My name is Richard Maddox, and I live in a world of superheroes. A world where people in masks rob banks and people in costumes stop them. A world where anybody, even your own family members, might actually have the power to soar through the skies like the proverbial Icarus, throw a bus twenty meters as if it was a toy, or run across the city in under a minute without breaking a sweat. A world where anyone could be a hero in disguise. Or a villain, for that matter.

This is the world I live in, and amongst all these people with these amazing, physics-defying and mind-blowing abilities, I — Richard Maddox — am utterly and decidedly average. I don't have special powers. I don't have enormous wealth and the accompanying little bat-cave filled with crime-fighting gadgets, nor do I have a sad backstory of how my family died in front of me. No, my family are as healthy as fiddles and — as far as I am aware — none of them have any hidden powers or are secretly the descendant of some ancient line of powerful knights that are half-dragon, half-man.

Oh, that last one? I didn't make that one up; a guy like that really does exist. He's called Dragon Knight. Imaginative, I know.. But his powers are nothing to scoff at and from what I've seen of him in the news, he seems to be a pretty cool guy.

Anyways, as I said, I'm completely average. In this world of heroes and villains, I'm just another regular human. Just another bystander, standing on the side-lines watching the heroes as they duke it out with the villains. Not that I've seen much such fights with my own eyes. Despite what one might think, they're relatively rare. Most people can count themselves lucky — or unlucky, depending on how you view it — if they see more than a couple of them a year.

Currently, I'm seventeen years old and my life is about as uneventful as you might expect for a boy my age. I wake up in the morning, eat breakfast with my family, go to school, get told off for sleeping in class, go home and study up on whatever I missed whilst sleeping at school, have dinner with my family, before going to sleep early in the evening dreading having to wake up in the morning. Rinse, repeat.

Ok, maybe my life is a bit less eventful than that of your ordinary teenage boy. It can essentially be boiled down to sleep, school, sleep. Not that I have much choice. I've always had trouble sleeping at night. Add on to that the fact that I have a tendency to sleepwalk, finding myself in different rooms the all the time, and you've got yourself the recipe for one tired teenager, using all his spare time just to keep up at school.

Not that my lack of leisure time matters much to me. Except for the occasional visit to my therapist, I don't have much to do during my time off. In fact; I don't have even have any friends. At all.

For as long as I can remember, other kids have avoided me like the plague. It's partly because I sleep 80% of the time, but I think it's also because they just think I'm weird. I've heard all kinds of rumors spread about me over the years. Everything from me being mentally retarded to things like me thinking I can see ghosts. I think the best one I've heard was one about me secretly being a superhero who fought for justice during the night and slept during the day. I only wish that was true...

Of course, the fact that I generally try and avoid other people and move to another town every other year probably doesn't help to discourage any of the rumors going around about me.

Right. Another thing about me.

I move a lot. At the moment I've lived in seven different places in my life. Wanna know why?

I have my own stalker.

That's right. I, Richard Maddox, loner extraordinaire, have my very own stalker. I have no idea who he is or why he keeps following me. All I know is that he won't stop. The first time I saw him was when I was six years old. Back then he tried to convince me into following him god-knows-where and when I refused, he got irritated and tried forcibly taking me away.

Luckily, I managed to escape and ran home to my parents bawling. The police got involved but they never found the guy. my parents tried staying with me as much as they could, but the stalker kept showing up at times when they were looking away or when I was left alone with other kids. No matter how many times my parents reported it to the police they never caught the guy. Eventually, people began thinking that I was making it all up for the attention and everybody stopped caring. Everybody, except my parents. They never doubted me.

As a consequence of this stalker's — who I aptly named Mr. Stalker in my head — stalking, my parents decided that we'd move, hoping that Mr- Stalker wouldn't be able to find me. And it worked.

At first.

After two years, however, he found me again the same events got repeated. And this is how it's been for the last eleven years. We move to a new place, stay there for a year or two before Mr. Stalker finds me, and then we move again.

This is why I love my parents. No matter how many times people call me a liar or how much it costs, they've never stopped believing in and supporting me. That's also why I sometimes hate myself so much. My family keeps sacrificing so much for me and I can't do anything but bring them more trouble. I can't even make it up to them by being a son they can be proud of because, as I said, I'm just so god-damned average.

To be honest, I might not even be average. I'm not that smart, I'm not that athletic, and I'm sure as hell not social by any definition of the word. All I do is drain my parent's bank account and force them to endure the endless calls from my teachers about my "misconduct" during class.

Please...As if half the class doesn't fall asleep during Mrs. Rickshaw's classes.

But that's beside the point. Right now, we've been living in the same place for almost a year without any signs of Mr. Stalker. He's found me after about one year before, but I've got a good feeling this time. I don't think I'll be seeing him for a while. We were extra careful the last time we moved. Who knows, maybe this time I'll even be rid of him for good?

I woke up this morning feeling the same as I do every morning. Tired as heck. I always set my alarm thirty minutes earlier than needed, because I know I need the extra time to get myself up from the bed.

As usual, the first thing I saw when I woke up was the Batman poster above my computer on the opposite side of the room. I'm not a huge Batman fan, but I enjoy the thought of a normal person being on the same level as the superpowered heroes, so Batman has always struck a chord within me that other comic book heroes haven't. Not that Batman can be considered a normal person by any means...but he's close enough.

The rest of my room is nothing special. There are a few drawers, a large rug in the middle of the room, and a large wardrobe next to my computer. Not much else. It's spacious though. At least double the size of my teenagers' rooms, I'd wager. That's what you get when your house is so large that you'd probably get away with calling it a small mansion.

Did I forget to mention that my parents are loaded? Yeah? Well, how else could we afford to move to another place every other year or so?

Both my mom and dad used to be inventors that created all sorts of stuff, both for the government and different superheroes. They mostly retired when they had me, but with the amount of money that they earned — and keep on earning from some of their inventions — they'll be able to live a very comfortable lifestyle for a long while.

Yet another reason why my genius parents should be disappointed in their failure of a son.

Keeping to my usual morning routine, I grabbed my clothes, turned off the computer that sometimes gets turned on during my nightly "walks", packed my things for the day, and turned off the lights as I left the room.

A quick visit to the bathroom later I headed towards the kitchen on the first floor. My and my sister's rooms are both on the third floor of the house, so on the way, I passed the second floor and checked in on the library real quick to make sure I hadn't knocked down any shelves or books during the night.

My room might be large, but it was nothing compared to the library. Large enough that if you put in some walls, beds, and a kitchen, you'd have a new apartment, the library is filled with literally thousands of books and more red-leathered sofas than any room has the right to in my opinion.

I've never understood why, but every time we've moved my dad has always made sure that we bring all our books and have a large enough library to hold even more of them. You'd think that — with the number of books we had here — my parents were avid book readers, but you couldn't be farther from the truth. My parents barely read any books at all, and when they do it's only a book about engineering or a similar subject. In our library, however, we have books covering all matters of subjects. From things like psychology, philosophy, religion, and history, to subjects like programming, physics, and biology. Hell, there are even a few books about phenology and a hundred other subjects you've never heard of.

Thing is, when I was a kid, I apparently loved reading and would read literally whatever you put in front of me. I can't remember much of those times and nowadays I don't read many books at all, but my parents seem to think that I still love books even though I've repeatedly told them the opposite. I suspect that my parents secretly hope that I'm some dormant genius or something and that my love for books will eventually resurface — hence why they keep the library.

Or it could just be that my parents want to seem cultured. I wouldn't put it past them.

Seeing that everything was in order in the library, I nodded my head and continued down the stairs towards the kitchen on the first floor. Mom was already sitting at the table reading a newspaper while Dad stood in front of the stove cooking something. From the smell, it seemed like eggs and...bacon?

Nice.

Although short, with her dark hair and angular reading glasses, my mom looked like a serious woman in her late forties on the outside. Fully focused on whatever she was reading she failed to notice me sitting down in front of her and picking up my spoon. Putting the spoon on top of her newspaper, I promptly pulled the paper down in front of her face.

"Morning, mom," I said with a grin.

Without looking up for even a second and showing no signs of being startled she reached for her cup of coffee while she kept on reading.

"Morning honey. Sleep well?" She took a sip from her cup and glanced up at me. My grin turned into a pout.

I swear. If she were to have a staring contest versus an emotionless robot, there is no doubt in my mind that my mom would win nine times out of ten. The tenth time she'd probably just be too focused to bother noticing her opponent.

A deep chuckling sounded out from the kitchen. "You should know better son. It'll require a lot more than that to surprise your mother."

My dad listened in to us in the kitchen, performing his best Gordon Ramsay imitation at cutting an onion. Disregarding age, my dad was basically the exact opposite of my mom when it came to looks. Long and bulky with short, blonde hair, 90% of the time you looked at him he was bound to have a bright smile plastered all over his face.

"You took the words right out of my mouth dad," I said, getting up from my chair and walking into the kitchen to gather some eggs and bacon on a plate. "As for how I slept...Well, I didn't wake up to find myself in the kitchen or any other room at least. Still dead tired, though." Placing the plate on the kitchen table, I sat down in front of my mom again and started ripping into the juicy breakfast.

"Honey..." She'd stopped reading the newspaper and was now looking right at me. Apparently, she'd decided to drop the robot act because her expression was now full of motherly concern. "You've talked about your sleeping problems with that new therapist of yours, haven't you? How's that going?"

"I brought it up at the last session, but we didn't really have much time then so we were going to talk more about it today," I answered, mouth full with bacon.

"That's good. I know you haven't had many sessions with her yet so it might be hard to tell, but what do you think about her? Do you think she'll be of help to you?" His mom asked.

"We wouldn't want to waste any money, after all." His dad cut into from the kitchen, chuckling to himself.

"I know nothing about psychology so my opinion isn't worth much, but I think she knows her stuff. And when I talk with her, it almost feels like she can tell what I'm thinking just from watching my face. I have no idea if she'll be able to help, but I'm willing to give it a shot."

My parents merely nodded to what I said before we switched to other subjects, such as what the news was talking about and what everybody's day looked like. After a while, Hayley — my younger sister by two years —joined us just as I about to finish and leave for school and began talking about basketball and whatever else interested her these days.

As I put on my shoes in the hallway and opened the door outside I heard — and ignored — Hayley's remark about "staying awake during class" and mom's subsequent scolding for "teasing her older brother".

The school wasn't too far away from where we lived. With my bike, I could get there in under fifteen minutes if I really wanted to. But I liked taking it slow, so I often chose to take what I called the 'scenic' route. In reality, it wasn't much more beautiful or scenic than the normal route, but it had no hills or slopes, and even though it took almost ten minutes longer, I actually preferred it that way because it allowed me to relax and think about stuff.

And I got to avoid tiring myself out. I just hate hills. And slopes. Especially on the way to school. But can you really blame me? I mean, who in their right mind would ever want to come to school all sweaty and tired? I get enough weird looks as it is — I don't want to add any more fuel to that fire.

When I reached school, I locked my bike and grabbed my things from my locker before making my way to the first class of the day, which just happened to be history with Mrs. Rickshaw.

Unsurprisingly I fell asleep almost as soon as she started talking. She must have tried waking me up at least six times before she just gave up. The rest of the school day continued in a similar uneventful manner until we were finally released a bit after three in the afternoon.

The session with my therapist was scheduled at four AM so I only barely had time to ride back home and have a bite to eat before I had to run out again to my therapist's house.

As far as I knew, she had all her patients in her own home where she'd refurbished her living room for the sessions. The room was just like those you see in movies where characters lie on a couch as they talk to therapists. Not that I've ever lain down when we've had our sessions. To me that just felt weird, so she'd bought an armchair for me to sit in. She even told me that she bought it just for me. Talk about dedication to your patient...Not that I mind it.

I made it to her house just in time and went up to the front door. Instead of ringing the doorbell and waiting for her to open the door, I took out a pair of keys from my backpack and unlocked the door. She'd given me my own key to her house and encouraged me to use it whenever I visited. She claimed that she couldn't be bothered to open the door herself all the time. To me, that sounds like a poor reason to give one of your patients a key to your own home, but I've never really felt like questioning her about it. If she wants to risk having her place robbed, then that's her business. Besides, it's not like I would ever abuse her trust in me anyway.

After locking the door behind me I promptly made my way to the living room. Her house wasn't that large. Except for the living room, there was only a kitchen, a couple of bathrooms, and two other rooms that I assume were her bedroom and office. Most of the time I'd spent here had been in the patient/living room.

As I entered the room I saw her sitting on the couch with her legs crossed and a book in her hands.

Eleanor Banks was probably one of the most beautiful women I knew. I could see her becoming a model if she wanted to. She was tall and exuded a proud demeanor even as she was doing something as simple as reading a book. She had her blonde hair tied up in a bun and a pair of glasses that — even though I knew that was it was a logical fallacy — made it feel like, wherever she was, she'd always be the most intelligent person in the room.

She noticed me as I moved over to the armchair she'd bought and put down her book next to a notebook on the table in front of her. A quick glance at the book told me its title. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by R. D. Laing. I'd never read the book — things like that were way out of my league — but I think I recognized it as one of the books we had in the psychology section in my family's library. Guess it must be a pretty famous book.

"Rick, welcome. How are you today?" Eleanor asked as she picked up the notebook along with a pen. I'm not sure why she had a notebook. She'd never used it before, at least not for real. She seemed to do fine without writing things down.

Letting that thought go, I sat down in the chair — awkwardly putting my hands on my legs. "I'm fine, thanks," I said.

"Fine? Does that mean that your sleeping issues have resolved themselves between now and our previous session? You are not as tired anymore?" She asked.

"I...I meant I'm fine — relatively speaking. You know, for me at least. I'm not worse than before. I still can't sleep though..."

She smiled and rolled the pen around in her hand a few times. "I know what you meant Rick. And it's not surprising that you still cannot sleep. Matters like yours do not resolve themselves that easily, else I wouldn't have a job. Now..." She leaned forward and looked into my eyes. "Let's start our session. There are several things to discuss today, and some of them are rather important. But let us start with where we finished off in our last session." She turned a few sides in her notebook and looked down as if she was reading something off it. I — of course — knew she wasn't, and whatever page she was staring at was completely empty. Despite this I said nothing, letting her keep up the act. I liked it when she did things like this — small acts that to any outsider might make her seem less proficient, or rather, gifted, than she really was.

Of course, the only reason I knew this was because I'd looked through her notebook during an earlier session when she was out of the room. I had wanted to see what she wrote about me but had been rather shocked when I realized she didn't write anything at all.

"I believe we talked about school and your tendency to close yourself from others and be a loner. If I recall correctly, I also encouraged you to try and talk to some of your fellow classmates; strike up a conversation about homework, or see if they shared similar interests as you." She looked up at him. "How did that go?"

I turned in my chair. I swear, I had planned to try and talk with some of my classmates these past few days. It's just that, whenever I tried joining in on conversations the topics had always changed to things I knew or cared nothing about. If you ask me, it was a sign from whatever god there was up there that I should stick to what I knew — and what I knew was being a loner.

Eleanor gave me a scrutinizing look, then sighed. "You don't have to say anything. Your countenance tells me more than enough. But Rick, you have to understand that if I am to help you, I can't be the one who does all the work. You must also put in some effort, otherwise, the situation will remain stagnant. You told me yourself before that you wished to become more sociable."

I felt my cheeks warm up a bit. "I know, I know. I swear that I'll try again. And this time I won't chicken out." I said. That ought to convince her.

"It is not that I do not trust you Rick, but perhaps it was a bit premature to ask something like that of you so soon after we started having our sessions. It might be wise to start with something simpler, like approaching and conversing with a single person." She looked down at her fake notes again before looking back up at me.

"In an earlier session, you mentioned that there was another person in your class who was often by herself. A Jennifer Burch. Was she one of the people you had tried approaching?" She asked.

I flinched. Jennifer Burch. The Einstein of our class. The girl who did nothing else but sit at the back of the classroom and study by herself, getting a perfect score on every quiz and every test.

Despite how perfect she was, she was an even bigger loner than me. I never even dared approaching someone like her. Not because I disliked her, but because I felt like I'd just annoy her.

"Well, no. Not really..." Why'd I have to flinch! She'd bound to have noticed that, and with Eleanor, flinching was equivalent to taking a ladder up to the roof and yelling out your thoughts with a giant megaphone.

A small smile formed at the edges of Eleanor's lips. "Well, from what I've seen you seem to have an interest in this girl. And from your descriptions, it appears that both of you are recluses of a kind. I believe she makes for a prime candidate for a first friend. And if not a friend, at the very least a conversational partner. I expect you to have attempted approaching her and starting up a conversation before our next session together. What is important is not the result, but that you have tried."

'Wait, shouldn't I get a say in this? We're talking about my life after all.' That's what first went through my mind, but then I saw the expression on Eleanor's face. In her mind we'd already moved on to the next topic, there was no arguing with her here. Well, maybe trying to become friends with Jennifer wasn't such a bad idea...

Eleanor met my gaze. "I know what you are thinking. If you feel uncomfortable with it, then you do not have to go through with it. But it might give good progress and more material to go over during the next session." She said.

Taking my silence as a sign of compliance, Eleanor turned another page in her notebook. "Now then, having resolved that matter, let us move on to more unpleasant matters..." Her voice took on a more considerate tone. "As you are aware, I have been corresponding with your parents about you over...email." She spoke the last word slowly — like it was foreign to her and she was afraid that she'd mispronounce it.

That was due to another odd little trait of hers that I'd noticed. You see, despite her intelligence, she had one glaring flaw. She was utterly and completely incapable of using or understanding any kind of machine or technology more advanced than a toaster. And that's not an exaggeration. I once tried showing her how to use my phone and she could barely get past the swipe-lock on it. Her inability to grasp how even the simplest pieces of technology worked was so unimaginably ridiculous that I sometimes believed she was faking it. God knows why anyone would do that though.

As for how she's been e-mailing with my parents; she said she had an acquaintance of hers that helped her out with things like that.

Eleanor continued. "In some of our latest conversations, we touched upon the topic of your childhood — and some details came up which you have neglected to tell me."

I gulped. I knew where this was leading.

She took off her glasses and stared straight into my eyes, sending shivers down my spine, and up again just for good measure.

"Rick. Why did you never tell me that you used to have superpowers?"