The voices

Bradley was a normal-ish kid, in a way you might be getting familiar with.

He didn’t see anything special, but he heard.

He heard as well, but he also heard.

They seem the same to most, but that’s just because the others cant really hear, they just hear.

Get the difference yet? “weird” people hear, but “normal” people just hear.

Hearing is different because the voices saturate the world. Someone who writes down ‘the trees scream as they fall’ will have different experience from those who hear. Someone who hears will feel the rage, the anger and disappointment of these trees, while someone who just hears will hear the creaking of wood crushing of wood under its own weight.

Bradley, or brad, was what we call a power hearing anomaly, or PHA.

This means he can not only hear, but he can talk and empower. Empower might seem strange, but its basically enhancing the target to extreme supernatural standards, like a tree becoming a Treant, a boulder becoming a Golem, etc.

Talk just means he can have a two-way conversation with these beings.

Brad was a truly kind-hearted soul. He always tried to be polite, kind and sympathetic. This led to some voices becoming attached to him rather than their original source.

Brad had basically made poltergeists, or ghosts that can interact with the world of the living, and tend to be vengefully protective or their territory. Poltergeists are also one of the only forms of undead that is both fully sapient, to the extent it was in life, and still anchored to at least one thing.

Now that the details are out of the way, story time!

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

p.s. it is worth noting that these descriptions will be the basis for all future stories unless otherwise specified.

It was a wonderful winter day at school, for most. Bradley, unfortunately, was the target of anger for many people, not because of him, but because he was an easy target.

Today was the last straw for some of the voices.

Jonathan, one of the bullies, had cracked one of Brad’s teeth.

The world seemed to slow, the air around Brad becoming a dark purple haze, as he fell to the floor, unconscious. Ghostly, partially transparent limbs began spreading from almost every surface that could be seen. The lockers were ripped from their hallway walls, the posters shredded as ghastly hands broke through with rage.

(this indicates gore sensitive zone, and will also later signify the end of said zone)

Jonathan limbs were restrained, pulled to the floor with violent conviction, as though trying to force him into the concrete. Then, for the first time in many years, the voices screamed into “normal” space and audio.

To those present, it sounded like the death throes of a million people being slowly crushed and dissolved.

Most of the staff and students that survived would never forget the day that the school halls ripped apart a child in rage.

The hands stretched Jonathan’s limbs to their limit, the horrible popping of joints and cartilidge tearing and dislocating, sending Jonathan into a fit of pained screaming, yet the voices did not stop tearing at his flesh. But then the voices decided to reach deeper, using the empowerement that Bradley had given them many years ago, the voices reached into Jonathan’s soul, and began to claw and rip all that they could.

Jonathan was not making it to the next realm, because the very essence of Jonathan was being erased.

Jonathan was being erased, hollowed out both literaly and metaphorically, for his transgressions.

Once his body, and those of the staff who had ignored bradleys pleas for help, and those of the other students who did the same, and the various bodies in the way were reduced to bone powder and meaty slag, dripping from any surface the eye could see.

(gore has ended. Good luck! This might become a series, actually.)

Bradley had been moved, of course.

The voices couldn’t bear to think the grief that would befall him if he discovered what had happened. The voices had an idea!

The voices reconfigured reality.

The voices were reality, after all.

The voices made Bradley immune to the tampering hands of time, immune to the faulty vermin of disease, hunger, sleep and thirst.

Bradley was not changed, bar his lack of need to eat, sleep, drink or defecate. Bradley’s powers weren’t made better, because the voices knew.

They knew he could do that on his own.