Chapter 1: The Beginning
I thought I’d just give a quick recap of our life before I discovered el powers, in case you’re interested in that kind of garbage.
I was born 26th February 1991, in that little country known as England. I moved homes a lot as a little sprog, mostly from one village to another, the names of which are not particularly important. I think there was a farm at some point as well, until the government came along and compulsory purchased the land of course. My parents were semi-religious, putting great emphasis on morality, right and wrong, don’t cheat on your taxes, all that wonderful drivel. Whilst mom-and-pop were still married (they didn’t die or anything, they just done got divorced) they always hammered home that one should always be righteous, stealing is awful, being jealous was bad, always be truthful, you get the idea. The kind of behaviour which (when applied to real life and taken to the extreme) made me a rather unpopular kid at school.
I was a bit of a sheltered child, no brothers or sisters, very shy when around others, barely spoke up when in a group, in essence not exactly a savant when it came to making friends. In retrospect I was basically that weird child who sat alone in the corner. Yeah, one of those kinds of kids. I got into a few fights during school. Well, not so much fights, more like being bullied the hell out of. However, I finally reached 16, and went to college to study English Literature & History. Not exactly the most exhilarating two years, but I did come out of my shell somewhat, so swings and roundabouts. At 18 I attended university to study medicine, dropped out after a year as it wasn’t “for us”. I got a job as a meter reader afterward; exciting times.
Three years later I became an electrical metering engineer, four years of that and I was promoted to a full-blown distribution network engineer. Now, that is just a fancy way of saying I worked with a team to fix melted power cables, usually because either someone was trying to run a drug farm from their home, or they had cut through the power line when digging the garden up, you get the idea. I did make a few friends with our work colleagues over the years, but I was still rather timid. Didn’t like going to the pub or big social gatherings, still don’t really. Hey, maybe you’ll forget about your social anxiety and suddenly you’ll love being in a crowd of people. Moved out of our mum’s place at 25, bit sad I know, and rented an apartment a few towns over.
That pretty much brings us up-to-date, just goes to show how exhilarating our life was back then really.
Right, back on track.
Our journey begins like so many others really. Snorting coke off of a steering wheel whilst leering at someone who is passing by. OK, not really, I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. Not much anyways. Although, I did discover our powers whilst eyeing up a lady whose curves were in all the right places, shame she wasn’t human. I suppose for some people that doesn’t really matter, ew. On an unrelated topic, I need to delete our browser history later. Thanks for reminding me.
Like I said, back then I was a network engineer. It was boring, had unsociable hours, constantly dealt with morons, but at least it paid well. Part of the job meant I had to cover the on-call system one week every month, between 8am to 8pm normally. So, I had been called out to a job that was way out of our usual area, I cannot remember exactly where it was but I know it took well over an hour and a half to get there. Oh boy was I angry at the office for making me go, especially since it was almost the end of the shift. I was quite miffed for the vast majority of the journey there.
Once I arrived, and found out that it was an elderly couple who relied on medical equipment that required electricity though, I calmed right down. Long story medium length: the incoming power cable was fine, and after some quick fault finding, I discovered that the heating element in the kettle had kicked the bucket. Whenever they tried to switch it on, the blasted thing would cause the fuse box to trip out. Easy fix, I unplugged the kettle, told them not to use it, and suggested that they get a new one. They thanked me profusely, and I left content with the knowledge that I had probably just saved their lives, quite the billy bonus.
Around halfway home, about 11pm, I was gunning it through some middle-of-nowhere village, and a nice thick fog had descended upon us just to brighten the mood. It was a scene straight out of a horror film. I even checked the rear-view mirror a few times just in case a murderer had somehow crept into the back of the van and was preparing to jump out and play peekaboo with our anus. It really didn’t help that it was so late at night, I’m an early bird you see, definitely not a late-night owl, ergo I was as tired as a sausage. I had already downed a double espresso coffee, and the supply of emergency coffee was locked away in the back of the van. I really did not want to stop to pull over in the pitch-black countryside to grab one, out of fear of a werewolf coming to eat us and playing our ribcage like a xylophone. Very active imagination I know.
Besides, if I downed another can of coffee then I wouldn’t be able to sleep when I finally got homeski.
So, instead of pulling over like a good boy driver, I just kept ploughing along whilst our fatigue just got worse, a really smart and ingenious idea. I wasn’t nodding off per se, but was certainly well on the way to doing so. I turned the music up loud and rolled down the window, I even employed the tactic of slapping myself really hard across the face every now and again for that brief pain rush. I was just recovering from the latest round of slaps when suddenly boom; a deer had jumped into the middle of the single-track road I was flying down. If it had not been for that gosh darn fog I would have seen it ages ago and had time to slow down.
I panicked, and for the briefest of briefest seconds, it seemed like everything froze in place. You know that moment when the voice in your head screams “oh shit” before the rest of your body can catch up? The adrenaline courses through your veins and completely wakes you up in an instant. Similar to when you suddenly realise today is your partner’s birthday, and you forgot to buy them a present. I reacted by gasping and slamming my foot down on the brakes, fully expecting to smash into the bloody thing right there and then. Good news for the company’s insurance however, I did not.
Usually the whole “oh crap” reaction lasts for a split second and then crash bang wallop, but it didn’t, it all just happened in slow motion. The deer saw the headlights slowly coming towards it out of the fog, bent its legs, and majestically hopped out the way just in time for us to miss the stupid thang. When it was out of harm’s way everything not nailed down in the van cabin jolted forward, like the brakes suddenly decided to engage several seconds late.
Now, even with all that wakey-up-time adrenaline juice rushing through us, my mind was far too tired to register what had just happened properly. I mean, apart from the fact that the creature had jumped out of the way just in the nick of time, and that I really shouldn’t have been driving in our current state. I did have a niggling thought that whatever had just happened was wrong, but such things would have to wait, I had to get to sleep. I got home well over half an hour later than I had planned due to deciding that it was probably a good idea to drive slower thanks to the fog. I yanked my clothes off and slumped straight on to the bed, crashing into slumber pretty much instantly.
When the alarm went off at 6am my mind was a hazy mess, as always. I jumped out of bed to slap the alarm off, then clambered back into our warm cocoon to rest for a while, half-awake half-asleep. My brain slowly creaked into action and started to replay the events of the previous night, I tried to convince myself that it was part of some odd fever dream that I had had during the night. You know, like the weird and wonderful ones that you remember every small detail about when you first wake up, but which you forget soon after? Unlike most dreams however, even the fantastical freaky ones, this one did not fade away into nothingness; it felt far too vivid and real. I just could not shake it. The more I pondered over it, the more I became convinced something strange had indeed happened, not that there was much I could do about it, I had to get ready for workies.
I began to obsess over what had happened, it got to the point where I was utterly convinced time had slowed down, and after a long day of debating with the voices in my head, I finally decided to do something about it. Going over everything, I myself concluded that the sudden panic and adrenaline surge must have been major contributing factors, so I had to do something that replicated just that. Instead of trying to mow down another one of God’s innocent creatures however, I decided to do something that was slightly less likely to kill me, but would still be bloody terrifying. I booked a bungee jumping session. Bit of an odd logical step but there we go.
Surprisingly, the earliest available opening was a week on Saturday, I guess someone must have chickened out and had cancelled, can’t blame them really. As I confirmed the online booking I was positive that it was the right thing to do. I signed up, paid, and received the confirmation email in a matter of minutes. There had been a second space available, and I had toyed with the idea of booking it for Serena, but realised rather quickly how stupid of an idea that was. She was extremely afraid of heights, and I really did not want to exacerbate the situation. I mean, I was scared of heights as well back then but that was the whole point.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention before. I had a girlfriend back then called Serena, who hailed from the Ukraine. We had met via one of my work colleagues, they had been friends since college I believe.
When I told her about the sudden and unexpected booking, she was somewhat surprised. I wouldn’t normally do something like that, nor would I book it on the spur of the moment. She was prepared to come to the venue and watch, but was glad that I hadn’t purchased that second slot for her. Looking back now, booking a bungee jump was a very impulsive and reckless thing to do; two attributes I was not known for back in the day. Who knows, perhaps I just wanted to believe something special had happened to us, and that I wished so hard for it to be true that I was prepared to do something crazy to get it. That, or I was finally having that mental breakdown that had been peering around the corner for the past few years.
By the way, I cannot remember the exact date, but the van incident happened mid-June 2019. I’d like to say the 17th but truth be told I am honestly not sure. Quite frankly I cannot be asked to go back and find out, this might be the story of our life but that does not mean we have to get every single unimportant detail down. Get over it, it really doesn’t matter. Back in a minute, piss break.
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