Water was trickling all around. He began to put the pieces together, and realized that he’d passed out face-up in a stream deep in the woods. He clothes were soaking wet. Most of the blood had been washed off of him, although it still stained everything he was wearing.
The memories of the night before came rushing back to him, and he sat down in the stream, not caring about the water. His soaking wet clothes were the last thing on his mind. The only thing he could think about was what had happened.
Is everybody dead? he asked himself. Of course not, he thought, shaking his head. If I survived, other had to as well. “That begs the question, what happened in the first place,” he said under his breath as he stood.
His thoughts then turned to the things that he’d done. He brought his hands up to his eyes, covering them enough that it was dark and he could still keep them open. That’s exactly what he saw: darkness. No glowing lights, blue or otherwise.
He brought his hands down to his sides, sighing in relief, but deep down, he felt disappointment. A smile grew across his face as he thought about those things he’d done. They were pretty cool, he had to admit. He’d gone from one side of the clearing to the other in a split second; he’d been able to bring down an entire tree and toss it off his shoulders like it was nothing.
Guilt struck him, sending waves of shame coursing through him. On one hand he felt ashamed about what was happening to him when some sort of massacre had just happened the night before. On the other hand, what was happening to him was equal parts terrifying and cool.
A theory popped into his mind that terrified him. What if what’s happening to me happened to everybody else?
He stepped backwards out of the stream, processing this new train of thought. What if this was too much for their bodies to handle, and they just…popped? He looked down at his hands, his arms, every inch of his body that he could see. He showed no signs of “popping.” From what he could see, other than the few stubborn bits of dried blood, there wasn’t a single imperfection on his skin.
He walked to the edge of the stream and knelt down. Before he did anything else, he needed to get the dried blood off his skin. He dipped his hands into the stream and the cold water rushed over his skin. It felt amazing, waking up every sense inside of him. He breathed in deep, taking in the smell of the woods around him. Birds were chattering in the trees, unaware of the horrific scene that had happened the night before, just…
Patrick realized he had no idea how far from the party he was. He had no idea how far away he was from anything.
“Not now,” he told himself. “One thing at a time.”
He scrubbed at his right hand, getting the blood off his skin. It was being stubborn, not wanting to come off. “Come on,” he said through gritted teeth as he scrubbed. The blood wouldn’t come off. Frustration flared inside him. He fought to keep the anger down.
Whose blood was this? It wasn’t his; he knew that. He had no wounds on him. Wendy’s? Ben’s? Joshua’s? Steven’s? It could’ve been any of theirs. He fought hard the urge to puke. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of who it could be. He was literally washing them off his hands in some stream in the woods.
He scrubbed faster and faster, grunting as tears escaped from his eyes. It was all too much for him to handle.
“Come on, get off, get off, GET OFF!” he yelled. He scrubbed his hand so fast and hard it became a blur. The friction from the speed and force rubbed his skin clean off his hand. He screamed in pain and stopped scrubbing. He looked down at his right hand as the flesh began to web back together, repairing itself. His skin closed over the wound, and after a few seconds of redness, his hand was back to normal, as if nothing had happened at all.
Patrick stared at his hand, with no idea what to do. Had that really just happened? Was he seeing things? Even though this all felt real to him, the things that were happening were so crazy and ridiculous it had to be a dream. There was no other explanation. No matter how real it felt, there was no way all of this could be real.
Slowly, Patrick stood. This isn’t real, he told himself. This can’t be real.
He spun around and found a large tree standing close behind him. It stretched high into the sky, and was so large that it would take two of him to be able to wrap his arms around it. Determined to prove to himself that this was all a dream, he walked up to it, cracked his knuckles, and punched the tree as hard as he could.
The trunk of the tree exploded. It sounded like a bomb had gone off, and flocks of birds went flying into the air. Other wildlife scattered as chunks of wood and splinters flew everywhere. The tree moaned as it fell away from Patrick. It caught on other trees on its way down, but it ripped their branches along with it. Finally, the tree slammed to the ground, creating a thud that felt like an earthquake.
Patrick stood there staring at what he’d just done. He breathed heavily, his eyes wide. “That can only happen in a dream,” he muttered.
A sharp pain stabbed at his side. He looked down and saw that a large piece of wood from the tree had gone straight through him. A little bit of blood had oozed out from his wound before it sealed around the wood.
Still convinced this was only a dream, Patrick panicked only a little. He wrapped his hand around the wood and slid it out of his side. He gasped; the procedure was a bit more painful than he had expected.
Once the chunk of wood was out of him, he tossed it aside. It was covered in blood, but when he pulled up his shirt, there wasn’t even a scratch there. “Thank god that was a dream,” he said as he patted the spot where the wood had been.
He examined the clothes he had on and decided to change them. These were covered in blood and had holes all through them. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He imagined a blue and white striped shirt, a fresh pair of dark wash jeans, and a pair of black sneakers.
He opened his eyes and looked down. He was still wearing the same bloodstained clothes.
He huffed in frustration. He’d never lucid-dreamed before, and wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to do it. But that was supposed to be the best part about lucid dreaming, the fact that there were no rules. There was no “way” of doing things; you just did them.
Why isn’t this working? he thought.
He closed his eyes and tried again. When he opened them, nothing had changed. “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath. He kicked at a rock in the stream in frustration. It rocketed through the air and shot straight through one tree before getting lodged in another.
Patrick smiled as he looked at the hole in the tree. That was pretty cool, he thought. He kicked another rock, sending it through another tree. Then another, and another.
An idea formed in his head, and he picked up a smooth rock from the stream. He turned downstream and began running. He ran faster than he’d ever thought possible. In the blink of an eye he was hundreds of yards away. He was so caught off guard by his sudden burst of speed that he came to a hard stop, sending himself tumbling. He left a large trench in his wake, and heard the now-familiar cracking of a tree above him.
He pushed himself up off the ground and got his bearings. Then he ran downstream. This time it was a little bit easier. He reached the pond that the stream ran into and skidded to a stop. He tossed the stone in his hand, then flicked it toward the pond as hard as he could.
The stone hit the water once before it launched into the air and disappeared from sight.
Over the next fifteen minutes, Patrick perfected his form until he was able to skip a rock across the entirety of the pond before it lodged itself into the dirt on the other side. After doing that for a few more minutes, he grew bored. The dream seemed to be going on for a very long time. Most of the time dreams were over quickly, with only a couple of things happening before he moved on to the next one, or woke up.
Maybe this isn’t a dream, he thought. He chuckled to himself at such a ridiculous thought.
He ran around to the other side of the pond in a sp
lit second. “Could I do that in real life?” he shouted into the air.
He decided he’d had enough of the woods. He thought about seeing Victoria, and showing her his dream-powers. He closed his eyes and imagined her house and front yard. He sat in his imagination for a couple of moments, and then opened his eyes.
He was still in the woods.
That was weird. Normally in dreams you didn’t have any recollection of going from one place to the other. You were just there. So why wasn’t he just there at Victoria’s house?
Patrick closed his eyes once again and imagined more of the details. He thought about the red brick pathway that led from the road to Victoria’s front door. The front porch that the two of them had drawn on with chalk when they were younger. The window that looked into the living room that Victoria had thrown a baseball through by accident. The side of the house where they’d found a dead bird that hadn’t flown when it fell out of its nest. He remembered how sad the two of them had been, especially Victoria. She still didn’t like to talk about it.
He thought about the tree in the backyard where they’d buried the dead bird at the bottom, and would always dare each other to climb to the top. They never had, of course. They’d both been too afraid, and by the time they were old enough to not be scared, they were much too old to do things like climb a tree.
Patrick opened his eyes.
Still in the woods.
A worrying thought popped into his mind.
What if this really isn’t a dream?
He looked down at the blood on his clothes. That definitely seemed real.
He ran through the woods with his newfound super speed, scouring every inch of it so he could find the scene of last night’s party.
After searching for less than a minute, he found it. He stood at the tree line, making sure to stay out of sight, and looked out at the scene of the party, horrified at what he could see in the light of day. There were dozens of police cars, ambulance, and fire trucks parked nearby. Officers were canvassing the area, collecting evidence and taking pictures. Blood painted the entirety of the clearing. There were two trucks completely flipped onto their backs, and another was crumbled up in a ball a full fifty yards from where Patrick remembered it being parked the night before.
Then the stink hit him. The metallic-smelling blood being heated by the sunlight. The smell of gasoline leaking from the destroyed vehicles. The entire thing was like something from a horror movie, or a nightmare.
But there was one thing Patrick knew now: this was no nightmare. The scene he saw before him was very, very real.
7
Game Plan
Patrick stared at his reflection in the pond, his mouth slightly open. His wide eyes looked back at him, unable to look away from the horrific sight in front of him. He knew that something terrible had happened the night before, and somehow he had survived. The blood all over him was evidence, though, that he had been right in the middle of it.
He closed his mouth and gritted his teeth. He knew what he needed to do first. He needed a new set of clothes. He couldn’t be seen covered in blood when there was an investigation into the apparent massacre going on. After that, he had to come up with a story.
He was terrified of having to lie to the police, but he had no other option. He couldn’t let them find out what he was capable of. There was no telling what would happen to him then. He would have to tell the police that he’d left the party early or something, and that he hadn’t been around when whatever had happened, happened. Once he got that out of the way, he could begin to figure out exactly what had gone down the night before. He doubted anybody else would be able to. He was the only one who knew about people with incredible powers. Well, he and whoever else had them. There was someone else in the city where he lived who had them as well, and when he found out who they were—who had committed this horrendous massacre—they were going to pay. Patrick was sure of it.
A pit grew in his stomach at the thought of someone else having the same powers that he did. If they were capable of committing a massacre of high school students at a party, what else would they be capable of? He had to find out, and fast. There was no telling what they’d do next.
A thought formed in Patrick’s head, a terrifying one that he’d fought hard to keep down, but it had slipped through his defenses and permeated throughout his brain.
What if there’s nobody else?
Patrick closed his eyes tight, concentrating on removing that thought from his consciousness. There was no way he could do something like that. True, he was missing parts of his memory, but there was no way he could have killed everybody at that party. Even if he had been drunk out of his mind, he just knew that there was no way that that could have happened.
But would the police believe that? Of course not. If he were to come forward and they somehow found out about his powers, there was no telling what would happen to him.
No, he knew that his only course of action was to find the other person with the same abilities he had, and make them pay for what they’d done. He wasn’t going to let them just kill his friends and get away with it. They had messed with the wrong person.
One thing at a time, he told himself. First, some fresh clothes.
Part Two: Discovery
8
Familiar Faces
Patrick stood in the alley watching the entrance to the clothing store. A late morning breeze blew a styrofoam cup across the road, and the scraping noise it made penetrated the eerie silence. He guessed that news about the massacre had already begun to spread, and most people were at home waiting to hear more. He wondered exactly what the reporters were going to say. How exactly did you report that an entire class had been killed in the woods and that there were cars that had been tossed aside like they were toys?
As he watched the store, waiting for the customer inside to leave so he could run in and grab some clothes, he grew more and more worried. What if the government knew about other people with powers? If he was the only survivor, all the evidence would point to his being the perpetrator and the one with powers. The government would be onto him in no time. Should he stay hidden and let everyone assume he was dead until he was able to find the person who had actually committed the crime? If he did that, once all was said and done, everybody would wonder why he had laid low for such a long time, which would create a whole new set of questions that could possibly lead to the exact same answers: he was the one with the powers.
All these thoughts swirled around inside his mind. Stop it, he told himself. One thing at a time.
Right on cue, the young lady with brunette hair in a ponytail sticking out of her baseball cap exited the store. Patrick exhaled, calming himself. Time to see how fast you really are, he told himself.
He sprinted out of the alley and across the street. The whole world slowed around him. The girl who was just walking out of the store now stood frozen, looking down at her phone mid-stride. Patrick slipped through the still-open door of the shop and went straight for the men’s section. He grabbed a black t-shirt with the phrase Can You Dig It? printed on the front in bold white letters. He wished he’d grabbed something else, but he didn’t have time to peruse the aisles for the most fashionable attire. He wasn’t an expert on his newfound powers, and wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible before something bad happened. He grabbed the rest of his new outfit—jeans, socks, shoes, pack of underwear—and turn to run right back out the door. He couldn’t help but smile at how exhilarating it all felt, dashing in and out of a store in less than a second, new outfit in hand. The person working the counter would have no idea anything was missing until the store decided to do inventory. And when they checked the security cameras, they would find nothing. They could barely capture things moving at normal speed in good quality, so Patrick was sure that there was no way they’d be able to see him moving at such incredible speeds.
He turned to look at the person behind the counter, fascinated by the fact that they were fro
zen in time while he sped around their store. He almost came to a total stop when he saw who was standing there. Lace Tomlinson was running her fingers through her blonde hair with one hand, and with the other, was in the middle of pulling her phone from her pocket.
She had been at the party the night before.
Patrick forced himself to focus on getting out of the store before thinking about anything else. He couldn’t afford to slip up now, especially if Lace was the other person with powers. He exited the store, running past the girl who had exited earlier, who had barely moved an inch the entire time he was in the store.
He ran across the still-empty street and into the alleyway between a laundromat and a convenience store. There, he slipped his bloodstained clothes off and quickly changed into his fresh clean clothes, being sure to pull all the tags off. He rolled his old clothes and shoes up into a ball, then opened up a nearby dumpster. The smell of rotting trash hit his senses like a freight train. Still, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d smelled all day. All the blood in the woods still won that prize.
He dug around the trash a bit, making sure to put his clothes near the middle where they wouldn’t be seen by whoever threw something away next. He couldn’t take any chances.
Then he jogged to the end of the alley, watching the inside of the store he’d just exited. Lace was leaning up against the counter, swiping through her phone. She didn’t seem to be too torn up by the fact that almost everybody she was friends with had died the night before. She stood there messing with her phone like it was any other slow Saturday at work. Of course she wouldn’t be too beat up if she’s the one who killed them all, Patrick thought.
He reached for the phone in his pocket. He planned to take some notes on the phone, but when he reached his pocket, he remembered that he didn’t have a phone anymore. Damn, still not used to that, he thought.
A realization hit him, one that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought about earlier. If he didn’t have his phone, then his parents wouldn’t be able to call him. Oh, shit. Mom and Dad are probably freaking out right now. A wave of heat washed through his body. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought about them sooner. They were probably in hysterics, not being able to get into contact with him, thinking he was one of the victims.
The First Superhero (Novella): Richter Page 3