Richen

Chapter eight: Unexpected changes

 

 He had been a thief his entire life and he was very good at it to. He had his own gang and the evening before he had succeeded to rob a bank and escaped with two million dollars in cash. The man had to kill some people at the bank but he didn’t care, they were stupid for trying to stop him and his crew.

 The man was in the mid forties and looked like a fully fledged gangster boss; he was not that long and had a round stomach and a sleazy back slick. Years and years on the street had made him cold as steel and he had no sympathy for weaklings that couldn’t kill. But as the streets hardly is a place to stay strong and in power, the change would come even for this man: The Boss of crimes in New York.

 The man was now at the gang’s base and counting money. What he had not counted on was to be betrayed by his own crew. With mere luck he managed to escape the house shooting some of his crew along the way. When he exited the house and ran into an alleyway he stopped dead in his track because in front of him was a big hole with something smoking in the middle, at this moment he heard a loud bang and extreme pain in his back, he turned around and was shot several times in his chest, when falling backwards into the hole he managed to shoot his killers.

 The man woke up, strangely, as he should be dead he started to suspect something; how could he possibly survive that many shots at close range straight into his chest? He slowly crawled up out of the hole stepping on a big rock in the ground; it was very warm so he moved away quickly. Could it have something to do with this strange rock, which appeared to be a meteorite, that he was still alive and feeling so great? No matter what, he thought, he needed to get to a safe place, some of his gang could still be looking for him, so he continued to run along the alleyway, exceptionally fast, feeling very light and strong.

 Returning from the hospital, the girl sat in her father’s car thinking about what happened earlier. At the hospital the doctors could not see anything wrong with her, on the contrary she was in perfect shape, her iron-levels were a bit high, but nothing that would cause any harm. She and her father did not dare to say what happened, because no one would have believed them, so they only said that she had come in contact with some strange rock in the mines.

 At home, she went to her room after dinner to think. How could she feel so great after being attacked by some silvery liquid from outer space? No matter how much she thought about it, she could not come up with anything and fell asleep on the bed.

 When waking up the next day, the girl felt well rested but it was one thing that she could not feel that she should, the bed. Opening her eyes she could see that she was floating a few inches above the bed. Not knowing what was going on, she suddenly dropped down into her bed again. Somehow the girl was not terrified of this, because she had a feeling that it was not something bad, it felt natural in some way. So she closed her eyes again and concentrated really hard for some moments. Nothing happened. Feeling really stupid, she became angry that she actually tried to levitate, surely it must have been a trick on her mind waking up. But when she was thinking about how she felt about the event, it happened; she slowly started to feel lighter and eventually she left the bed. She fell down a few seconds later. Now it was clearly not a trick on her mind and she thought really hard about how she could control this new “gift”, which surely had something to do with the liquid.

 Walking downstairs to eat breakfast she felt really good inside, smiling to her own reflection in a mirror as she entered the kitchen where her father sat reading the news paper. She almost told her father about what happened when she woke up, but then she thought that it maybe would be better to wait a little, just in case something else happened to. This day she was free from work because of yesterday and her father left for the bar moments later kissing her good day. Fifteen minutes later the girl went out to the backyard and continued to experiment with her new gift.

 The police officer was a little suspicious about this Englishman, how could he have no injuries after being hit by a meteorite, when the girl had been shredded? But he could not detain him for any crime so he had to let him go. So the young man left the police station heading back to the hotel, still shaken from the day’s events. Finally at his hotel room, closing the door behind him, he sat down on the floor crying, he really liked this girl, and even if he didn’t knew her, it was still terrible to die like that.

 While crying he saw a sudden light coming from somewhere, he looked up and he saw that his right hand was covered in some strange flame, it looked like fire but it was dark like smoke, he shook his hand rapidly to get it off and strangely it disappeared. Under all of his young life he had not seen anything like it, but he was not scared because it hadn’t caused him any pain.

 While wondering what this strange smoke had been, it appeared again, now instead of hesitating and shaking it off, he examined the dark smoke closely and tried to touch it with his left hand, and while doing so it spread to that hand to. Standing up he supported himself on a chair, but the chair started to smoke where he put his hand, so he immediately let go. Apparently the smoke on his hand caused some sort of damage to other objects than himself. He tried again and grabbed the chair, the same thing happened and he let go. The spot was black like burned from a fire or something. He shook his hands and the smoke was gone.

 That day the young man tried again and again creating this strange smoke from his hands, when he finally got the hang of it, he realized that it had to have something to do with the meteorite; why else would he be able to do this? What if, no it would be ridiculous he thought, but it was worth a shot, maybe he could throw this smoke away from his hands, like in the movies? He took a stance, feeling really dumb while creating the smoke and focusing on what the target should be, might as well be the chair, it was already black and broken anyway.

 He focused and then threw his arm like throwing a baseball, and something happened that he didn’t expect; the smoke gathered in his palm in the swing like a ball and flew towards the chair with overwhelming power and shattering the chair with a loud bang and a wave of air blowing away things in the vicinity. Afraid of both the force of the smoke ball he had thrown and what would happen when the hotel staff would enter the room, surely in a few moments, he took his belongings and left the room in a hurry.