Superhuman Nature

by Brandon Overall

  “Pretty convincing, right? I’ve been practicing for a while. You just happened to be looking at it from the best angle. Thanks for the compliment, but I have to get going home. Sorry to cause a racket.” Neil started to walk away, but the man put his hand on Neil’s shoulder and stopped him.

  “Hang on a minute. What do you mean you caused a racket? Did you bust down that tree?”

  Neil turned around to face the man. He looked serious now. The last thing Neil wanted to do was offend some tree-hugging hippie. He could tell there was no way to talk himself out of this situation. The man might be a hermit, but he was no idiot.

  Neil did the only thing he could think of. He reached out for the dumbbell that he had sent speeding out into the woods and pulled it from its resting place. He could see it speeding towards him from behind the old hippie. He slowed it to a halt, and raised it above the man’s head. It moved through the air without making any sound. The man had no idea what was about to happen.

  “I’m really sorry about this.” Neil said

  “Sorry about wha-” The weight dropped almost a full foot onto the top of his head. Neil saw his eyes roll back as he went limp and fell to the ground, unconscious. He might have a bump and a slight concussion, but he would be alright. Neil quickly ran to his car and drove off, feeling guilty about what he had just been forced to do.

  It was already mid-afternoon, and Neil decided he had done enough ‘studying’ for the day. It was time to head home to grab a bite to eat. He hadn’t eaten anything since last night with Emma.

  Emma.

  Neil had almost forgotten about her. So much had happened since last night that it almost felt like a different lifetime. He felt like he was living as two different people. One exam-studying, beer-drinking, girlfriendless Neil, and one tree-killing, self-levitating, homeless-man-assaulting Neil. Finding time for both Neils would be a challenge.

  He decided to try calling Emma from the phone number he had gotten off of her Facebook earlier that morning. It might be a little too soon since their last encounter, but he was feeling overly-confident from the high he felt from being able to fly.

  She answered it on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Emma, its Neil, from last night.”

  “Neil! Of course you’re from last night. I don’t forget people that quick. I didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon. What’s up?”

  “Nothing much, I was just thinking about getting some lunch and was wondering if you might want to join me.”

  Neil surprised himself by completing the whole sentence without sounding nervous. This was the first time he had asked a girl out in a long time.

  “You mean like on a date?”

  Neil suddenly felt embarrassed. This was a silly idea. They had just met last night. He should have casually called her later on. Calling the very next day sounded too desperate.

  “Well, I mean –”

  “Relax, silly. I’m just messing with you. I’d love to get lunch. I’ve been studying all morning and I could use a break. Meet me at Chipotle in half an hour?”

  “Sounds good, I’ll see you there, Emma!”

  Neil ended the call and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything in his life seemed to be getting better by the day. Two days ago he was just a lonely college kid stressed out by finals, with no girlfriend and had no idea if he was going to be happy or miserable a month after graduation. Now he had unimaginable power, had met an amazing girl, and couldn’t care less about finals. All of his life, he had felt like he had some sort of untapped potential, and he was now finally starting to see that he was right. He never would have guessed what he was actually capable of.

  Neil made it home, brushed his teeth, changed his clothes, sprayed a little bit of cologne on, and started walking down the street to the burrito place where he had agreed to meet Emma. He arrived a few minutes after the time they had agreed upon, and Emma was already leaning against the side of the building waiting for him. When she noticed him, she smiled and made a fake pouty face.

  “Took you long enough! I was starting to think you were going to ditch me!” She stood with her arms folded to give the appearance of being upset, but Neil could tell it was in jest.

  “Sorry, I had to help an old lady cross the street and rescue a kitten from a tree on the way over here.”

  To his surprise, Emma ran towards him and embraced him as he got close. Neil wasn’t expecting any kind of affection like that after just meeting her the night before, but he didn’t mind. As she got close, Neil could smell her perfume. A wave of relaxation washed over him as they embraced, and he realized that he was holding her longer than he should have.

  Neil pulled back, a little embarrassed, and tried to change the subject before making it any more awkward.

  “So, you ready to go in? I’m starving.”

  “Definitely. I haven’t eaten anything all day.” She seemed not to mind the uncomfortably long hug.

  They both went inside and got in line to order. There were already eight people in line in front of them. In a college town, 2:00 PM on a Saturday was the breakfast rush. It looked like they came at just the right time to hit it dead on.

  While waiting in line, two rather buff looking guys came in wearing backwards baseball caps and cut off shirts. Neil didn’t follow the University sports teams very closely, but these two looked like they could be football or lacrosse players. As they came in, they were both laughing at something one of them said outside.

  In disbelief, Neil watched as the two guys walked straight to the front of the line without passing so much as a glance at the people that had already been waiting for several minutes. On any other day, Neil would have just ignored it, but today was not any ordinary day. He was not afraid of these two Neanderthals. He knew there was absolutely nothing they could do to hurt him. On top of his new found confidence, he had a girl to impress.

  “Hey assholes, why don’t you go to the back of the line like a fucking civilized human being.” Neil said triumphantly.

  They turned to face him, looked at each other, and smiled. They were taking the bait.

  One of the guys walked straight up to Neil so that their noses were almost touching.

  “Listen here chicken-shit, we’re hungry, and we’ve got practice in an hour, so you and your little slut girlfriend here are going to have to wait a little bit longer to eat your fuckin burrito. Deal with it.”

  As he said the word slut, he lightly pushed Neil. It wasn’t enough to make him stagger back, but it was enough to piss him off even more.

  “You don’t want to push me man, I’m not someone you want to mess with.”

  Neil could tell he was going to enjoy this. Despite having never been in a fight before, he wasn’t nervous at all. He felt invincible. He could break this asshole in half if he wanted to, but that wasn’t going to do anybody any good. Not to mention, Emma wasn’t the type of girl that responded well to meatheads. He decided all he needed to do was scare him enough to back off.

  The guy in front of Neil laughed right in his face. He clearly had a hundred pounds on Neil, but had no idea that his bench press numbers weren’t going to do him any good.

  “I could kick your ass right now if I wanted to, little man. Luckily for you I’m a nice guy, so I’m going to save you the embarrassment. Now get back to the end of the line before I change my mind.”

  The meathead pushed Neil again, this time with a little bit more force. Now was Neil’s chance. He concentrated on using his arms as a part of his mind, instead of his body. He reached out and placed his hands on the guy’s chest. He pushed out using several times more force than his muscles would have ever been able to.

  The guy flew several feet onto the ground and slid into the wall on the other side of the room. Neil did his best to make it look like he was exerting every ounce of strength he had to do it, but it was all for show. It took no effort from him at all.

  The bully’s friend recoiled in surprise and put his han
d over his mouth.

  “Oh shit!”

  The guy now on the floor was leaning up against the wall and looked almost nauseous from the surprise of being launched across the room.

  “Holy shit man, what the hell is your problem?” His friend said, as he rushed to help him. They quickly walked out of the store. The bully seemed to be limping.

  Everyone in the room was staring at Neil. He realized he had attracted a little bit too much attention to himself.

  “Man, what assholes. Sorry they were rude to you, Emma.”

  “That was incredible! I’ve never seen someone get thrown around like that before. You’re a lot stronger than you look. Don’t worry about those guys. I’ve seen them before at parties. They always try to start trouble. I know you were just trying to do the right thing.” Emma smiled.

  “I don’t know about all that, I just didn’t feel like waiting longer for my burrito. I think I just caught him off guard. If he was bracing for it, there’s no way I could have pushed him over like that.” Neil tried to downplay it as much as possible. He didn’t want people to start spreading rumors about how he threw someone all the way across a room.

  Neil paid for both meals at the register. Emma smiled and blushed instead of objecting. He got the feeling she wasn’t used to being treated well. She didn’t tell him much about her life back in Boston, but he gathered that she had been through a lot. She had the kind of toughness about her that people only developed by relying on themselves for most of their lives.

  They ate their meal without mentioning the two jocks from earlier. Neil asked Emma about the nursing program, and what kind of things she had to study for the upcoming finals. Emma asked him about what he did in ROTC and what he was going to be doing after college.

  Truth be told, Neil didn’t really know what would happen to him after college. Everything seemed to be changing in his life so fast that there was no way to predict what would happen to him. He could be sedated and locked up in a government testing lab in another year, or he could be the ruler of the free world. In truth, neither one of those options sounded very appealing.

  Neil tried inviting Emma to come over later that evening, but she insisted that she really had a lot of studying to do. It sounded like the truth. It didn’t seem like she was just trying to get out of seeing him again, so Neil wasn’t upset with her response.

  They finished their meal and stepped outside the building.

  “Hey, let me know if you want to take another study break.”

  “Oh, I definitely will. Thanks for lunch. Thanks for everything, actually.” Emma leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then walked away.

  Neil was too stunned to say anything back. He just sat there in silence as his body seemed to melt with warmth. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time, since the end of High School when he met his last girlfriend. He felt like a teenager first discovering the amazing way the opposite sex could shut your whole brain down just by something as simple as a kiss on the cheek.

  Neil walked all the way back to his house with a smile on his face. A couple people smiled back as he walked past, thinking he was smiling at them.

  When he got back home, Bryan was sitting on the couch playing video games with the new TV that Neil bought the previous night. This was a frequent occurrence.

  “Hey Hitchenator, where you been?” He asked, eyes still glued to the TV.

  “I was having lunch with Emma. Before you ask, no, I didn’t bang her.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that, man. I’m not some sick perv. But, hey, did you see her tits at least?” Neil just shook his head while laughing under his breath and walked up to his room.

  Neil had already completed all of his homework assignments, and didn’t really have anything to study, so he decided to do a little bit of research on the internet. The only way he was going to figure out if there were other people like him out there was by searching for them.

  He started out by searching Google for things like ‘telekinesis’, ‘levitation’, and ‘real superhumans’, but all he got were references to fiction, or people performing lame levitation magic tricks on YouTube. He couldn’t find anything credible that pointed in the right direction. One thing he did find, though, was reference to a military funded program in the ‘70s and ‘80s dealing with research of Telekinesis, ESP, mind-control, and other psychic activities. The officially published documents declared that there was no evidence of any humans possessing psychic abilities.

  “That’s just what they want us to think.” Neil said aloud, jokingly.

  He found a blog by someone who claimed to be a subject of the government research by the name of Carl Delmont. He wrote frequent articles about psychics and people who claimed to have telekinesis. Most of his posts had several hundred comments at least, so he appeared to have a large number of followers.

  After reading some of his initial posts, Neil read that Carl Delmont claimed to be a government whistleblower on the research that was done on him, and that he in fact had genuine psychokinetic powers. Neil thought he was just a convincing storyteller trying to make a cash grab, but nevertheless he made a bookmark to the site for future reference.

  As he was searching the internet for more information, Neil looked down at his fingers and had an epiphany. He was still moving the mouse and typing on the keyboard with his hands. It was something he had been used to doing all of his life, but it now seemed archaic.

  Neil made sure his bedroom door was locked and sat back down in his computer chair. He reached out past his mind, like he did before, and searched for his mouse and keyboard. He found them quickly.

  He slid the mouse along the mouse pad effortlessly using just his mind. It took a few minutes for him to get the hang of the relationship between the movement of the mouse and the pointer on the screen, but he learned quickly. In almost no time, he was able to fling the mouse precisely to click on anything on the screen with his first try. With a little bit more practice, he was able to almost directly control the pointer on the screen with his mind – essentially erasing the mouse as the middle man from his consciousness.

  Next, he worked on perfecting his mental typing skills. This came almost instantly. He still had to look down at the keyboard to realize which buttons he wanted to press, but he was already typing quicker and more accurately than before.

  Neil pulled up one of those online typing speed calculators to see exactly how much faster he was. After typing the sample paragraph, the counter read 357 words per minute. That had to be a new world record.

  For most people, improved mouse and keyboard skills would only be a minor convenience, but Neil spent his entire four years of college working on computers. To him, it was like the training wheels were just taken off of his bike and he had complete unrestricted control over his vessel.

  While he was still admiring his new-found typing abilities, Neil heard a knock on the door.

  “Hey man, what the hell are you doing to your keyboard in there? It sounds like you’re trying to break it.”

  Neil didn’t even think about how much noise typing that fast was making. He would have to make it a point to only do that when no other people were around.

  “Just playing some game someone sent me. Go away, my dick is out.” Neil knew the effectiveness the second sentence would have in achieving some privacy. He was right.

  “Whoa, ok man, TMI, just be careful about playing games where you have to type really fast with your dick out. They’re bad news. My cousin died that way.” Bryan walked back down stairs.

  After a couple more hours of fruitless research, Neil decided to go to bed. His mind was ready to shut down almost immediately after the eventful past few days.

  CHAPTER 7

  Neil’s eyes slowly opened and he was brought back into the world of the conscious. The sun was coming through the windows. Birds were chirping. He felt well rested and extremely comfortable. Actually, he felt more than comfortable. He felt like his entire body was floating o
n a cloud.

  Why did his bed get so amazingly soft over night? Why weren’t his covers over his body? Why did the ceiling look closer than it should have been? That’s when Neil realized why he felt like he was floating.

  He was floating.

  In a panic, Neil began to squirm. He was floating almost three feet off his bed. He fell back down to his bed as soon as his consciousness took over, bounced, and fell off the side onto the floor.

  “Oww” Neil said, with his face pressed against the hardwood floor in his bedroom.

  How long had he been floating there above his bed like that? Neil glanced towards his bedroom door and realized with horror that it was slightly ajar. Bryan could have seen him floating above his bed like some sort of possessed demon.

  Neil stepped out into the hallway and peaked into his roommate’s bedroom. Bryan was lying on his bed, snoring away as usual. Neil breathed a sigh of relief. Even Bryan wouldn’t be passed out like that after witnessing his roommate floating above his bed.

  Now that the panic was over, Neil took a moment to reflect on the interesting predicament that he had found himself in when he woke up. He recalled from high school psychology class that most parts of the body become paralyzed during REM sleep, but the mind becomes extremely active. During that part of the sleep cycle was when the most vivid dreams would happen. Neil’s mind during REM sleep must have caused him to float above his bed like that in an attempt to become more comfortable.

  If that happened every night, it could become a problem for Neil. He would have to lock his door every night and avoid sleeping anywhere besides his own bed. That issue had the capability to produce other problems as well. If he could levitate his body while sleeping, could he accidentally levitate other objects in the room?

  This ‘gift’ that Neil was slowly beginning to understand was starting to look more like a curse. With every advantage, there seemed to be an equally devastating disadvantage. Keeping everything a secret would be a tremendous challenge, Neil realized.