A hearty punch of disappointment strikes me in the gut. If Eddie and I part ways, I certainly won’t be getting paid in full.
Right now, there are too many unanswered questions to contend with, too many variables churning through my skull. I can’t tackle this whole thing at once, so I need to move through each piece one by one.
I center my focus and gaze down at my hands, commanding them to press the truck horn. Nothing happens. It’s the same feeling I’ve had plenty of times this evening, a complete disconnect between my brain and my body.
“Fuck,” I sigh, thinking of all the places I’d rather be. Visions of Marlo cloud my mind as I imagine her tuckedinto bed while Noah snoozes loudly on the living room couch, Netflix politely asking if he’s still watching.
I try pressing my hands down again, and again, and again.
Again.
Again.
Aga–
Suddenly, my breath catches. I feel the slightest bit of tension within my muscles, a subtle, almost imperceptible twitch lurking somewhere beneath my flesh.
Unfortunately, the change is so faint that even taking note of it amounts to little more than a heart-wrenching disappointment. This is less “hopeful sign” and more “declaration of the awe-inspiring power I’m up against.”
The resistance makes it feel like I’m struggling to push over some colossal boulder, and every time I press my weight against the object it simply ignores my mass. It’s possible that the slight tremor in my fingertips was a budge of the mighty stone, but what the hell does that matter? A budge won’t cut it.
I close my eyes and lean back, trying my best to settle and relax, but I’m unable to calm my racing brain. A horde of questions keep rearing up and making themselves known, but eventually one curious thought sticks.
Why did he handcuff me if he could just tell me to stay put?
I consider this for a moment, but it doesn’t take me long to arrive at a decent potential answer. It’s because his powers wear off over time.
I open my eyes and sit up, staring at the car horn belowmy fingertips. Once again, I try to force my hands down, and once again, I fail. However, the twitch in my muscles is a little more apparent this time around.
“Holy shit,” I murmur.
I glance at the dashboard clock, noting that it’s been four minutes since Eddie left. I try my best to extrapolate what that will mean for my bodily autonomy moving forward, but the calculation is impossible. I barely understand my paralysis in the present, let alone the future.
The next few minutes are spent focusing all my willpower on pushing down the car horn, with mixed results. To my relief, I actually start to see some real movement, my hand now capable of lowering a few centimeters before drifting back up into its previous position, but every passing moment that I don’t press the horn only increases the likelihood of Eddie’s return.
He said fifteen or twenty minutes, I remind myself as I cross the fifteen-minute threshold.
As if manifested by my own thoughts, I notice a figure emerging from the darkness, my heart skipping a beat as the shape makes its way down the alley. This feeling of alarm is accompanied by a surge of disappointment that my experiment’s been cut short, but seconds later everything shifts again.
The figure walking toward me isn’t Eddie. In fact, he’s not even walking. Instead, I find myself observing a young man on a skateboard, likely around twenty years old. He’s rolling casually over the fractured cement, looking beleaguered after a long night, or maybe a little drunk.
Panic envelops me. I put all the effort I can muster into pressing the horn, my hands trembling as they drop slightly and then lift back up. I can feel the plastic of the steering wheel as it bumps against my fingertips, the pressure starting to build and then disappearing when my motivation fumbles.
The skateboarder is about ten feet away now, but he’s focused on something else. He doesn’t see me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Realizing now that the horn isn’t going to work, I try a different approach. I open my mouth and put all the force of my lungs into calling for him, desperate to produce a sound but coming up short. I can feel my throat just barely starting to tighten, then suddenly it relaxes as the air’s about to make its way out.
The young man is five feet from my bumper now, casually gliding past on his board as concrete hums under the wheels. He’s looking straight ahead, completely unaware of my presence within the darkened truck cab.
As he passes my window I make one last attempt, putting everything I’ve got into a single burst of sound. I don’t even try shaping it into words, just focus on volume and strength, and to my shock this technique finally produces a lone staccato result.
“Yuh!” I grunt, a primal, one-syllable expression that comes out in a strangled huff. It’s mercifully louder than I expected.
The skateboarder’s head immediately turns. He drops one foot to the pavement, grinding to a halt as he squintsinto the truck. I stare directly at him, trying my best to produce a coherent verbalization but coming up short. All the resolve I could muster was expelled with that yelp, and now I’m exhausted.
“Hello?” the young man says, stepping closer to my window.
