Everyone has turned against me. They are clicking their tongues and shaking their heads because they think I've turned into a lunatic. They are whispering in eachother's ears that I need to be locked up, that my parents are planning on committing me, but I ran off before they could. When I go home it will all be over for me.

They walk away from me and go into a little candy shop that our friend, Stacia, works at. They are all crowded around her at the front counter, chatting away excitedly, like the bunch of naive fools they are.

I look in and probe with my eyes. Start tinkering inside their brains and pushing buttons. "Dance!" my mind says, and they dance like puppets. Veronica and Angela twittering around on their feet, looking excited about something. For all I know it could be a victory dance, they just heard some good news. It has nothing to do with me. but they are my little toys. All minds are my toys now.

It's just that no one believes me. the police officer looked down on me with pity, when I told him I suspected I'd been given powers. I leaned against a wall, and thought back to earlier that day:

"What do you think could have caused her to get sick and die?" the police officer had asked me.
"I don't know... maybe food poisonning?" I said.
"Did she eat anything funny today?" he asked me.
"Well, she did buy a hot dog from a street vendor while we were out, but I didn't have any, cause I wasn't hungry. We also had sandwhiches when we got back." I said.
"The thing is, food poisonning wouldn't kill her that fast, unless it had been poisonned by someone, rather than just had Salmonella, for example." He looked at me suspiciously. I shrugged.
"Did anything else wierd happen today?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Well... I did read her a poem right before she died." I said.
"It was from a book of shadows, it's rumored to give people powers. I think I might have powers now." I said. People's facial expressions change quickly when you tell them things that go against their ideas of reality. You can see the exact second when they dismiss you in their mind as hopelessly insane. "We'll have to run some tests." he said, then walked away.
In the midst of all the chaos, my dad had gotten home. The police officer went into the kitchen with him, to ask him some questions. I crept over to the door, to listen. I could hear the officer's side of the conversation, which was loud and pronounced, but not my father's, which was quiet and mumbled:
"Would your daughter have any reason to kill her friend?" the officer asked. I could hear my dad mumbling.
"Well, we can't rule that out. She seems to be acting strange, and I think she might be lying. Also, there isn't any apparent cause of death, so this is all very suspicious to me." - then my dad mumbling some more.
"Has your daughter been acting weird at all? Unstable or crazy maybe?" -more mumbling.
"Well, we'll have to take her in for further questioning, and a psychiatric evaluation, if that's ok with you?" When I heard that, I knew I had to get out of there fast.

So I fled from my house, and met up with a bunch of friends, to wander around town, like we always do. But in my town, word spreads fast; and they were already transformed from my friends, into enemies. People were turning against me fast. It felt like everything was spinning out of control. I had to run, and hide. No where was safe.

Then I remembered one place that was safe. There was a place me and my ex-boyfriend, Josh used to go to when we wanted to be alone. It was an old abandonned apartment on the top floor of an apartment building. The place was in such bad condition that the landlord wouldn't bother trying to fix it up. Me and Josh lived only a couple blocks from eachother, and in between our 2 neighborhoods was that apartment building on the corner. We would go there and fuck our brains out, so our parents wouldn't catch us.

I walked fast. I had to hide myself before it was too late. Everywhere I looked I saw police in the crowds. I hate how my city is always so foggy, but today I was grateful for it because it was easier to be invisible. I was looking to one side, then the next as I ran down the street, when I bumped into someone. "Oh, sorry." Josh said. I was so happy to see a familiar face! Even if it was my ex boyfriend, who had played me, who could never commit his heart to one girl for long, who wanted sex with anyone who had a vagina. I hated him, but I was comforted by the sight of him. I grabbed his arm. "Josh! come with me!" I said. "No! Let go of me! You're crazy! I've been hearing things. You've gone nuts. You think you have powers. Please, let me go!"

Josh is strong, he could have easily gotten out of my grip. But not the grip of my mind. I just kept saying "come with me! come with me!" over and over, and he couldn't get away. He dragged his feet, but he came. We slipped inside the front hall of the apartment building, and I pulled him into the elevator, and pressed the button for the top floor. "NO! Please, let me out! Don't do this!" he yelled, his voice dripping with fear.

Then we were in the safe coccoon of our old hide out. I sat down on the old mattress that lay on the floor in the middle of the debris. "Let me go!" he yelled. He could have easily walked away, but it was like he was tethered to me by an invisible mental rope. He was trapped by my mind.

"Josh, listen. Everything has gone so crazy. Something strange has happened. You listen to me. You have to." I spoke urgently.

"It was rainy. Me and Mandy were sick of sitting in the house, so we walked to the library. I was so sick of her at this point. She'd been staying at my house for a week while her parents were out of town. I was drawn to this book, in the library. The title was Lucient's Book of Shadows. It just called to me."

"You're crazy!" he said.

"I found a poem. And it had this warning beforehand: 'There are rumors that this poem is cursed. However, as it is told, if you read this poem aloud to another, the force that wrote it will bestow you with powers from beyond the darkness. Beware, there are grave consequences for such an act, and it is not to be taken lightly.' But I wanted it. I had so much desire for it, it belonged to me somehow. So I ripped it out of the book and I brought it home and I read it to Mandy. She got sick, she cried for me to call 9-1-1. Somehow, she knew she was dying. By the time the ambulance got there, she was dead! I killed my best friend, and now I have this power. I'm scared. Hold me, I'm scared."

He had no choice. He held me, and said "You're a freak. I just want to leave. Let me go! You can't keep me here!" he was on the verge of tears.

"Yes, I can." I said. "Listen to this"
I pulled the folded up page out of my pocket, and read:

"Seeping from the bowels of earth the rage of death, greed's fevered birth imprisoned prayer, murderer's hands,
the demonic swarm of sinner's hands exhales savage heats, fear and lust,
eating all in it's path and spewing poison dust all your sins and anquish ablaze frenzied with war and decayed craze our breath is winter and alive at night with the dragon of the sky in our sight I call on you to revive this seed destroying weakness with your dirty deed."

His face was filled with horror and anguish. He crumbled to the ground, doubled over with sickness. I hadn't stayed to watch as Mandy died, I'd been in the other room calling an ambulance. I watched with a disturbing fascination as he twitched. He seemed to be internally burning, and then his body lay limp. I must have stayed for several hours, just staring at his body, and staring into a space that only existed in my mind. I could feel a power surging inside me. I could hear voices that no one else could, but I knew they were real. My sense had been heightened to a dimension that was unreachable to an ordinary human. As the hours passed, his body turned wrinkled and white. It was disgusting, but beautiful. The hate I had for this boy who had broken my heart had been ressurected to a roaring that I'd concentrated into my reading of the poem.

Finally, I stood up, realizing I couldn't stay here, couldn't risk being found with this corpse. Couldn't stay and let the maddness devour me either.

Back out on the street, the energy and the noise of everything was an unbearable cacophony. It was nearing dark now. I ran through the streets, without direction. Desperate, and knowing I had no place to belong now. I wanted to crawl into a dark cave and hide forever. But I could never find a haven in a big city like this.

I ran through the streets, screaming of a horror that only I knew. A few minutes later, a police officer restrained me. I could have easily commanded him to let me go, but I resigned to him, because I had no where to go anyways.

When they committed me to the hospital, they confiscated all my belongings. The poem was gone forever.
I lay in a room that was unbearably white. With enough concentration, I could turn the noise to silence. I enjoyed the quiet, but was constantly exhausted by the mental energy it took to silence the voices.

A nurse came in, and tried to ask me questions. "What day of the week is it?", "What is the date?", "What is the year?" just to see if I was even a part of reality. But I couldn't make myself care. I didn't answer, just lay looking at the ceiling.

Later, a man with a suite came, to talk to me. I liked something about him, so I decided to confess all my sins to him. I told him about the poem, and my powers. I told him I killed my best friend and my ex-boyfriend. I had hoped he would believe me. Instead he tried to convince me I was delusional and needed medication. I aquiesced, and took the several pills I was given each day. It was comforting, because the pills silenced the voices I had once been bombarded with.

I sat out in the lounge, playing board games with the other patients. I picked at my meals. My powers were weak now, because of all the medication. At first I had thought I would prove I was telling the truth, by causing chaos, knocking things over, making people into my puppets. But I gave that up. I liked this place. I liked the quiet whiteness of it. I liked the people. I liked having the huge terrifying world reduced to such a small, comfortable existance. When the doctor told me he thought I was well enough to go home, I proved him wrong. I spent the night banging my head against the wall, screaming and mumbling. Letting out the evil I'd been holding inside. They put me in "the Time-Out Room" when they discovered I was banging my head, but I continued to thrash and bang my head against the padded walls, in vain. It worked, and I wasn't released from the hospital.

I lay in my warm, white coccoon, and promised myself I would never leave.