I woke up with a searing headache, it was as if a thousand mosquitos were sucking the blood out of my brain while tap dancing on the inside of my skull, really painful. It was a good five minutes before I started to regain cognitive thought, looking through the haze of pain I saw that I was in my bedroom, good, that was good. Bedroom was safe, no strange offices, no shapeshifting objects.

And then I remembered my dream and promptly hid under the covers, hoping that the world would leave me alone for a while, and it did. For a time nothing happened, I just lay under my covers and prayed nothing would eat me, after a while I started getting angry with myself. Come on Norman, it was just a dream, nothing to get upset about, now get up and go to school.

School? Shit, what’s the time?

I looked at my clock to see 8:15, fuck I’m late. Did I do my homework? No. Fuck.

I got up and quickly got dressed, my room was a mess. Clothes, socks and underwear lay strewn about everywhere. It was frankly disgusting but what could you do? Oh the problems of a teenager.

I picked up my bag, it probably didn’t even have the text books I’ll need today but it really didn’t matter. I could always copy off someone anyway, I’d usually just put every text book in my bag and carry that around every day but I was supposed to do my homework last night. Which I didn’t and now I’m also late. I’ll also have to go downstairs and have breakfast and why the fuck am I in the kitchen?

I looked around, I really was in the kitchen, yep there was the drawing that I made when I was nine, still looking like a piece of shit. Maybe I blanked out because I was thinking so deep, I snorted at that, yeah right.

I kept on musing about my intellectual capabilities as I opened the fridge and took out the staple for every growing body, Fairy Bread. Stuffing my face, hands and pockets with a few I hefted my backpack and made way for the door, now if only mum wouldn’t notice that-

“Norman? What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

Shit, well, time to own up I guess.

“Sorry mom I just kind of slept in.”

She looked up from the couch in front of the TV and gave me a reprimanding look, “That’s just not good enough, we can’t have you dropping even further in your grades. Did you at least do your homework?”

“Um, yeah.” Filthy liar. “It’s why I got up so late, it was really hard, so um, yeah.”

Nice going idiot, but she seemed to believe me. “Good, I’m glad you’re taking your education a bit more seriously.” She said as she turned back to the morning talk show.

I heaved a silent breath of relief as I rushed out of the house, chest pounding as I ran down the street to the bus station. It wasn’t that far but still far enough to leave me grasping for breath, but it was worth it as I saw the bus turn around the corner just as I made it. I boarded it and sat down, letting myself catch a breather and think about my dream some more. Dreams are supposed to be made from fragments of your memories right? Weaved together by the forces that is your subconscious, well I call bullshit but whatever, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember a guy that I wanted to punch that badly in the face, speaking of which I need to get to school to-

Huh? I was right outside the school building, looking straight up at its clock tower, which read 8:27. What on Earth was going on? I shook my head, focus, you need to get your head in the game, you can’t be daydreaming everywhere you go. So I started walking, barging through the glass door in to the cesspool of hormones that is called the hallway. God I hated school, every time I saw a face trying to fit in, flirt, or not get beaten up I felt like I was seeing toddlers trying to act like grownups. Everyone was so bad at just trying to be normal that I felt like I was the one being abnormal. Like right now, I saw a guy approaching a group of girls, all casual as if he really was there because he was interested in them not just because he wanted to bang, and the girls seemed to be buying it, giggling at his jokes and comments, it made me feel angry.

“Woah there.” A guy said as I accidentally bumped into him.

I looked up to see Simon looking down at me. Ripped, good looking, great guy, Simon, he was one of the kids that everyone seemed to like, you know the ones that get along with everyone really well, the natural leaders, the alpha males, the top dogs. Yeah those guys, and Simon was one of them, I really hated his guts, just because he was everything I was not.

“Oh hey, uh, Nermal? How’s it going?” He smiled at me vaguely. Yah I definitely hated his guts.

Luckily for me, the bell chose that moment to ring, signaling time for homeroom. And as I went off to class I spotted her.

Walking down the hall with her friends, was Sophia. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful as her, with her butter blonde hair and doe like eyes, she was perfection incarnate to me. I never had a crush on anyone else ever since I laid my eyes on her in 1st grade, looking like a lovely porcelain doll in the corner while discussing why ladybugs were so cute, she captured my heart in that very moment. I never talked with her of course, but I would walk on hot coals if she asked me.

And then my mood was ruined as Simon walked up next to her and grabbed her hand. Sigh, such is the fate of the unworthy.

I made my way to my chair and sat down before taking a book out and immersing myself in the latest adventures of Captain Skipp and his motley crew of pirates. It was a piece of shit that I’ve finished reading a year ago but I kept it in my bag to pretend I’m busy and no one would approach me, it worked, unsurprisingly.

“Alright let’s do the roll!” Called my teacher, I already forgot her name but I doubted she knew I existed and that made me have a great deal of respect for her.

It was soon over and I made it through the first round without incident, but up next was physics and I just knew something horrible was going to happen. And I was right, first thing our Miss Pond made us to do was take out our homework, the one I didn’t bother to do. The fact that I remembered her name should give you a sense of how much I despised her. It wasn’t her teaching, she was actually quite good at that part, it was the fact that she always set homework and she would always check. Now that caused quite a few problems early on in the year when she discovered I didn’t really do mine, and now she always made extra sure that I did it. I appreciated the sentiment but I still didn’t do it, which led to more issues, which led to every class feeling like a warzone with her.

Commander! The T3AcH is starting to move in on us!

Men, ready the guns. Give her everything she’s got.

It’s not working sir. None of the other stuedents are even distracting her!

Fine, initiate turtle mode, I want all limbs withdrawn under the desk, head down and start taking interest at the first thing the ocular lenses detect.

No success sir, she’s right above us!

“Norman? Would you like to show me your homework?”

Well, it’s been an honor serving with you gentlemen, abandon ship!

“Norman?”

I sighed, could she just, for this one instance, stop? I really didn’t want to deal with this. I just wanted this moment before another person in my life realized I was a disappointment to continue for eternity. I wish that all the rebuke and abuse from my teacher and my family as they’d be called in again to talk with the principal would never come. Just this one time, please.

I looked up to see her staring back at me unblinkingly, so I just sighed again and said. “No miss, I didn’t do my homework.”

I waited for it, it never came, slowly looking back up I saw her still staring at me, unblinking.

“Uh… Miss Pond?”

No answer.

I look around only to realize everyone else is staring at me as well. Okay this was some real horror story shit.

I look nervously around again before slowly and deliberately standing up. No one followed the movement. Ever so cautiously I tip toed over to the door, checking all the while that no one was following me. I open the thing a crack. No notice. I pulled it open ever so quietly, slipped outside in to the hallway, then fucking legged it.

I was at the end of the hall before I saw the next statue. A boy, small kid, completely still as he seemed to balance on the heel of his foot while defying the laws of physics.

I slowed in wonderment but kept going before arriving at the next scene. It was a teacher this time, scolding another kid for not being in class. She seemed to be waggling her finger at him, except they weren’t waggling, they stood there like sausages. Just what the fuck was going on?

I burst out of the school and on to the street. People were paused midstep, some eating, others talking, birds levitating in the sky, it was truly fucked.

I sat down on the steps of the school and thought hard, I cried a little as well but I managed to keep myself focused. What in the world was going on? Was I dead? Or insane?

Then it hit me like a firetruck, like a big, red firetruck blazing down the highway with a megaphone saying ‘Outta the way faggot!”. The dream, the dude, the survey, the bloody super power question.

I groaned in to my hands. You’d have thought I’d be happy, ecstatic even, that I might have just acquired super powers and you would be right, yay me. But the fact that I had the chance to pick Immortality right? That’s with a capital I, and I wasted it, it made me want to bash my head against the wall and jam toothpicks under my nails.

But as I looked around again, at the people getting on with their lives, it finally sunk in. I had superpowers! Real ones! This was the best thing that could have happened to me since getting my own computer.

I danced around a bit at the sheer joy of it before heading back inside. I went back to my classroom and looked around at everyone, now that I examined my classmates faces properly I saw that most of them had expressions of malicious amusement, which made sense I guess but they’ll get what’s coming for them. I slowly went around and examined everyone’s homework, taking care to pay attention to the smart kids’ answers, before walking back to grab my book and writing down what should have been the correct answers based on the number of students that reached the same conclusion.

I sat down with a smug expression on my face, waiting for the teacher to check my answers. Oh, how do I stop this dimension thing? Wait what did I even do? Did I stop time?

Answers to questions that would need many hours of testing and pondering to figure out, which I couldn’t be bothered with, I just needed to figure out how to cancel whatever it was. Maybe if I thought really hard?

It seemed to work, Miss Pond started blinking again and the world resumed it. “Norman?” she asked again.

I grinned before showing her my homework, needless to say she was surprised. Giving it a thorough perusal she looked at me and gave me the warmest smile I’ve ever seen her give. “Well done Norman.”

Ooh that felt good. But not as good as seeing the others’ faces, most were surprised, some were outright stupefied and a few were still smirking as if they thought I was still going to get in trouble for some reason.

Heh, Norman one, stupid fuckers zero.