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Jeremy glanced down at his hands, which were hidden beneath the table on his lap. A moment later he closed his eyes. It was happening again.

Tiny beads of sweat popped out of his cheeks and forehead. He could feel the pressure mounding. He wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.

“Please,” he whispered. “Not again.”

He looked around the crowded downtown plaza and panicked.

He saw a familiar-looking man bite into a sandwich, and his mind did a jump shot to his old best friend Patrick, who’d disappeared when he was only ten. He turned and spotted a pair of brightly dressed women chatting at a table, and was instantly transported back to high school, to the girls he’d always wanted to talk to but never had the courage to approach. They too had disappeared.

“Why is this happening?” Jeremy asked, grasping the table with trembling knuckle-white hands. He could feel the power welling up inside, knew that it would burst from him like a firework no matter what he did.

He looked down at his hands again. They’d begun to glow a faint, swampy green.

“Not again,” he moaned. “Please, not again.”

He clamped down harder on the table. His grip was so tight he thought it might snap in two. Then he convulsed. His head whipped back, his stomach clenched and he was certain everything he’d eaten for a year would come back up again. He gasped and shuddered. Shrieked. Brightness filled his vision.

A moment later, all was dark.

*    *    *

The first light to reach Jeremy’s eyes was cracked and broken. He lifted his head mechanically and sat up straight.

When his mind came back online he whirled. He searched his surroundings, already knowing what he would find but hoping this time would be different.

Jeremy was alone.

The tables were empty. There was no sign anyone had ever been there. Silence hovered over the plaza like a thick fog. Tears began to fall from Jeremy’s eyes. He raked a hand through his hair, gazed up at the sky and shouted.


It was the same thing that had happened to Patrick and the girls from high school. They were there. Then his hands started to glow. There was light, then dark, and when he came to they were gone.

The glow was gone now, just as it had gone before. Now, all he could do was wonder how long it would be before it happened again.


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