A Loner Mentalist Pt. 01

There was nothing he could say to change their minds, he felt sure of it. No amount of begging, pleading or reasoning would do the trick. Especially not if Mia was there to counter all of his arguments. He felt like he was out of options, but then he remembered their fears. They had phobias. One feared clowns, the other spiders and the third one feared snakes. It wasn't much to go on, but he was desperate. After a minute of thought, he twisted his backpack off his back and opened the zipper to reach in. He groped blindly inside it until he retrieved his pen and sketch pad.

He put his pen to paper and drew two big touching circles. He shaded them both as best he could, guiding his pen by feel, and then drew eight broken lines radiating out of one circle. He ripped out the drawing, took a paperclip and attached it to the front of his shirt collar. His second drawing was just a big, squiggly line, meant to evoke the idea of a snake. He ripped it out and set it aside.

The car turned off the asphalt and started to drive up a bumpy, unpaved, country road. "Shit," Jack swore. He pressed his sketch pad flat against the trunk lid with his left hand. With his right, he did his best to sketch a smiley face on it. He shaded a nose in the center of the face, or at least, where he figured the center was, and then ran his pen around the top of the face to make curly, clownish hair. He didn't need the drawings to be perfect, just good enough to give the guys a frightful idea he could build on.

Before long, the car pulled onto a side road. Judging by the bumps and even slower going, Jack guessed this dirt road was even less used than the one they had left. It was probably a poorly maintained access road for this cabin they were taking him to. His heart began thundering in his chest. The showdown was coming. He struggled to focus and channel his emotions into his power again.

He was feeling a strange, new kind of fatigue. His body felt ready for action, even though the protracted rush of adrenaline was leaving him a bit shaky. It was his mind that was tired. He wasn't sleepy, though he wouldn't say no to a nap, right about then. Stringing two thoughts together was slowly, but steadily, becoming more and more difficult. It was like trying to do AP math in his head after being awake for a week straight.

The car came to a stop and Jack armed himself with the last of his willpower and his blind drawings. He pressed the clown face over his face and held the snake line as a weapon. He checked that the spider was still attached to the front of his collar. Car doors opened and closed, shaking the car. Jack let out a practice hiss. He drew a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. He clothed his mind in fear and tried to imagine the startling sight of himself lying in the trunk, covered in paper drawings.

"Ready," he heard one of the guys ask from the other side of the trunk lid.

The lid popped open andJack became startled. He told himself he was startled to see the boy in the trunk of his car had transformed himself into Pennywise. He screamed in fright and ran for it.

Jack was startled and he told himself it was because the kid was covered in tarantulas. The thought that these ugly, hairy things had been in the trunk of the car he was riding in made his stomach clench. He screamed in fright and ran for it.

Jack was startled and he told himself it was because of the hissing snake the kid was holding. He didn't know where it had come from and he didn't care. He screamed in fright and ran for it.

Jack smiled when he snapped back to himself. The trio was running away in fear and now was his chance to get out of the trunk, take the car and drive back into town. He didn't know how long the guys were going to be running scared. He knew he had to hurry, but he had a hard time figuring out exactly how to get out of the trunk. His mind was utterly exhausted, unable to put two and two together, anymore.

He vaguely remembered that he had limbs, he just didn't know which were which. There were white, boxy things on the ends of two of his closer limbs. They were very thin. They bent and bore marks on them.

He didn't know how to move, but he had to try. He sent impulses of movement to every muscle that would answer. His body shimmied in the trunk and he started to receive messages from his nerves. He wasn't sure, but those might have been pain, or discomfort.

A shape entered his field of vision as he cast his sightless gaze about. The shape made sounds at him. He could barely remember that everything that was going on at the time was linked to Mia, but he had no idea if the shape and sounds were hers. He used the shape as his marker and strained to move towards it. He flailed for a few seconds and then realized that his limbs had made it out of the trunk, where he wanted to be. He smiled in triumph and willed the rest of him to follow. His body tried, but couldn't do it. He got the idea that maybe he should use one of his limbs to assist. The idea was a vague one, like the memory of having overheard something unimportant a long time ago.

As he struggled to work it out, the shape moved him and he found himself suddenly touched by something big and brown and hard and cool. It was touching him from head to toe and Jack was all smiles as he worked out what his own shape was supposed to be. He had his head on one end and feet with toes on the opposite end. A smaller thing landed on his back and Jack placed the back as the upper rear part of his body.

Mia growled at Jack Watts, lying at her feet and drooling like a stroke victim. When the guys went to drag him out of the trunk they screamed like scared, little girls and ran into the woods. She had thought that Watts had died in the trunk by choking on the exhaust, or whatever, and her heart beat a mile a minute in her chest, making her think she was going to die herself. This was supposed to be a prank, a humbling experience for the little shit, not murder. She had slowly walked around the car and was very much relieved to see him alive in the trunk.

Her relief faded when he started imitating an overturned turtle. She feared he had had a stroke, or something. He looked ridiculous, like he couldn't even understand the world before his eyes. She began to suspect that he was faking it. When he pushed his hands and legs out of the trunk, she pulled and deposited him on the ground. She had hoped the fall would make him stop acting, but it didn't.

"Oh, fuck," she said.

Jack was obviously hurt in some way. If this ever got to the cops, they'd arrest her and charge her with a crime of some kind. She had to get away from there and get the guys to come with her. As long as the four of them kept quiet and kept this a secret, the cops would never know enough to arrest them.

She shut the trunk and jumped behind the wheel. She drove around Jack and honked the car horn, calling out for the guys to come back. They weren't answering her, so she turned the car off and got out to search for them. They hadn't run very far and she found them huddled together behind a fallen tree and looking more scared than she had ever thought possible.

"Come on, guys," she said. "We gotta go!" They kept hiding behind the fallen tree and gave no indication of having even heard her. She rolled her eyes and wondered if whatever had turned Jack into a retard was contagious for men. "Guys, get up! The car's that way!" The guys curled up into little balls. They shook their heads and silently stared at the ground in front of them. "Jesus H. Christ on a cracker!"

She pleaded and cajoled the guys for a few minutes before they agreed to follow her to safety. She led them back to the cabin. When the car came into view, the guys flinched as one and ducked behind cover. It took her another five minutes to convince them that the car wasn't dangerous. Dave, the guy that owned the car and was always happy to give her a ride whenever she needed one, looked to be scared shitless of it. She tried posing provocatively, but the guys ignored her.

"Boys," she said in a flirty voice, "the first one to get in the car gets to spend the ride in the back seat with me!" When they ignored her offer and kept watching the car like it was haunted, she was stunned. No one had ever refused an offer from her before. She undid the button on her Daisy Dukes. "I won't be wearing all of this on the way back."

The guys kept ignoring her so she walked over to Dave and slapped him. He gave her a look of surprise and she rolled her eyes at him. She couldn't believe he could ignore her after that handjob she had given him earlier. "Dave, are we getting out of here, or what?"

"Yes," Dave said, seemingly starting to get a grip on himself. "Yes, but not in the car."

"Why the fuck not," she almost yelled at him. "It's your fucking car, asshole, and we're not gonna walk all the way back to town." She shoved him in the shoulder. "Dave! What the fuck's going on here? Why did the three of you run off like that?"

Dave and the guys refused to answer her questions so she rolled her eyes at the sky and gave up. She walked over to the car. They guys yelled at her to not get in, but she did. She started the engine and the guys cautiously began to move towards the car. They kept yelling questions at her about whether or not she was alone in it.

She leaned out the window. "Yes, I'm fucking alone in here! Who else do you think would be in here?"

The guys nervously licked their lips as they crept closer to the car. Their eyes darted all around themselves, as if they expected a monster to jump out and grab them at any moment. "Oh, for fuck's sake," she whispered in frustration. She honked a few times and sighed as she waited for the guys to find the balls to approach the car.

"Open the doors," Dave said.

"What?!"

"Open the fucking doors, bitch," Ramon yelled.

Mia's brow drew down in displeasure. Ramon had always bought her stuff, like her phone, but he was rapidly crossing the line of no return. She reached behind herself and opened the door. Then she climbed onto the passenger seat and opened the two doors on that side of the car. The guys crouched down and started cautiously approaching the car, peering into the cabin with suspicious looks on their faces. They reminded Mia of cavemen in movies that saw fire for the first time.

"Fucking nutjobs," she grumbled into her chin and wondered if there were any men left in the world, or if they had all gone extinct to be replaced by whiny, little bitches.

After a few more minutes, during which she pointedly ignored the guys and their paranoia, they finally got in the car. She put it in drive and steered the car back towards town. She drove past Jack Watts lying on the ground and spared him one last look in the mirror. She told herself that if he died up here, it wasn't her fault. She put the pedal to the metal and tore off down the country road, making the car bounce violently.

Jack lay on the ground for an indeterminate amount of time after that. He struggled to understand the world around him, but forming thoughts was slowly becoming a feat well beyond his abilities. He couldn't even rally enough awareness to be afraid anymore. His consciousness twinked out, without him even realizing what was happening.