Antiheroes 24

Maggie managed to leave the hospital without too much fuss, despite the fact that it was crawling with cops and officials. She was asked for a statement, but nobody had seen her in the lobby itself, so all she had to do was tell them she hadn’t seen anything, give them her details, and then she was off.
The sun was rising as she walked home, lighting up the cloudy sky with a faint glow. She’d been awake for so long that she could barely keep her eyes open, and honestly, she was beginning to consider finding a park bench and lying down for a nap.
When she finally reached her apartment, she fell straight into bed, eyes closed before she even hit the pillow.

It was early afternoon when she woke. Even as she rolled over to check the time, a sick feeling started to grow in her stomach, a feeling of foreboding which was justified when she realized that she should have been at work two hours before.
She threw herself out of bed, and hit the wooden floor with a thump. Her phone had to still be in her pocket from the night before, so she rifled, panicked, through the pile of clothes on the chair in the corner. She found it in her jeans, pulled it out, and looked with dismay at a dozen notifications from her boss and co-workers.

“Shit,” she said, aloud.

As much as she didn’t want to, she had to call them and beg to be allowed to keep her stupid terrible job. Her boss answered the phone.

“Maggie.”

“Um. Yes. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sick, slept right through my alarm. I’ll do all the cleaning, close the store, whatever, just please don’t fire me.”

He was silent for a long time. “Fine. But don’t let it happen again. You’re starting at 7 tomorrow, and you’d better be here on the dot.” He hung up.

“Ugh.” She was going to have to be there before 7, if she wanted him to not hate her forever. Fuck.

Fighting the urge to go straight back to bed (and possibly stay there forever), she went and fetched her laptop. She had to know what was going on, and like any good millennial, she was going to ask Google.

unusual powers news, she typed.

‘11 Bizarre Sources for Alternative Energy.’ Fuck you, Discovery News, she thought. And same to you, Good Housekeeping. Who wants to know ‘9 weird powers and privileges the Queen has’?

developing supernatural powers.

super powers real.

weird shit happened to me.

That one shouldn’t have worked, but on the other hand, this was the internet, so maybe she should have known. There were forums full of people talking about strange things that had happened. Half of them were definitely delusional, but there were a lot that sounded plausible. Confused, concerned people, reaching out, looking for someone who might have an explanation or a shared experience, just as she was. They seemed to be all over the world. She honed in on one, posted by someone else from New York, with the username ‘endedupstate.’

I was talking to some people, someone I knew, and it got awkward, and I think I just really wanted to not be there. Next thing I knew, I wake up in some forest miles from home, hours out of the city. There wasn’t time for me to have made the trip, even if I did just pass out and forget it or something.

Interesting. She’d seen some people writing about being able to control their abilities, but this sounded more like what had happened to her and the others. Unconscious, just a reaction to the situation. She clicked on the profile, found an email address, and shot him a message.

Hey-

Sounds like we might have something in common. Can we talk in person?

Maggie