Abilities

During the next couple of nights, William couldn’t shut down his body to sleep or simply sit in his chair for a half hour. Adrenaline was still shooting through his veins from the brawl in the garage, but it got easier. Two days later he fell asleep in his chair for forty-five minutes before waking up in a panic thinking someone was coming for him. Gazet and Brick stayed with William in his home. William insisted because they had nowhere to stay, but it was probably because he didn’t want any Abilities knocking down his front door without protection.

It wasn’t just William, though. None of the three did much sleeping. They spent most of the time getting to know each other. William told the story of how he and Melissa met after a basketball game. Gazet talked about growing up in Ireland. Brick didn’t say a whole lot. He was a man of few words, but made up for it with his actions, for which William was thankful.

Gazet grew up in a small town outside of Dublin he told them. It was him, his parents, and his older sister, Claire. Gazet got a big kick out of the story William told of how he and Melissa met, which was strange because the story wasn’t considered a Romantic Comedy idea. While he belonged to a small family, they were a close family. Always enjoyed each other's company.

“The one thing I always wanted to do more than anything in the world, was dunk a basketball. Jump high enough to where I’d feel like I’m flying, even if just for a second. But that wasn’t something that a five-foot two-inch man could do very easily,” Gazet said with a chuckle.

He spoke a lot about his parents. Gazet said he never saw a couple more in love than his parents. They were always going out together. They would see a movie or go to dinner. They would play games like Putt-Putt or even simply get out of the house to take a walk. Even as they aged year-by-year, they never let their love flicker away. It matured over time, but they always acted like young teenagers in love and Gazet said he never saw anything like that with the other kids’ parents. He felt very lucky to learn from them. He learned how to be a man from his dad and learned a lot about love from his mother. Unfortunately, they died too early. Gazet was only twenty-six when they died in a car accident. They were only in their late forties.

He told William and Brick a dream he once had. He dreamt that Claire was going to die in her bed. The dream didn’t show how, it didn’t say when. It was simple, but in the dream, he was kneeling on the ground next to the bed. There was a chair positioned next to the post at the foot of the bed, but Gazet said he was kneeling to be closer to his sister. He remembers she was squeezing his hand. It wasn’t in pain, or in fear, but he remembers, in the dream, that she was squeezing his hand out of love. Each squeeze was a random pulse to make him smile. He remembers laughing and playfully patting the top of her hand with his other one every time she squeezed, like it was a game of Whack-A-Mole. He remembers the smell of the air blowing through the open window. He remembers the steam lifting from the cup of hot green tea on the night table. He remembers everything.

He remembered again, when it all came true six years, seven months, and twenty-six days after he had the dream. On the twenty-seventh day, he referred to it from then on as a nightmare. That was the first time he ever had one of his visions. Gazet remembered hearing stories about how people discovered their powers and they weren’t all nightmares like his was.

He recalled one girl in Brazil who pulled her drowning daughter out of the ocean. She first swam out to save her, but the undertow was too strong and she couldn’t swim out any further. When it pulled her under, she was ready to accept her fate and inhaled in desperation. However, she didn’t choke. She didn’t drown. She breathed normally. She could breathe underwater, and then she found her daughter and pulled her out of the water to safety.

The first time Gazet discovered his powers, he dreamt his sister was dying. He thought maybe he killed her. He didn’t tell anyone about his dream, and how it mimicked every single aspect of what happened that day. He never spoke a word about it. Then he dreamt of a young man getting hit by a car. Days later, he ran into that man on his way home from work. He didn’t understand at first. He thought it may have been a case of Deja vu, but what he saw next triggered his sixth sense. The young man stepped off the curb, and that is when Gazet realized his purpose. He grabbed the young man and pulled him back onto the curb just as a city bus drove by. He understood from that point on he wasn’t meant to hide from what he was.

“How do I make a decision like this?” asked William.

He sat in his favorite chair, legs up and arms behind his head. Gazet sat on the couch, back against the arm and legs sprawled across the sofa, drinking a cup of Green Tea. Brick stood at the living room window. He walked in small, slow circles looking out the window every time he passed it. No one was expecting a surprise invasion, but Brick wasn’t the relaxing type because Abilities weren’t vampires; they didn’t have to be invited into the house, they usually just blew down the front door.

“Maybe there isn’t a decision to make,” Brick said as he held the window curtain back.

“What?” asked William.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about him,” Gazet spoke up.

“No, what did you mean?”

“Just forget it,” said Brick, “mind if I grab a drink?”

“No, help yourself,” William responded as Brick wandered into the kitchen. “Gazet, what did he mean?”

Gazet’s thumb circled the lip of the mug. He looked into the cup. The tea inside was still. There were no ripples, or small waves of motion. It was as calm as a liquid could be. Gazet found tranquility in that. He turned his head slightly, but was still looking off in another direction. William slammed the recliner’s footrest close and popped over to the coffee table and sat down on the corner. on the coffee table in front of the couch. Now William was in Gazet’s line of sight so Gazet had no choice but to look him in the eyes.

“Brick thinks that maybe you shouldn’t choose between your sons,” Gazet took a deep breath and continued, “Maybe you should let them both go.”

“What?” William hopped off the table and paced around the room with his hands-on top of his head. Brick slipped into the room and leaned on the wall between the kitchen and living room.

“What if you choose the wrong one, William? What if you choose the son of the moon? Do you realize what might happen to you?” Gazet asked.

“He’ll grow up and kill you,” Brick said. “He’ll inherit his powers and the evil will take him over. He’ll kill you.”

“What if he doesn’t inherit his powers? What if they never come? What if my sons aren’t the Brothers of the Sky?” asked William.

“They are, and they will inherit their powers,” said Gazet. “They both will. It may be best to give them both up.”

“No,” replied William. “I’m not going to do that. If Melissa were here listening to you two, she’d throw you both out on your asses for even discussing this in our home. She wouldn’t even go for the idea of giving up one of them. No,” William paused. He watched Brick make his way back over to the window. “No, I’m going to take one and…” he laughed, but it was quiet and sad. “and leave his brother with another family. I’ll just take my chances. Good or bad, my son will never kill me,” he finished up with foolish confidence.

Brick looked at William and nodded with respect for William’s love for his children. William looked down at the floor; Brick and Gazet connected eyes. Brick shrugged his shoulders as Gazet shook his head.

****

“I’m sorry, may I ask why? I mean if you aren’t ready to be a parent,” the doctor couldn’t finish. William remembered the doctor saying.

“I am ready to be a parent,” responded William. He continued to replay this over in his head.

William sat in his chair spinning a bottle of beer that was placed on the coffee table replaying everything about his latest visit to the hospital over in his mind. There was a Cincinnati Bengals coaster on the table, but the beer was set to the side. William rubbed his eyes. They were heavy and dark, and his frequent blinks were slow.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to give one of them up?”

“No, I don’t. I never had any children, but I know you did the right thing,” answered Gazet. “You saved a lot of lives by doing what you did. It needed to be done.”

“I sat in that room just staring at those boys. I just watched them lie there. I knew that my life would end without ever getting to know one of them. One of my own. Never even getting to hear his voice. How was I supposed to make a choice like that? How could any father make a choice like that?”

The chime on the clock rang. It played a catchy jingle that meant it was the beginning of a new hour. After that, the gong sounded a number of times to represent the hour in the day. It only rang once. It was an old clock but there was never one single problem with it. The TV would go out every once in a while, kitchen appliances needed to be replaced—but that clock was always there, always reliable, always chimed.

William rose to his feet to head to the kitchen. He grabbed the last beer from the refrigerator and moved back to his chair. Again, he set this bottle down next to the coaster. The cool drops of condensation slid down the bottle and connected with the table. It didn’t smack into the surface or fall off the bottle; it simply transferred from the bottle to the table like energy transfers from one source to another. It was smooth.

William placed his hands on his chest and interlocked his fingers like he was locking his heart in place. His eyes shut. They weren’t closed in a gentle way, not like someone that is lying in bed falling asleep. He shut them like he was afraid of something, wishing something away. It was like he was forcing himself to fall asleep.

“We just need a name for the birth certificate, Mr. Wehde,” said one of the lead nurses.

“Mitchel,” William responded softly as he looked through the glass at the two newborns.

“I’m sorry?” the nurse leaned closer.

“Mitchel. His name is Mitchel.”

“Mitchel. Thank you,” the nurse wrote it down on her chart and walked away. William placed his fists on the glass and set his forehead against it. He closed his eyes, and a tear slipped out.

William must’ve dozed off for a while because the clang of the clock chimes woke him up. He noticed the clock’s little hand just passed the twelve and the little hand on the four. Four in the morning. It was more sleep than he had gotten in about a week. A light caught his attention. It was coming from behind him, but he spotted it in the reflection of the TV. He turned his head slowly. Now that he knew what an Ability was and the things that they could do, his movements were more cautious. He didn’t want to startle anyone that could bite his head off.

The light was coming from outside the house. It was like someone pulled their car up to the side of the house and flipped on the high beams. But that wasn’t what was happening here because the light wasn’t yellow, it was white, and it was from high above.

William turned in his chair to look out the window. He tilted his head and body to get a better view, but it wasn’t cutting it. He walked cautiously stood up and walked closer to the window and pulled back the curtains.

It could have been the alcohol, the lack of sleep, or the bright light pouring through the glass, but William had to rub his eyes to get a clear sight of what was streaming through the window. It was the moon. The moon’s glow was the brightest thing outside the house. It was the brightest thing in the sky. There were no clouds, no blanket of stars, just the moon. It wasn’t one of those orange moons, either. A pale, full, bright white light that could even be seen standing in the middle of Times Square.

The sun hadn’t been out too much lately. Most days were overcast, or raining with the occasional thunderstorm. There hadn’t been clear sunshine in some time. William hadn’t thought about it much, or even noticed the weather until now. Since he got home from the hospital, he hadn’t thought about anything else but his kids…his kid. His kids who were supposedly the children of the sun and moon. Nothing was normal anymore and the moon was no exception. It was mystical.

William turned to the front door as Gazet dropped his bag down. William couldn’t take his eyes off the bag. Packed and ready for transport. The moon shot through the front windows hitting him in the eyes. He knew what the bag meant. He knew that if he looked up, Gazet would say bye and leave. He would be on his own. Days after witnessing two men attempting to kill his babies, he was now going to be alone with no way of protecting them if the guys came back.

“You’re leaving? Now?” asked William.

“It’s time.”

“Why? Where’s Brick?”

“William, he’s gone. And now I must go, too,” said Gazet.

“But I need you guys. Gazet,” William walked to stand side by side with Gazet and gently clutched his arm. “I need you to help me take care of my son.”

“William,” Gazet picked his bag off the ground. “You and your son will be fine. We finished it before it started. We did the right thing. Good luck.”

Gazet reached out to shake hands with William who in a matter of days, had lost his wife, lost a son, and now was losing a friend. Their handshake was firm. They didn’t need words, or to hug. The strength of their handshake said it all.

Once they broke the bond between them, William looked away and walked out of the room. He never looked back. Gazet watched him leave, though. He looked around the house. A mess of newspapers, blankets, and clothes cluttered the floor. Gazet put his hand on the doorknob and as he opened the door he said quietly, “good luck, William.” After that, he left the house leaving William and returning to his normal life in Ireland.

As the door closed, William stepped back into the living room. He bought the house with Melissa. The night she died, Gazet and Brick showed up. Now there was an emptiness that he had never felt before. William lowered the shade and blocked out the light from the moon. Now, besides the lamp, the room was dark. The house was dark. It was quiet and calm. He pushed the old newspapers down to the bottom of the garbage. Tossed the blankets onto the couch and pictured a better life, a less lonely life. But William was feeling the pressure lifted from his body. There was something about the calm of this specific night that put William in a clean state of mind.

A baby monitor sat on the table next to the coaster. William walked like time no longer was moving and picked up the monitor. He held it closer to his face and listened. He stared into it like it was a TV show, then looked up, staring at the ceiling as if searching for answers from his wife. His eyes scanned the ceiling, moving from end to end and he ended one side of the room to the other, but finally his eyes rested looking, again, looking at the monitor.

William entered the bedroom. The curtains were open, and the glow of the moon was coming through the window. It hovered over the baby’s crib in the corner of the room. William wondered how anyone could sleep with such a bright light coming through the windows. But then he realized it wasn’t bad. Sitting in the living room, it just seemed bright and obnoxious, completely out of place. But inside the bedroom, the moon was peaceful. It was comforting to see the walls painted with the soft glow. William stepped to the crib and looked over the gate. The baby was sound asleep. He lay in the crib covered by a single blanket. His arms were up. His hands were by his ears like he was celebrating or flexing his tiny baby muscles.

William looked out the window, again, coming face to face with the radiance of the moon. He slid the curtain closed and looked at his boy, Mitchel.