Crystal Creeps & Eerie Escapes

The trek through the darkened woods is not a long one. Only one event of note occurs as we make our way through the dark woods: I faintly hear an incredibly loud sound that seems to come from underneath me as much as it fills the air around me. It's almost like listening to an earthquake. We venture past several rows of trees, in the dark, for perhaps five minutes before we eventually find our way into a clearing where moonlight illuminates our surroundings.

Andrew lets out a soft gasp when he spots what has his cousin and his cousin's friend all worked up: there is a deep hole in the ground not far ahead of us. It is a weirdly circular pit only twenty or so feet from us that we are quickly walking towards. When we reach it the four of us surround it and peer down.

The hole stretches about eighteen feet down and there are strange ledges that any climber could hold onto to get in or out of the cave without having to drop or ascend eighteen feet in one move. Some weird light seems to faintly pulse throughout the cave, allowing us to barely make out that the whole thing is a soft shade of blue on the inside.

"Andrew, are you getting this?" Steve asks, an amusing grin on his face as he peers into the small cave. Andrew silently nods as he positions the camera above the hole and points it straight down into it. Steve surprises everyone by walking to the edge of the pit, turning, and beginning to climb down it. While the other two make quiet protests about Steve's behavior I decide to skip ahead and also begin to climb down the pit. I do so a touch faster than Steve, partially thanks to my enhanced body, and so I actually touch the cool floor of the area before he does.

"Nice!" He says, offering me a fist bump when we're both down the hole. I pound his fist with mine and we both look up. Steve looks at Andrew and gestures for him to come on down, while I tell the teen to toss me the camera.

Matt hesitates but begins to climb down after us after a few moments of quiet contemplation on his part. Andrew looks at me concernedly and I simply reassure him that it'll be alright before motioning for him to toss me the camera again. I watch a thousand thoughts go through his head, before he nods and drops down to the floor of the area just outside of the pit. He moves so he can come as close to handing me the camera as possible rather than just tossing it to me.

Andrew eventually drops the thing and I gracefully catch it. I hand it to Matt who takes it carefully and I help Andrew quietly descend down the drop so he can join us. When he's with us in the pit I turn and study what lies ahead.

Ahead of us lies an eerie tunnel, occasionally illuminated by flashes of blue light which radiate out from a distant chamber I can barely make out from here. If I can barely make it out I bet the boys can't see it. Inside of that chamber is the thing that started this all: a crystalline mass that radiates some sort of aura-like field of what must be radiation. My friends don't know any of that just yet.

I decide to coax the story along and indicate that we should go deeper, a suggestion which thrills Steve who takes the lead. The rest of us follow after him, determined to keep an eye on him and each other.

We slowly make our way through the tunnel. It is a long but narrow thing, very slowly sloping downwards, there is barely enough room for two of us to stand side by side. The boys comment on the pulses that provide the ambient illumination, annoyed by their short duration, curious as to their origin, and trying to time them.

I think it's probably something like a heartbeat, though I don't reveal this bit of meta-knowledge that I happen to possess, and it quickly stumps Matt. He is the one trying to time them, but it quickly becomes apparent that it's too irregular for him to reliably time it. Partway through our journey a shockingly loud sound emanates all around us, and I have to feign being in pain for a moment and act like I'm hurt like the boys are so as to not give away my abnormal status. Some of my body mod perks render me immune to discomfort from sensory overstimulation, at least at this level of overstimulation as this is not an intentional attack of some sort.

It takes us about twenty minutes, and a lot of subtle encouragement from me, before we finally reach the chamber. As we approach it the boys spot the mass which is going to change their lives, and they excitedly converse about it, and beginning to move much faster down the narrow tunnel. When we reach the chamber all of us stand in front of what I know, according to the original intended canon as envisioned by the movie's screenwriter, is dubbed a "Mogo", a Massive Organic Geodesic Organism, or something like that.

The monster we are seeing is a beautiful, if frightening thing. It is a wall-sized crystal mass with vine-like substances that extend outward from a large lump of solid crystal. The monster itself is gigantic and it is one of the walls that surround us in this chamber. Strange vein-like lines of dark substances cut across its crystalline body. There is something genuinely fascinating about it, even if it's also utterly terrifying.

Steve, demonstrating both foolhardiness and remarkable courage, and making my job a bit easier, steps towards the crystalline face of the monster. The boys don't know that they are looking at its equivalent of a head, but I do, and as Steve approaches it, a small part of the mass parts, like an electric door sliding open to allow someone in or out of a store. This allows a small tendril made of sharp crystal and covered in dark vine-like growths to appear from within the mass and snake sinuously towards Steve.

The tendril is occasionally internally illuminated by the same blue glow which provides us with the illumination Andrew has relied on to make filming in this cavern possible. I study the tendril and faintly register a quickening of my heart beat.

This is my first encounter with the supernatural, and it makes sense for me to be reacting to it with a bit of an elevated heart rate. The tendril seems focused on Steve, and I wonder if it's currently making a last ditch effort to dominate us, and this is just it failing… Well, it's succeeding enough to render the group speechless but that's not because of its abilities, the reason we're speechless is that no one here has ever actually seen something like this in real life. It is frightening, fascinating, and rather novel and there is something about that mixture that is amazing.

According to a drawback from the Chronicle jump doc this particular member of its species was slain and when the boys encountered it in the film's timeline the thing was in the midst of its death throes, which is why it failed to enslave the trio and only gave them telekinesis in the canon timeline. The ability to bestow telekinesis is something these freaky monsters can do, by they turn people they give telekinesis to into mindless drones members of this species use as a means to gather food. It is destined to die soon, and there's no way my presence here has altered that, but I still don't love Steve's fascination with the mass.

I grab Steve's shoulder and lightly pull him back, something he doesn't really try to resist as he gawks at the writhing tendril. As I pull him back a bead of sweat appears on his forehead, but it is pulled from it and hovers in midair, causing all of us, including me, to look at it in amazement. The thing is slowly pulled towards the tendril, and when it touches it the tendril shudders, and the cavern around us subtly vibrates.

A small bead of blood begins to drip out of Steve's nose, and I try to pull him back before he abruptly collapses, causing Matt to let out a gasp of shock and fear. I kneel beside Steve and get ready to pick him up. Matt tries to say something right before he is sent flying out of the chamber by a force that I am surprised I can perceive: a nearly imperceptible wave of energy that emanates from the snake-like tendril. Andrew looks at me and places the camera on the floor to come and help me with Steve, only to be sent flying back as easily as Matt was. I brace myself and imagine my telekinesis wrapping around Steve and I like a blanket protecting us from the psychic elements.

To my shock this is enough to make the monster not able to attack Steve, since he remains unmoved by the creature's next actions, another attempted projection of telekinetic power. Sadly for me, I guess in its frustration it gets a final rush of adrenaline as it immediately turns to me and when it hits me with a wave of telekinetic force I feel as though someone has just punched my brain. This completely decimates the blanket of telekinesis I was using to protect Steve, but doesn't immediately harm either of us.

I am relieved for half a second as my brain recovers from the beating it just endured right before I feel a powerful wave of telekinesis paralyze me, lift me off the floor and send me hurtling out of the chamber over the span of about two seconds. As I'm being shunted out of the room I reach out with my telekinesis and send Steve careening towards me, my telekinesis amped by the adrenaline coursing through me.

Under other circumstances I'd feel excited by the knowledge that I can do something like this without having an instant brain aneurysm, even without being in a chemically induced altered state of mind, but I only barely have the wits and presence of mind needed to brace myself as Steve's flying form closes the distance between us and hits my stomach. Thankfully my body mod makes me strong enough to tank the hit, feeling pain rather than any real injury, and I begin to reposition Steve. I work to sit him up as he begins to come to his senses, groaning in pain.

I almost don't notice the boys as they reach me and Matt helps Steve up and Andrew, with surprising force given his thin frame, helps me to my feet. He turns towards the chamber, right as rocks begin to fill it, and we hear another incredibly loud noise reverberate all around us. I take Steve's hand and force him to look at me.

The cavern is still vibrating so I mouth, rather than speak, one word. Run. He nods at me, and the four of us begin to dart down the tunnel.

The sound continues to emanate from all around us for several seconds before abruptly ending. When it ends Steve's eyes begin to refocus and he seems to immediately grasp the situation, suggesting he was in a supernaturally fascinated state but not truly unconscious earlier. He quickly picks up the pace, as we feel the tunnel suddenly start to cave in behind us. I urge everyone on, and in minutes we make it to the end of the tunnel and the pit that leads us in and out of the thing. The last of the cave collapses behind us as we all begin to climb out of the pit.

I am the first one out of the thing and I spend a minute helping my comrades out of it. When we're all out of the cave we all lay on the ground of the clearing a small distance from the pit and look up at the night's sky for several quiet moments.

Steve is the first of us to get up. He sits up and leaves, not saying a single word to any of us. While getting up he stares at the pit with haunted, frightened eyes. None of the three of us who have not left say anything and we continue to look up at the night's sky, our minds undoubtedly wondering what the fuck we just saw and no doubt trying to process everything that has just happened.

I myself am not immune to that sensation. It's one thing to see something like that in a movie, it's a whole other thing to have been physically there, experiencing it in real-life. It might seem like just a weird encounter when watching what just played out on camera, but to actually be subjected to the nearly invisible attacks of the monster and to be unable to do much of substance in the wake of its abuse is… legitimately scary, even though I didn't feel super scared in the moment.

It all happened so incredibly fast, taking little more than a few minutes from start to finish, so it was hard to have thoughtful, appropriate reactions in the moment. Looking back, knowing that it's over, feels good. I also definitely know that it's over, between the noise cutting off abruptly and the tunnel collapsing in real time… Yeah, that portion of this story is definitely over.

I eventually get up and say farewell to the boys before walking back towards the party. I know they are destined to get back home safely, same as Steve, so I need to begin heading back myself. I walk towards the party, and then past it, without reentering it.

The journey home is a long one. I make it back to the city after walking about an hour down a series of roads surrounded by woods, and from there ride a bus part way across the city. All of this is reasonably safe, even if I'm a bit surprised to find that this version of the city has late night public transportation.

I walk the rest of the way home from a bus stop not terribly far from the suburb I live in, and manage to crawl into bed, exhausted, at around three in the morning. I fall asleep almost instantly, and don't have dreams I remember when I awaken sometime later.

I get up, feeling remarkably refreshed after the events of last night, and check my phone. It is currently ten in the morning, and I have multiple text messages from Andrew, Matt, and Steve, which is a curious way to learn that Andrew created a group chat for the lot of us to try and piece together what the hell happened.

I type out a text saying I just woke up, in the midst of a flurry of text messages that are the boys exchanging conspiratorial messages about what the fuck happened last night. I get alerts on my phone denoting the reactions everyone has to the message, even while all three continue to go tin-foil hat in the background. I shake my head, and head to the kitchen.

I make breakfast and immediately hurl myself into my training. I almost immediately notice that something about my telekinesis feels different, and within minutes I am recalling last night's achievements.

Last night I did two things of note while encountering the mogo. The first thing I did was create a forcefield which successfully blocked something. I did so by imagining a blanket of telekinetic power enveloping me and the other person I wanted to protect: Steve. Additionally I was able to pull Steve, not only a late teenager but one with a solid, muscular build, towards me. Pulling or pushing someone is not as difficult as lifting them up outright but Steve must weigh somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds so to be able to even move him, especially as much as I did, is a serious feat.

As I get into my training, really feeling the power of my telekinesis after last night's shenanigans, I begin to try new things. I experiment with moving decidedly heavier objects than I did on Thursday, such as a table in the living room. I am delighted to find that not only is this something I can do, I can do it fairly easily!

I experiment in other ways as well, trying to figure out how precisely to call and shape the forcefield I used to protect Steve and myself. To do this I go on a journey to a superstore partway through Saturday afternoon and buy a BB gun, and return home ready to try and use it on myself, to see if I can block the pellets that such things use.

I don't immediately succeed with this, but after a few hours of repeated experiments I manage to pretty consistently figure out how to call up the forcefield and apply it to specific parts of my body. This is a neat trick, and when I do successfully it the ability prevents the pullets I'm using from touching me at all, slowing down even their dizzying speed to nothing in the span of a few milliseconds. I spend the totality of Saturday evening honing this ability, trying to well and truly master even this limited form of a forcefield.

This is downright revolutionary. A forcefield is a fantastic example of defensive telekinesis, and if I can figure out how to strengthen the forcefield enough and also how to apply it in such a way that it totally surrounds me at all times, I can become virtually invincible. Hell, even the thing's ability to block BB pellets is staggering.

I go to sleep on Saturday a few minutes later than usual, my mind racing with thoughts about my newfound telekinetic ability. When I awaken I resolve to more forcefully train this ability, and I make breakfast even as I train both normal telekinesis and my forcefield at the same time. I hold the BB gun aloft with telekinetic hands and aim it at where parts of me that I focus on protecting with the forcefield.

I carefully and slowly take a breath and squeeze the trigger of the gun as I exhale, allowing me to fire the weapon at myself without damaging the handy toy I happen to possess. The gun's ammunition, a tiny pellet, explodes out of it and rockets towards me. It hits my barrier, focused on my hand, and is successfully repelled! It lands on top of my hand, completely inert, like someone tossed it to me by hand, as opposed to if it was shot out of a gun.

"Yes!" I almost shout triumphantly. I've now taken a serious first step towards mastering practical, usable telekinesis that is more complex than "Pull fleeing enemies towards me" or "Push a car trying to hit me away from me". This is where the fun begins, where, with enough experience I can do things like write stuff with telekinesis, or stand in the middle of a battle, being attacked by foes on all sides and use telekinesis to endure their blows.

All of Sunday is spent with me slowly honing my ability to telekinetically multitask. I practice doing more than one thing, even more than one mere type of act, with my telekinetic abilities. I use telekinesis to clean while continuing to work on my forcefield, or change the channel with telekinesis while opening and closing different cabinets in the kitchen.

I do what little homework I have on Sunday afternoon, carefully and slowly continuing to practice my skills all the while. The homework is easy and it takes me scant little time to do it, I even practice doing multiple types of homework at the same time with telekinesis, very carefully and slowly writing bits of answers to a question for another class with telekinetic penmanship.

When I lay in bed somewhat late in the evening on Sunday I know that I'm about to enter another routine. My meta-knowledge makes this clear to me, and though I know I could speed up the process I don't particularly care to do so. In the wake of the encounter with the mogo the movie flashes forward to a period maybe a month or so after the events in the cave.

During this time Andrew, Matt, and Steve have discovered their telekinetic abilities and have even reached a point far beyond where I began, able to pretty finely manipulate objects as heavy as a baseball and as fast as one can be when chucked by decently athletic teens. I, unsurprisingly, have already exceeded this point pretty significantly, but I still need to work hard and push this power as far as I can in the time I have left.

Andrew, towards the end of the film, in a moment of stress appears to have unconsciously caused lightning to strike one of his comrades, and at the end of the film is lifting, carrying, and hurling buses. He is in a chemically altered state during this time, and highly emotional, but even so this feat is still wildly beyond my abilities. I can't even fly, yet.

When I awaken on Monday I start the day off at school, where I eat with an excited pair of teenage psychics, who seem to have not yet discovered their abilities. I don't have any classes with Steve so my communication with him is limited to text messages.

The day ends uneventfully, and I go home to further train my abilities and do homework. This begins a routine that will last me the remainder of the month and all the way through the very first few days of October. This routine is simple: During the week I go to school, interact with Matt, Andrew, Casey, and a small group I gather that begins to do good deeds throughout the school, people that I subtly use my social perks on to gather the beginning of a following. This part of my schedule never meaningfully changes, even in the beginning of October.

During the weekend I do a few hours of volunteering with my group of friends, which includes Matt, Andrew, and now Steve. I do this to ensure that my influence on them is not a temporary, or limited thing. I need this for a long term plan to help Ms. Detmer, since Andrew's family is too poor to help her get cancer treatment.

I initiate this plan at the end of August, working to get donations together to ensure that Karen, Andrew's mother, can get the medication and treatments she needs to survive at least to the end of November and thus my time here. Beyond that… I don't know. Andrew and I begin to collect donations pretty quickly, and thanks to my popularity we are able to get enough for Karen's short term treatment in a few days.

When I am not volunteering on the weekends I am training. For the month of August I keep my training simple and hone my abilities to as razor-sharp an edge as I can before I do something new on the first weekend in September. The first weekend of September I decide to train my powers in the real world, and use my abilities to explore Seattle and subtly stop crimes. I do small things like mess up people who try to snatch purses or who grope people, focusing my time and energy on small criminals who'd make someone's day worse but opting not to fight with serious criminals like muggers or other violent assholes.

I knock people unconscious by doing things like making them trip on something hard or, on a few occasions, break their bones with telekinetically lobbed objects. I also do this rather subtly by taking advantage of my peak human senses so no one ever connects me to the small-scale heroism and vigilantism I perform. This training proves to be quite handy because it helps me get used to using my powers in the wild as opposed to in fairly controlled, predictable settings and situations.

During the last two weekends of September I take things up a notch and I make use of my abilities in more dangerous situations. I stop drug deals in rougher neighborhoods and even help a family whose house is on fire with my telekinetic skills.

I even begin to experiment with newer, finer applications of the particular sort of telekinesis that the boys are developing and that I've gained the ability to use to a decent degree by doing things like healing. At first I focus on healing myself, using my powers when I get injured to address the injuries, replicating a series of feats that Matt could, theoretically, perform according to a sequel devised by the screenwriter of the original film. It is only after I have healed myself from injuries as serious as penetrative wounds inflicted by somewhat heavy debris I get struck by during the last weekend of September that I try, successfully, to heal an innocent bystander hurt during a drug deal I stopped.

At this point my telekinesis has reached the level where I can hold the average adult aloft if I want too, though I can't do anything utterly wild like send someone flying. My forcefields are also now able to completely surround me, something which I have them do passively thanks to "With Great Power Comes Great Leisure", an Andrew-inspired perk.

When October rolls around Andrew is the first person to reveal that he has telekinesis to us. He shows us what he can do by holding a lego building in mid-air for a few seconds before blood begins to drip down his nose. Steve reveals what he can do during the first full week of October by tossing a football to Matt and suspending it in mid-air some distance between the two of them, a feat which is a touch more impressive than what he does during the baseball test scene in the movie, which hasn't happened yet.

Today is October 6th, and Matt, Steve, and I are all packed into Matt's car. Andrew is fiddling with a new toy, a camera that Matt bought for him earlier today, and we're heading to a "Mysterious destination" that Matt is hyping up for us. We're in the outskirts of the city, not terribly far from where Andrew lives apparently, and I know what's about to happen.

We reach an empty clearing and Matt parks the car. When he does we all get out and I grin at Andrew, ready to have fun holding myself back and revealing my own telekinesis. I've told the boys I can do what they can do, but I haven't actually shown it off just yet.