I broke my first neck when I was eight. I didn’t even know I had done it when it happened. I just stared at the stupid PE teacher who was yelling at me and I wanted him to lie down and die. And he did. Just like that. It was the first of many neck breaks. And car crashes and plates broken. But, like I said, I wasn’t even aware that I had done it. Ost of the kids were just scared and screaming as the blood escaped from the corner of Mr. Brightman’s mouth. His eyes were wide open staring at my soul like he could see into my messed up brain like he knew that it was me who caused all of this.

So, I went home after the police came to the school and all of our parents were called to come and pick us up. My mother walked me back to the car and when we got in she just kinda looked at me with a real worried look in her eyes. You see, my mother is not my birth mother, she is my house mom as I live at a foster home with five other kids. She was very concerned, but I didn’t really know why as she had absolutely no connection to Mr. Brightman. She may have known of him, as he was on the town council, but other than that, he was pretty much a complete stranger.

“Are you ok, Mark?” she asked me. That’s my name, by the way, Mark Riley. That’s not my real last name, but the name I’ve been given as from what I’ve been told, no one knows anything about my birth parents.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It was a little scary, but he was mean. So, even though I was scared, I’m not sad. He was a jerk-off.”

My mom didn’t like that I used that type of language, but she knew that I heard it from the other boys, or quite honestly, the jerk-off that was her husband. He liked to hit us and not feed us dinner if we were too loud while he sat in his chair that smelled like cigar smoke watching shows that had women in very little clothing on.

My mom stayed quiet and was much more concerned than I realized at the time. As years went on, I found myself in other situations where I seemed to be controlling the result. When I was being forced to eat the roast meat that I hated and my mom’s husband was yelling at me about it, my plate flew across the room and caught him right above the eye. He needed seventeen stiches and he could never see quite the same out of it. I was never made to eat roast meat again.

Then there was the time in seventh grade when I saw Jonathan Morris flip me off while driving by with his dad. I hated Jonathan so much because he insisted on slapping the back of my head and spitting on me whenever he saw me and also did it to all of the other kids who lived in my house. He said we were the “Lost Boys” because our parents lost us at birth. Jerk-off. So I made the traffic light fail and his dad never saw the semi-truck that was heading at him. It slammed right into the side of his car. The truck’s grill had those bull horns attached to it and I watched and smiled as one of the horns pierced through Jonathan’s neck. We were never called the “Lost Boys” again.

So as I grew up I used my powers for both good and not-so-good. You might just think I went on killing rampages all the time, but I’m not a crazy psychopath! I just want justice when it’s needed. I seemed to not only be able to manipulate inanimate objects to do whatever I commanded them to, but I was also able manipulate my body to learn skills very quickly. So, I learned how to play music. It was the only time that my mind was clear. Completely focused on the music. I learned to play bass guitar and was one of the best for my age.

It was weird because I made these things happen and no one seemed to notice that I was the common denominator on all these grotesque situations. I got good at making things look like random accidents. I continued to manipulate the world around me with no attention until I turned seventeen my senior year of high school. I came home one day after hanging out with some friends of mine as we had just started our punk rock band. We were called The Snots, and we practiced at my drummer’s house because his dad was practically deaf and his mom didn’t notice as we smuggled beer into his basement.

My mom can into my room, closed my door and sat on the edge of my bed. This was not normal as we lived in a house with a “no closed door” policy as all the boys were getting older and she didn’t want us in there with the local girls who tended to be sluts in my town. Not that any of us had any luck with chicks to this point, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

“They know about you,” she said.

“Who knows about me?” I asked, feeling a little more than confused at her sudden sense of urgency.

“The government. The feds. The MAN! They know about your powers and that you have been using them. They know you had something to do with the Morris boy’s death all those years back and they know it was you that caused that accident at the factory last fall. They know everything.”

Let me bring you up to speed. The previous October I made the metal belt on Harold’s (that was her husband) machine at his meat packing factory where he worked come off when it reached about seventy-five miles per hour and slice his throat. It was the first time I had killed someone from a distance without having them in my sights. Took a lot out of me and I was sick with flu-like symptoms for three days. Well worth it. Poor bastard. He bled out right there in front of God and everybody. He never touched us again.

“Anyways,” she continued, “they’ve been coming around here asking questions and writing down stuff and generally taking notes. They are going to lock you up if you don’t leave quick.”

So, I have come to find out that my mom has always known about my “specialness”. She watched me closely from when I was young and just pieced things together. For a while she said she wasn’t sure if I was aware that I was doing this or if it was dumb luck. Then she realized with the Jonathan Morris situation that I knew exactly what I was doing. She just let me go and never said anything. Even when I killed her old man. I think she was relived if you ask me. The hitting wasn’t only limited to us. She came in with her share of black eyes, too.

The next day at school I found myself keenly aware of stares and looks that I had never noticed before. I found myself feeling nauseous around certain individuals and I wasn’t sure why. Until late in the day when my science teacher, Mr. Berube followed me into the boys bathroom.

“Hey there, Mark. How’s your day so far?” he asked. He was opening the janitors closet that usually contained a mop bucket and some crap they throw on the floor when the freshmen puke up their lunches. Not a normal stop for a science teacher. That was my first clue.

“Fine” I replied. I was having a really weird day and making conversation with this pot-bellied, balding creeper was not my idea of passing the time. Especially while I was trying to take a piss. Please stop talking.

“Do you think you could give me a hand here for a second? I need to move this crate of supplies out of the way to get to the fuse box, but I can’t get it by myself.” He was not really making eye contact with me as I was walking towards him.

I instantly got really nervous and anxious and this is when my “powers” always start to kick in. I found myself able to sense I was in danger and it was like I could sense the gun he had in his hand. What was he going to do? Kill a student in the bathroom and just leave me here? Maybe make it look like a suicide?

As he turned towards me, I grabbed his arm with my thoughts and jammed the gun right through the 220 volt breaker that was located. Inside the fuse box. The metal barrel made contact with the electric current and he began to shake violently. His flesh started to burn and blood was coming out of his ears. I threw him across the room and made sure his skull smashed the side of the ceramic sink caving his forehead in. He slumped to the floor as I walked calmly over him.

My mom was right. They were everywhere now, and I had to get out.

So, I left that afternoon with two hundred dollars in my pocket and never looked back. That’s the thing with being a foster kid with no record of birth parents. You can pretty much pick up, change your name and never look back. I found a job a few hundred miles away and got myself an apartment. I hooked up with a touring rock band and have been on the road for the last twenty years. I’ve never really had to use my stuff that often anymore. Maybe a jerk-off club owner or someone trying to swindle our cash away from us. But nothing more than a broken arm or two. Or maybe a sudden stroke if the asshole was worth it.

And that’s how I ended up here. Alone in my hotel room with a girl from the club last night. I have had my share of one-night stands these past twenty years or so, but this one was different. She seemed special, if you know what I mean. She had been flirting with me all night and when we finished our last set, she made sure that I knew where she was going to be spending her evening. Not that I minded at all. We had a

great time and we finished off more than enough alcohol to put us both into a hung over state this morning. She slowly got out of bed with a hair style that has seen better days and gives me a coy smile.

“I’m gonna take a shower. You can join me if you want.” She stripped off her shirt in front of me and made her way into the bathroom and I heard the shower turn on. Not a bad way to start the morning, right?

I smoked my last cigarette and gave her some time to get the water hot. These hotels can have pretty shitty water pressure, and we’re not rock stars, so we usually end up at the closest Comfort Inn. As I walked into the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of me in the mirror.

“It’s about time. Take your clothes off and get your ass in here.” she said as she had her back to me and was looking over her shoulder.

I opened the door to the shower and heard a thud followed by a gurgling sound as she hit the floor. I saw the twelve inch dagger that she was planning on using on me sticking out of her chest as I perfectly placed it in her heart. She wasn’t bleeding too bad as I kicked her out of the way and took my shower.

You see, what they don’t know is that as my mind has grown stronger and older, so have my other senses. I can smell them now. Like the guy I ran over with the bus last month. I know that they are everywhere, but they have no idea what I’m capable of. What they also don’t know is that my body is becoming as flexible as my mind.

I reached down and touched her shoulder. Slowly she started to shrivel up into an unrecognizable solid mass on the white tile floor. Her hair was the last thing to burn and the smell was a combination of onions and shoe leather. You know one of those smells that you can’t decide if it is good or gross, yeah like that. While this was happening I could feel the changes take place in my body. I was morphing and shifting and things were changing all over the place. I was getting smaller and my inside were re-arranging themselves. IT had been a long time since I had taken the form of a woman. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was not used to the amount of sexual flirtations and forwardness that men show. It usually doesn’t take me long to break another neck and I can put myself into the shape of a male again. The transformations usually last for a month or so while it allows me to skip town. Then magically, one day I am back to my original self.. Weird huh? Yeah you should have been there the first time it happened…..

By T Gamache

From: United States

Website: Https://tgamache.com

Twitter: @t_gamache

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