Unusual Events: A Short Story Collection

by Max Florschutz

  And as he pushed at it, willing it to fade, it seemed to shrink a little, condensing itself down, like water under pressure. Becoming harder to detect.

  I’m losing it, he thought as he let out a shaky breath. This is insane. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard of. Unless those lectures from teachers about how stress worked had been far more literal than he’d realized.

  He grabbed the tablet again, the rain forgotten, and began typing. “Shakes,” he said as he typed the word out. “Sweating. Sudden, warm, internal pressure. Nausea, no vomiting. Weird stuff.” He paused for a moment and then typed in the last one. “Burn marks.”

  He hit enter, and a moment later the page was full of search results. The first three he skimmed over but ignored completely. I don’t have menopause. The fourth and fifth were both suggesting fever. But the sixth …

  He froze. The sixth was a result he’d not expected to see at all. A government site, the page titled “Late Bloomers.”

  The site address itself was from the NSAU. The National Security Agency, Unusual Department.

  He closed the page with a snap and tossed the tablet on the table.

  * * *

  It was a half-hour before curiosity got the better of him. He rolled over, his hands searching out the rectangular bit of plastic and glass, pressing aside the piles of laundry his sudden motion earlier had scattered. The television was rambling on in the background, but Mark wasn’t exactly sure what they were talking about. He wasn’t even sure what sport they were discussing.

  The NSAU.

  It had to be a mistake. A bad result that had worked its way up in the search rankings because it was affiliated with the government. Or maybe there were random words tied into it. Maybe it was the result of a bad web crawler. There had to be some explanation for it.

  But he could still feel the pressure. That warm, odd feeling, deep inside of him. As he’d lain on the couch he’d focused on it, his mind slowly putting together where it was and what it felt like. It was low, just below his stomach, and it certainly wasn’t physical. If it had been, the examination at the doctor’s would have found it. So then … what was it?

  He typed in the search terms once more, the autocomplete finishing his work for him, and scrolled down the page as the results began to load. The NSAU page was still there, sixth from the top, still titled “Late Bloomers.” He held his finger above the tablet’s screen for a moment and then stabbed down.

  It loaded quickly, a simple text header identifying the page as the property of the National Security Agency, Unusual Department. Below that, floating over a low-key background, were two seals. One was the seal of the NSA: an eagle clutching a key in its claws.

  The other seal was similar in design, though not in execution. It was an image of a dragon striking a pose akin to that of the eagle, its wings outstretched on either side. In its foreclaws it was holding not a key, but a staff of some kind, with light flaring out of one end. The seal of the Unusual Department.

  Below that, the page looked fairly ordinary. A selection of contents along the left side. Links to contact information along the right. A design out of time and place … like most government websites, though he had to admit his experience with those was somewhat limited. And square in the center of the page, the article that his search had delivered him to, title reading “Late Bloomers: A Guide to Identifying Unusual Talents.”

  It’s a coincidence, he thought as he began reading down the page. It’s just a collection of the right words.

  The first half of the page certainly seemed to support the theory. He skimmed over the article, half-reading the agency’s explanation that magic—and therefore Unusuals—was still a topic that was not well understood, and much of what they had observed still had little in the way of explanation, though theories abounded as to how—

  He jumped down a few pages, read a few lines discussing various tests, and then jumped down again.

  This was a waste, he thought, scrolling back up. This thing’s huge. It was just a coincidence that it came up. The NSAU trying to get word out or something. The top of the page arrived once more, and with it the contents.

  He paused, eyeing the list of subjects. None of them looked helpful … but then, he didn’t need to use the contents, did he? And what would it hurt to stick around and look for another minute?

  It took a moment to find the browser’s search function, and he decided to go with the first thing that came to mind. Pressure, he thought, typing the word out. There were a number of hits.

  The first few weren’t anything related to what he was worried about. They were things like “social pressures” or other terms that were scientific enough that he didn’t even know what they were referring to, much less about. A few jumps forward past that took him to some more straightforward stuff, but again, it wasn’t anything that related at all to what he was feeling, though they were closer. There was one that gave him a momentary feeling of panic, but it turned out to be a short blurb concerning what it felt like to have contracted lycanthropy. He passed it with a shiver.

  At least it isn’t that, he thought as he continued hitting the “next” arrow. I never got bit by anything or anyone, never got a bad blood sample, none of that stuff. He let out a sigh. Maybe I am just overreacting to a bunch of stress. I’m letting it get to—

  He stopped, his eyes going wide as he saw the text on the screen. “Symptoms often include feelings of intense internal pressure, followed by an overreacting release of energy that may not be acknowledged by the subject, then shaking and sweating as the subject’s body attempts to cope with the abrupt loss of energy.”

  No way. He reread the line again, and then a third time, each time feeling the meaning sink in just a little more. There’s no way that they’re talking about me. I’m just some kid. It’s a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.

  His eyes darted to the next line down. “Often,” the article read, “this release of energy is not acknowledged by the subject. What few who have been questioned about their own experiences have related that many of their earliest experiences with their ‘awakening,’ as they sometimes call it, coincide with a number of strange events that they can’t explain—”

  Like the volleyball exploding, Mark though, an icy lump forming in his gut. Or the garbage can catching fire.

  There was the sudden slam of a car door from outside the house, and he jerked, his body twisting as he sat up. Someone was home.

  Oh no no no no no! He took one last look at the article, and then shut the browser. Whoever was home, the last thing he wanted to do was answer any questions about what he’d been looking at. He brought his game client back up, a small sigh of relief flooding through him as he saw a response from one of his old friends, and he typed out a quick response. Someone was opening the front door, and he called out a quick hello, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray the sense of panic he was feeling.

  There’s no way, he thought. It’s just a coincidence.

  He would look later. Definitely later. It was just a coincidence. Just the stress of everything getting to him. That’s all it was.

  * * *

  It wasn’t stress, as much as he wanted to believe it. He’d spent the last few hours slowly and carefully reading a section of the NSAU site he’d been guided to, followed by a number of other sites he’d found through quick, specific internet searches.

  He wasn’t sick. It was something else entirely. Something he’d never thought he’d ever have to think about.

  Magic.

  That was what most people called it. Some of the papers he’d scanned over had given it other names. “Directed interior energy flow.” “Unquantified energetic projection through unknown means.” Or the less complex but no less questionable-sounding “inner power revealed.” The last one had come from a site that had looked as unreliable as it had sounded, however, so he wasn’t about to trust its explanation for things.

  But there was no way around it. Too many of the more belie
vable sites he was finding were all saying similar things. Unless he was sharing symptoms, there was only one answer.

  He was an Unusual.

  For what felt like the hundredth time that night he sank back onto his bed, staring up at the dimly-lit ceiling and letting a long, slow, steady breath.

  I’m an Unusual. A weird.

  Maybe. The voice of reason in his head wouldn’t give up. You don’t know for certain. You’ve never tested it.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to test it. If he tested it and nothing happened, then it was a relief. But if he succeeded?

  Then he was an Unusual, with everything that entailed.

  Though it’s not like Unusuals are bad, he thought as he rolled onto his side. A soccer poster stared back at him from the wall, one of his favorite teams locked in a victory cheer as they scored a goal. Not most of them, anyway. There were always the horror stories. The ones the news fixed on for weeks. Like the serial killer out on the east coast that had been killing homeless people and sewing their bodies into some monstrosity. Or the vampire who’d lost it in a nightclub. Or the werewolf who’d attacked a hunter after he’d been shot. The news had talked about that one for months. He’d even seen some of the pictures.

  Then again, you’re not a necromancer, right? Or maybe not one? The sheets felt clammy beneath his side, and rolled onto his back once more, again staring up at the ceiling. You’re a match.

  Match. Lighters. Firestarters. One of the more common Unusuals, according to some of what he’d read. If any Unusual could be considered “common.” Several of the articles he’d looked at had theorized that it was some sort of magical adaptation based on mankind’s determined interest in taming fire, a sort of subconscious focus on pushing their talents toward one of the most basic survival needs: Warmth. An individual who, with a snap of their fingers or a flick of their wrist, could set things alight or even, in some rare cases, conjure pure flame from thin air.

  That’s what you’re supposed to be. If he was what the internet had claimed, if the symptoms he was suffering were indeed the same symptoms that firestarters who’d come into their talent late in adolescence reported suffering.

  The terrifying thing was that they were. Right down to a horrifying account he’d read from another Unusual who’d unconsciously made a ball explode by heating the air inside of it—in a manner that was all too similar to what he’d seen happen in gym earlier that day.

  At least he hadn’t found the worst outlet. One match had reported accidentally setting themselves on fire.

  Which had been another lesson the sites he’d looked at had stressed: Being a firestarter did not make one fireproof. Matches were just as vulnerable to the fires they started as anyone else.

  Which made the test remarkably easy. Since distance was a factor in using one’s own “energy” or “power” or whatever it was, the tests he’d found online had gone for the simplest approach, the one most likely to make the most of a weaker Unusuals’ capabilities.

  All he needed to decide was whether or not he was going to do it.

  The articles had made one thing clear: If left alone and given enough time, the attacks he was experiencing would go away, one way or another. One article had estimated that there were a number of unaware Unusuals spread throughout the world … though it had ballparked that the number was fairly low. Unusuals still averaged less than one in twenty-thousand most places.

  So how did I end up being one? Neither Mom or Dad are Unusuals, and if anyone else in the family is, I sure haven’t heard about it.

  Then again, the articles he’d read hadn’t nailed down if there was a genetic component or not to being an Unusual. For all he knew, it was something to do with the move, or where he’d been born.

  Though that last one didn’t make a lot of sense. Surely someone would have noticed if Mountain Vista was pumping out Unusual babies.

  Then again, if they were all late bloomers like me—like I might be … Mark let out another sigh as he sat up, his eyes sliding over to the notebooks sitting on his desk. One of them was the same notebook that he’d possibly charred the edge of a few days earlier.

  “Well …” he said, pausing as the quiet sound of his own voice startled him. He glanced over at the clock on his nightstand. 1:00 a.m.

  “Do I want to do this right now, or do I want to wait?” He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment before gently pushing himself off of the side and stepping up to his desk.

  The notebook paper felt rough and cool beneath his fingers as he tore a tiny strip free. A small piece, just enough that he could pinch it between his thumb and forefinger and still see about half of it.

  “Here we go,” he said, dropping himself into his chair. He’d read the articles. The test was simple enough. All he needed to do was reach for that pressure inside him, somehow, and push it towards the paper. If his fingers got burned, or the paper caught fire …

  Deep breaths, he thought as his chest moved in and out. Just focus, just like the articles … Just like the articles on the internet said …

  He took another breath, closing his eyes as he felt for the warm pressure beneath his stomach … and then stopped.

  Do you really want to do this? Now? He cracked his eyes and looked over at the clock. The neon green numbers stared back at him in silence. It was still one in the morning.

  It’s been a long day. You should get some sleep. Think about it. Pray about it. Once you try to light that paper … there’s no going back. Even if you are going to do it anyway, maybe you should do it after you’ve had a chance to calm down and think about things.

  He brought his eyes back to the small slip of paper, already growing damp with sweat between his fingers. Should I do this now? He stared at it for a moment, and then, slowly, dropped the slip onto his desk.

  No, I shouldn’t, he thought. Not this late. And not when I’m all worked up over it. What was it Dad always said? “Half the decisions you make you’ll make too fast, and the other half too slow, the trick is knowing which to make fast and which to make slow?” It had been something like that.

  And sitting in front of his desk at one in the morning, after having spent the last two hours freaking out and reading through dozens of different articles on Unusuals? No. Not the way to do it.

  You know, he thought as he flipped off the desk lamp and dropped back onto his bed. If this turns out to not have been me suddenly developing powers, and it really is just stress, well … He shifted, tugging the sheets over his body and shucking off his shirt.

  Then it’s probably not helping me de-stress much, he thought as he closed his eyes. Just my luck, I guess.

  Tomorrow. He could think about it tomorrow. After the project his dad had mentioned. Or maybe during.

  Tomorrow.

  * * *

  The nice thing about service projects, Mark thought as he slotted a brick into place, grinning slightly at the clunk the material made, is that you get plenty of time to think. Especially with something like this. He grabbed another brick from the wheelbarrow and dropped it into place, making sure it lined up perfectly with the cross-hatch pattern he’d already laid. Just get into the groove, relax, and let your brain pick its way through whatever it has logged to think about. Today, that was a lot.

  A loud, electric screech echoed across the park as his dad activated the cement saw once more, cutting several more bricks into the angled pieces they’d need for the edges of the path. The noise was shrill, almost eardrum-piercing, but it was distant enough that it wasn’t too much of a bother.

  Clunk. Another brick in place, slotted carefully into the tight groove left by its siblings. When this path is done, it’ll last the city another ten, twenty years easy, he thought as he picked up the next brick. Which is a lot longer than I plan on being here.

  Heck, even if the pathway lasted four years, he’d be gone before then, off to college somewhere to get a degree for some field he still hadn’t decided on yet. Probably for a job that wouldn’t come clo
se to paying off his student loans.

  But that was future Mark’s problem. For now, all current Mark had to worry about was making sure that each brick went into the right place. Check the sand and gravel to make sure it was level. Pick up a brick. Drop it into place. Repeat.

  That, and think about things. Let them stew, boil, and simmer until everything had been distilled down to its simplest elements, like a complex chemical equation that had been broken down to basic terms. Once all of those terms were in place, a reasonable, accurate assessment could be made. Kind of like the scientific method.

  So far, he’d been able to weed his thoughts free of a few of those points, though he wasn’t sure how many more there were going to be. The first one to go had been that he was having some kind of attack. He wasn’t sick—at least, not according to anything that Doctor Diallo had found, so that assumption could be discarded. Which left several explanations to go off of.

  The first, and the one that he had decided was the more likely due to Doctor Diallo’s recommendation, was that he was just stressed. The shock of the move, the lousy situation he faced every day at school … all of it had just caught up with him and his body was reacting as a sort of warning system.

  The second explanation was that he was, as the internet had informed him the night before, an Unusual. A match, lighter, firestarter … whatever he wanted call it. Someone with the ability to start a fire just by thinking about it.

  There were several elements in support of that second idea. The first was the shocking array of strange things that had happened to him over the last week or so. The crispy paper. The charred mark on the desk. The volleyball. And the fire in the garbage can. Each of them an event that had been out of place and … well, unusual in his day to day life. And each one had come after one of his attacks.

  Clunk. Another brick slid into place, rough, artificial stone sliding against itself with a faint rasp.

  But there was no reason to believe that each of those elements couldn’t be coincidences. The crispy paper would have felt similar if he’d spilled a glass of water on it. The mark on the desk certainly could have been there before. The volleyball …? That one was a bit harder to explain, but if there had been a weak seam in the material and the coach had recently inflated it, then it was possible it had just torn under the pressure.