by Oscar Reeds
Janine didn’t see eye to eye with me on this idea.
“What?”
“You do realize that people will start asking questions about your source of early income, right?”
“Huh?”
“Well, you can’t exactly appear with a magical million dollars and have the people selling business space just give you some with no questions asked. If anything, they will doubt that you’ve stolen said money, or are trying to launder it.”
I knew she had a point, but I was still not following.
“Well, I mean, I can start off with less…”
“But you would still need a decent increase for people to think you’re being legitimate.”
I then had an idea.
“OK, so listen to this, right? I would open a bakery…”
“Yeah?”
“And in that bakery, I would earn some cash from the customers, BUT I would also artificially place money in the register while removing products from shelves.”
“Oh boy…”
“Once I’ve removed enough, I would place the ‘sold’ goods in boxes and, unbeknownst to anyone, get them to the poor.”
“Mhm.”
“So, as my business booms, I would get more stores, and with more stores, I would earn more money regularly, and create just enough money for myself to make a decent increase. I would of course work out a deal with homeless shelters, so that every time I get some food to the poor, I get tax write-offs, and I get to actually KEEP more money than I produce.”
“Yyyup.”
“But the best part is, I would—”
“That plan is stupid,” my father said. Normally I would be angry at his criticisms of my stuff, but this was the first time he called one of my ideas or notions stupid AFTER our experience, so there was no real malice in his voice.
“How is it stupid?”
“You have that magical guy giving you powers, why not just ask him to give you a power to shift people’s minds? That way you can convince anyone that your business is legitimate, even with the excess money.”
“Or better yet, convince them to unknowingly flock to your product,” Melissa added, clearly enjoying this conversation.
“See, see, the girl has a point,” my father pointed to her, and they high-fived each other.
“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” I asked. “And besides, I don’t think I could get a power like that right off the bat, the power to, like, influence people on that level. Could I, Norman?”
Norman, again, remained silent. For some reason, he kept to himself during this whole thing, and didn’t say a word unless I asked him.
“Norman?”
Nothing.
“Norman?!”
“Huh, what?”
“Did you even hear my question?”
“No, I wasn’t listening. What question?”
This response was so matter-of-fact and direct that, I have to admit, it made me feel a little irritated.
“Okay, let me ask again. In the future, would I be able to control vast amounts of people’s minds?”
“I doubt it,” he replied, “since it’s a complex thing to do already. I’m sure you can do it to a certain extent, but not, like, a whole planet or anything.”
That was all the answer I needed.
“So my idea still stands, Janine. And dad. And Melissa.”
“How about you diversify it?” Melissa asked.
“How so?”
“Well, you can make a casino. Any earnings there could easily be manipulated.”
“Or,” Janine interrupted, “You could invest in several bookies’ and reap the winnings of…well, wherever you bet. That way you can claim to have earned an undisclosed estimate of money from sheer luck.”
“You can do something similar with lottery,” my father interjected. “Buy out roughly several hundred tickets, play them one night, and whatever the winning one – use it. Then spend the money sparingly into various ‘businesses’ outside of the town, so you can have a paper trail that nobody could trace, and so that everything can seem legitimate.”
“Ultimately,” Janine again interrupted, “just say that you got the money from Tommy Wiseau, the director.” I was, admittedly, puzzled by this. “You see, if what his friend and co-worker Greg Sestero said was true, that Tommy’s bank account was indeed ‘a bottomless pit,’ you can go directly to Tommy and promise to finance an entire movie from him. He did underhanded shit in the past, so he won’t care about the money’s origins. Not to mention that you could just pay him off to say ‘yeah, I give him money, huuuh?’ or something.”
“Alternatively,” now Tohrumi chimed in, cleaning the hallway, “you can open your own adult-themed bar, with women you yourself created.”
“Or an adult camming website,” Yukio added from her room, making a break from her first seventeen sessions.
“Yeah, or that,” Tohrumi continued. “You can always claim that you got the extra cash from the internet.”
All of these were spectacular ideas, but I was getting sleepy.
“Look, let’s rest up here. Tomorrow we can go to school together and decide what to do with that pathetic lot on the spot. My financial future can wait.”
Everyone agreed, so in the next few hours, my dad and I managed to craft a makeshift bed in the living room for the girls. Tohrumi and Yukio were to sleep on the floor, and Greysticks went outside, by the front porch. Before I finally closed my own eyes, I noticed that Norman wasn’t done staring into nothingness. Even while I slept, he was thinking of something seemingly important. I wasn’t going to learn what that something was until the following day, so it was safe to say that that night was my last good night of sleep for a good while.
Chapter 6
The dawn came slashing in. We all got up and had breakfast, which my father made. I must admit, I never knew he could be such a good cook. Immediately after that, he was getting dressed and looking over the wanted ads, trying to see if he could find one that he can apply for as early as that morning. Our little bond gave him a new zest for life.
We waved Yukio and Tohrumi goodbye and slowly began walking to our school. However, an old woman began yelling at me.
“Devil, devil, deeeeviiiiil!”
It was pissing me off. Janine seemed to notice.
“Don’t.” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try to silence her with a power or something.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Really?”
She was right, I wanted to. But for some reason Norman didn’t make that not-quite- subconscious wish come true for me.
“Why didn’t you enable it for me?” I asked. Naturally, we both knew what I meant. He was still distant.
“Because I know that deep down you want to do something else,” he replied.
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “Okay. I want to erase her memory of what I did.”
Nothing.
“Erm, I want to erase her memory of what I did?”
Nothing again.
“Come on, Norman!”
“No can do.”
“Why? It’s just her.”
“But it’s a wish dealing with omnipotence, and I cannot make that come true.”
The old woman kept yelling “devil,” with everyone who saw what was happening with me on the street during the cinema ordeal clutching the nearest thing and trying to hide themselves from me. I had to rethink this.
“Alright, make sure that she feels less intimidated by me, despite knowing what she does.”
A surge came up. The woman was now merely stern in her tongue.
“You, young man, are a potential menace,” she said. I still didn’t like it.
“Make sure she’s even less intimidated than me,” I asked, and again a surge. The woman was now slightly concerned.
“Well, you’re not all bad, but I would still be a
fraid of you in certain circumstances,” she said. But still I wasn’t satisfied.
“Now I want her to feel total indifference towards me having powers,” and a surge later, she did. She merely said “hello, young man” and moved along. Most people on the street were confused.
“Right. Give me the power to give all of these people the same indifference.”
A surge later, and the group around us was moving about their business, not looking at me.
“And finally, Norman,” I said, getting ready to ask the first request of a global nature, “I want the entire world to feel indifferent towards what I can do.”
There was something different about this surge, but not different enough for me to fully notice or understand it. Sure enough, nobody yelled at me on the street, and everything went on as per usual.
Melissa sighed, which of course I noticed.
“What’s wrong, Mel?”
“I mean, this desire of yours is a bit selfish,” she said, cautiously. That very cautiousness told me that she was still afraid of what I could do.
“What do you mean by selfish?” I asked.
“Even your nobler wishes were about you getting something better for yourself,” she added. “I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, it just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Well, what do you suggest I do?”
“I dunno,” she was playing with her hair again. “I guess just try and do something for others?”
I said nothing at the time, but I knew she had planted an idea in my head, which I filed away for a later use.
We were at the school. Naturally, it felt weird to both of the girls that nobody over there started freaking out after they saw me. Norman’s magic did the trick again. However, what surprised me more was the argument that was happening outside of the building. I managed to make out Haggard and some of his goons, but the other three standing before him were…well, they were full of bruises, so I couldn’t tell their faces, but I could tell their defiance. After we got close enough for me to hear what they were talking about, I understood why Haggard looked so confused.
“Can’t you nerds stay down?” he asked, legitimately baffled.
“No,” the only girl said, in a thick Slavic accent. “You will bother us no longer. And you will finally listen.”
“I wasn’t listening to you for the past four years, why would I start now?”
“Because we stand as one,” the guy behind Petra said, and by his shrill voice I could tell that it was John the Lutist. Haggard laughed at this. “Oh, laugh all you want, chadboi, but we will not be moved!” A slap later and Lutist was moved. At least a few feet to the left and onto the ground were his new trajectory. The last guy didn’t speak, but merely shook.
“And you, Ray? Wanna say something?”
Gene Ray wanted to say something, indeed, but felt powerless against this giant before them. I fully understood how he felt, having been in this same exact position myself for ages.
“Look, Bob,” Haggard’s friend Elsebone Ebone Endrobone Eobone of Eb’ne said, chuckling. “He’s about to tell us of the Time Cube!”
Haggard looked at his friend angrily. He shook.
“Did I just hear a witty retort based on his name that a sportsman like you must never, ever utter on the count of your waning intellect and wanting of acerbic wit?” he asked.
“But, Haggard?”
“What?”
“What do the last few words you said mean?”
Indeed, I could explain away this one as well. Haggard’s aunt was a famous linguist, and a very harsh, very strict woman. Whether he wanted to or not, Haggard had a very vast vocabulary. He went out of his way not to use it so he could fit in with the in-crowd. The rare moments that it did pop up such as these were a wonder to behold. When I said that he was a wordsmith, I was being only partly ironic – technically, he was a wordsmith, but one that’s still ‘in the closet’ about it.
“Sh-shut up!” Haggard said, slapping his friend. For good measure, he also slapped the three nerds before him.
“Keep hitting us,” Petra mumbled, getting up from the ground, “but we won’t move. Conrad showed us that we can stand up to you idiots, and standing up to you we are.”
“And besides,” John was back on his feet too, staring Haggard down, who was even more confused, “we have always felt bad that he took the brunt of the pain because of our silence. No more.”
Gene Ray also got up, but said nothing. His face was enough for Haggard.
“I…I don’t get you…” he mumbled.
I was just as flabbergasted. Neither of these three ever spoke to me before. Yet here they were, ready to be hospitalized on my account. My little school outburst must have worked better than I anticipated. But then again, this must have been something they wanted to say to him for the longest time – something that they wanted to do before I had the abilities that I did, when the strongest person on school grounds was Haggard, the same confused guy that stood before them now.
“Leave them alone,” I said. And immediately the same smug expression was back on old Bob’s mug. It was as if I hadn’t beaten seven shades of shit out of him mere days ago. This took me aback a little, but not for that long. After all, I did just do a planet-wide sweep of people in order for them not to freak out over my powers. In retrospect, that was a bit of a bad idea, because now Haggard treated me the same way he always had, i.e. like dirt. I was no longer the super-powerful nerd who could smack him about from a distance. I was the same old Genital whom he stuffed in that locker filled with rancid goat shit, the type of goat shit he had fed me seconds before stuffing me in said locker.
“Get out of here, Genital,” he shouted, ready to punch me. I must admit, I stepped back a bit instinctively. I’m not proud to admit that it was Norman’s massive sigh of cringe that got me back on my feet again.
“Or what, Bobby?”
This sentence of mine pissed him off. He ran towards me at full speed, ready to tear me limb from limb. But several aerial slaps from my chubby hands and he was back on the ground, licking his wounds.
“Go on, Bobby,” I chuckled, though truth be told I forced it. I wanted him to feel like shit. “Where’s that attack of yours?”
“Those powers ain’t gonna help you, Genital,” he growled, clearly not looking his best. “I will beat the living shit out of you.”
Indeed, he got the living shit beat out of him. This time I was kicking.
“Bobby, baby, you can’t touch me.”
“Shut up, Genital! I’ll show you…!”
Again, he was beaten senseless. This time I even distance-kicked him in the balls.
“Nope. You, Bobby, are on the ground now.”
The man didn’t give up. I gotta give him that. But several attacks later, he was on the ground again, with several teeth swinging from his jaw.
“You’ll fucking die!”
I used my telekinetic power and got him in the air, slapping him against several walls. None of his jock friends dared approach to help him. After I threw him down, he could barely stand.
“Apologize to Petra, John, and Gene,” I said, firmly.
“Fuck you, Genital.”
I smacked him extra hard, to the point where I even tore some of his skin.
“Apologize.”
“No!!”
I punched him so hard that I broke his nose. He wept.
“Apologize.”
He wasn’t himself. He was thrashing, tossing about, jumping around, fidgeting, and jerking his limbs. But he didn’t talk. And true to his word, he didn’t apologize.
I was getting angry. I nearly froze him entirely and approached him with a sharp pencil. Nobody dared stop me, and the mood became decidedly darker.
My pencil was under his chin, and he couldn’t move. I enjoyed his tears too damn much.
“Apologize, Haggard,” I growled. His eyes gave away his new fear, and for the first time ever, he
was in a situation where he was about to lose his life, and it hit him hard. He wanted to live. But I was having none of it.
“No, Conrad! Don’t!” Mellissa embraced me from behind. I wasn’t moving, but then again, neither was anyone else. She was beside herself with sadness.
“If you do that now, Conrad, you’re no better than him,” she said, crying. “Don’t be him.”
I hated her when she was right.
“Fine,” I dropped him on the ground, where he crumbled into a fetal ball of tears and cussing. I approached him and looked down as our eyes met. He, like everyone else, was now looking at the new pack leader, and he didn’t like it.
“These three,” I said, firmly, “are off limits. Touch them again and your cock gets cut off.”
I then ordered everyone, teachers included, to get the hell back to their classrooms. For me, school was officially over. But I still wanted to talk to the trio who defended me.
“You guys alright?”
“Yeah, we are,” Petra replied me, sweeping the dust off her clothes. “Thank you.”
We then talked for about half an hour or so. Each of the three had their own story to tell, and they were as fascinating as they were somewhat expected. Petra, for example, was born in a small village in the Slovenian highlands. Unlike her family, she didn’t really go through the fall of former Yugoslavia, but she did suffer from a different problem, that of disinterest unique to dying villages of Southeastern Europe. She moved to the capital, where she worked odd jobs, and on a fluke managed to book a flight to the good, old US of A. I always thought of this story to be fishy. After all, what kind of country allows open child labor? But evidently, you can work in game centers and whatnot as a teen. Not to mention that she came with a guardian who later merely returned home. There was another legal loophole which allowed her to get an education here, but I have no idea what it was. Naturally, her thick accent and nerdy disposition made her a target for bullies, and naturally she decided to hang out with other nerds, who also got regularly beat up by the likes of Haggard. When they made me the sole target in school, she found relief and observed from a distance how I often got my ass handed to me. The moment Dwyer mentioned his plan to get closer to me, she agreed with zero hesitation.