Prologue
“So where’s the sight? Where’s the tears? Where’s the monster that feeds your fears?”
--“S/h/r/e/d/d/e/d”, by Ending, The Happy
Once upon a time, there was me. And once upon this other time, I was a Hero, or a Heroine if you want to be so technical. This is a story in itself.
And once upon another time, I had two friends named Ryan Bloodgood and Paul Kingston, both of whom were also Heroes. Best friends. Bandmates. School children playing with me in the dust after the P.E. teacher [finally] resigned. So this might be a fairy tale with a happy ending after all, if the pot lasts long enough.
When you live so differently from everyone, your perspective changes too. You catch yourself wondering how humans could live their whole life without a ‘blessing’ and still manage to direct their lives with the drama of a soap opera, or not. Things from outside the window look different than being on the inside, but the only thing is, they’ve locked me out of the house altogether.
Paul, Ryan and I call ourselves blessed because saying that we have magic, well, seems a bit too pompous. So we’ve got our little talents, and we’re happy with what we have. Who needs a lie detector when you can see someone’s memories and erase them? But that’s kind of like asking a writer to choose one: the pen cap or the ink pen? Both has their perks, you can say.
I’m like Ryan, but where he sees the past, I see someone’s present. Like being a human camera, but handier.
Poor Paul feels so left out.
When he touches an object, or a human, he sees the thing that touched it last. We call it pyschometry. Kind of useful for figuring out who snuck into the secret supply of macaroni and sausage, but that’s all he really uses it for anyways.
They call us different. I think we’re talented. They see us as dangerous.
I say we’re in for one helluva ride, and that we’re crashing without the car.
