Fiction.

I have another secret.

I mean, it’s not a huge deal.  I can’t make anything happen that doesn’t have a chance of happening anyway. I don’t create these situations, I just take advantage of them. And I didn’t kill many people tonight, just whoever was on life support, I guess, when I found the faulty point in the hospital’s wiring and started the chain reaction with fuses and wires and shit (I’m no electrician!).  I’m in the camp that believes that life support is no way to live anyway. Definitely pull my plug if I’m ever in that situation, God forbid. It gives me chills just thinking about all those slackjawed vegetables, so I don’t feel too bad about dispatching them, and I’m going to elect not to include them in the secret tally I’ve got going in my head. Unless I don’t have that tally anymore. I’m not sure. Things have been a little confusing lately.

I’m pretty sure Lauren and Kaiser and them got out OK. I don’t see why they wouldn’t, unless they got trampled by an onslaught of overweight, panicking nurses when the lights went out. I even tried to focus a little light in their direction as I made my way out onto the street with everyone else. I couldn’t catch a glimpse of them, but I hope they appreciate the fact that I left them alone. Maybe I’ve slipped up a little lately and let this thing get away from me a bit, but I’m feeling better now. I’m even a little proud of myself for how strong my light manipulation capabilities have become! I’m thinking if I just keep working on that, maybe I won’t need the other thing, the bad thing. Maybe light will be enough. At any rate, when I saw them all lying there in the stark hospital lighting, they looked so helpless and so tired. It didn’t seem right to kill them. They’d done a lot for me after all. Well, some of them, anyway. So before they could react in their feeble ways, I cut the power and hit the streets.  One day I’ll find them again when I’ve got everything under control.

But look, like I said before, I have very few vices. I don’t steal, I don’t lie. I always show up to work on time. I just, sometimes, push things in a direction in which they were already headed, that’s all. Nobody made that guy swim around in a part of the river known to be dangerous. And basically if you’re going to be a young girl alone at night in a cemetery, you’re pretty much asking for it. Chemical plant explosions? Come on. It was really just a matter of time for that one.

In fact, it took me awhile when it first started happening maybe ten years ago to figure out that it was me that was causing the deaths. I experimented on some old people for awhile, just some grandparents of people I knew and an elderly couple on my block. I figured no one would miss them, you know? After the fifth pre-existing old-person condition that I pushed over the edge, I decided to try something more complicated. My mom was carrying groceries up the steps one day when the knowledge of her very own dangerous information hit me. I could almost see her slightly weak heart inside her bursting with the effort, even though I was upstairs in my bedroom and couldn’t actually see the front steps at all. Her usual call for help with the grocery bags nearly distracted me, but I’d been practicing with the geriatrics, so it wasn’t too difficult to concentrate on those valves and aortas or whatever. Then I heard some dull thuds and the sound of a little broken glass, and it was all over! I can’t even begin to describe the rush that followed.

I guess some people get high from giving life and some from taking it away.

I mean, the bum was easy. Jack Arrow was a demented individual who was so close to being pushed into a murderous rampage that I barely had to do anything. I didn’t know he was what he was when I set him off one night on my walk home, and even now I’m not sure how much he knew about me and what I had done to him. But it sure does seem that I’m the only woman around here whose neck didn’t get a saw held to it, doesn’t it?

To be honest, though, I’ve gotten a little out of hand lately. I’ve started to do it without even thinking about it. It’s become automatic, like lighting up a cigarette, which I should also probably do a little less. The other day when we were in Monroe Park, I didn’t even realize I was responsible for the car smashing into the Mosque until after it happened. My reach has expanded too. I get these little danger alerts like an annoying kid pulling at a corner of my brain, and I make the deaths happen just to make it stop, only now they seem to be coming from farther and farther away. I’ve certainly never, to my knowledge, caused something as big as a chemical plant explosion as far away as Hopewell before. The rush it gave me almost rivalled how it felt when I was just starting out.

I’m sorry, Dad, wherever you are. I miss her too. And I guess I’ll miss you now. And maybe I’d stop if I could, but I doubt it. I didn’t ASK to be like this. I didn’t ASK to be able to do these things. I can’t help it anymore, and who cares anyway. I deserve to have a little pleasure in my life. I haven’t had everything handed to me on a silver platter like Lauren or Kaiser. And fucking douchebag assholes like James are far more harmful than someone like me. I don’t insult people. I don’t fuck over my friends. I don’t belittle people for no reason. I don’t completely disregard the feelings of another person. Maybe I don’t want to stop after all.

So you know what? Fuck you, James. Fuck you, Jack Arrow. Fuck you, Dad. And fuck you, everyone else!

I recommend staying out of harm’s way.