Where Am I?

The moment he opened his eyes, he saw not his room but a waterfall as big as it could be. It was covering his whole vision. He couldn't see the top of it. It was amazing and terrifying at the same time. One second he was in his room, the next at some unknown location with a magnificent view. He stood there, amazed by the whole situation, until he heard his mom's voice.

Once he heard her voice, he realized that there were no sounds at all. In fact, all he could hear was the noise his home TV was making and his mom's calls. It got him thinking about what was happening.

But while he stood there thinking about what was happening, his mom's voice was getting louder and louder since he wasn't responding. Then her voice was so close that it seemed like it was coming from behind the door, but where was that door?

The next thing he knew was the sound of an opening door. The moment he heard that sound, his room came back to normal. It paralyzed him for a moment, but he didn't want to make his mom worry and give her reason to send him to the psych ward. Instead, he pretended that he just woke up, and because of that, he couldn't hear her.

She told him that dinner was ready and to come down and eat it.

He did as he was told and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. The second he was left alone in a closed room, he decided to try and call for that vision again, but nothing has worked. He tried many things, but to no avail. After all, he tried to think about what happened before he saw what he saw, and the only thing that came to mind was that breathing technique that he used to ease his pain.

He tried it, and it worked, but this time instead of a beautiful waterfall, all he could see was something that, for lack of a better word, he decided to describe as a Martian field, which was caused by the red desert-like look the place had. He tried to look around this time since now, even though it was still a big surprise, he was more mentally prepared, and therefore his mind worked better than his emotions. He didn't let the overwhelming feeling of excitement and surprise freeze him in one place.

He started walking until he came across an invisible obstacle. He tried to feel it with his hands, and it felt like his bathroom door. He tried to press the doorknob, and the door opened. Once the door was opened, "Mars" disappeared, and his regular bathroom came back.

Jaremi started to see patterns here. It seemed like this was some kind of illusion that was active until the space was sealed. He was calmer now since he knew that he wasn't switching locations and wasn't appearing in random locations (yet).

It seemed like, compared to yesterday's situation, when he was simply hearing all of the thoughts people around him had, now he had some sort of control over his abilities. But it also wasn't a good sign for him since now he couldn't hear people's thoughts. It got him thinking about how long all this power-shifting would last and whether he would be able to see the end of it.

He went down and ate dinner with his parents and younger brother. The whole meal went mostly silent, excluding the part where his dad was asking him about his wellbeing and trying to figure out why he passed out again.

After dinner, he went back to his room and tried to experiment with his abilities. He tried to imagine a place that would be brought to life as an illusion. He tried his best to recreate all the details in his mind so it wouldn't be imperfect.

He then closed his eyes and tried to imagine the place he wanted to project while doing his breathing exercise. He was right, and it worked. He saw a large field with a fence around it. The field was surrounded by trees. The sun was bright, and he could swear that he felt its warmth on his skin, even though it was just an illusion.

After primal shock went off and he was thinking straight again, he noticed something weird. The grass on the field was not moving. It was like everything was frozen in time or that he was seeing an image of extremely good quality.

After he noticed that, he realized that the waterfall that he saw in the first place had no water splashes as well, but at that time he was focused on other details that got all of his attention.

He then "broke" an illusion by opening a window in his room.

Everything went back to how it was.

But Jaremi was not done with it. He wanted to test this power to its limits. There were so many things he wanted to do and so little time for them.

He decided to get an answer to his main question at that moment, which was, Does anyone else see these projections?

He figured that since his mom was home, he would test it with her. He went to the living room, where she was sitting on the sofa and watching TV. He got inside a room quietly to avoid getting her attention and performed his little trick just to see her reaction when it was done.

He got what he was hoping to see. His mom was scared. She didn't know what was happening or what to do. She felt confused about what was understandable.

In normal circumstances, he would have felt bad for pulling such a stunt on her and using her as his involuntary lab rat. But ever since he heard her thoughts about him, he felt no remorse for her. The only thing that he felt towards her was the urge to find out the truth about her thoughts that he had yesterday.

Partially, he was hoping that she would not see anything, and it could have been used as an excuse for him to convince himself that he was just imagining things, so he could just ask for help from trained professionals, but since that wasn't the case, he had no one to come and aid him or to trust enough to vent about his current situation. Even though he had his father, he was a very busy man, and Jaremi didn't want to add another problem to his.

Now that he knew that it wasn't just his brain playing tricks on him, he figured that he needed to be safe. There were no known people with special abilities before, and most likely it wasn't because he was the first of them, a new branch of human evolution, or some mad scientist's experiment.

In his mind, the closest answer to reality was that the people who got to acquire those powers were hidden from the world in the best scenario and captured by others for experiments in the worst scenario. While he was right in both of these suggestions, he had no proof to back his hypothesis, and all he could do was stay low enough to keep himself from getting discovered.

He then went back to his room, feeling satisfied and excited. There were some things he wanted to check out. When he went to the room, Jaremi closed the door with the key. And tried to project a new image in the room. This time the scenery was the same as before: a large field filled with grass and surrounded by big trees. But now he was trying to test not just the limits to which the illusion could hold but also what would make it disappear.

First, his goal was to make the grass act real and move like there was a light breeze. He started by focusing on a small part of a field. Since he didn't know what to do, he came up with his own methods of practice that involved imagining the movement of grass and focusing on this image.

At first, he was still hesitant about his method and its effectiveness. But a few minutes later, he noticed that there was one little blade of grass that started to move. Jaremi was happy with this; it meant that he was on the right path to improving his skills.

In reality, this was very hard since he just got his new power that day and had no previous knowledge about this type of thing since it was well hidden from ordinary people. The only reason it was considerably easy for him to achieve success in his practices was his willpower, which made him focus on things he truly wanted and not get distracted.

Time was flying as he was still practicing. Since it was Saturday tomorrow, he had no need to worry about his homework, which was a good thing in his situation. It allowed him to solely focus on this ability of his.

When night came, he felt a bit uneasy, like something was about to happen again. But despite him being worried, he was exhausted from all the practice and fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. Even though he didn't know that, his powers required him to use up energy that he didn't know he had. It was incredible for someone who never had a day of practice to actually last this long using his abilities and not collapse from exhaustion after a few hours of practice. And since he was trying to make his projections move, this was even more energy-consuming.

The next morning, when he woke up, it turned out he was right about feeling uneasy. His ability was gone. He tried to use it once he woke up, but there was no response to his actions.

He felt like he was being lied to by his own brains and was going to start laughing at himself for believing in such an impossible thing as superpowers. But before he started doing so, he felt the same well-known pain in his head that was less painful than it was before but still enough to make him lose consciousness.