Abilities

The months shot by and temperatures dropped. As January approached, the ground was blanketed with a beautiful canvas of powder, white snow. People that traveled internationally for the holidays were beginning to settle in causing the streets of cities like Rome and Florence to be overrun with shopping tourists.

For Mitchel, it was like fall came and went in the blink of an eye. From September 14th to December 28th, Mitchel had robbed seventeen ATM machines and one bank. He never left a single fingerprint in any one of his heists.

The bank job was about halfway through his list of crimes. He waited till the early hours of the morning, one night, zapped his way through the doors and disabled the alarm and camera systems. When police showed up the next morning, they told reporters that the vault door was lying on the ground. The edges were ridged like it had been cut with a handsaw. This was a door that weighed almost as much as an elephant and survived a six-man break in attempt during an inspection test.

Now that January was here, it was time for Mitchel to go home. He had told his dad that he was in Italy to study abroad. It was his final semester before graduation from college and jumping feet first into the real world. Except, Mitchel had been lying to William for a while. Mitchel hadn’t been in school for over three years. How does a father not know that his son hasn’t been in school for over three years? Well, Mitchel and William weren’t as close as a father and son should be.

Mitchel arrived at the airport around 2:00 p.m. Italy time. His plane wasn’t scheduled to take off for another three hours, but he had nowhere else to be. He sat in the terminal taking up three seats. He had his butt sitting in one, his feet hanging across the aisle placed on the chair in front of him, and his small carry-on bag in the chair next to him. He had a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.

A lady, who was struggling with her bags and also her two children, dragged her baggage through the aisle that Mitchel was plopped down in. There were open seats on the other side of him, enough for her bags and little redheaded maniacs, but she couldn’t get through because Mitchel’s legs. He was either hibernating like a bear, or cared less than any human being on the planet. He sat there motionless. Only his chest moved slowly up and down.

“Excuse me,” softly spoke the woman.

“Maybe he’s dead,” said the redhead with more freckles.

“No, he’s not dead. He’s just rude,” the lady turned around and began to leave. “Grab your bags, boys.”

“Yeah, he’s just rude,” the freckled boy moved in closer to make sure that Mitchel was breathing. As soon as he knew Mitchel was alive, he spurted out, “Ya big ass!”

“Boys!” the mom called from another set of open seats that she had found.

The boys turned around and began walking. The freckled boy pulled the extendable handle out and rolled his bag. Mitchel lifted his hat up above his eyes with his index finger so that he could see the kid that called him an ass. The little boy was falling behind, struggling with the suitcase.

Mitchel stuck his finger out pointing at him like his hand was a pistol. Simultaneously, his thumb smacked down and his eye winked. At that moment, a small bolt of electricity shot out of his finger. It was black like a normal bolt had been taken over by a darker force. It was instant. In the blink of an eye, it manifested at the tip of his finger and shot out heading straight towards the kid.

It cracked on the kid’s suitcase causing the lock to snap and the luggage to spill all over the floor. Clothes fell out. Tiny underwear that had drawings of Optimus Prime from Transformers imprinted on them sprawled over the floor and Power Ranger action figures came tumbling out after. Freckles’ entire trip’s worth of stuff was on the floor.

The boy burst into tears because exposing his underwear was excruciatingly embarrassing for a kid of his age.

“What did you do, now?” the mom rose from her seat and came rushing to the boy’s side. He couldn’t even speak his mouth was quivering so fast. “Go sit down. I will clean pick up your stuff. Just go sit down,” she pushed him away.

Mitchel dropped his hat back over his eyes. If anyone were looking at him from across the room, they would be able to see the expression on his face just under the bill of his hat; he was smiling.

WAM! Someone kicked Mitchel’s legs like it was 4th and 10 and a team needed a sixty-yard punt that got him behind the kneecap. Mitchel slipped out of his seat, but caught himself before he hit the ground.

He jumped up and threw his hat off. His strength and anger at this guy pumped some energy into his body; he tossed the hat a good twenty feet from him. The hat landed right in front of the crying boy. Freckles looked down and instantly was put into a better mood. He reached down and swooped the hat up. He was smiling at everyone feeling cool in his new hat before it even made it to the top of his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mitchel yelled at the airport security guard who woke him from his nap. This man was big. He had to have been over three hundred pounds. 315, probably. Not a pound less. “Is there a problem, Humpty?”

“Yeah, there is, Slim Jim,” responded the largest security guard ever hired. “The problem is you’re taking up one too many seats and blocking people from getting to where they want to go.”

“There are seats open all over this joint,” voiced Mitchel.

“Just sit like your mama taught you.”

Mitchel never appreciated it when someone mentioned his mom, because he never got the opportunity to know her. When he learned that she died giving birth to him, he blamed himself every day after that thinking that he was the one that killed her. Mitchel stared into the eyes of this man; this man that was over half the size of Mitchel, who was half a foot taller than Mitchel. His upper lip tightened up and his eyes locked in. Mitchel was ready to set fire to the terminal.

“Son, just sit down. There are a bit too many people around for this,” said the guard.

“You’re right,” Mitchel looked around. “Too many eyes.” Mitchel nodded to the guard and slowly sank into his seat. The guard nodded back and proceeded on his way with each earth-shattering moving step that he took.

Mitchel, adrenaline running from the confrontation, forgot that he had lost his hat. He looked around the area to find it. He hopped up out of his seat and walked around keeping his eyes on the floor. And then he saw the little pain in the ass. He approached the kid. Freckles looked into Mitchel’s eyes and smiled. Mitchel smiled back and then the kid stuck his tongue out. Mitchel took a long, deep breath built of frustration. He collected himself remembering why he hadn’t just burned a whole through the guard; too many eyes on him. Instead, he politely asked the woman for the hat back and she gave it to him.

Mitchel smacked at his hat, shaking his head, on his way back to his seat. I guess he was trying to smack out whatever hair infestation the redheaded kid may have put into the hat in the few minutes he wore it. And then Mitchel’s day got even more annoying. Some punk was sitting in his seat. The guy was bent over digging through his own bag. Whatever this guy was looking for, it was in the bottom of the bag. It was like the Santa Clause movie with Tim Allen, where he reaches into a small gift bag and pulls out a gigantic canoe. Any deeper and this guy would have fallen into a parallel dimension that resided in the bottom of the bag. Mitchel couldn’t see his face, but, because the guy sat sideways in his seat, Mitchel could see the horrible display of butt crack that this guy was offering the world.

“Hey, tubby, you’re in my seat,” Mitchel said.

The guy slowly turned to Mitchel and sat up straight. He smiled. It was John. The guy that helped Mitchel pull of the first couple of ATM thefts. It was the pudgy friend that Mitchel hadn’t seen since the run in with Karen at the hotel room in Tuscany. He had put on more weight in those months.

“Hi, friend,” John said as he lifted moved Mitchel’s bag to the floor offering Mitchel a seat.

Mitchel’s frustration had all but vanished once John turned around. He wasn’t exactly excited to see him, though; his mouth hung open, he swallowed and he could have gulped a roll of quarters. Nobody in the terminal was paying attention to them and he made sure of it. As terrified as Mitchel appeared, John seemed that much happier.

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” said John

“Yeah,” Mitchel’s breathing was heavier. He was looking not only into the eyes of John, but at his whole face. He checked his nose, his cheeks, and the top of his head, even shot a glance towards the man’s shoes. “Yeah, John, that’s because you’re dead.”

CHAPTER 12

That fateful night back at the hotel, Mitchel had killed a handful of guys without even breaking a sweat. A few hours after pulling off a quick job at an ATM machine around the corner from his Tuscany hotel, he and John headed straight back to their room only to be confronted by a mysterious woman from Mitchel’s past. John didn’t stay. He knew what kind of trouble this woman brought, and he definitely knew what kind of mood she put Mitchel in so John booked it. He made an excuse to get the hell out of that room. He told Mitchel that he was going to check into another room for the night so that the two could have the room to themselves.

John didn’t stay for long. He frantically pressed the elevator down button. Their original room was on the sixteenth floor. Then it hit John. Where Karen went, she didn’t go alone. The ding sounded from the elevator and the 3 lit up above it. But for John, that was like the ding to start the race because he took off like a bullet. He sprinted down the hallway and couldn’t even make the sharp left turn without running into the wall and knocking over priceless several hotel wall hangings.

He slammed into the door leading to the staircase but it didn’t slow him down. The stairs were normal for any building. It had five or six steps and then leveled off into a turn, and then another five or six down and continued that way to the bottom; like a spiral. But his first step didn’t go entirely too well. The big guy tripped himself up going at that speed and he rolled down the first level of stairs on his butt.

“Oh, god, my ass!” John took a moment to scream. He walked around the small-in-between level of the stairs rubbing his ass trying to get feeling back into it. “You idiot!” He called himself names and then he proceeded to kick the concrete staircase, which brought another yelp. Then it hit John that he was running for a reason, and he shook it off and conquered the rest of the stairs with a small limp.

He busted out of the hotel, knocking into a woman who was carrying a couple of boxes of newly bought clothes. She dropped them, but John didn’t have the time to be polite. He continued running down the street.

He turned the corner into a dark alley, because he didn’t feel safe in the light. Everything was so bright on that street that the lights of the hotel had practically turned night into day. John’s face told the story of what had just happened and why it was happening. He was panting, sweating, and shaking like a wet dog. His eyes bounced around the alley. He crouched behind a dumpster to catch his breath. He spit. He spit a couple more times. He was breathing so hard that he couldn’t swallow his saliva. He hawked it all in the back of his throat and let it fly.

He sat quietly. The cool metal of the dumpster shot a chill through his forehead. The smell wasn’t the freshest, but the cold steel calmed his nerves for a moment. The dumpster slowly pulled away from him to where John’s head wasn’t against it anymore. He noticed, but too late. The dumpster slammed into his face just as he looked up. The blow knocked John back into a puddle.

John’s nose was quickly losing blood. It dripped from his nose like a broken faucet that never stopped leaking. He closed his eyes and pressed his index finger and thumb onto his eyelids. The blow stung so badly that his eyes watered. Once he recovered, he opened his eyes and looked at the guy.

It was so dark in the alley he couldn’t make out who it was, but John already knew. The guy stepped closer, but John wasn’t ready to meet his fate. John rolled onto his side and started scooting away by his elbow. The pain shooting through his unofficial broken nose took away from the shattered glass and sharp rocks and gravel that dug into his elbow every time he put it to the ground.

John wasn’t moving quickly enough, and even though he had no chance to get away at this speed, the guy wasn’t taking any chances. He put his foot into John’s stomach hard enough to break a rib. All the blood that hovered above John’s upper lip spewed out onto the ground when he coughed in pain.

“Sorry, Johnny boy. You got caught hanging with the wrong people,” said the guy. He pulled a gun from the back of his pants and bent down over John.

It was like John’s pain disappeared when he saw the guy that now had him cornered. The blood was still there, and a small shard of glass in his side, but John was over it. He accepted his fate.

“Who are you?” muttered John.

As dark as the Tuscany alley was on that night, the guy that was lingering over John’s broken body leaned forward, set the point of the gun on John’s forehead and turned the lights out on John.

****

“What in the hell is going on?” Mitchel whispered. Inside, his thoughts were screaming but externally he stayed quiet and as calm as he could. “You’re not here. You are not here,” Mitchel was almost laughing he was so confused.

“I’m here,” John was never so calm or collected in his life. “I promise you I’m here.”

“How? I saw you, John. When I found you, you were lying in that alley with a bullet in your head. You’re dead, John.” Mitchel rocked back and forth in the seat like it wasn’t nailed to the ground but, instead, was an old-fashioned rocking chair.

“And you got dead from that?” John wasn’t as intense as his friend was. He reached into his bag and pulled out a smoked ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread and bit into it aggressively. He chewed his lunch with a smile.

“John, what’s going on?” Mitchel was growing frustrated, but was still too confused to show it. “You were shot…in the head. Come on,” his voice squeaked.

“Mitchel, my man, you heal pretty quickly, you’re stronger than most people alive, oh, and you shoot black bolts of electricity out of your hands, but me standing here shocks you?”

Mitchel took a moment to collect his thoughts. He sat back in his chair and put his hands-on top of his head. He got caught in between a laugh and a scowl. He was on the edge of losing it. A friend of his that he hadn’t seen in over three months was sitting in front of him.

He wanted to reach out and poke him, or pinch him, or even smack him across the face just to prove to himself that John was there. Mitchel wanted to grab a random person, walk them over to John, and ask that person if John is really sitting there just so Mitchel would know he’s not crazy.

“Ok, you’re not dead,” Mitchel was trying to convince himself more than he was just repeating what’s been said. “So, what now?”

“Now, you head to Ireland,” John’s voice finally had a serious tone.

“Ireland?” Mitchel chuckled. “What’s in Ireland?”

“The man that can give you all the answers.”

“Answers to what?” asked Mitchel.

“To everything. To why you are the way you are. Why you have these abilities. Why you have a fire inside of you filled with rage. You want to know why you feel like there is a caged beast inside of you just fighting to get out?” John didn’t blink. He didn’t look away from Mitchel. “You go to Ireland and you will find out everything you need to know, but if you don’t, I guarantee that everyone you’ve ever known will die.”

Mitchel leaned forward. His jaw tightened. He clenched his fist pushing it into his thigh. Like the security guard before, Mitchel didn’t like to be threatened, but after this threat Mitchel wasn’t so much mad as he was in shock. A guy that he’s known for three years, who never said more than two serious statements in the time they worked together, now, apparently, didn’t just have the biggest answers to all the questions in Mitchel’s life, but was also threatening the end of the world.

“John, what’s going on?” he asked.

“Trust me. You want to go to Ireland,” John was done with his sandwich at this point. He crumbled up the foil it had been wrapped in and dropped it into his bag. Then he pulled out a ticket. A plane ticket. “You might want to hurry up. Your plane leaves in forty minutes.”

John stood up and put the ticket down where he had been sitting. He swung his bag ck over his shoulder and took in the sight of Mitchel staring at the ticket trying to put together all the answers.

Last time these two were together, Mitchel was looking down at John as he lay dead in a pitch-black alley, and now Mitchel was looking up at him as the sun shone through the windows. Mitchel reached out and picked up the ticket. He read it. “Destination: Ireland. One way.”

“One way?” Mitchel read out loud.

“Stay as long as you need,” responded John. He nodded to Mitchel and stepped away from his old friend.

“John, where do I go when I get there?”

John turned back to Mitchel and chortled. He erased the steps he made and stood back in front of Mitchel.

“You’ll just know,” John smiled and continued, “and Mitchel,” he leaned forward. John’s blue eyes opened big, full and as clear as the sky. John looked Mitchel right and blinked. His pupils were red, a strong, blood colored red. “You’re not as crazy as you think you are.”

Mitchel jumped back. Another blink and John’s eyes were back to blue. John cleared his throat and walked away. Mitchel watched him and clutched the ticket in his hand. All of the questions in his life were going to be answered with this one trip, a trip he never planned on taking, a trip that was given to him by his dead friend. Or was it?

Before Mitchel realized it, John had vanished into the crowd without a trace of where he had gone.

What the hell was going on?