Date: October 3, 1976
Location: Hawkins, Indiana
The constant hum had sharpened into a roar. Being twelve was a new kind of hell. It wasn't just thoughts anymore; it was a deluge of raw emotion. I was an empath, though I didn't have a word for it then. Joy, sorrow, anger, fear – they hit me like tidal waves, leaving me gasping for air in their wake. Sometimes, I'd walk into a room and be overcome by an inexplicable sadness, only to realize Sister Paul was thinking about her long-lost sister. Or I'd feel a prickle of furious jealousy, tracing it back to Billy looking at Mark's new baseball glove. My own emotions were getting lost in the static of everyone else's.
My appearance continued to shift, making my life both easier and harder. The ginger hair was longer now, brushing my shoulders, and the way it caught the light almost shimmered. My green eyes were striking, even to me, and my delicate features had refined, pulling in more than their fair share of stares. It felt like I was draped in a beautiful, fragile disguise. He's so pretty, like an angel, the younger girls would think, giggling. He could get anyone to do anything, an older boy once thought, watching me charm an extra cookie from Miss Karen. They saw the shell, not the mind drowning inside it.
Understanding the Power
My telekinesis was never about brute strength before puberty. It was about precision and focus. At my peak, if I truly concentrated, I could move objects weighing up to 150 kilograms (approximately 330 pounds) – things like a heavy dresser or a filled trunk. It required immense effort, leaving me drained and with a splitting headache. But the force I could apply was more like a steady push or pull, enough to slide, lift, or gently break.
Now, though, it was different. Puberty had ignited something terrifying. My baseline strength, even without full concentration, felt like it had jumped to around 180 kilograms (approximately 400 pounds). But the real change wasn't just in weight; it was in the sheer kinetic force I could unleash. It wasn't just a push anymore; it was like a sudden, explosive burst. Instead of lifting a dresser, I felt like I could shatter it against a wall. It was wild, untamed, and inextricably linked to my emotional state.
I had to find a way to quiet the noise, or I'd crack. My telekinetic training, once about moving crayons, became about building walls. I started small, trying to block out individual thoughts, like trying to plug a single leak in a dam. It was excruciating. My head would throb, my nose would sometimes bleed, a thin, coppery line staining my upper lip. But I persisted. Every night, under the thin blanket in the orphanage dorm, I'd imagine a fortress around my mind, thick stone walls, a shimmering force field, anything to keep the relentless current of other people's feelings at bay.
It was slow, painful progress. Some days I managed a tenuous calm; other days, a sudden burst of anger from an older kid would rip through my flimsy defenses, leaving me disoriented and nauseous. I knew I needed more, something stronger, something to make the noise stop.
The Trailer Incident
One scorching afternoon in late August, the orphanage was quiet during naptime, but my head was a maelstrom. The air was thick with the sticky heat of summer and the cloying, clashing emotions of thirty sleeping children. Restlessness, boredom, resentment, a distant longing for ice cream – it was all too much. I felt a migraine building behind my eyes, a dull, insistent ache. I slipped out of the dorm, desperate for silence, for space.
I wandered aimlessly, past the wilting garden, past the rusty swing set, until I found myself at the edge of the property, near a forgotten, overgrown path. Beyond it, tucked away behind a clump of dying elms, was an abandoned trailer. Its windows were smashed, its paint peeled, and its tires were long gone. It was a rotting carcass, left to decay. Perfect. No one would be here.
I pushed open the door, the hinges groaning, and stepped inside. The air was stale, thick with dust and the smell of damp decay. But the best part? It was empty. Utterly, beautifully empty of human thought and emotion. The silence was a balm. I sank onto the floor, leaning against a graffiti-scarred wall, and let out a shuddering breath.
But the silence didn't last. The dam I'd built around my own emotions, the ones I'd bottled up for years – the fear of this new body, the frustration of being a child again, the profound loneliness of being Anthony Stone trapped as Rupert Johnson – began to crack. Added to that was the constant low-level irritation of the orphanage, the endless small demands, the incessant mental chatter of everyone around me. It had been building, a pressure cooker inside my skull. And now, in the quiet, with my guard down, it became too much.
My migraine exploded into white-hot pain. My head snapped up. A small, rusty metal plate on the wall shimmered, then