Caped (Book 1): The Burdens of Fate Read Free

Like I could sit down at that bar and order myself a drink.
    Damn, this sure is going to take some getting used
to.

 
 
    Alvin Turner -
Journal #1
    I was afraid and shaking. There were random
body tremors, and my breath... the constant fear my breath was leaving me. It
was too short, too quick. Hyperventilating. I couldn't breathe. My eyes
couldn't focus and refused to stay still. "Help me," I thought.
Because of my breath? Maybe.
    I needed to get out of here, but I couldn't. My
muscles refused the signal. Move dammit!
    Oh God!
    I knew why. I knew why but I was too afraid to
admit it. My breath...no more air. I needed air but my lungs were full. Help
me, I thought. Help me because I was right. I didn't want to be right. What
did...what does it mean to be right?
    My muscles locked up, for how long I don't
know. Perhaps a second. Maybe longer, or far far shorter. And right when I felt
as if the stagnant tension was going to send my body screaming in every
direction, I coughed. Like a smoker's cough sans all the phlegm and mucus.
Deep, long, and raspy; shaking me from the balls of my feet to the crown of my
skull.
    It was liberating and terrifying.
    Yet I still half expected to wake up at any
moment, to blink and find that it's all in my head.
    The first couple of times I noticed
"it" it happened too quickly for me do anything other than pass it
off as my imagination, a byproduct of adrenaline or other perception altering
chemical the brain frequently pumps out. And then I began to worry. Something
was wrong with me; I was convinced I was seeing the first stages of something.
WebMD said otherwise, call me lazy but I have neither the money nor patience to
go see a doctor. Maybe if this were Britain
or Canada
but my luck's never been so good.
    Then it hit me on my drive home today, perhaps
I could control it. And so here I sat, in this very chair, feeling like an
extreme idiot. Started the stopwatch app on my phone and began to focus, trying
for the same feelings I'd felt before. I tried multiple approaches, squinting
my eyes, tensing my muscles, and trying to replicate a feeling of shock, but
accomplished nothing other than feeling like an idiot. Each moment growing less
confidant that anything had happened at all, which didn't bode well for my
mental stability. But in the defeat and the calm of just staring at the
clock...I felt it.
    And I'd like to call bullshit on that considering
I was never calm when this happened before, but I felt it.
    What exactly it was I felt, I'm not sure. Best
described as a muscle, but throughout my entire body. I flexed it with as
little force as one would use lifting a finger and immediately the world slowed
to a crawl. I was dumbfounded, and so I did it again, this time with a little
more force. It was amazing, the ease with which I could control it, coupled
with the feeling of near infinite freedom; and I hadn't even left the chair.
    What can I equate this feeling with? Nothing.
Nothing comes close to describing the stagnant and unreal look of it all. No
sound, except the ghostly ephemeral ones I make. Stuck to the ground, yet
feeling weightless all the same. You never realize how many things around us
are moving until nothing moves at all. In light of that, a simple fact remains:
My life has changed.
    One thought blended with another and the next
thing I knew I was cautiously exploring my limitations. I was obviously
breaking/bending the laws of physics, but to what extent? Could I open doors,
pour liquids, move living things? Dozens of questions, and with each one I
answered a new one seemed to replace it. All falling under the umbrella of the
million dollar question: Am I alone? Freak event, small subset, or will the
entire population be speeding around out there? Or crazier still, perhaps,
different abilities? Nothing has come to my attention to prove anything except
that I am alone. Whatever the case, I have many questions to mull over, but for
now I can't help but enjoy myself.
    Oh