Chapter 5

About a week later it was time for my monthly errands. I usually go to the Bi-Mart in town first and get ten cans of dip, they are the cheapest I have been able to find so far. Then I head across the street to Albertsons and buy ham from the Deli, a couple half gallons of super pasteurized milk, and a plate of cookies. Their cookies are like crack. Then I go up to Medford to the Walmart and get everything else I need for a month on the mountain.

My drama started when I got to Albertsons. Out in front of the store was a table setup for donations. The woman standing there was about my age and a hottie. I may have checked her out longer then I should have because the next thing I know she is blocking my path with a slight smile asking for a donation for the ACRC. You probably don’t know what that is, so I will explain.

Every town or city I have ever been too had at least one organization to helping the poor, homeless, or just families on hard times. ACRC is Ashland’s. I forget what it stands for, but twice a week you could wash your clothes there and get showers ... They also have counselors, who can give out food and coupons. The only time I contacted them was when I was refereed to them for free counseling to get over my depression. When I called they wanted me to come in, but I couldn’t afford to spend the gas money. When I asked if we could do it over the phone or internet, they turned me down.

Now this little hottie with a wedding ring was telling me the virtues of ACRC. I interrupted her saying “Ma’am, no thanks” ... I took a half step around to the left and meant to pass her. That wasn’t happening. She lost her smile and stepped in my path again and started preaching.

‘Do you think the homeless are beneath you? They are just down on hard times, and are willing to work just as hard as you or harder to get back to being productive citizen of our society!!’

I tried to interrupt her a couple times as she preached at me, but she just kept going. Looking around she was starting to draw a crowd. Three people was standing around looking at us, an old guy gave me a look of sympathy and moved on. With the extra people there, I decided to cut between the table and her and again my maneuver failed. She never stopped talking! I looked at her table and it had a poster board with pictures of a few people and the building. On the table was a stack of pamphlets underneath a candle. With my patience waning I just focused on the flame while she explained how many people the ACRC helped this month, and there many depreciating conditions.

Finally I had had enough. I reached for my wallet. She got this little smirk on her face as I reached in my wallet and pulled out my Oregon Trail credit card and showed it to her.

‘Do you know what this is lady?’

‘No. Should I know what it is? We can’t accept credit card donations here, you will have to call the office for that.’

‘Ma’am, this is how I get my food stamps every month.’

Her face soured for a few seconds, then she got a very serious look like she was talking to a child about misbehaving in church.

‘I know what a food stamp is. My best friend’s family was on food stamps and they came in a book.’ Then she went on to tell me how I was a horrible person for pretending to be poor. How I was going to hell for lying ... I looked at the flame on the candle again and I swear it jumped three feet in the air and burned that candle to the papers in about 2 seconds. I think I was just as surprised as she was, but it wasn’t my pamphlets and table on fire and she could go to hell. I may have used a little wind to exasperate the fire some into the poster board, but you couldn’t prove it. With her dealing with her table I was finally free to move around her and get my shopping done. Neither she nor her table was there when I came back out, fuck her.

As I continued shopping I got to thinking about that flame. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, there were no open flames in Walmart to play with. Come to think of it, I don’t have any open flames in my apartment either. With my cart full of groceries I went to the other side of the store in search of the biggest candle I could find. A thirty pack of twelve hour candles for fifteen dollars and three bucks for 900 matches got added to my cart and monthly expenses.

When I got home and put my groceries away I got an idea. I called the ACRC and introduced myself. First thing I asked is if they knew what an Oregon Trail credit card was. They of course knew! So I proceeded to tell them how I was verbally assaulted at Albertsons and when that wasn’t enough I think she tried to burn me but missed and caught her table on fire. How I seriously considered calling the police and bringing assault charges against her. Now I just need to make a SubSpot account so everyone can give me money for that public service! ... Hey! It put a smile on my face and made me feel better, that is what matters.

My mischief aside, I did get out a candle and light it. In the corner of my apartment I have a stove that burns pellets or something. Who can afford to buy pellets when 80% of the heat goes out the flue. With the candle on the stove I began playing.

After several hours of playing, and seven candles gone. I finally had somewhat of a breakthrough. With much practice I was able to make the flames burn hotter or colder. I couldn’t affect the size of the flame without addressing the heat. I also put a plate under the candles after the first one made a huge mess. I could stop the flame from burning without taking away it’s air. Something else noteworthy is a twelve hour candle turned into a three minute candle in nothing but oxygen ... also a slightly burnt spot on the sloped ceiling above it. I tried moving the fun outside but it is a little windy today and I didn’t want the distraction of trying to control the wind. So that was the only oxygen experiment I did.

Now the breakthrough I had is while I can’t control fire, per se, I can control energy. How I found this out is I had two candles sitting next to each other trying to move the fire from one to the other. This didn’t work. I probably sat there for a good twenty minutes and started getting a spot in my eyes from staring at the flame. I probably looked like an idiot as well, as waving from one to the other didn’t work. So giving up at staring at the source of the flame, I stared at the destination. Still nothing. Then I thought that maybe the flame needed to be bigger to get it to jump for me. I would look at the source, get it bigger, then stare at the destination. I did this over and over again for probably a good five minutes when the destination started to smoke. At first I thought I was making headway, and it was starting to work. When I thought about it though, it didn’t make sense. I could move the wind anywhere I wanted with just a thought, why couldn’t I move fire? So I turned to google ... I wont rewrite here what I read, but I will break it down how I understand it now. You can google it yourself if you want. Fire isn’t something to touch or move. It is the expression of energy caused by burning. We can mold fire into different shapes and intensities to perform a function, like a cutting torch. You can’t however grab the fire and move it from one object to another without also grabbing what is producing the fire.

It took me a long time and a headache to figure out what I had done. When I was staring at the flame I was focused on making it hotter. As I looked at the wick without a flame, for a split second I still had the previous focus of making it hotter before I stopped. That’s why after five minutes the wick started to smoke, I was making it hotter. With that in mind, I stared at the empty wick again to make it hotter and BAM! ... we have fire.

Everything has energy in it, and that is what I was affecting with my staring contests. I was exciting the energy to make it burn hotter, and slowing it down to make it smaller. When I was staring at the empty wick, I was making the energy in the wick move faster and faster until it caught fire. Pretty cool.

Now in theory I should be able to affect electricity too. I burned out two light bulbs before I stopped trying. I tried to speed up the energy and the bulb popped. Trying to slow it down caused another to pop as well ... I will need some kind of a lab environment to figure this out I think. If I could figure out how to control electricity, that would be REALLY cool. Everything runs on electricity, I would truly be a god among mortals. ‘Your phone died? Let me see it a second. There, it is back to full charge.’

Frequencies are just another form of energy. Light, microwaves, cell phone signals, radiation ... the possibilities are truly endless. I am not sure if I can create frequencies, or just affect what is already there. I don’t think I can create air, but I haven’t really tried. I think I need that lab pretty soon. I don’t want to mess with it until I have an idea what I am doing. I can see it now, playing with light, and getting rushed to the hospital for radiation exposure. My apartment becoming contaminated and unlivable for the next one thousand years. Pretty sure Ted wouldn’t appreciate living next to a contamination zone. I imagine the FBI would have some difficult questions too.

I need money for a lab. I can’t try and use an existing lab, they will want to record everything. I doubt they would even let me in a lab with expensive equipment without some sort of credentials. I could probably rent a lab, but that is more paperwork to track me. The garage below me isn’t being used anymore. If I could get a little money I could get some simple things and setup a lab pretty easily.

The next day I decided to test the waters a little bit. I knew they would think I was crazy, but it would give me an idea of what to expect.

I got the information online, and called the Ashland Fire and Rescue. A lady answered and I asked to speak to the Chief. I was put on hold, and less then a minute later a guy answered. ‘Chief?’

‘Speaking ... Who is this?’

‘Sir, I would rather not say at the moment. You can call me Smokey. Can I ask you a few questions please?’ Smokey the bear just came to mind, don’t ask me why...

He laughed and said ‘Sure, I have a few minutes. What can I do for you Smokey?’

‘Well, I recently acquired the strange ability to control air. Which means I can put out fires on a large scale with ease. I can also affect air related natural disasters. I was curious if you have any contacts with the folks that deal with forest fires and such.’

‘Mr Smokey, that is quite the whopper. I can honestly say I never heard that one before, and I have heard most of them.’

Before he could continue I broke in. ‘I would be happy to provide a private demonstration so you will take me seriously. I just don’t want my identity to be known for obvious reasons, one of them being forced into a hospital for my own welfare.’

He sounded unhappy now. ‘Mr Smokey, please stop wasting my time, the joke isn’t that good. Have a good afternoon.’ and he hung up.

Well that could have gone worse. Oh shit! I used my phone to make the call ... I am such an idiot.

I got dressed and put air in the tires of my car. It only took about twenty five minutes to find the fire house from the address online. I parked two blocks away. I left my phone and my wallet under the seat, but I had brought a candle and a box of matches with me. The obvious way to demonstrate my power would be to create a tornado right in front of the building for a few minutes, but not that subtle. Let’s call that plan Y. As in why the fuck did I come here. I could make it real windy in a closed room, but that had the possibilities of a lot of damage. Ideally I could just use the candle, and be gone in a few minutes.

I walked in the office door and stopped at a desk with a young lady sitting behind it. When she looked up at me. ‘Hi, I am here to see the Chief, tell him Smokey is here to see him please.’

She cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Sir I was told if you called back to not put you through. I don’t think he wants to see you, you should leave.’

‘I only need a minute of his time, and if he wants me to leave, neither of you will ever see me again I promise.’

She gave me a stern look. ‘I asked you to leave, if you don’t I will call the police.’

Getting frustrated... ‘Did he tell you what I claimed?’ she looked confused... ‘Did he tell you that I said I had a power?’ She nodded and was getting ready to speak. Instead I just blasted her in the chest with enough air to push her and her chair back and pinned her against the filing cabinet. After a count to five Mississippi, I released the air. Looking around, I had just made a huge mess of this office. There are papers everywhere, a plant turned over, her desk was nearly clean with shit all over the floor. I sighed... ‘Could you please go tell the Chief what I just did and ask him to see me please?’

She looked frightened, but nodded and left the room immediately.

I walked over and sat in a chair. I picked a magazine off the floor and started flipping through it. A minute or so later the door on the truck bay side opened and two guys came through and went through the same door as the secretary. A few minutes later one of those guys came back out. ‘The chief will see you now.’ and he waited...

I followed him in the office. The Chief was standing behind his desk comforting a crying secretary. The two other guys just stared at me with arms crossed ... This didn’t look good...

‘I am sorry I scared your secretary with my demonstration, she wouldn’t let me see you and threatened to call the police. Sorry for the mess out there too. I just need a minute of your time.’ I looked at the two guys. ‘Preferably alone.’

The Chief finally looked at me and he looked pissed. ‘You have some nerve! You come in here and assault Catherine, then demand to see me in private?!’ He was spitting while he talked. ‘Don’t worry, the police should be here very soon. You have until they get here to speak your piece. Then I never want to see you again, ya hear?!’

Fuck ... me...

‘For the record, I never touched ... Catherine. Just like I never touched these two gentlemen.’ I had them both pinned against the wall with chest sized gust of wind. Their cheeks were flapping like crazy which would have been funny in a different circumstance. Catherine screamed and backed to the corner and sat on the floor. I had to yell above all the ruckus my wind made. ‘You could have been the greatest fire chief in the world, responsible for single-highhandedly stopping forest fires all over the nation.’ The Chief had a look of astonishment on his face as I turned and left the room.

When I got back out by the secretaries desk, I could see the reflection of flashing light through the glass door. Sure enough when I got to the door there was a cop walking towards me. I focused on his radio and it sparked and popped. The cop, Officer Edwards from the name tag, started working the mic near his lapel. I focused on his gun, the barrel, his holster caught fire which freaked him out. He started dancing around trying to get his utility belt off. While he was distracted I looked at his car. With a twirl of my fingers a tornado formed for a few seconds and sucked his car about forty feet in the air. I used some wind to turn it upside down and let gravity takes it’s course. It landed with a loud crash, louder then I thought it would. I turned and walked out into the bay looking for a back door. I found one on the other side past three trucks. Outside I just turned towards where I parked, and kept walking never looking back. I stopped the wind in the office when I got a block away. Once in my car I headed towards home taking a round about way to avoid my mess. What a waste of fucking time.

I watched the news as best as I could for the following week looking for stories about my mess. I don’t have access to TV stations with my TV, so I just scoured the online media for the local area. The only thing I found was an insert about the damaged police car, no description. The most important thing I found were no pictures of me and no one looking for me, at least that I could find. Hopefully I made an impression to not be fucked with and they dropped any charges, only time will tell.

Dammit, I still need money.

I found a cool website. I found crimemapping.com, which showed where crime was being done in the past in Medford. With it I was able to narrow down high crime areas. I was looking for residential areas, not business and parks. I figure if I can find some drug dealers I can find some money. If I can follow the chain high enough I should get some real money. Now I am no hero, but I do need some money. Hopefully I can do it without getting shot, stabbed, or my ass beat. I guess worse would be if my identity was known and I got locked up in a lab.

It is a few hours until it gets dark, so I got dressed and waited. When I would harvest weed, I wore a thin hoodie to cover my hair. Weed is extremely sticky, and hard to wash off, so that hoodie was a lifesaver. I still had it so I put it on over my t-shirt. I also took my Crocs off and put on work boots. I thought about taking my flashlight, but walking around with a two foot flashlight might look suspicious.

It took about forty five minutes to find the neighborhood I had found on the map site. Then I went in search of a place to park my car. I found a Taco Bell about four blocks over. I parked outside and went in to buy a drink. I left through the opposite door and started walking down the street.

It was about six block later that I came upon my first target. He was young, maybe mid-twenties. He was leaning against the fence behind a bus stop. I kept looking at the ground like I was in another world as I meandered towards him, almost shuffling my feet. I even started mumbling stuff to myself.

When I was next to him, and he was between me and the fence I took a big step to the right and looked him the eye. As I talked a I pulled a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and held it close to my chest. ‘You know where I can buy some shit man?’

This guy was dressed kinda nice, that’s why I pegged him. He was definitely clean, and his shoes looked new. He was wearing a ball cap with a logo I didn’t recognize, but his shirt had a Patriot’s logo. He smiled. ‘You think I am a drug dealer cause I’m black?’

‘If I thought you was a drug dealer I would have asked a completely different question, now do you know where I can buy some shit or not?’ I put the twenty back in my pocket, and started bouncing from one foot to another like I was cold. It wasn’t cold out.

‘So you think I use drugs because I am black?’ He was starting to show some attitude.

‘I think you live around here because you are standing at the bus stop. I think you are dressed nice, and might be intelligent enough to know where not to go to get robbed ... Since this is your neighborhood you might know where to go to get drugs ... Now can you drop the self righteous racist shit long enough to tell me if you know where I can buy some shit?’ I had stopped bouncing around and looked him in the eye.

He looked angry. ‘Fuck You!’ he glared at me ... I couldn’t help it and laughed. This is Medford Oregon, there aren’t a lot of blacks here to begin with. Add to that I grew up, and went to school in places where whites were the minority. I wasn’t intimidated.

‘So can you help me out or not?’ I asked with a smirk on my face, trying not to laugh.

He dropped his glare and almost smiled. ‘Yeah, go to the next block and take a right. The second or third building on you left I seen some peeps hanging out.’

‘Thanks.’ I said and started walking in that direction.

Sure enough, between the second and third building there was a couple guys, one looked pretty young. I would be surprised if he was eighteen. I figured he was the holder, and the older guy was the seller. They were both dressed pretty normal, nothing flashy like the guy at the bus stop.

I nodded to both of them and approached the older one. ‘I need some shit, you got any H?’ I looked around nervous like, checking all the dark places for a third person.

‘How much you need?’ he looked me up and down.

‘I need enough for two, how much?’ still looking around.

‘You don’t look like you use.’ He just stopped talking waiting for me to comment.

‘I don’t, never touched the stuff. It isn’t for me.’ I took a step back, like I was getting ready to bolt. ‘You have it or not?’

‘Yeah I have it, cost you eighty.’

‘Eighty!? That is a lot more than I was told it would cost, twice as much, what gives.?’ I took another step back.

‘Fuck you, I sell the real shit, not some nasty tar. Do you want it or not?’

I reached into my pocket and pulled out some money. ‘What is your name?’ As I pretended count it. This was all the money I had, sixty dollars.