Chapter 6: Elephants and Thumb Wrestling

Saturday, July 11, 2009, 8:00PM

It was late in the evening when they returned home carrying several bags of clothes, shoes, and dog supplies. Tricia and Joey carried most of the bags while Annie unlocked the front door. Joey dragged himself in, wounded, exhausted, and happy that the day was finally over.

As they dumped the bags on the couch, Tricia stood back and looked at the new pile of clothes. She frowned. “Damn. We forgot something.”

“Huh?” Joey looked up from pulling Scrappy from his new pet cage.

“Nu? What did we possibly forget? We got everything! Clothes, shoes, dog stuff, toothbrush ... What did we forget?”

Tricia gestured to the bags. “Ah, the classic question ... What do you get the man who has everything?”

Annie thought for a second. “Wait, I’ve heard this one before ... Antibiotics and a condom!” she said grinning.

Tricia gave Annie a double-take. “No!” She gestured to the bags. “Something to put it all in. Joey, you need a dresser.”

Joey looked at the bags and his face fell. “Are we going to go shopping again now?” he asked fearfully.

Tricia shook her head. “No. We’re done for tonight. We’ll get that tomorrow.”

“And where are we going to put a new dresser?” asked Annie.

“There’s plenty of space in your room,” Tricia said.

Annie pointed to Tricia. “My room? Hey! I need that extra room, Miss I-Don’t-Have-A-Turning-Radius!”

“Fine. My room then,” Tricia relented. She looked at Joey. “How does dinner sound now?”

Joey’s eyes lit up. “Okay...” He picked up a bag of clothes and looked at it in some wonder. “And Tricia? ... Annie? ... Thank you.”

Tricia and Annie beamed. “You’re welcome,” Tricia said.

“You’re welcome,” Annie said with some pride. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I need to use the ladies room.”

“Okay,” Tricia said. “We’ll get dinner ready.”

Annie wheeled off to her bathroom, and Tricia looked at Joey. “Well, she’s going to be in there for a while. So it’s just the two of us now.” She gave him a little grin. “You want to learn how to make spaghetti?”

“Okay...” Joey said a bit shyly.

Tricia gave him a sultry smile. “Have to warn you though. This kitchen gets hot quickly.” And she winked at him.

It was over an hour later, and Annie had returned from her trip to the bathroom looking very refreshed. They all sat at the table for spaghetti and salad, and talked about the day animatedly as they ate.

“Okay!” Annie said as she spooned some more salad onto her plate. “Change of subject! There are some elephants in the room we need to discuss.”

Tricia grinned wickedly, looked down at her chest, and shook her tits. “They’re called ‘breasts’, Annie.”

Joey blushed and Annie threw a spaghetti noodle at her. “That’s not what I’m talking about!” She turned to Joey. “See what I have to live with? And I have five more months on this lease ... So, Joey. You have superpowers! Tricia says she got to see them. So I’d like to see them too. Can you push any kind of power into anyone?”

Joey shut down a little bit and shook his head. “No. I ... I can only put some powers into Scrappy.”

“But you can put powers into us?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Have you tried? Couldn’t hurt!”

He shrugged. “I know, but ... I need to feel the person, and I can’t feel you.”

Tricia raised her eyebrows. “Feel the person?” She rocked in her chair slightly. “Where?” she said with a grin.

He blushed. “Um...” He gestured strangely. “Well, when I touch Scrappy, I can like ... feel his whole body, not just the part that I’m touching. Like I can ... close my eyes and tell which way he’s looking, and if his mouth is open, and what position his legs are in, and how he’s holding his ears, even if I’m only touching his back. And ... I can also feel his mind.”

Annie frowned. “Feel his mind? What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “I can ... feel his mind. And I could feel my dad’s mind too. But I can’t feel other people.” He turned to Tricia. “Like, I’ve touched you a couple times, and I don’t feel you.”

Tricia cocked her head at him. “Maybe you just need some practice.” She smiled. “Maybe you just need to feel me up some more.”

Annie rolled her eyes.

Joey bashfully looked at his plate. “I ... It didn’t take practice. It either works or doesn’t work. Usually it doesn’t work.”

Tricia held out her hand to him. “Well, try it again. See if it works.”

Joey hesitated. “No, I...” He squirmed, sighed, and then reluctantly took her hand. Tricia noted his hands were shaking a bit. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

They waited.

He shifted in his seat. A grimacing look came over his face. He squirmed and grunted a bit in frustration. “Uhghh...” he groaned, sounding almost in disgust.

He finally shook and let go of her, as if dropping something revolting. He rubbed his face with his hands. “It’s not working,” he confessed.

Tricia stared at him, and then looked at her hand in shock. “You felt something. What did that feel like?” she asked. Am I ... disgusting inside?

“Weird.”

“How weird? Like disgusting weird?”

He shook his head. “No. Like...” He gestured again strangely. “It’s like ... I wasn’t supposed to be in there.”

“Oh.” Tricia sat back. But is that really it? Or did he really find me that repulsive? Am I that ... stained? Is it the way I’ve been treating him?

Annie watched with curiosity. “Well, I don’t want to put you through that again, but ... I don’t think you’ve touched me yet.”

He nodded. “You’ve touched me. This morning, when you put that stuff on me. I ... couldn’t feel you.” He looked at her, and hesitated.

“You don’t have to..., “ Annie began.

But Joey reached out to her carefully. Annie hesitated, and reached out and took him by the hand.

Joey closed his eyes and concentrated. He scrunched up his face. He grunted. Finally he yanked his hand back and stuffed his hands under his arms, hiding them both. “NO!” he barked, and then looked embarrassed. “No ... Sorry. It’s not...”

“It’s okay,” Annie said soothingly. “It doesn’t have to work. Maybe it’s for the best that it doesn’t work.”

Joey nodded.

He didn’t like touching Annie either, Tricia noted to herself. But what’s so disgusting about her? She’s not like me. She doesn’t have the same stains that I carry. She’s not flirting with him. What is it? Is it just everyone? No. What is it that Omega Man and Scrappy have that we don’t? They’re both male. Maybe that’s it. But, do dogs even have Y-chromosomes?

“But you can still put powers into Scrappy, right?” Annie asked. “Is that difficult?”

He shook his head. “No. He’s easy.” He looked at her. “Did you want to see?”

Annie nodded. “Sure!”

As Joey got up and called Scrappy, Annie looked at Tricia. “Well, what do you know Tricia?” she said. “Turns out you’re not easy after all.”

Tricia chuckled outwardly and took another bite of her dinner.

Joey came back with Scrappy and sat back in his seat. He looked proud, even excited. “Okay, I can like ... make him glow...”

There was a flash of sparks from his hands, and Scrappy glowed luminously like a small animated lamp. The girls screamed in laughter.

Joey beamed proudly. “And I can make him invisible...” The glowing vanished, and then so did the dog.

Annie giggled and reached out. “Is he still there? OY! I can feel him! That’s so cool!”

Scrappy reappeared. “I can also make him weightless...” he said, and he let go of the dog. Scrappy just hovered in mid-air over the table. His fur fluffed up and he suddenly started kicking and twisting and whining.

Tricia laughed at the sight of the floating dog, but Annie said “Oh! Don’t do that. He doesn’t like that!”

“I know,” Joey said, and he grabbed the dog again. “He gets confused and scared. I can also make him stand on the wall.” And he put Scrappy against the wall like he did in the restaurant and let go. The dog clung to the wall, looked around, and whined.

“Spider-dog!” Tricia called out.

“How do you DO that?” Annie asked.

Joey picked up Scrappy and petted him. “It’s all different kinds of energy. Like, glowing and invisibility? I’m just playing with light. But the weightlessness I’m like warping gravity, and the sticky feet is all that...” He screwed his face up. “What is it called when two things rub against each other, and it’s sticky, and not like, slippery?”

“Friction?” Annie suggested.

“Yeah, I guess. I’m just making more of it. I could also put him on the wall by bending gravity, but that only works if he stays facing the same direction. He doesn’t get scared then, cause I guess it feels the same to him, and he can even run a bit. But when he turns, he falls.”

Annie frowned. “Why does he fall when he turns?”

He gestured with his hand bending forward in a right angle. “It’s like ... I can bend the gravity like this, but the gravity has to match the bend. When he changes direction, the gravity doesn’t fit the bend, and he falls.”

Annie’s eyes grew wide. “So you’re bending gravity?”

Joey shrugged. “Well, it’s not me. I just make the stuff that does that.”

“What stuff?” asked Tricia.

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s this...” He gestured. “ ... Stuff. Like, it feels like a ghost or something. I just tell it what to do, and it goes inside him, and it does the powers. I don’t know what it’s called.”

Annie frowned. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.” She thought some more. “That sounds completely new. If it’s yours, you should give it a name.”

Joey looked confused. “Me?”

“Sure! It’s your power. Take control of it. What do you want to call it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. What are ghosts made out of?”

Annie shook her head. “There’s no such thing as...”

Tricia interrupted. “Ectoplasm!”

Annie frowned. “Really? They named the stuff that isn’t used to make ghosts?”

Tricia nodded. “Yep. For the same reason they named the stuff that isn’t used to make fairies fly.”

Annie nodded and shrugged. “Ectoplasm. Hmph! Good word.” She looked at Joey seriously. “Sounds like it needs to be used somewhere real. How does ectoplasm sound for the name of your power stuff?”

Joey grimaced. He didn’t like it.

Tricia spoke up. “It’s got to be tied to him. How does ‘Omegaplasm’ sound?”

“Or ‘Joey-plasm’” offered Annie.

Joey smiled. “I like Omegaplasm. That sounds cool.” He smiled to himself, and repeated the word. “Omegaplasm!” And he pointed one finger and white sparks flew out of it in a little shower.

Annie jumped. Tricia squinted. “How come you make those sparks sometimes?”

“That’s the ... Omegaplasm” Joey said “ ... when it’s leaking. Like when it’s ready to go into someone, but the ... I guess ... the connection isn’t ready yet.”

Annie cocked her head and looked at Joey. “So, you said something about feeling minds. Can you read minds?”

Joey hemmed. “Well, kinda ... not really.”

“Can you tell what Scrappy is thinking?”

“No,” he said patting his dog. “ ... But I can tell where he’s thinking.”

Annie scrunched up her face in confusion. “Nu? What do you mean?”

“Well ... okay, so like ... when he gets scared, I can feel him thinking back here, but deep inside,” he said, and he pointed to the base of Scrappy’s head. “And when he sees a squirrel or a pigeon, he goes over here, a little higher but way in the back ... and when he gets confused he goes way up front...”

Annie’s jaw dropped. “You can sense his brain stem, optic chaism, and frontal lobe when he uses them? Joey! You know what this means?”

Joey shook his head.

“You can single-handedly revolutionize neurology. You’re a walking MRI.”

“Huh?”

“You can tell us all about brains, and how we use them. You can figure out where individual thoughts are, and help study the brain. You can be probably the world’s greatest brain surgeon, or psychologist.” She looked at Tricia. “We have to start a college fund.”

Joey slunk back in his chair. He obviously didn’t like the idea.

“I’ll add that to our next shopping list,” Tricia said. “Joey, how do you use that?”

“Hmm?”

“How do you use that mind-feeling? Is that part of what you do with the Omegaplasm?”

He nodded. “Yeah, like ... some powers work best if he can control them. Like the gravity bending. I can make the Omegaplasm look at a certain spot and tell it to follow directions from there.”

Annie’s jaw dropped. “So you can add conscious control to a power?”

“Um ... yeah, like my dad could figure out how to bend the gravity into different directions, but Scrappy can’t. He’s not that smart.” He looked at the dog. “But I can put powers in that he doesn’t control, like the floating and glowing and invisibility. Some things he can control, but it really depends on what he can think about or figure out. Like the ... friction. He like, grabs the ground when he stands, so I make the Omegaplasm work from that. He COULD climb up and down the wall if he wanted to, but he gets too scared.”

“Wow...” Tricia thought. “There’s an awful lot to this power I never realized. What all can you do? Like what kind of powers can you make? When I was doing research, there was documentation of strength, flight, invulnerability, heat and cold powers, electricity and magnetism ... Is it all energy powers?”

Joey nodded.

“Can you do anything physical like ... shapeshifting, healing, growing or shrinking?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t know how to do that. I can’t change him.”

“But you can also manipulate space, like those light-holes you told me about yesterday, right?”

“Light holes?” Annie asked.

“Yeah! Wormholes you could see through,” Tricia explained.

“Oh...” Annie thought. “So is the gravity bending done by warping space?”

Joey shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Kinda feels like that. Same with the invisibility.”

Annie raised her eyebrows. “The invisibility is warping space?”

He nodded. “Kinda. I just push the light in a different direction.”

Annie gestured, moving her finger in a circle. “So you push the light around him like this?”

He shook his head. “No ... it goes...” He tried to gesture, inside, around, outside, and he frowned. “I can’t point in that direction,” he confessed.

Annie’s jaw dropped. “You’re pushing light four-dimensionally?”

“What is that?”

Annie shook her head in disbelief. “Not something easily explained over dinner.” She glanced at Tricia, and then looked at Joey seriously. “So tell me Joey ... Can you do things with time too?”

Tricia leaned in.

Joey shrugged. “Yeah. I ... I made my dad go real fast. He said it looked like the whole world slowed down, and all the sounds got really weird and...” He pointed to the lamp overhead. “Did you know that the lights are all blinking really fast?”

Annie nodded, smiling. “Yes, I knew that. Sixty times a second. Faster than the human eye can...”

Joey yawned.

Tricia grinned. “Looks like it’s bedtime! We’ve had a busy day.”

Annie held up her hands. “Ah, that reminds me. Elephant number two. Sleeping arrangements.” She looked at Joey. “So, when you were trying on clothes, Tricia and I discussed this, and we feel that if you are going to be a permanent guest here, you shouldn’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“The couch is okay,” he said. “I’m used to sleeping on the ground.”

Annie shook her head. “And we’re not going to take advantage of you like that. Beds are better. But the problem is, we have three people and two bedrooms and beds. And until we manage to change the number of bedrooms and beds, two of us are going to have to double-up.”

Joey looked very nervous, and looked back and forth between the two women. “ ... okay...” he said meekly. Then he brightened up. “You two can get bunk beds!”

Tricia’s jaw dropped.

Annie broke out into a wide smile. She looked at Tricia. “I like that! Can I be on top?”

Tricia glared at her. What are you doing??? This is not helping! She shook her head. “And just how are you planning on getting up there?”

“Achh! Details!” she waved dismissively at Tricia, and looked at Joey. “We don’t need bunk beds. Our beds are big enough for two already. But the problem is the number of rooms. You need your own room because you’re the only boy, and I need my own room because of my special needs.” And she patted her chair. “So. How do we decide who gets to sleep together, and who gets their own room?”

Tricia thought, and grinned. “You know ... Annie and I have this well established method for resolving our big conflicts.”