I took a deep breath as I stepped through the curtain. "Hold on to who you are," I said.

The other side was like stepping into another world. An ocean of light and multi-hued colors washed towards me. It was so intense that I couldn't see any face of any individual in the crowd. Instead of focusing on that, I walked toward it.

"I am Timmy Freak," I said.

I stepped forward.

The light had a near physical presence. It was pushing on me, pushing me backward, but I didn't let it. I stepped into it. "I am Timmy Freak." I stepped again. I noticed that there were certain patterns in the light. They were dancing, with each individual color coming towards me like a scintillating worm of energy snaking its way toward me. Resisting the urge to sample them and see what each one felt like, I took another step forward.

"I am Timmy Freak."

Who was I? I was an investigator. Now I was a vampire. I was a scientist. I was a researcher. I was a believer in the paranormal.

I took another step forward.

The lights began to filter and funnel straight toward me. I realized with that step that the attention of the room had probably not been on me until this moment. There were lights overhead. I was standing in the spotlight. There was a microphone, so I used it.

"Hello," I said. "I'm Timmy Freak. I wanted to introduce myself." It hit me then. A wave of every color focused on me all at once, and they struck like a snake. I could feel them trying to tunnel inside me. I gasped, out of breath.

"That's not mine," I said, trying to focus on the advice I had been given. It was too much. I became aware of something inside me that I hadn't had a name or sensation for, like a muscle that I had never used before this point and had suddenly become aware of. And there was a thousand-pound weight resting on that muscle. I buckled, collapsing. I could feel the lights were still attached to me, still funneling into me, trying to bore inside me, trying to change me, make me into what they were.

“I am...”

***

Blackness surrounded me. This was new. The pressure and the weight were off, but I still had awareness of the muscle that I had just discovered.

It hurt.

I probed at it, like tonguing a missing tooth. So, that was the muscle I needed to work on.

Where was I?

I tried to look around, but there was no difference in my surroundings. Everything was black, as far as I could see, with no discernible difference in color. I realized I wasn't standing on anything. I wasn't sitting or lying down. I couldn't feel any sensations coming from my body.

Did I have a body?

A voice came out of the darkness. It wasn't terrible and thundering, booming like Big Black's voice had been. This voice was different. It was unhurried, calm, assured. I'd label it as regal, except I'd never actually heard a king or queen speak, so I felt that might be a misapplication.

"I told you once," said the voice, "let go, or you'll tear your soul."

Not having a body, I wasn't sure if I could respond, but I tried anyway. I found the thoughts I had filtered directly into speech, but I didn't have the muscle control of speaking them.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Timmy Freak. I don't remember you telling me anything or meeting you before. I don't mean to be rude, your honor," I ventured, "but who are you?"

"I am existence," the voice said. "I am who I am."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I tried to purse my lips at this but found there was no muscle control there. Instead, my thoughts came spilling out unbidden.

"That's confusing," I heard my voice, using some mysterious form that was not my lips, say.

"Not from my perspective, it's not," the voice said.

"Alright, fair enough. Well, it's nice to meet you anyway. What should I call you?"

"You should not call me by any name," the voice said.

That was even more confusing.

"Why are you here?" the voice asked.

The answer to that leapt out of my not-mouth before I had time to process what I was thinking.

"I'm tired of other people having control of my life," I heard myself say. "I wanted to take back control. So I'm trying to grow stronger," I said.

I could feel the voice smile. It was very strange because I still couldn't see anything and I still didn't have a body, but it's like the presence of somebody's paternal pleasure was washing over me in this not-place.

"This is a task I approve of," the voice said. "Very well. I will keep you from tearing yourself apart. Return here as long as you can continue to endure the pain," the voice said.

***

I was about to respond when abruptly I was in the hallway. The familiar scintillating colors rolling off the students were washing towards me. Pain was an understatement. Something inside me was screaming. It was like I had consumed fire, and if my willpower could be burned, I had a third-degree burn on my will.

Keeping my head down so I didn't catch any more aura, I made my way to my locker. I pulled out a pen and sketched the symbol on my palm. I didn't even have to look this time. I wondered what would happen if I sketched the symbol wrong. Something to try later.

As I got there, I counted to three and then stepped forward as Billy bumped me. It took most of the impact away.

"Watch where you're going, nerd," I heard the familiar voice say behind me.

"Go back to walking school, you human traffic accident," I said.

"Why don't you say that to my face," came the familiar retort.

I turned and slowed my perception of time as I did. I wasn't confident I could catch the fist without slowing time down. I only seemed to be able to slow things once per loop. The fist was in the air in its familiar flight. I reached out and caught it, letting time resume, watching Billy go from anger, to pain, to shock. He tried to pull away, but again, the luck transfer caused the point of contact to be immovable. Not surprised by it this time, I smiled and winked at him as he tried to pull away. Then when it finally released, he fell on his ass.

"What the hell, nerd," Billy said.

"I got rolled in radioactive goo when I was little, and now I have superpowers," I said.

"What?" Billy said, looking very confused.

A crowd had formed around us as usual. I kept my head down to avoid any more attention than I was already getting. Their auras were like fires flickering painfully on my burn. I couldn’t feel any emotion from them, only pain.

The rush from taking the luck hit me, and it helped. My third degree went to first degree, and the attention of the crowd felt less like flame, and more like sun on a sunburn. I tried to rub the spot that felt burned, but I couldn't reach it. It was inside me, but not a labeled body part.

"Thompson! George! My office, now!" came the familiar voice of Mr. Pheizer.

I smiled at Billy and headed into the office. But this time, I wasn't aiming to get there ahead of Mr. Pheizer and Billy to have a conversation with Not-me. I didn't want to speak with him again until I had a better handle on what was going on.

The ache in my chest had lessened, but it was persistent. Feeling inspired, and more than a little bit detached from the consequences if this didn't pan out, I waited near the doorway until Billy was seated and Mr. Pheizer came into the office.

While I waited, I sketched the luck symbol on my hand again, curious what a second hit would do, and if I could fully dull the ache. Mr. Pheizer stepped in, and as he stepped up, I held out a hand.

I should by no means be able to stop the momentum of a man his size, but the luck symbol didn't let me down. He encountered my hand like hitting a wall, letting out an "oof," and nearly doubling over on top of me.

"Hang on a second," I said.

He looked down at me, startled. "What," he had time to say before the transfer did its job and released, and I was bodily pushed backwards by the position we had ended up in, and crashed into the desk, knocking over the pencil cup.

His perplexed expression crashed into concern, and he stepped over to help me. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Fine," I said, though I had hit my elbow fairly hard. The rush was cleaning that up.

The ache in my will abated, to my great relief. I had read somewhere that the process of growing stronger was to push hard enough with a muscle that the muscle would tear. It was the repair process in which the body recognized the need for a greater amount of strength and would repair the muscle to a stronger state than it had started in before it had torn. That was the logic I was applying to exercising my will and control of auras.

That thousand-pound weight in the gym auditorium had torn something, I felt sure. And then I had encountered... A deity? It certainly didn't seem like one of the big bads that Not-me had mentioned. But I didn't want to tell Not-me about any of it. I didn't want to see his face.

In fact, next break, I was going to go look in the mirror in the girl's bathroom and then avoid reflective surfaces for the rest of the day. As far as I was concerned, his help was just about as useful as a bag of shit. I shook my head at my own thought train. I was cursing more in my head. I needed to stop that, otherwise I'd become old and crusty like Not-me.

Mr. Pheizer lifted me bodily and set me on my feet with no more effort than a man setting a milk container on a counter. Great, to him I was a human milk container.

"What were you trying to do?" Mr. Pheizer asked me.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to run into you," I lied. "I was trying to see if I could use the bathroom before you tell us how much trouble we're in. I didn't get a chance."

"Can you hold it?" he asked.

I decided it was unimportant where I spent the next two hours, and I told him I could. I returned to my respective seat, somewhat confident the plan I had would work, and somewhat doubtful. I was about to practice telekinesis until I could turn around and attempt the auditorium again.

Mr. Pheizer lectured us on all the usual things. Billy was giving me a weird look. I had no idea what he was thinking, and I didn't want to sample his aura and try it, so I was avoiding looking directly at him.

After we were left alone in the room, I practiced telekinesis. I knew I had to use emotions to move the cup. But my own emotions were out of reach. I felt like if I dipped a finger in them, they would crash over me with such force that I would be washed away.

So I cheated. I looked over at Billy, and I sampled his aura. But instead of taking it and applying Not-me's suggestion of walking away, or feeling it, I channeled it into my efforts to move the cup. The pencil cup, which Mr. Pheizer had put back, tipped over.

“Yes!” I said.

This startled Billy so badly that he nearly fell out of his chair. He blinked and looked around the room. I realized he'd been sleeping, and I had startled him awake. I had been concentrating so hard I hadn't even noticed he was asleep.

"I've got this," I said.

“What?” Billy asked, blinking bleary eyes at me.

“A workable plan,” I said. “Go back to sleep Billy, we’re going to miss math and history.”

“Ah man,” Billy said, smiling sleepily. “This is going to be a good day.”

“You have no idea.” I said, grinning back at him.

***