The Gift: Day 03

EDITOR:

MIRIAM BELLE

CREATIVE CONSULTANTS:

MIRIAM BELLE & SIMPLY_CYN

*

TUESDAY

"Tell me again what you saw," Andy Shaver leaned back in his large, comfortable chair and scratched his full bushy beard. The chair was meant to imply the position of someone in authority. It quietly said that only a person in charge could sit in such a luxurious and stately chair. It had belonged to three principals before him and all of them had possessed that unquestioned presence throughout the school. In his mind, the chair that sat beyond the Royal Oak desk in the principal's office was a throne. Thus, as the one sitting in it, he assumed responsibility for those who didn't. Of course, their "rule" had been in slightly less cynical years when respect for authority was far more common than it was today.

And until today, Andy had been sure there was nothing happening inside the confines of his school that he couldn't handle.

"Mr. Shaver," Jesse sighed and rubbed his temples, "How many ways can I tell this story?"

"Right now, I have thirty students who are all on suspension for conducting what can only be described as an orgy in the biology classroom," Mr. Shaver said frankly, "I have a very emotionally disturbed teacher who will probably will never teach again, let alone escape the impending lawsuits and possible jail time. I have damn near sixty parents who want to blame and lynch someone and the press is about to start making up their own stories. You'll tell the story as many times as you have to."

"I told you, I was walking by the classroom when I heard some funny sounds," Jesse said, "I opened the door and saw everyone doing, well, each other. Mrs. Brewster was with Daniel Miller and Tina was in the corner with a bloody nose. I got her out and ran for help. That's it."

Mr. Shaver frowned and removed his wire-rimmed glasses from his round, beet-red face. It was very clear that Shaver was more comfortable with his nose buried in school business reports and administrative duties than anything close to dealing with sex. He still couldn't believe the event had even happened. He'd never dreamed in a million years that so many students, so many good students would go on a sudden sexual tirade like this. And the notion of Diane Brewster, one of the most respected members of the faculty, being involved still seemed ridiculous to him. He wouldn't have believed it had he not been the one to pull her naked body off the top of her desk. The look on her face as he covered her with his jacket haunted him. She was scared to death and yet caught in the throes of some animalist lust.

"Daniel Miller wasn't even at school yesterday," Mr. Shaver said, "I was in there, and I can tell you I didn't see Daniel.

Jesse shook his head, "Sir, he was. I saw him. Everyone saw him. Ask the other kids."

"Everyone in that classroom has been questioned thoroughly, and no one can remember Daniel being there, let alone anything else," Mr. Shaver replied.

"They have no memory of it?" Jesse asked himself more than he did Mr. Shaver. Had Daniel been able to wipe out people's memory of the day that completely? He recalled the night they had messed with the strippers at The Lucky Beaver. Daniel had made them all believe lies about what happened to them. Could he have mind-wiped an entire student body and faculty? If Daniel could do that then might be no limit to what he could do. The bottom line was, he had the power to do it and he had shown he wasn't afraid to use it.

"No memory at all," Mr. Shaver confirmed, "Nor does Mrs. Brewster."

"Check the attendance logs," Jesses said suddenly, "That'll prove he was here."

"I already did, Jesse," he replied, his hands up in a calming motion, "He wasn't here yesterday. And even if he had been, what would that prove?"

Jesse opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. How could he honestly tell Mr. Shaver that Daniel had been given the gift of complete mind control from a funky old hag as some kind of cosmic twist of fate? That Daniel had then mind-fucked thirty kids and one teacher into an orgy and then somehow erased their memories of the experience, leaving them with nothing but a lot of unanswered questions and deep psychological scars? Shaver would have him locked up in the booby hatch.

"Jesse," Mr. Shaver smiled and put his glasses back on his blunt nose. The hefty man walked around his desk and stood in front of Jesse, his hands buried in the pockets of his slacks. He asked, "Have you seen Daniel since yesterday?"

"No," Jesse shook his head. That was odd indeed. Jesse had tried calling Daniel's house several times but to no avail. Under the direction of the authorities and school faculty his parents had confined him to the house. They said that until they knew what was happening, he was to stay close to home. As much as he wanted to find Daniel and figured what the fuck he was doing, he also had grown a little fearful of his friend. A part of him warned that staying away from Daniel might just be for the best.

"Look," Mr. Shaver sighed, "This has been an ordeal for everyone involved. As much as I appreciate what you did for Tina, I also know that you're hiding something."

"I'm not hiding anything, sir," Jesse reassured him.

"You're a good kid. An honest kid I think, and that's why I know you're lying," Mr. Shaver said, a hint of disappointment creeping into his voice. Jesse wanted to crawl under the rug and die. He had always known he was on the up and up, and that most of the staff liked him just fine. He even had come to think of some of the teachers as friends, in a strictly academic sense of course. Jesse had always taken pride in the looks of respect he got from the faculty, and he knew that not only was he good student, he was a damned good black student on top of it all.

"Mr. Shaver," Jesse ran a hand over his shaved scalp, "If you want to figure this mess out, then you gotta talk to Daniel Miller."

Mr. Shaver nodded. He wasn't happy with any of this, and he was tired of pressing Jesse for the details. He returned to his seat of power and sat down not feeling at all like he was charge. In fact, Shaver had never felt more out of control in his life. His authority as principal wasn't enough to solve this and it goaded him to no end. He felt bad over his impotence in the matter and he felt even worse over his lack of knowledge about it but the most horrible part was that so many lives had been affected so adversely. It hadn't been a school shooting, but after seeing the blank, shell-shocked faces on the kids in that room as they were pulled out by the staff and police... hell, it might as well have been.

And then there was poor Diane Brewster...

Mr. Shaver folded his hands together in front of him on the desk and looked at Jesse for a moment. Finally, he spoke, "Okay. I'm not going to question you to death. But please, if you can remember anything, call the police or call me. This is serious Jesse."

Jesse sat in silence, all of sudden feeling very hot and embarrassed. His baggy jeans seemed to confining on him, his Redwings jersey uncomfortably itchy. He could feel something, no, someone in the back of his mind. Someone was picking around and digging for information and he knew exactly who it was. Jesse took a deep breath and blocked himself off to Daniel. There was a moment when he could feel the burn of Daniel's anger touch him. It was hot and painful in his mind for a few seconds, and then gone. Daniel was pissed.

And Jesse didn't much care at the moment.

"You're excused," Mr. Shaver said.

"Thank you sir," Jesse stood up and left as quickly as he could. He was already feeling guilty over what he and Daniel had done to the strippers at The Lucky Beaver on Sunday night, and now he was fighting off guilt over his classmates. He knew he wasn't the one responsible and yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he could've done something to prevent it. As much as he may not have liked some of them, they didn't deserve all that. Jesse wondered how they would deal with it all, how many would be able to move on and process what had happened to them. How many wouldn't?

Once out in the hallway, Jesse wasn't sure where he was going to go. It was three-thirty and school was over. Steady streams of freshman, sophomores and juniors were filling the hallways in a stampede to go home. The entire senior class had been dismissed for the rest of the week. It made Jesse realize just how small the school was. Thirty seniors constituted a quarter of the school population, and when they weren't there the normally frenzied rush to get the hell off the campus seemed less than spectacular.

A few of the lower classmen regarded Jesse with strange looks and questioning glances as they passed by to their lockers. Maybe it was the look on his face that made them all not commit to asking him questions, or maybe it was the fact that they just didn't know what questions to ask. Either way, he was a small stationary island in the flood of students flooding the halls as the three-thirty bell finally finished ringing.

Jesse took a deep breath and walked to the gym. The huge gymnasium was alive with echoes and ghosts of the voices outside in the parking lot. The lights were dimmed down low and the doors to the locker rooms all shut tight. For some reason, Jesse had the crazy image flash in his mind of sailors securing their ship before a storm. Button down the hatches and secure the rigging and all that bull shit. Get below deck and stay there until the storm was over.

That's how the school felt, all the students and teachers buttoning up the hatches and getting below deck before they got swept away by the storm.

"What the fuck am I going to do?" he whispered and walked into the shadows of the gym. Jesse nearly had a heart attack when a voice spoke back to him from the far corner of the gym, echoing and seemingly bodiless.

"That depends," the voice said.

Jesse stood still for a moment, his nipples going rock hard as a shiver arched its way down his spine.

"Dan?"

The heavy double doors that he had just walked through slammed shut and locked. The sound of metal hitting metal echoed painfully though the empty, now barely lit gym. Jesse was suddenly gripped with a panic that told him to run, to turn and beat on the doors until someone opened them. The lights dimmed even more and then finally went black.

"No one is going to open them," Daniel said quietly.

"Another mind fuck, Dan?"

"Security."

He thought about yelling for help, but knew it would do no good. As long as Daniel had influence over the people outside Jesse could fire off a hundred rounds in a mini-gun and no one would hear him. He swallowed hard and then steeled himself, clenching his fists and standing tall. He was not going to be afraid, let alone be afraid of Daniel Miller. He looked into the shadows and asked, "So what's the deal here?"

"What's the deal?" Daniel snorted, "I was going to ask you the same question."

"Thirty kids," Jesse said into the dark, "Thirty of them. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that the look on Glenn Martin's face as he got gang raped was a fucking Kodak moment," Daniel laughed, still hidden in the shadows.

Jesse took a step forward, his sneakers squeaking on the gym floor. "And what about Tina?"

"What about her?"

"You broke her nose."

"I broke half the cherries in that classroom yesterday," Daniel told him, his voice filled with a sadistic satisfaction, "What's you're point?"

"Dude, you can't do that shit. You stirred up a fucking scandal."

"Not my problem."

"It's our problem," Jesse countered, "We started this shit. It's one thing to fuck around with people and mess with them a little, it's a whole other thing to make yourself an orgy in the middle of fifth period bio."

"Did you see Mrs. Brewster?"

Jesse rolled his eyes, "Yes, I did."

"She has got the best set of titties I have ever seen."

"She'll never teach again, you know that? She might even go to jail."

"Good, she can be the sweetheart of the cell block," Daniel laughed, this time much closer to him. Jesse squinted, straining to see his friend.

"Jesus, Dan..."

"You want to know something?" he echoed.

Jesse was silent for a moment, and then asked, "What?"

"You want to know how I felt?"

Jesse said nothing.

"I felt righteous," Daniel said, "They all got what they deserved. The homophobe got his ass stretched, the fat guy got a threesome and the geeks fucked the cheerleaders. Football players got a taste of what it means to be truly fucked over by their teammates. They got their asses knocked down a peg or two..."

"And you were the man to show them their place, is that it?"

"That bitch Brewster needed to be humiliated, she needed to be taught a lesson," Daniel explained, his anger barely in check as the air in the gym grew cold, "I've watched all these mother fucks walk around here like they're God's gift or something and I'm fucking tired of it, Jess."

"Look," Jesse reasoned, "I know that dip shits like Glenn Martin and Brendan Keel deserve a good ass-kicking. I know that Tina hurt your feelings man, but this is insane. You ever stop to think that some of the girls might get pregnant?"

"Only six of them did," Daniel said.

"What?!" Jesse staggered back. He didn't know what had shocked him more, the number of girls or the brutal simplicity in which Daniel reported it.

"Six of them got pregnant."

"How do you know?"

He could almost see Daniel smiling, "Because I can see everything now, Jesse. Just like I saw you grab Tina out of the corner and take her to the office."

"What's happened to you, man?" Jesse asked.

"Just like I know you tried to rat me out to Shaver just a little bit a go..."

There was tense silence that seemed to thunder in his ears as Jesse strained to see anything.

"Dan?"

Jesse walked around slowly, his eyes slowly starting to adjust to the darkness of the gym. His heart was pounding in his chest as he vainly searched the ocean of blackness around him. He suddenly felt exposed, naked and uncomfortable around his friend. He could feel Daniel in his mind, so close to him and yet just out of reach. Jesse realized Daniel was toying with him like a cat might paw a mouse around the kitchen before killing it.

More than that, he was establishing authority.

Jesse turned and focused on the double doors. He poured all his thoughts, all his will into making the doors open. Imagining his hands on the door handles, he gritted his teeth and pictured them opening. There was phantom shove against him as Daniel fought back, struggling to keep them shut. He could hear the metal straining under the battle of their wills, the telekinesis pushing on the doors from all directions. He could feel pressure building up behind his eyes as sweat popped out on his forehead. Jesse grimaced and pushed harder, forcing all his might on the doors. In the darkness, he heard a grunt that echoed through the open space.

'Not as powerful as you thought,' Jesse thought.

The wood and drywall around the metal frame began to snap and splinter in loud pops and cracks.

Jesse could feel his brain becoming too large for his skull and he had to stop. The doors groaned and creaked back into place as they stopped fighting and the pressure was released.

"Nice try, Jesse," Daniel huffed somewhere to his left.

"You're making a mistake," Jesse managed in between deep breaths.

"No, you are. We have this gift for four more days. Use it, Jesse."

Jesse braced himself against his knees, slightly bent over and dizzy. "Not like this, Dan. Not like this."

"Okay then," Daniel regarded him so coldly that Jesse wouldn't have been surprised if icicles had suddenly formed and spiked their way down from the ceiling, "We're friends, and I'd like us to stay that way. So you just keep out of my business from here on out. You fuck with me again, I'll fix you."

"You threatening me?" Jesse pushed.

Daniel was silent for a moment, and then said, "When I threaten you, Jesse, you'll know it."

Jesse smiled to himself, "Was that a threat?"

No reply came from the shadows.

"Stay out of your way or what, Dan? You'll kill me?"

"I'm warning you as a friend..."

Jesse wiped the sweat from his forehead, "What else are friends for, right?"

"We are friends," Daniel repeated, his voice laced with irritation, "And that's the only reason why I didn't mind fuck you like I did the others."

"That was awfully big of you," he replied and then said, "Let me ask you something. After all, you see everything now...tell me, what happens when things go back to normal and you're just plain old Daniel Miller again? What then?"

No reply, only pitch-black shadows and cold silence. Jesse realized that somehow the gym had grown even darker than before. It seemed the shadows were reacting to Daniels anger and becoming almost tangible, a rolling ichor devoid of light that was enveloping him.

Jesse wasn't above admitting he felt truly afraid, and he knew he should stop, but pressed on, "What happens when you can't mind-fuck people into leaving you alone or loving you? What happens when all those parents come looking for the guy responsible for their sons and daughters being raped?"

"They won't find out. I'm in control."

Jesse shook his head, "No man. No you're not."

"Yes I am," Daniel insisted quietly.

"What will you do when Glenn has the upper hand again, when you go back to your old life?" Jesse shouted. He could feel Daniel's anger building up like molten magma under a cinder cone, but more importantly, he felt uncertainty creeping into the equation. Maybe Daniel hadn't thought that far ahead?

"Shut up, Jesse."

Of course he hadn't thought that far ahead.

"What'll you do, huh?!" Jesse echoed through the gym and raised his arms.

"Shut up!"

"You don't know, do you?!"

"Shut the fuck up!"

Jesse felt the air get sucked out of his lungs as he was lifted up off the gym floor and sent reeling backwards. His arms and legs flailed in the wind as he flipped over and became disorientate. Up became down and left became right as he spun in the blackness. The sensations were surreal as he tumbled through the nightmare he knew Daniel was willingly subjecting him to. His stomach turned over and threatened to release his breakfast and lunch in a single violent ejection as he was tossed hurled the air. Then there was a bone-crunching crack and Jesse felt the harsh reality of the gym wall meet his backside in a full impact.

Jesse gasped for air like a fish out of water and slid down the wall and landed in a heap, stifling his gag reflex as he tried to roll over. Air rushed back into his lungs as Daniel released him from his grip. Slowly, his muscles responded as his vision filled with bright bursts of colored light. His back burned with a deeply rooted pain as the base of his skull cried out in protest. After a few minutes, Jesse managed to stand on wobbling legs and grasped the wall for support. He could taste blood in mouth, metallic and bitter.

"Okay, Danny-Boy," he breathed, "I'll stay out of your way."

The entrance doors unlocked suddenly and flew open, slamming against the walls in the corridor outside with twin bangs. The lights flickered above him and gradually began to illuminate the gym with their fluorescent bulbs. Jesse wildly looked around for Daniel, and couldn't see any sign of him. Except for him, the gym was empty. Jesse laughed to himself and let his body slump to the floor.

"Shit," he whispered and blacked out.

***

One the day Daniel Miller wiped the memories of his classmates and forced the school secretaries to falsify their records to show he had been absent (at home with the flu the poor boy) he discovered his gift went beyond anything the old haggard bitch had told them. When Madame Helena put the cosmic touch on them, she'd only thrown vague and clichéd descriptions of they would be able to do. Both he and Jesse had believed the old woman to be a nutcase, a frighteningly accurate nutcase when it came to reading their minds and telling them about their pasts, but a nutcase none-the-less.