Amateur

If the world ever ends, or at least the gross human society portion of the world, I'm hanging out in the bowels of a mall. Del dragged us into the maze of tunnels and hallways underneath the mall where he had his store, and if you needed to hide, nobody would ever find you down there. Food everywhere, out of the way, and dark as hell. Perfect for hiding.

Or for practicing weird shit where you keep getting nosebleeds.

"You sure you want to try again, Mac?" Del asked. "You're looking pretty green."

Green was putting it lightly. We were in a giant warehouse room on the lowest floor of the whole mall. Wafts of old garbage and rotting food didn't help anything, and the glare of the earthquake-proof fluorescent lights was enough to give anyone a migraine. Still, it was a big empty room, and I was breaking a lot of shit.

We'd been at it for a few hours now. Del had set up a box in the middle of the room and kept putting weird crap he found around the warehouse on it to see what I could do. The first few had been just like the mug in my apartment. I strained and focused for what felt like forever until the thing finally shifted slightly, and I dropped to the ground with another nosebleed. What good was that for a power? Imagine discovering you could fly, but an inch off the ground for less than a second. That's what my 'moving shit with my brain' power was starting to feel like.

Then, I sent a giant bag of movie theatre nacho cheez across the room, where it splattered on the wall and was still dribbling down onto the concrete below. That was when the fun began. Del ran around like a sugar-soaked kindergartner on Hallowe'en, grabbing anything he could get his hands on and watching as I sent it sailing across the room. Had the 'moving shit with my mind' thing gotten any easier? Hell no, I still felt like shit every time, but I'd figured out how to channel all that energy and make shit happen.

I toddled over to the box and sat down. Tears ran down my cheeks, and I was this close to throwing up again. I didn't want to ─ throwing up was the worst, but I wasn't above it if it provided temporary relief. A hearty puke often made me feel better, in the moment, but the shitty feeling often returned moments later.

"I still don't know how the hell you're doing this." Del scooched onto the box beside me. There was just barely enough room for both of us. "This kind of thing only happens in books and movies...video games! And not even very good ones."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked, keeping a hand hovering near my mouth. The contents of my stomach were right there.

"Magic video games usually have super shitty controls because they have to deal with all the magic and which spell goes to whatever button," Del said. I loved how he maintained his nerdiness, no matter the situation. "Why do you keep doing that with your hand?"

"Because I'm going to barf." I laughed, and dry heaved. "So leave me alone and let me keep my hand there unless you want me to spew all over your precious vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt."

"Hey!" Del covered the iconic logo with both hands on his chest. "You leave Rexy alone!"

"You're safe. I think I'm done." My stomach was still hurting, but not from too much output. "I think I might actually be hungry."

"That makes sense," Del said. "We've been at this for a long time now. A snack might be a good idea. When was the last time you ate?"

It took a second for me to remember. I'd slept for a day, spent a bit of time floating around in whatever the hell was underneath my closet, and hung out with Del breaking shit in his mall warehouse. I hadn't eaten a thing for days.

"I had a pizza popper." It was good, too. Hawaiian. Was that racist? Just because someone put pineapple in something, that made it Hawaiian? Why wasn't it Costa Rican pizza if it had ham and pineapple? Don't even get me started on the 'does pineapple belong on a pizza?' debate. Do I like it? Yes. Was I momentarily cured of the disease of hunger? Yes. Does anyone need to spend that much time worrying about what other people put on their pizza? Fuck no.

"When?" Del asked, shaking me from my internal pineapple diatribe. "When did you eat that pizza popper?"

"Yesterday," I said. "No, wait. Two days ago. When was Tuesday?"

"You don't remember. You can't remember the last time you ate. Damn it, Mac!" Del stood up and crossed the room. "You've got to take better care of yourself. I bet the last thing you ate before that was my fucking Twizzlers!"

I couldn't admit that he was right, but he was. Over the last few days, all I'd eaten was a handful of Twizzlers and a pizza popper. That sounded like a weird country song. 'I Missed You So Much All I Ate Was a Handful of Twizzlers and Pizza Popper.' Boom. Million streams, right there.

No wonder I felt so weird. I was running on fumes. Strawberry-flavoured, pineapple-powered fumes. I was glad, in a way. If I'd had a full stomach trying all this telekinetic shit, I'd have puked even more. All my little splotches all over the room (which I did not envy janitorial for having to clean up tomorrow) would have been grisly otherwise.

"Here, there's got to be something in one of these boxes. Something you can eat." Del raced over to one of the stacks and started opening boxes. It only took a couple of boxes for him to find something. "Here, cookies! Good ones, too. It's not the best, but it's better than nothing."

"Bring 'em over," I said. My head was starting to spin. "Some calories are better than no calories."

He tossed them at me, and they landed at my feet. I tore into the box and took down half a dozen cookies before I knew what I was doing. Hunger is a powerful motivator, even for little weird chocolate thins that probably expired sometime in the last decade. I didn't know how often they cleaned this warehouse, and these cookies could have been here a hell of a long time. They were half decent, so I didn't care. I took down six more without thinking about the potential gastrointestinal consequences.

I instantly regretted that decision. A searing, angry heat boiled up from my stomach and radiated to the rest of my body. I screamed, and Del rushed over but couldn't get close.

"Shit, Mac!" Del bellowed. "What's wrong?"

"I'm on fire, Del!" I wanted to tear my skin off and let this awful, raging fire out somehow. I felt like I was being cooked from the inside like somebody had thrown me in a microwave and pressed start.

"No, you're not!" Del stood there, flapping his arms in a stunning impression of the least helpful person on the planet.

"Del!" I shrieked. "Fucking do something!"

I knew I was being unfair, but at that moment, as my bones cracked and torqued from raging temperatures that felt like I was dancing on the sun, I didn't give a shit. This was it. This was how I was going to die. The weirdest few days of my life, and I wouldn't live to tell the tale. Thanks to chowing down on a bag of fossilized cookies, I was going to join my mother in the afterlife.

"Hold still!" Del cried. "Stop flailing around like that!"

"Just...shut...your...fucking...mouth..." I snarled through gritted teeth. Was holding it all in helping at all? What if I just let go? What if I let the heat win? Would I get my wish? Would the pain go away because I was dead?

"What can I do?" Del asked. I caught his eyes just for a second. He looked helpless, even more worried about me than when I showed up at his store with two black eyes. Or at his house with a nose so bloody I could still taste it.

"Back up!" I roared. "I feel like I'm going to blow up!"

As funny and stupid as that sounds, I meant every word. The heat kept climbing, searing and roiling through my body and threatening to take over completely. I felt like a supernova just before it exploded and took out a solar system.

Just let it.

My subconscious and I didn't have a great relationship at the best of times, and my willing acceptance of her endless stream of negative self-talk had led me to live a life I wouldn't otherwise have chosen. Sure, we're all victims of circumstance, but when you've got an inner critic that never shuts up and tells you you're wrong ALL THE TIME, you tend to tune her out after a while.

Not this time. I let her win. Finally, I gave in to the heat. I let it cascade over me, ripple and undulate in waves up and down my body, fusing with my body and soul. Take me now, I wanted it to know. This body is yours. Rip it apart and let me be free.

Alas, no freedom for me. The heat built and boiled and made my hands vibrate. They shook uncontrollably, flapping around like leaves. I held them out in front of me, and Del, thank the gods, thought to get the hell out of the way.

"Del!" I screamed, and two fireballs shot out of my hands. The heat was gone in that same instant. "Fireballs!"

Of all the things to shriek as actual fireballs shoot out of your hands, I hoped I wouldn't go down as 'Fireballs' Dorvis for that moment of ineptitude.

"What the hell?" Del yelped. It wasn't often you heard a young man yelp like that. I guess fireballs have that sort of effect on people. "You okay?"

"Amazing." I stared down at my hands. The pain was gone. I felt like a million bucks, whatever that was supposed to feel like. A stack of boxes across the room probably didn't feel the same way, seeing as how they were engulfed in flame, but better them than me. "What about you?"

"I think you burned out my nose hair." Del rubbed his nose for dramatic effect. He had been extremely close when the fireballs blasted.

"That's okay. You needed a trim anyway," I said.

"How much are you staring at my nose hair?"

"Enough to know you needed a trim."

"Touché."

We watched the boxes burn until they were a smouldering pile of ash on the floor.

"Should we clean that up?" I asked.

"In a minute," Del said. "But first, I need to ask you something."

"Shoot."

"'Shoot' as in 'go ahead,' or 'shoot' as in 'fuck, he's going to ask me something personal?" Del asked.

"Both," I said, without thinking.

"Awesome. Okay, I don't know how to put this delicately, but what the hell is going on here?"

I stood up and walked over to the boxes. The smoky warmth of burnt cardboard hung in the air, and I kicked the ashes to stir up a few more embers.

"We've been over that, Del." I stared into the deepest part of the fire, where it glowed red-orange, like the first hints of a sunset. "I fell into a hole in my closet."

"Yeah, I know, but what the hell does that even mean? Del kept his distance. "The shit you're doing right now is Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, fucking Marvel shit. People can't move crap with their minds. They can't shoot fireballs out of their hands. That doesn't happen."

"That's just it," I said. "Why can I shoot fireballs now? Did the fireballs take over from the shit-moving? Have I lost that power and can only shoot fireballs now?"

"You want to check it out?" Del asked. He didn't seem super enthused about it. I think my fireballs might have really freaked him out.

"In a minute," I said. Something that felt suspiciously like a terrible idea percolated at the back of my head. I wasn't exactly famous for ignoring my bad ideas, either, so I needed to let this one brew up nice and good.

"Fuck," Del said. "I know that face."

"What face?" I held up a finger that was supposed to mean 'shut the hell up for a second,' but Del took it to mean 'say more things and be annoying.'

"You've already done enough dumb things for a bit, Mac," Del said. "Can we pause for a minute?"

I shook my head and headed for the warehouse door. "I want to try something."

"If you say 'vigilante justice,' I'm going to be very upset." Del was right behind me.

"Fine," I said. "I won't say it."