"Hey, when we get home, somebody has to let that dog out." Since it was only me and my father in the car, I assumed he meant me
"Yup," I replied, staring out the window, closing my eyes against the harsh daylight. I let the car's momentum carry me off into sleep, a sort of deadness where the headaches were lesser, where I could breathe past the flighty sensations of panic and dread when I started to think about It.
In high school, I was the girl who always appeared on top of her game. And who wouldn't be, with a power like mine? I was on time for the bus looking like a vision born from the pages of a modeling magazine. I was never late for class or appointments with advisors. I always received top marks on my tests and could finish intricate projects when everyone else was asking for extensions. Friends joked I was a Time Lord, and despite my paranoia that people might suspect the supernatural, this was played off by my fascination with a certain show.
With an inhale I could bend the world to my will, make it freeze, make it all stop. I was Queen of the Dimensions, Master of Time, Lord of Getting Shit Done. It felt like a buzzing in my brain, starting in the back near the top of my spine and spreading to the front, just before the crown. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, but lately that's where the headaches had started. Where the migraines began to bloom, spreading tendrils of pain to root into the backs of my eyes.
I was a Goddess before the pain started.
In my third year of college is when it got really bad, when I started to wean myself off of the ability. I realized it was like a crutch, that I had never learned proper time management like normal people. My grades started to slip. People started to become concerned. A promising career path as a lawyer was dashed against the rocks as I took more and more pills to keep the buzzing at bay.
"Hey. What are we doing for your 21st?" Dad asked.
I stirred a bit. I didn't look 21. I looked almost 30. It was a symptom, they said. Quite rare, they explained.
I always thought it had something to do with my perception. There is no such thing as true magic, magic with no scientific basing. I had considered the notion of being a doctor for that purpose, for divining the secrets of time and the universe. There was a lot I could have done with it, actually, either cruel or beneficial. I didn't want to take an MRI at first, didn't want to be examined in case someone else found the secrets, the inner workings of life.
They had found something much more mundane, more average, and much more sinister. They found It.
The car rolled to a stop, jarring me a bit from my dozing. We were at a red light, and I closed my eyes again.
The doctor fired up the x-ray light, putting the slide into place. I sat on the skin gripping patient seat, the paper crinkling as I shifted. It was a human skull, outlined in light blue. The doctor was an older male, white, with a grey beard. "As you can see here, there is in fact a mass behind your prefontal lobe, here." He circled an area of greyness with his finger, looking at me. "I'm sorry, but you do have options."
The car started rolling forward.
The screech of tires had my eyes fly wide open and I bolted upright. The crunch of metal sounded over my father's cursing as the car lurched to a stop. Someone had run the red light, and the car next to us had surged forward.
I took a sharp intake of breath, and all sounds faded behind the wall of buzzing and intense pain. I hadn't thought before I did it. I wasn't even in jeopardy; it was all happening in front of us. As I crumpled forward with a whimper, in the moment where everything was meant to be still, at my beck and call and will, when there was only stillness, there was movement.
I shot upright, leaning forward to peer out the windshield, at the car that was speeding through the intersection, into the car to see a young girl in the car seat fidgeting, crying.
I held my breath, watching for just a moment longer, before I was unbuckling, throwing the car door open. The pain intensified as I moved, ran to the car, finding it unlocked. I pulled the child out, feeling sick to my stomach, feeling the sudden weight of her in my arms. I stumbled back, to the medium, or I think it was the medium, I couldn't see anymore. I fell back, and the girl cried harder. I let out my breath, the back of my head resting against something hard while the soft human squirmed in my arms. The crunch of metal rushed back, and the pain became unbearable, reaching a pinpoint crescendo in the back of my head…
And then the silence reigned.