How's about you get him a drink, Saush."
"How's about you get me a drink, beach boy. I think the young lady deserves a rest, after all that attention she's been giving you." I continued my accent across the room, looking for the nearest door.
She stopped me, "What do you think your doing. Sit down. I'll get us all some soda's." She put me next to the bum and strode through a well lit arch.
"So......who are you?"
"Not that it will matter later, but my name is Dr. Philip Armand. I'm a professor at Brodrics University. Now, how about all of you. Do you have names?"
The bum slid sideways and stared into my face with youthful authority, "Yeah we have names. I'm Tommy. You already met Sausha."
He nodded to the gangly youth beside him, "This golden haired boy is Jean and the guy next to him," a young man with a scraggly black beard nodded "is Ralph."
Across from the oily looking Ralph a clean cut blond haired boy sat up straighter. "Over their on the papasan is Mark, " from under a shag of rusty brown hair the boy beside him smiled cockily "and beside him is his brother Don."
"Our most prestigious member looks like he's fixing himself a drink. Toss me a beer Will." A tall man covered with thin red hair looked back at me with barely concealed curiosity. He was a student from my early morning philosophy class. Realizing that these children were on the brink of adulthood did nothing to my avid dislike. Ignorance could not be excused by youth or obliviousness. The act of treason they committed against reality, even in innocent experimentation, was punishable by natural consequences. Only my intervention saved them from fate.
"Well, I appreciate your kindness but I think it's time I get on my way. Is there a phone I can use?"
Sausha and William both stepped forward to protest, but Tom beat them to the punch. "This has nothing to do with kindness, Professor. We want to know what happened back there."
"Please, Philip, all we want is an explanation." Sausha used her innocent sunflower face to swindle some charity out of my cynical vista.
I looked into the face of blant naivet
- ‹ previous
- 19 of 53
- next ›