“What the fu…”

The words were still ringing on his head, unable to get them out. He felt like someone had taken a gramophone and put it inside his brain. The feeling was disgusting, and all he wanted to do was cutting off his head to make it stop.

Of course, he then remembered cutting off your own head was something of permanent nature. He might have hated his life at that moment, but he was no suicide. Unless he also had dissociative identity disorder and he was unaware of it.

“I’m not crazy.”

Of course, the echo now fading out of his head pointed otherwise.

Lawrence couldn’t quite remember what he was dreaming. Nothing great, he ventured. Not if that ominous feeling came from the dream. But no, the words he heard had nothing to do. He knew with complete certainty those words were meant specifically for him.

At least, his body knew.

“No no no no no. No! What the hell?! ‘My body knows’? I’m not some kind of cliché jap story prota! I’m a regular, mentally sane twenty-one years old adult, and I’m not about to make a storm in a glass of water just because of a silly nightmare that ‘my body knows it means something special’ or some shounen crap like that!”

One of the defects of being a programmer though and through, was Lawrence’s extreme rationality for most mental dilemmas. He had heard a voice. He was dreaming. His body told him the voice wasn’t a dream. Rule out the third option, because of its absurdity, and put the first and second together. What do you have? A nasty bad dream. Nothing more, nothing less.

At least it was this track of though what allowed Lawrence to shield himself from the uncomfortable feeling stuck on his gut.

“And now I’m screwed. I can’t go back to bed…” Once woken, going back to bed was useless. Even sleeping pills wouldn’t help him go down this time.

“So what do I have now? I woke up at…” He took a glance at the alarm clock still mischievously staring at him from the upper shelve, grinning.

“Oh great, it isn’t even eight AM and I’m awake already. And I see a fucking clock grinning at me. Well, isn’t this just great?”

Feeling too stressed to bare, he kicked the innocent wardrobe to his left. All he got was a soaring toe and even more crankiness to add to the heap he already had.

“Fucking excellent way of starting my vacations” he chewed on the words with anger and distress.

Lawrence knew what laid underneath all of that. He was angry at himself for behaving so childishly yesterday. The memories of curling up in bed and wishing for a power of some sort, something to make him different, were still fresh on his mind. He was embarrassed and angry, and remembering the events of yesterday weren’t doing any good.

He felt disgusted with himself.

“Well, fuck me.”

This wasn’t a way to start the day. He just started with the wrong foot. It was all fault of that nightmare. He’d just have to take a nice shower, eat his breakfast, and then everything would be okay.

Lawrence sighed. He was too old for existential crises. Physically, maybe not so. Emotionally, he was getting to his forties. At least that’s how he saw it.

“Maybe that’s why I never get a girlfriend I like. Being too young and old at the same time must be something of an impediment for that kind of thing…”

He cracked a smile. This was better. The nightmare was in the past now. Everything was alright.

•••••

“Ahhhh… this is better…”

Hot water caressed his body and dripped to the bathroom floor, cleansing him from dirt, cold, and all bad thoughts troubling his mind.

“Much, much better…”

He got out of the bathroom, putting some housewear on and hanging the moisty towel to vent it. Half an hour and a whole shower after waking up and hating the world, he felt at peace. His PE teacher from highschool, an ex-yoga teacher named Harrison, would be proud of him if he saw him right now.

So he was completely awake and ready for the new day now.

The habitual sound of Plaza neighbors waking up and business starting to open was in perfect synchrony with the chirping of early-rise birds, creating the ideal mood for relaxation. Even the weather itself seemed to feel happy today, because the thick patches of clouds usually shadowing the sun were now nowhere to be seen, and the normal quasi-cold ambient temperature was now a nice twenty-six degrees, according to his smartphone.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Just the perfect morning…”

Something was definitively off.

He shrugged it off and kept on with his daily routine.

Go to the living room, turn on the morning news, eat breakfast, brush your teeth and…

“And what?”

After that, the next thing would usually be get working, but all he had to do right now was a couple of hours of code editing. Nothing complicated…

Well, he felt on the mood for that. Yeah, he would do some hours of extra work. When he got tired of it, he would idle on the computer, maybe hang around with his friends. Dean should be free today.

“That sounds like a plan.”

Everything went ‘keiaku doori’, according to the plan. The TV sounded even better than yesterday, although Lawrence couldn’t quite understand why. He shrugged. Must be my imagination, he thought.

“Good morning, Plaza! It’s quite the wonderful morning: no clouds, no cold, no wind! It seems today will be a great day for us all!”

“I honestly hope it is, pal” he told to the chubby bald men in a suit, the TV presenter. “I hope it is…”

He wanted cereals today. He looked on the fridge: he had six cartons of milk left. Nothing to worry about for a whole week. He hated going shopping, for some reason. Maybe it was the crowds, or the way the receptionists seemed to always have something better to do on their phones than the thing they were paid for.

He shook his head, grabbing one of the milk cartons and leaving it on a nearby counter. He took a bowl and a box of cereals (CrunchySpargates.Co), emptying whatever was left of its content in the bowl. The respective amount of milk followed.

“Cereals always go first. Just like toilet paper goes face-front.”

“It is with great sorrow that we announce the end of this now past Wakening Season, as November 30 has officially come to an end. This 2035 has seen the birth of what, without a doubt, will soon become, great Heroes… and Heroines. All we have left is to pray the upcoming 2040 becomes a lucky year for us… and to hope that those who were given the power, continue to watch for us”

“You mean kicking Villain buts, just say it out loud pal” Lawrence swung milk-full spoon around, despite knowing Chubby Presenter couldn’t hear or see him.

One of the downsides of a society full of good and bad metas, was precisely the influence that Villain apparitions had on Heroes’ influence. Or rather, the LHU’s. It was a widely known fact that the States Union Government hated to depend on… well, anyone, actually. It would be understandable that forcing them into a position where they basically have this big walking calamity which they can do nothing about; and having someone on the other end who can, if not terminate, at least contain said calamity, free of attachments to them and able to do basically whatever they want… It wouldn’t exactly be a something to be excited about.

In short, the government was basically forced to admit they had this huge problem they couldn’t fix by themselves, and have the only entity who could actually deal with said problem out of their reach.

This implicated several things–

“But I’m not in the mood to explain so, hold your horses.”

“And now, for our morning news: An explosion in the Plaza district, whose causes still remain undetermined, provoked several damage on the nearby infrastructure, and while luckily no lives were lost, multiple business will be forced to close semi-permanently or permanently. Among these, the popular ‘Gahara Sweet and Cheat’ café, and the construction company Brickback, remain with no scheduled reopening date…”

The clinging sound of his spoon in the bowl reached Lawrence like something far in the distance.

“An explosion…?!”

Something cold trickled down his face, and he was forced out of his thoughts by the spilled milk all over the place.

“Ah, shit… ehhhh… Something… to clean…”

•••••

After the breakfast incident, Lawrence had totally forgotten to brush his teeth, and it wasn’t until a couple of hours later, half way through his work session, that he realized he had some of the cereal stuck on his teeth. He was forced to pause the code editing, temporarily –and he was happy about it, if he was being honest. It looked like the whole ‘final touches here and there’ part wouldn’t be so… ‘Final’, after all.

It was a lot messier than he originally thought.

Of course, this wouldn’t be near enough to spoil his vacations, but the mere thought of having to spend an extra couple of hours working in his vacation year was…

“Yuck.”

Shaking his head, he headed for the bathroom. He shouldn’t vex himself with that kind of stuff so early in the morning. That nightmare had woken him up earlier than usual, after all…

“Tututut… Toothpaste… It’s, uhm,” his hand ran through a couple of closed cabinets in the bathroom before finding the correct one. “Aha! Now, let’s get over with this, shall we? I have a heap of messy code waiting for me to un-mess it, and I don’t really want to spend the rest of the day stuck in…”

He stopped in front of the mirror.

His eyes opened up so much they seemed like they would just pop out of their place and fly far away. Mental inertia forced the next words out of his mouth, although to Lawrence right now they might have as well been a sweet bird’s chirping.

“…stuck in work…”

After the initial two minutes of what you could basically call ‘standing there, eyes bulged, mouth wide-open and doing absolutely nothing but stupidly staring at the mirror’, Lawrence noticed the thing wasn’t goint.

He tried his luck and rubbed his eyes.

Sure enough, it was still completely there.

Fifteen seconds of more ‘standing there blah blah blah’ did just as much as his previous actions.

The mark wasn’t going.

“What on the actual fuck…”

He rubbed his eyes once again, just in case.

The mark was still there.

“Nah, nanananah, nahahahahah… This isn’t fucking happening.”

He shook his head, rejecting the sick joke that someone had played him, anyone. But who could’ve done this? Sean, yeah, probably. Sean had a back-up key to his house, just for emergencies. But the guy was a dick. Lawrence could perfectly imagine him sneaking into his house just to fuck with him like this.

“Oh, Sean, I’m so going to kill you when I see you…”

Lawrence stared stupidly at one of the cabinets near him. “Oh yeah, I should probably get this off. Ink isn’t good for your skin. Cancerous, and all of that crap… Eh… alcohol… alcohol, ah, here…” He snuck a hand on the cabinet and searched for a small bottle with alcohol, which he pushed accidentally and threw to the floor.

“Ah, shit… Thanks God this thing is plastic… eh, cotton…”

There was no cotton.

“Ack, fuck it all! Fuck you, Sean! Fuck you, Wakening Season! Fuck you, Chubby Presenter! Just, UUUGHHH!!! FUCK!!!”

Losing his patience he threw the content of the bottle on the back of his left hand, where the black QR Code remained from what was surely Sean’s sick joke.

He scrubbed his hand with all his might.

The mark didn’t fall off.

Raising a shaking hand, Lawrence said the words he never on his whole life expected to ever say.

The proof of fire to prove one’s identity as a meta.

“{Status}!”