I’m still gazing at the frame of my bed. The matte black metal that usually prevents me from falling off the edge of my bed is all twisted and contorted like some sort of balloon animal. The frame is still connected to the bed although who knew how long that would last.

I notice that my breathing has become slightly shallow and decide that it would be better not to try and get more than one heart attack within hours of each other.

Did I seriously just crush both that doorknob and my bed frame? Weren’t Hallucinations supposed to be just that? Seriously I had no idea what was going on.

“If it was a hallucination then I just need to wake myself up from it,” I say this and then immediately give myself a hard slap across the face. From the stinging and heat rising in my cheek I’d say that was a solid wake up slap.

I shake my head a bit to clear the pain out. Now satisfied that I’m actually awake and not lucid dreaming, I reach for my bed frame once more. I slowly extend my hand, so slowly that it feels like it’s happening in slow motion. I grasp the metal pole. It feels cool in my hand. And then I twist it with all my might and as soon as I do that the bed frame instantly goes up into the air along with the rest of my bed and slams into the wall of my room.

With wide eyes I just stare at the carnage that my room had now become. Somehow by trying to lift my bed, I managed to fling it all the way across the room. Plus the bed frame near the top of the bed had come entirely loose.

Great.

Just what one earth was going on with me? I doubted that this was just a hallucination. I had already slapped myself super hard with my hand that were…, wait a minute. If my hands could throw a whole bed across the room then shouldn’t that slap have broken my jaw at the very least. Instead, I felt only mild pain. Okay, I’m going to do something pretty stupid. Like usual.

I had put my bed back into its proper positioning only now without its metal headboard. I stashed that in my closet. I now stood in the middle of the room. I apparently had some sort of super strength. However, the jury’s still out on that. There is still a chance that this could all be an elaborate psychological breakdown that preys on my fantasies of having superpowers. Or it could be superpowers. I know which choice I prefer. However, before any of that, I’m going to need to be extremely careful so that I don’t cause any more damage than I already have.

I clench my hand into a fist. No, I was not going to punch a wall or anything. What I had in mind was a little simpler than that. I was going to punch my other palm.

I lightly raised my hand to feel my cheek, the pain was gone, and it hadn’t even been a minute. I feel like it would usually last a bit longer than that, but I wasn’t too sure. Either way that slap had shown me that there was something more than just simple, super strength at play here.

While still gazing at my fist, the same one that crushed metal, I questioned why I hadn’t suffered any other injuries when I had slapped my face. When I had done that I assume that I was using just as much power as I did when throwing my bed so why had I not hurt myself.

I think I had an idea as to why.

I held my palm out as far from my other fist as I could. If I wanted to properly test this out, I’d want to use as much force as possible with the new super hands that I had.

I pull my right arm back and then with as much force as I could possibly gather from such a position, punch my left palm with all I had.

Pain, that’s the result of that experiment. However not horrible pain, not the excruciating pain of a broken wrist. No, it felt more like the pain one feels when they mess up a high five. When someone accidentally goes in a bit too hard, and your hand stings for quite a while after but you can still use it.

While slowly and carefully walking towards my bed I relax and then sit down on it and look at my hands. They were pretty average just like the rest of me. However they apparently now had some sort of superhuman power residing within them.

After mulling it over for a while, I come to a conclusion. That rather than just increasing my body’s strength, this new ability I had gained also reinforced the rest of my body. I wasn’t just strong, that strength was also my defense. It seemed like this ability could both attack and defend. I guess it’s basically a suit of armour or something like that.

How did it work? I honestly had no idea. I lift my arms and try to inspect them. All I see is just a normal hand. There’s no muscle definition that hadn’t already been there previously. I hadn’t become a bodybuilder or something, so I don’t think it has anything to do with the physiology of my body. So maybe it was a bit more supernatural.

While still thinking over this, I feel something draining out of me. I suddenly feel lightheaded and almost collapse onto the bed, but I grab hold of the edge and somehow miraculously don’t break it. I feel really tired like someone who has just won a marathon. But it’s not physical so much as it is mental fatigue.

I guess the ability reached its limit. Or maybe I just woke up from the hallucination.

I think for a while but eventually, accept that I won’t be able to make heads or tails out of it.

I remember all the Hallucinations that I had just been researching only a bit ago. I check the time on my glowing green alarm clock on my desk. It’s was currently nine pm.

I last remember it being six pm. Had that surreal post modern dream I had, really taken that long.

I take a look at the door with the doorknob still crushed. I guess dad must have thought I took a nap.

I get up off of my bed. I’m still soaked in sweat, and by now it’s starting to stink up the room. I should probably wash all of this off before doing anything else.

I’m currently in the shower letting the cool and refreshing water wash of the stickiness of the sweat from my entire body. Nothing better than having a shower after accidentally breaking both your bed and door. That’s when it happens. A feeling pierces through my mind, body, and soul. It feels like a drop of water had fallen into my being. The fatigue that I had still felt has all but gone away now. The shower water is dripping down my face as I feel inexplicably refreshed.

I start to panic slightly wondering if I would actually end up destroying the bathroom. However, for some reason I feel a sense of calm wash over me. It almost feels like I’m being reassured by something that I had no reason to worry.

I slowly calm down, and I look down at my hand. Something compels me to try using my power once more. I reach for a bottle of soap and crush it my grip. I turn my head expecting it to explode, but when I look back, all I see is a slightly deformed bottle. As I watch the bottle slowly return back to its previous state, I realise that even though my power was active, I hadn’t destroyed the bottle.

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What had been the difference between when I had thrown my bed and just now.

I immediately remember that calming sensation. That must have been it. That sensation was what allowed for me to not mutilate my precious bottle of soap that kept me clean.

All of a sudden with an almost alarming swiftness the calm feeling shattered. I guess that means that I’m back in Destruction Mode as I’m calling it for now. I still had something that I wanted to test out, so I grasped the wooden handle of one of those weird back scratcher things that my dad used. And instantly shattered it into many pieces that fell on the floor of the shower. Ouch. I was probably gonna get in trouble for that.

So just now without that calm feeling, I obliterated that wooden stick. So what would happen if I tried to regain that calmness from before?

Even before I can get the thought out, the calm passes over me. Wow, that was a lot easier than I had thought it would be. Does it get easier every time I do it? Or was there some other weird conditions to activate it? In any case, it didn’t change what I had to do.

I reached over to grab one of the remaining pieces of wood. I enclosed it with my fist and then crush it with my hand.

When I then opened my hand, there it was. Whole and unchanged. Interesting. So somehow with that weird calm feeling, I can somewhat control exactly how much strength I output. Well, that’s definitely going to be useful. Hopefully, I won’t be breaking anymore precious household items.

I’m back in my room while continuously trying to hold the calm feeling down. I have a sudden idea. Now that I won’t break my computer if I try to use I can probably do a bit of research on if anything similar to this has happened to people involved in the other hallucinations. I sit down on my chair in front of my computer and log on.

I then quickly go to a search engine and type in the words: ‘Hallucinations lasting.’ I press enter and the screen changes showing many different types of medical websites talking about various mental illnesses. I immediately go back and try a different type of search. Hopefully this wouldn’t take too long.

It took quite a bit of time. It’s currently midnight, and I had also bought dinner to my room today, telling dad that I still felt a bit under the weather. While I do feel bad about lying to him, I didn’t want to accidentally hurt him or anything. Although considering how natural it feels for me to regulate my strength down to my previous levels, maybe I should have eaten with him.

After a bit of research on the internet, I discovered something very interesting. Before today’s event, I just kept up with the types of hallucinations and where they happened. However, during my research, I dug in a bit deeper than I usually did. And I almost smacked myself on the side of the head for not doing it sooner.

Apparently, there have been some examples of people who were reported to have been the victim of a hallucination who had been witnessed repeating their hallucination incident elsewhere. On many of the forums, people were skeptical about whether the incidents were hallucinations at all. Two main factions had popped up. Those who denied that these events were happening in reality and those who believed in them. It made for some pretty good entertainment if I do say so myself.

At this point, I had given up on thinking of them as hallucinations. I knew I would be deluding myself if I did that. Now that I had my new abilities I couldn’t be fooled.

I was getting more excited by the minute. I actually had real superpowers, and it wasn’t just a hallucination. I was more sure of that than I had ever been before.

I knew with all this energy about to burst out from me that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. So I decided to try out this ability a little more. Well, I couldn’t punch things in my room so I decided to try and sneak out to see if I can maybe do something a bit more superhuman.

I slowly open my door wincing as it creaks; it really needed some new oil. The rest of the house is dark. I guess dad went to sleep already. Cool, this just makes it easier. I silently tiptoe over to my shoes and put them on like I imagine a ninja would. I sneak forward to the door, all stealth. I grab the door handle and pull it down slowly and quietly and step through the now open door. The sky is black with little pinpricks of light dotting it. I quietly close the door walk down the path to my street.

Once I reach the street, I release the calm feeling that had been engulfing me for the past little while and start sprinting with all my might. One second I’m standing still and the next I’m running faster than I ever have in my life. It might be around forty kilometers per hour or something close to that.

My hair whips against my face as I run down the road. It’s exhilarating. I had never run like this in my life. My legs were pumping down against the ground, but I didn’t feel any sort of physical fatigue. Not yet at least. As I run I reconfirmed my destination in my mind. I was headed to a nearby park that was practically deserted at this time of night. I was super curious about how much my maximum strength was.

I ran and reached the park in what I could only assume was record time. And I’m not even tired. I felt like I had just walked to the park instead of sprinting at the speed a car drove at. I zone in on an area of the park that was off to the side. It was a kind of mini-forest where a copse of trees were.

I walk over there slowly this time feeling the mental energy that I had lost while running replenishes rapidly. I approached the area until I reached the trees that I had been eyeing.

Not even hesitating I threw a punch that contained the full force of my strength. I heard a loud thud and then a crack. I turned my gaze to the area of the trunk that my fist had hit. There was a roundish hole as if a large drill had bored in, as well as several cracks that spread out from the area where my fist had hit.

So my current strength wasn’t strong enough to break a tree. I wonder if it would grow or would the amount of force that I’d be able to output stay like this. Either way, the fact that I could already do this was making me giddy. I tried punching the tree with all my might once more. A loud crack sounded out through the park, and a cloud of leaves fell on me from above. My punch had pretty much decimated what had remained of the trunk, and now the tree slowly leaned back and careened until it impacted the ground with a loud thud. Hopefully, no one heard it.

I scratch my cheek while laughing awkwardly, “Is it illegal to break a tree?”. That was what was on my mind.

“Hahaha, I may have made a mistake” As soon as I say these words I immediately turn back to the direction that I had come from and start sprinting home, without my power activated this time.

----------------------------------------

He still felt it.

It had been a few hours, and the bruises from Jack Kelly’s latest beating were still causing him trouble. He was currently in his room sitting in front of his desk. In front of him were all the necessary implements that he needed to complete his schoolwork. Yet he didn’t so much as bother to touch them. He couldn’t even pick up a pencil. This wasn’t due to his injuries. No. It was due to the fact that Jack knew that if he picked up that pencil than there was a high chance that he would walk over to the room his father was sleeping in right now and stab him in the eye.

Jack’s face was serene, almost like he was meditating. However, no true Yogi would ever have the thoughts which were swirling around his mind. Hate. Anger. Rage. These were at the foremost and the most easily identified. However, hidden beneath them was fear and sadness.

Jack Kelly hid those emotions because showing them got him hurt. How long ago had it been since he had last cried? Definitely not since his mother had died. Not since his father had turned to alcohol to dull the pain. All those emotions that had once burned bright in the young child had grown dark and twisted. Even in his private moments, Jack didn’t allow for any weak emotions to arise.

His rage continued to build and build until it got so unbearable that Jack got light headed and collapsed onto his bed. He lay there for a time. Until he rose up sweat slicking his red hair against his pale face. He was panting softly. However, he didn’t allow the shock to faze him.

He instead returned to his desk and faced the work that he was supposed to have already been done. However, just like before his rage built up. Hatred against that man that had made every single day of his life into a miserable hell. The rage crescendoed and crescendoed until something curious happened. Jack saw something in the corner of his eye. It was his pencil. It wasn’t different from any other sort of pencil that was bought from a normal store. The one peculiar thing was that it was suspended in the air.

It had been days since Jack had seen the pencil that would soon change his life. He was still sitting at his desk but unlike before he now had a serene smile. He raised his right hand and instantly dozens of objects rose up into the air and began orbiting him. Moving in circles around his body all of these objects were in perfect time with each other, never touching.

Jack lowered his hand, and all the objects returned to where they belonged.

Still smiling he watched the pencil float back towards the area of his desk that he reserved for it.

He grabbed it in his hand and stood up to leave the room. He was about to have a nice chat with his beloved father.