I am holder of a power great and terrible. I don't mean that I have potential for greatness or terrible things; I suppose I do, but no more than the average person. I mean that the power itself effects my life for the best and for the wretchedest. I can feel the future. Not see it written out, but experience sensations before the stimulus hammer falls. It's a sort of a stringy sensation in an airy antechamber to my frontal lobe, that does not exist outside my own perception.

It's great because it's a gift, of course; even this trifling mind deserves better than to be given to an ingrate, and it's saved me from a million tiny inconveniences besides. But I use it clumsily, still stammering over the consequences of avoided inconvenience. In fact, absent the myriad trials of an inconvenient life, I was freer to contemplate what might trouble me. and in that way was more miserable.

I call this ability Psychicsis, though only to myself; it's a wretchedly self-clever portmanteau of "psychic" and "psychosis".

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For instance: I was once cleaning a bathroom (one of the few jobs I felt fit for, given that it allowed one to work in a hunched silence), and while scrubbing the toilet, felt something possibly slide from my shirt pocket. My hand flew to my breast and seemed to be just in time to save... well, I couldn't say what, exactly. I only felt it as a small valuable something gone... gone, in a soft plunk down a backwater still unclean given my listless efforts at scrubbing.

Moving on, buffing out water stains from the mirror, I agonized over what I would have done. Trust my own efforts, give my hand into the clear stream tabooed, or play things safe and sacrifice a precious possession? A rational part of me scoffed at the idea of giving up something I care about to a societal eye that wasn't even watching; the expectation of disgust. With a razor scalpel, heat-cleaned and now cooled, this part of my brain would excise all shame if given the chance; I would become a slobbering blob. It's best to beat its surgical hand back now.

Trouble struck when I went for a brief walk. A child dropped the ball he was playing with, which rolled into the street with expected magnetism. I strummed the fated string with my presence on the sidewalk. In its lemmingcharge to asphalt the ball bounced against my hapless foot, and I picked it up.

Expectant eyes behind me. I held the ball down, offering in a single hand, loosegripped and steady. Couldn't yank it away as he went for it, even if I wanted to, which I don't. I don't, no matter how much I can feel it about to happen.

"Hold on to that ball," I said, smiling to ward off the malaised air I was sure hung about myself. Still offering.

The child looked at me as though I were a great glassy earwig, or cockroach, or some other filthy verminous beast (thus, however briefly, defining me as the same.) As though he knew the needless cruelty barging about my head. He took and then promptly dropped the ball.

It bounced predictably into the seemingly empty street, but I still couldn't bear to look. Shamefully I strode on down the sidewalk, head hunched, shoulders achingly high, pretending to be enraptured by some spectacle bound to the earth. Even the (admittedly expected) squeal of too-late brakes could not soften my shameful pace. Spectral whispers of a hastily assembled crowd nagged at me like moth teeth, but I only moved more cravenly, approaching a stork-like stalk. The base of my neck began feeling strained, acrid stink of grass near shamebreaking; still I could not bring myself to look up.

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One ghostly whisper clattered its chain, and stood out from the rest. How horrible. The phantom chorus nodded in rattling agreement, casting metallic judgement: How terrible. Just awful. Such a great shame. Finally, a ghastly wail of condemnation: Shouldn't we call someone?

Until this moment I hadn't considered the legal repercussions of my failure to act. I would have sworn, though, that as I walked away from the scene of the accident, a clacking followed with on the edges of my hearing. The beat of beat-cop feet. Closing in, in pursuit; I widened my pace and from the sounds of it so did the fire-eyed lion at my tail. Deer eyes wouldn't save me now, prey to my own failure to use my power, I picked up the pace further and further but never lifted both feet from the ground at once. For then, witnesses could not claim I was running. Got to look out for number one, so bit the old familiar asp, sourly, fangs pry into a prion ridden mind... Not anything wrong with me just a Power. The enclosing sound numbed the edges of my thoughts; that's why I might come across more disintegrating than usual. Power aside though; I am usual I swear it.

Lost in ponderance and panic I failed to notice the street softly declining; that's how decay always goes. Its minuscule at first, unnoticeable and then ignored, until one finds themself lost at the top of a staircase. The sole abyss I refused myself entry into. In a single day I had become an accomplice to vehicular manslaughter and speedwalked from certain arrest and thought untethered thoughts; all the while pretending to be a normal human. True I was uprightwalking, human bones in human skin and featherless; human and yet so much less for my gift... And despite it all I still thought myself (what?)too good for?) this final plunge forth.

So I stood at the stairtop; stock-still in pale daylight, burning as a world does. So wasteful. Taking up heat and not even spinning outside of my mind that doesn't count. Waiting, with flaming wrists, for cold metal coils to smother cover hold and treasure the lifeveins... but they never came. Never would come.

Psychicsis lied to me again.

Jeffery took the ball from the ragged leery stranger with no incident (I guess looks can be deceiving) and ran over to our stooped social. I and several other mothers and drinks more juice than drink and a stoop. Brief respite; we have to tease relaxation from our constant tensionridden minds chemically and sweetly. God I wish some sweetness besides syrup; wish Jeffery's father would call when he would miss dinner...

"How horrible," Linda said, noting concerned after the stranger down the street. "People walking about in such a shape, I mean." Breathily she continued.

"How terrible."

"How awful." The exhausted echoes of the worn chorus.

I concluded the sympathetic recital. "What a great shame!" quoth I, in dramatic ironic aplomb.

Oh yes, what a shame; carefree enough to worry about a random child, such a jealous shame. "What a shame." Whispered, again, breathily, recalled Linda. What a performance! We somnambulist troupe were unbeatable and beat; exhausted I mean, ohI'msosorries all around the table.

Odd thing about the streetwise stranger was their gait; not goose-stepping but impressed upon with a posture. Lifted steps and neat shoelaces. I don't know; you'd expect someone so unkempt to shuffle. I guess they had more energy than they let on, slacker bastard. Own a comb, lazybones. I tried to giggle at my delirious wit and found myself too tired... The young don't know how good they have it...