Wild-born

by Adrian Howell

  There was something else, too. Metal was harder to move than any other material. I first thought that this was because metal was heavier than other materials, but after a few experiments in and around the house, I found that it was easier to levitate a stack of glass plates, a brick, or even a small tree branch than it was to move a handful of coins. Between metals, aluminum was much easier than steel.

  And here’s the killer part: My telekinetic power was greatly affected by how much metal was near me. If metal was actually touching my skin, it weakened my power so much that I couldn’t move a single strand of hair. Back at the hospital, I had lived in a cloth gown, and what I thought was a dip in my power after I came home was actually caused by things like the zipper on my jeans, my belt buckle and, worst of all, the stainless steel back of the wristwatch I wore during the day. No wonder I had the strength to throw Cat out of the pool when I was floating in water wearing only swimming trunks, and how I managed to lift her in her room when we were just in our pajamas.

  This weakness to metal contact was my first real breakthrough in keeping my power under control. I took a short length of copper wire from Dad’s toolbox and wrapped it around my right ankle, hidden under my sock. The wire completely negated my power, and I was normal again. I was sure that there would be no more accidents like the one at the pool.

  Of course, knowing how to limit my power only made me bolder. After all, as long as I was careful to wear the wire when I was with my friends, I could keep practicing when I was alone, or, as often was the case now, with Cat, who stuck around me more than ever. It was easier sharing this secret with someone, even if it was with my little sister. I still occasionally worried that she might tell her friends, but Cat turned out to be a better secret-keeper than I gave her credit for.

  One of the few ways in which our parents were really cool was that, ever since I turned eleven, they stopped hiring a babysitter for Cat and me when they left us at home. They weren’t trying to be cheap or anything. After all, they did pay who-knew-how-much for my private hospital room. They just believed in giving us some room to grow, and that philosophy didn’t change even after my car accident. Mom might go ballistic over a broken vase or stained rug from time to time, but provided we didn’t burn down the house, it was ours to do with as we pleased. It was the ideal training ground for secretly developing my powers.

  It was now mid-August, and Cat and I were enjoying the last few weeks of summer vacation.

  “Higher, Adrian!” cried Cat.

  “No! Someone will see you.”

  In the fading afternoon light, Cat was zooming around our backyard on my telekinetic roller-coaster ride. I could keep her afloat for nearly two minutes at a time before having to rest and catch my breath. I was exhausted after half an hour of this and I knew that I was losing my concentration, so I set her back down on the lawn as gently as I could. We lay on the grass for a few minutes, breathing heavily. For me, it was more tiring than exciting, but I was happy too. I felt that I had mastered my power at last. I had, in fact, done nothing of the sort, but at that time, I believed that things were going to get better and better. I was actually looking forward to going back to school and attending my next history class, or rather what I was going to do to it.

  Suddenly Mom’s voice rang out from inside the house. “Addy! Cat! Dinner!”

  My heart missed a beat. I had thought Mom was going to be out until much later. I hadn’t heard her enter the house or cook dinner. I shuddered to think what would have happened if Mom had walked into the backyard mid-Cat-flight.

  Cat might think this was just a fun new game, but I was sure Mom would want to have me checked at a hospital. It was all just too unnatural, and I was afraid that if any adults found out what I could do, being called “weird” at school might be the least of my problems.

  Cat, apparently unconcerned, skipped up to the path leading around the side of our house, stopped, and smiled mischievously.

  “Come on, Addy-baby!” she taunted. “Mom says dinner!”

  She took off as soon as I stood up and, knowing perfectly well she expected just that, I sprinted after her. I almost knocked over the TV as I tore through the house trying to catch her, but Cat had a knack for timing, and she was safely seated at the dining table under the watchful protection of Mom by the time I caught up.

  As soon as Mom’s back was turned, Cat stuck her tongue out at me. I made a green pea jump up from her plate and hit her nose.

  We both laughed.

  Chapter 2: The Berserker

  After Mom and Dad had gone to sleep that night, I was standing in the middle of my room making a book fly around me, flapping its covers like a bird. I thought I heard a strangely rough and deep voice off in the distance. I let my book fall to the floor and wondered where the voice had come from.

  An instant later, it felt as if someone was stabbing my forehead with a burning hot knife. The headache had come so suddenly that I first thought I was being physically attacked, but I was alone in my room. The stinging pain was unbearable even at the start, but then it got worse. I fell to my knees, clutching my head and trying not to scream.

  And suddenly, just when I was about to cry out, the pain vanished as if it had never been there. I looked up, but everything was blurry.

  I heard loud knocking on my door and Cat’s worried voice. “Adrian, can I come in? I’m coming in, okay?”

  I wiped my eyes and tried to steady my breathing as Cat entered, looking anxious.

  “I heard you yell. Are you okay?” asked Cat.

  “Yeah, Cat,” I breathed. “I’m okay.” So I guess I did cry out.

  “What happened?”

  I gingerly touched my forehead with my fingertips. “I don’t know. Did Mom and Dad hear?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Cat. “What do you mean, you don’t know what happened?”

  “I mean I don’t know!” I bellowed back, really angry with Cat. I felt that something was seriously wrong with me, but I didn’t care. Suddenly, I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hear her scream.

  Cat stared. “Adrian, you look white. Are you really okay?”

  “Just get out!” I raged at her. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone, Cat!” If I had to be with Cat any longer, I knew I’d hurt her.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going.”

  “Shut up, Cat! Get out!”

  Cat looked at me really frightened and backed out of my room, hastily shutting the door behind her.

  I was furious. How dare Cat come into my room like that?! How dare she talk to me?! How dare she even exist?! I could kill her for that!

  With the last shred of sanity left to me, I forced myself to look away from the door and out the window. The windowpane exploded outwards into tiny fragments that rained into the backyard.

  I breathed easier. I was still angry, but calm enough to know where I was, and what I had just done. I grabbed the copper wire which I kept under my bed, and instantly my energy drained away along with my anger. I slowly wrapped the wire around my left wrist. I felt really drowsy and worn out, but it was comforting after what had just happened.

  I walked to my door and whispered, “Cat?”

  “Adrian, are you okay?” Cat asked through the door. Somehow I knew that Cat wouldn’t have gone very far.

  “Yeah. I think so,” I said.

  “Is it safe to come in?”

  I opened the door and smiled at her weakly. She returned a hesitant smile, and then entered.

  “Cat…” I started, but I didn’t know how to say it in a way to give it justice.

  “Don’t say it, Adrian. I know you’re sorry. But that wasn’t even you. You were all white, and… and…” Cat’s voice trailed off. We looked at each other, and Cat finished in a hushed voice, “For a moment, I thought you were going to kill me.”

  I replied quietly, “For a moment, so did I.”

  “I think maybe you should tell Mom and Dad about this.”

  Cat had voiced exactly
what I knew was right but was afraid to do, so I protested, “Cat, I really don’t know what happened. It was like I was pumped with anger. It wasn’t mine at first, but then it was. What if I’m going crazy? What if they take me away? I’ll have to live in some hospital for the rest of my life!”

  “No!” Cat looked at me, her eyes a bit too watery for comfort. “I don’t want that.”

  I shook my head. “No, Cat, you’re right. I should tell someone.”

  “I take it back!” Cat said hastily. “Please, Adrian. What if they do take you away?”

  “Look at the window, Cat.”

  “I know. I saw it. I heard it break.”

  “Cat, I almost tried to kill you.”

  “But you didn’t, Adrian! And let me have that.” Cat pulled the wire off of my wrist and said gently, “See? You’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  She gave me a quick hug, and I said quietly, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “So,” said Cat, cheerful again, “here’s what happened. You were bouncing this” – she picked up my tennis ball and held it under my nose – “against that wall, and… Oops!” she cried in mock-alarm as she threw it out into the yard.

  I had to laugh.

  Then I looked at her seriously and said, “If it ever happens again…”

  Cat nodded. “I know, Adrian. We’ll both tell.”

  “I just can’t believe Mom and Dad didn’t hear all that.”

  “They sleep like rocks!” said Cat, giggling. “You should too, Adrian. And, oh, keep the wire.” Cat threw the copper wire back to me and stepped out of my room.

  The next day, Mom threw a typical fit about my window while Dad did his best to look angry. I knew I should have felt sorrier about it, but I was just glad the truth didn’t come out that morning. Mom and Dad really did sleep like rocks.

  I quickly learned something which, when I thought back, I wondered why I hadn’t figured out much earlier: Whatever had possessed me that night, breaking the window was not directly connected to it.

  I could use my power to hit things just as easily as I could to move them. Blasting, which is what I came to call it, required a different kind of focus, not surrounding the object, but against it. Anger, even make-believe anger, helped that focus, but it wasn’t really needed, just like you don’t really need to be angry at something to hit it with your fist. It was more like semi-controlled aggression. Instead of surrounding something with carefully focused energy, I could throw my energy directly against things, hitting them with the force of a good punch even from across a room.

  The blast energy was usually invisible and silent, just like with levitation. But if I pumped enough power into the shot, I could hear a slight whooshing sound and just make out a faint shimmering silvery line in the air along its path. Also, unlike moving or levitating things, blasting didn’t need nearly as much control. I could do it without much thinking or focus. But this also meant that it was more dangerous because I could end up blasting something (or someone) by accident. In fact, now that I thought about it, I wondered if perhaps it was a combination of blasting and levitating that had ejected Cat from the pool.

  Once I got the hang of blasting, which, surprisingly, took only one day, I demonstrated it to Cat. I lined up four soda cans on the picnic table in our backyard. Standing ten paces away, I knocked the first can over by just looking at it and focusing. It rolled off the table as if I had slapped it with the palm of my hand. For the second shot, I stretched my right arm out toward the cans. I had learned that extending my hand in the direction of the target helped focus my power. Two cans went flying off the table, being thrown about three yards, bent like they had been punched. Finally, I pointed just my right index finger at the last can, concentrating really hard for nearly a full minute on making a small, focused shot through my finger, just like a bullet from a gun. It hit the can dead center, and the soda sprayed out of the hole I had made. The blast didn’t go clean through the can, but the other side did lump out a bit. The cans were made of aluminum, but that didn’t matter with this kind of energy. I could hit anything with equal force, and the closer I was, the more powerful the blast. I showed Cat an old red brick that I had managed to split in half using several focused finger shots at point-blank range.

  “That’s amazing!” said Cat, but I caught a slight hint of tension in her voice. Perhaps she was regretting her decision to talk me out of telling our parents.

  “I’ll tell Mom and Dad if you think I should, Cat.”

  Cat shook her head. “No, Adrian. You can control it, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it’s okay. Really!”

  It really wasn’t. But that wasn’t Cat’s fault. It was mine. I shouldn’t have listened to her. She didn’t have this power and couldn’t know what it felt like. I should have listened to that small part of my mind back in the hospital: the part that was trying to warn me that when your life is changed, it’s changed forever. There is no going back.

  Three nights later, I didn’t wrap the wire around my ankle when I went to bed, and I woke up hovering. When I opened my eyes, my nose was so close to the ceiling that, for a split second, I believed I was lying facedown on the floor. Then gravity came back and winded me as I hit the real floor, hard. Unlike Cat, I wasn’t lucky enough to land on my mattress.

  Though that was the first time I did it in my sleep, it wasn’t the first time I had hovered. I had managed to levitate myself soon after I gave Cat her bump on the head. However, I couldn’t keep myself airborne for more than a minute. I was larger than Cat, and the same rules applied to lifting myself as with anything else. I had no way to know how long I had been sleep-hovering, but I figured that I must have woken up just after I lifted off from my bed. The greater question was how I had used my power in my sleep in the first place, but again, I didn’t know.

  “Now, that’s weird!” said Cat the next day when I told her. Our parents were out playing golf, of all things, and we were, as usual, left at home by ourselves. Cat was sitting on the living-room sofa across from where I was standing and looking at me like she hadn’t really seen me before.

  “All of this is weird, Cat,” I said, annoyed. My sister’s opinion of this had finally gone from “amazing” to “weird,” and I felt a little betrayed.

  “I know, Adrian. But you said you could control it.”

  “I can,” I said. “I mean, with the wire.”

  Cat frowned. “Yeah, but it’s like you’re getting stronger and stronger. What if someday the wire doesn’t work anymore?”

  “It works fine, Cat.”

  But that was a tad and a half on the dishonest side. Oh, the wire worked alright, but it actually worked too well. Recently, when I was wearing it, I felt really weak and tired. It was like my body could no longer support itself without my power free. I wondered if perhaps my telekinetic power was eating up my physical strength. I had no real answers. All I knew for certain was that the copper wire didn’t make me normal at all. It weakened me. That certainly made going to sleep easier, but sometimes I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. That’s why I had skipped wearing it the night before.

  And school was starting in only a few more days. If I wore the wire, I wouldn’t have the energy to play any sports, or perhaps even commute, but if I didn’t wear it, I might do something that… well, something…

  “Are you sure the wire works?” asked Cat, carefully studying my unconfident expression.

  “Listen, Cat, I know this is weird. But I think I’m going to be okay. Just–”

  But I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I am coming.”

  I heard the deep, growling voice inside my head, and it sounded more like an animal than a man. Once again, the headache followed an instant later. It felt like my head would explode, or be crushed, or both at the same time. I realized that the voice I had heard was actually a “thought.” A vile thought. It hit me so hard I couldn’t tell up from down. One moment I was on my knees, grabbing my hair, the next,
I was on my side, thrashing about. It felt like a blender churning up my brains. It pounded me from the inside, and this time I knew I cried in pain. Loudly. Whatever was doing this to me, it was much closer than before.

  And then, just as suddenly as the last time, the pain was gone.

  “Adrian? Adrian!”

  Cat was crying. My whole body was shaking. I couldn’t think straight. Everything seemed to be in slow motion.

  I felt… fear. That was mine. Anger. No, that wasn’t mine. Not yet. But it would be.

  “Cat! Get out!” I yelled. “Get out of the house, Cat!”

  “Adrian? Oh please, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

  “Something’s really wrong! Please, Cat, run!”

  It wasn’t just anger. It was pure, unfiltered rage and hate. I picked myself up and roared at the ceiling. Cat was gone. It didn’t matter. I would find her. And kill her. And everyone. I would kill everyone. And everything. I would destroy everything.

  I sensed something move behind me.

  I turned around and snarled. “Cat!”

  Cat jumped on me, hitting my face with a frying pan that she had gotten from the kitchen. The moment the metal surface made contact, I fell to the floor, my nose bleeding. My emotions, my power… my very being was fading away.

  “I’m sorry, Adrian, I had to,” Cat sobbed hysterically.

  “Cat… oh, Cat… What is happening to me?”

  I could barely see her for the tears in my own eyes. She gripped me tightly and pushed the frying pan into my hands. I held on to it as if it were a lifesaver in a thrashing sea, feeling the comfort of the nothingness it gave me. Here, there was no pain, no energy, and no emotion. The cold, black metal tuned out the whole world. I vaguely heard Cat saying that she was going to get my copper wire, and when she stood up, I passed out.