Chapter 19 - 3.2.1.0.-1.2.3.4.5_QQQQ

I jerked my hand back from the Arduino board that was now in flames. I had no idea what happened, I hadn’t even touched it yet. My eyes followed the power cord to the outlet on the wall. It was making a terrible crackling noise, blue and orange sparks spewing out of its sides like a pipe about to burst. After a few more moments of directionless panicking, I gained some of my wits back. I figured I was probably safe from being electrocuted as cords tend to be well-insulated, but I could still get burned really bad from all the heat everywhere. As the smoke rose to the ceiling, I lunged into my closet. I tackled a miniature mountain of cardboard boxes and sifted through them as fast as possible. Not that one-- no-- this one’s empty-- There. I found my old rubber boots I had as a teenager that I was too embarrassed to run around and play with puddles in. I put one boot on each hand then “kicked” the plug sideways out of the wall. It sounded like a firecracker went off as I forcibly dislodged from the wall, but eventually the chaos simmered down. The fire was also short-lived after I “stomped” it all out. There was probably a much smarter solution to this, but the boots were just the first thing I thought of. God, all these electrical components are toast. The 7-bit display, the power supply, even the once-blue board itself was now charred black.

“Uh.”

I turned around to see Bunny peeking at me from the hallway. I’m not sure what she thought when she saw me in my smoke-filled bedroom with boots on my hands, but I’m sure my adrenaline-filled explanation didn’t help her to understand. Though, In retrospect, I should have taken the boots off before I started waving my hands all around. Live and learn.

“I’m glad you didn’t get hurt.”

“Thanks, I really don’t know what happened. It looks like the power supply exploded, but I have no idea why. There must have been some kind of surge of electricity coming in through the outlet. I wonder if we can sue.”

I was going to Google if there was any recently-reported power issue around the area, but I stopped in my tracks after seeing my notifications. Seventeen unread texts from Rose?

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That's real weird. I tried to reload the texts, but that's all they said. Seventeen messages is a lot for anyone to send, but doubly so for her. (And that’s like, thirty-four times weird.) She's the kind to stuff everything into one monster message, not spread things out. Maybe she's just fucking with me again? Or maybe my phone can't read demonic incantation files. I give it a fifty-fifty.

Before long, I began to realize that wasn't the only weird thing with my phone. My screen was artifacting, glitching out a bit. There were clusters of greyish pixels around the corners of the screen when I tapped on it. It reminded me of my last phone after I dropped it on the corner of a table. There was no physical glass shatter or anything, but the pixels were messing up quite a bit now. Unusual...

I sat myself on the couch next to Bunny in silence, staring at the light bulbs on the ceiling fan. I had something I kinda wanted to say, but it was somehow too embarrassing. It's just a gut feeling that I have, anyways. I'm probably wrong about it, and I don't want her thinking I'm more stupid than she probably already does. I decided that it was ultimately unimportant, and that I just wasn't going to mention it. But then she looked up and noticed what I had been watching the whole time. The light in one of the ceiling fan bulbs was fading in and out a bit. It wasn't dramatic, but it was noticeable. And unlike the way bulbs usually behave when they're going bad, it was fluctuating very smoothly. A slow brighten, then a slow fade.

It reminded me of the waxing and waning of the moon, in turn reminding me of the motion of the ocean tides that it controls. It's hard to pin a mysterious effect to a cause, but there always is one. Whatever, I guess I'll say it.

"I think I'm doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Making the light go in and out. I think I might be able to control electricity."

She didn't ask me to elaborate, so I had to continue unprompted.

"Earlier, I think I made that Arduino board blow up. I guess I was focusing on it too hard? This might be some sort of demon power, I don't know. It was messing with my phone too a second ago, and now this light. If I was developing electricity-bending powers, that would explain all of this. Maybe. I don't know for sure. Just a thought."

"Try it."

"What do you mean?"

"Try to do something with the lights. Turn them all off."

Hm, okay. I don't really know how. If it's really a ‘power’ there has to be something I’m doing to trigger it, logically speaking. Though, I realize that logic may not be the best tool in the mental toolbox to be using right now. I’ll substitute it for intuition. If I just blindly guess at this I can probably figure something out. That’s been my strategy for all my life, anyways. I think I’ve done okay for myself, but I guess recent events may suggest otherwise. C’est la vie.

FIve minutes later, the intuition route yielded some pros and cons.

The pros: When I really centered myself, I could truly feel that I had access to something that I didn’t before. I found a new part of my brain or something. It was like I’ve been living in a house for years, and then found a hidden closet that I never knew existed. Inside the closet were stacks and stacks of old newspapers. The New York Times, to be specific. I could tell even though all the text and images were scratched out. Not inked or professionally redacted, but literally scratched through with claws or something. Deja vu? The only thing left in a readable state were the crossword puzzles. Looking through them, some of the letters were already filled in. Not very many, but a handful. I knew this was all trying to tell me something. I just didn’t know what yet. Of course, I’d know pretty soon. And I’d learn just how literal this vision was being, too. But yeah, anyways, those were the pros of channeling my intuition.

The cons: I blew my microwave door across the room. It just exploded off in a puff of smoke, all the way into the living room. Bunny was actually in its trajectory, but she dodged it like she was in The Matrix. When it slammed onto the floor it was buffered by the carpet, sliding frictionless across the ground. It was like what I used to do in my socks to build up static charge to shock my dad with. It seemed to have caused a similar effect to the microwave door, as by the time it hit the opposite wall, it was shining and sparkling with electricity. It was electrocharged. This is very unusual of course, because it’s mainly just plastic. Plastic is not usually very conductive. This might be the last bit of proof I needed to decide that I was, indeed, a magic user. But celebration of my power comes later, first I gotta figure out how to turn off the damn thing.

Chapter 19 - 3.2.1.0.-1.2.3.4.5

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