I went back to work with Ed. This time, I needed to find a way to startle myself. Well, if an alarm could wake me up every morning, startling me out of sleep, then why couldn’t I set an alarm that would go off every few minutes. Checking my alarm app on my phone, I found the settings for how often the alarm would go off, but there wasn’t a random alarm setting that would let me pre-set a recurring alarm to go off at random within a two-minute interval. A quick check of the app store and I had a choice of over a dozen random timers. I have no idea why someone else would need one, but I wasn’t going to complain.

With the alarm set at it’s highest volume, I started a standard pattern. Making noise wasn’t a problem, as dad was busy in his shop, hammering away and making lots of his own noise. There was no way he’d hear my alarm. I quickly fell into a rhythm of hit, block, pivot, send the arm around, duck, punch, and block the arm. Rinse and repeat. The first time the alarm went off, I jumped, but I had just done a hit, and nothing greyed out. Damn, that was loud. I kept going, hoping that the alarm would eventually synchronize with the blocking of the arm. It was like playing a game of Perfection, where you weren’t sure how much time you had left to put the pieces in their proper place before the timer ran out and causing the whole board to jump up at you.

Five more failures and my nerves were shot. The “Pop Goes the Weasel” song was running through my brain, but I was the damned weasel that kept popping whenever the alarm went off. Each time the alarm sounded it jarred me slightly out of position and took my focus off of Ed’s rotating arm. I kept at it though and was finally rewarded on the seventh try. The alarm caught me off guard again just before I was supposed to block the arm. I jolted slightly up from my proper position and overcorrected down and would have only taken the hit on my wrist, but the room greyed out and the arm passed through me. This time, I noticed a very slight stretching feeling, like you get when someone very gently pulls your arm, except that I felt it over my entire body. It also wasn’t a pull in any one direction. The outwards pulling sensation came from all directions; almost like my body was generating a field around it. I had a mental image of the force field created by the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four, but my field didn’t project a repelling force. My field was somehow causing me to pass through solid objects. The idea of a field made sense since my clothes stayed with me when I shifted. Wow! Reappearing naked after the bus almost hit me would have been so embarrassing.

The blaring alarm went off again, snapping me out of my thoughts. Son of a…I quickly turned the alarm off, took a breath to calm myself, and started to think things through some more. What did I learn from these experiments? First, I have the ability to pass through objects. (Yay! I’m really not crazy, or at least not completely crazy.) Second, I think that the ability is activated by a field that surrounds my body. Third, I don’t know if the field is actually a circle, like a force field, or if it’s skin-tight, following the contours of my body, or somewhere between the two. Four, the first time I used my abilities was very different from the other two times. It not only lasted longer that first time, but from my perspective everything disappeared. The other times, there was only a greying around me as I passed through objects. Five, I’ve used the ability several times today and it seems to be getting easier, in that less danger was required to activate the ability each time that I used it. The first time, I was going to be killed by a bus. The next time, Ed’s attack could have hurt my arm, maybe even given me a slight fracture. The last time, I maybe would have gotten a tiny bruise.

Now that I didn’t have to use Ed, my bedroom was the best place to continue these experiments. I was going to lie down on my bed and see if I could picture the field in my mind and make it work, but what if I shifted right through the bed. Even worse, what if I shifted through the bed and shifted back immediately, would I then be embedded in the bed? Hmm, that would give a whole new meaning to the term embedded.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The floor was my next choice, but again I had to question that choice. Even though my house is a ranch-style home and has only the one floor, the floor itself isn’t directly on the ground. Would I pass through the floor? Well, I didn’t pass through the floor that last two times, so I figured that I was safe. I sat cross-legged on the floor next to my bed, as if I were meditating, and tried to feel my skin. I wanted to be able to compare how I felt when things were normal versus how the pulling sensation felt when I ghosted. Next, I visualized a field surrounding my skin. I expected to have to pretend that it was there, and I was stunned to actually feel something surrounding me.

Holy Shit! How had I never noticed it before? Who doesn’t notice a blanket wrapped around them? Sure, it was an invisible blanket that had no actual physical properties, but it was there. It had no weight to it at all it didn’t glow, like you hear that people’s aura’s do, but it had a presence to it. I wonder if I’d always had it and had now just developed the ability to feel it. Maybe it was always there, and I had never looked.

Just to be certain, I pretended that there was a field surrounding me in a bubble shape. I sensed nothing beyond me. It seemed like my field was only at skin level, projecting out a little bit to include my clothes. The next question to figure out was how to turn the field on and off. I relaxed again and started breathing evenly, focusing on the field. I had a few ideas that I wanted to try out. First, I closed my eyes and visualized a bus heading in my direction. As the bus drew nearer, I tried to feel for any changes in the field. With a few feet left before collision, I couldn’t feel any changes in the field. I let the imaginary bus hit me and send my virtual avatar flying twenty feet into the air, before coming down in a broken heap of broken bones, ripped skin and blood. It was a lovely image and I was quite proud of the level of detail that I’d managed, but it failed to turn on my ability. However, even failure can teach you things. In this case, I managed to cross out the possibility that the field responded to my imagination. It wasn’t quite a silver lining; more like a tarnished chrome lining.

Keeping my breathing steady, I tried again, this time attempting to recreate the stretching feeling that I had when I ghosted out. I focused on the field and tried to gently pull it outwards in all directions at once. Since nothing happened, I tried increasing the pressure that I was applying, and I received the same results. Well, if pulling doesn’t work, why not try pushing? This time I felt a change in the field. It only lasted an instant and I don’t know what the change did, but something was different for that little bit of time. If the change were a sound, I’d say that the field revved softly, like a car engine. It was like a slight gust of wind over the corn stalks. The stalks would rustle and then became still again. I envisioned another push, a little harder this time and with my eyes opened. I saw the room become grey and then it changed back.

I did it! Relief flooded through me. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was that I wouldn’t be able to get control of this. I still had a lot of work to do, but now I had a starting point. An ‘on’ switch.

Over the next two hours, I practiced turning the power on and seeing how long I could keep it going for. At first, I could only hold the field on for two seconds, but with practice I got it up to seven seconds. It took more effort that I expected; both mental and physical. Concentrating on anything for a period of time isn’t easy, as your mind gets distracted a lot. I really hoped that using this power was like using a muscle and that over time I could work that muscle out so that holding the field on wouldn’t be such a chore.

By the time I got the field to stay on for those seven seconds, I was sweaty and tired and ready for a quick shower and sleep. There was just one last thing to try. I turned on the field and after two seconds I switched from pushing out to pulling in. Before, when I let the field go, or when I couldn’t hold it anymore, the room took about a second or two to go back to normal, with the greyness slowly ebbing away with the last of my strength. This time, the room seemed to pop back to full color instantly. I had found my ‘off’ switch. If I found my field turning itself on at a bad moment, I could pull back from the grey, if I wanted to.

Now that I wasn’t scared of going to school tomorrow morning and disappearing in front of everyone, I thought that sleep would come quickly. It didn’t. Instead, I ended up staying up for another half hour as I debated with myself whether to tell Eva and James about my new abilities.