Chronic Migraine

People say that everyone has problems. Everyone gets sick, experiences sadness or horror in their lives. It's normal, just try and get over it. But what I experience is truly something out of a nightmare. This curse, this power, whatever the hell it is. I don't want it. I just want to be normal. To have a life without these repeated episodes where hell itself erupts forth.

It started years ago, when I was about 15. I think that's when it was, it's hard to remember time during these fits. I was just your average nerd, I watched anime and played Yu-Gi-Oh! in my spare time. I'm sure you know where this is heading in terms of my social life. I was bullied, but it was never anything terribly bad. The occasional wedgie, books being knocked from my hands, etc. I tried to brush it off but every time it happened I felt this...tingling in my head. Like an itch or something.

Then one day I was at my locker, getting ready to go home when a group of jocks walked by. Football players, the big beefy types you just know are on some kinda steroid. They looked pissed too, our team had just lost a big game the day before. They saw me and, I guess wanted to take out their frustration on an easy target. The first thing I felt was a fist hit the back of my head. I slumped foreward in a daze, and I remember other fists hitting me. That tingle in my head showed up, but it got stronger. This pulsing in my head, like a throbbing headache.

It pulsed and pulsed, before a wave rushed over me. Time seemed to stand still, quite literally as I and the jocks were frozen in place. I became suddenly aware of every single thing around me. I could FEEL the position and texture of every object around me. Lockers, books, clothes, the bullies, everything. As I took it all in I found it harder and harder to concentrate with all the stimulation, before I just blacked out.

When I woke up, I was in a scene straight out of a horror movie. The hallway I was in looked much bigger as all the lockers had been flattened against the walls. Tiles on the floor were smashed and cracked, as well as those on the ceiling. So broken I could see the rafters. Then something dripped onto my head. I looked up to find one of the jocks impaled on a broken rafter. I looked around me to see the rest of them in similar fashions. Broken and destroyed, scattered around the hall. I screamed in horror and fled from the school, where police had just arrived. I was taken into custody and sent to a mental ward.

For months they watched me, and to them I seemed a normal kid. They and even I had begun to doubt that somehow I was involved in the killing. I mean, how would I have caused so much damage? I was maybe 5'6 and just over 120 pounds. Nowhere near enough to send someone into the ceiling. After a year they released me and tried to focus their attention elsewhere. The authorities anyway, the families of the jocks and most people who worked at the school still thought I was some kind of monster.

Which helped, in a way. People avoided me so whatever this thing in me is didn't strike again. I graduated high school and went on to go to college. That was all running smoothly until one night I decided to go to a party. Normally I don't go to such things, being the severe introvert I am, but one of my friends was going and said it might be good for me. She had no idea just how wrong that was.

I played the part of the wallflower as you might expect, kicking back and just sipping at a beer. Trying not to draw attention to myself. Then Chuck came staggering in. Chuck was a mountain of a man, pushing 6'6 and easily 300+ pounds of bull linebacker. He must have drank his weight in beer as well, the way he staggered around. He took one look at me, sitting there and talking to a girl and decided in his drunken mind I was some sort of threat. He rushed over as fast as he could, and before I could get very far there was a hand on my head.

The tingle started again as I was slammed head first into a table, followed by a wall. Throughout this punches slammed into my back and sides, the pulsing in my head growing once more. It reached its climax and once again time froze. I felt every single drop of booze in the building. Every nail. Every wood fiber. The junkies down stairs. All these sensations of object assaulted my brain, I felt myself shaking before once again blacking out.

When I woke up, I was in a crater. The frat house I had been in was in ruins, walls scattered and broken, the ceiling having been blown off. Chuck lay before me. Or at least, what may have once been Chuck. Now he was chuck of another sort entirely, and my grey clothes were now a deep crimson. There were other bodies strewn about, but the only fatality was Chuck. Most of them were still knocked out from whatever blast decimated the building, except my friend. She was cowering in some corner, her face stained with tears. When I turned to walk to her she screamed and called me a monster. I started walking home but it wasn't long before I was in cuffs.

My friend did what any person would do and tell the police what she saw, and normally they wouldn't believe her. But the others awoke and told a similar story. While I was being beaten, a flash had gone off around me. Shaking the building to its foundation and sending everyone flying across the room. Then I'd stood, staring at Chuck, as some unseen force ripped him apart and pounded him into the floor. Several minutes after Chuck stopped moving the beating stopped, I'd clutched my head and collapsed. A few minutes later is when I woke up.

The cops didn't want to believe it, but with the testimonies and evidence before them they weren't left much choice. I was hauled off to a mental institution and watched constantly for years. No signs of any such power surfaced, and the doctors were utterly baffled. I was just getting used to the peace there when fate would have it another of these episodes would be sparked.

I'd been given leave to go without being observed, thanks to my spotless behavior. I was trusted. So while I was heading down a hallway to my room from the bathroom I ran into Steve. Steve had some sort of, schizophrenic kind of thing. He would switch between one voice and mindset that was of a polite, quiet librarian and that of a raging psychopath that loved to be violent for the sake of being violent. I had no idea he'd been avoiding his medication, or I'd have specifically avoided him. I waved as I passed, and the only indication that was a mistake was the twisted grin that formed on his face.

My greeting was returned with a series of punches, I was sent to the floor in a heap but he didn't stop. With each strike the throbbing inside my head grew stronger, until once more time froze. But this time, I didn't black out. Not only did I feel every single thing around me, I felt my brain lurch. I watched as a shockwave shot out from my body, and saw the concrete walls crack and shatter around me. The ceilings came down, but were blocked by some unseen force. I felt pressure on the top of my brain, and watched as Steve began to lift up. Pulses and throbs shook through my brain, and with each one a blow was struck against Steve. Powerful strikes, impacts that could never be made by human hands. I saw, and felt, his bones shattering. Organs rupturing. I watched him be flung so hard against a wall it broke and crumbled on top of him.

I felt horrified, realizing I'd just killed a man in such a brutal fashion. I had to get out of here, away from this scene of carnage. I started running, instantly knowing the path out of the building. I could feel every hallway in my mind, though things were starting to get foggy. Guards appeared, drawing their batons to try and stop me. Before I could speak to warn them I felt my brain throb again, and watched each of them be slammed mercilessly against the walls before falling into heaps. I couldn't stay here and feel sorry for them, so I continued running.

I made it out, and into the woods. As I felt all the motion in the trees, and in the grass, and even in the soil beneath my feet it all became too much. My vision swam, and I collapsed. When I woke up, I was in shackles and in a plastic room. I was told the government was interested in whatever my ability was. They wanted to try and tap into it somehow, so they have me writing up my recollection of the events as best I can. I wish I coul forget it all. That none of this happened. That I didn't have whatever this thing is. Though the thought of being able to control it, and having some use instead of being a beaten prisoner for the rest of my life makes something in my head tingle...