My Super Secret Life…Potentials-3.

My great thanks to Thera who came up with the greater part of this really interesting character.

………………………………................. *Karma….

My name’s Quinn, Quinn Jackson…yeah that guy…poor me right. I know, I know.

I guess this is how things got started and that was as far back as junior high. I was famous. Q-J…the all star basketball star and even then…It thought I was perfect…I thought I was king of my world. Big and strong…I was even good looking and I’ll admit…I knew I was all those things.

I know, nothing new golden boy falls from grace. It’s far from being a new story. I’m sure those of you remember that I was in a car accident that’s left me paralyzed. That the doctors say I should be able to because of the implants they put in but nothing works, I can’t move.

It’s karma.

See my dad was that dad where I was the apple of his eye, the chip off the old block and had been all of my life. I’m not saying it’s his fault but what happen to a kids mind when nothing’s his fault, and he’s been praised all of his life.

Or sees his dad treat his mother like a slave…and she took it…like a good wife, meek and obedient just like dad said how girls ought to be, how the good book and god says they should be.

And I was a chip off the old block.

Girls wanted me, I was popular, good at sports but great at basketball. I treated the girls that I was with like that. It was rape…really it was with me pushing them down to blow me…or taking them.

“What…they’re going to believe you? Not fucking lightly…you were all over me, you wanted to get all over the money.”

I must have said that to dozens of girls. I must have done that to dozens of girls. There was nothing wrong with that…I mean it was just like dad said. “They’re all whores, all of the Quinn. They spread their legs when they want something.”

So…when I raped Julie…I don’t know her last name…I never gave a fuck when I fucked her and told her the same thing I told all of them.

And she cried, she bawled like every other little whore had. I had just zipped up and left and got in the car with the guys. Greg Patton passed me a beer and I guzzled the first one down then the second only slowing at my third and by then I looked up when I heard Scott. “Who the fuck is that?”

I looked…Julie was there…still barely dressed standing in the snow.

In that way that you remember stuff so clearly when it’s too late. I could see the tears running down her face.

“It’s the whore I was just with, just drive around the bitch.”

Scott went to do that not even slowing down and as we passed Julie he eyes flared blue white and an avalanche of snow exploded like from her hand and I seen it…seen her skin shift to icy pale…it made the blood on her legs stand out even more, her hair to bleached bone white…..the anger, the pain, the hate there.

That avalanche it our car and sent us a full twenty feet off the interdistrict overpass before we crashed down fifty feet below.

I was the only one that lived.

It was karma.

………………………………........I remember it was so black…and there were things that were going bump in the night out there…things crying out as lost as I was, as scared as I was and there were growls, screams, demented laughs and giggling even.

Something would touch me or bump me like a shark…

There are no words to really describe the sheer soul deep terror.

~Good…it is good that ye know this.~

~Who…what…?~

~Both…~

There was light and there was this woman in these hooded robes, like the ones you’d see in bible women but she was glowing golden and had these shimmering blue eyes.

~Who are you?~

~I am your judge Quinn, and you have a stain on your soul……you will not pass.~

She started to dim out…

~No!…No!~

I could feel them coming for me…

~No!…please!…anything!~

She stopped and stared at me, then she looked up like she was praying…she got brighter…Nodded.

“Yes…so mote it be.”

I sort of woke when the medical team yelled “Clear!”

But then it went dark again, but like regular sleep darkness.

I’ll skip over the hospital stuff mostly. I’m paralyzed from the neck down, they have said that I should be recovering but don’t get why. My father freaked out, my mother prayed and was a sobbing wreck for weeks.

Then they stopped coming.

It was slow at first and then just one day they just never showed up anymore. And that really tore me apart and I got really depressed…wanting to die almost depressed…I’m too scared of that though…those things out there waiting.

Depression and paralysis led to sleeping all the time…and sleeping led to nightmares…bad nightmares about things that made no sense.

Then one hit me hard one night with this guy…a drugged up gang type that looked high as a kite and he had the doors barricaded in a room in what looked like a room in the emergency department. There was a nurse trapped in there and he’d already hit her, tore her top and she was so scared…

Then I was there? And he was there and trying to hurt her, to catch her and I tried to stop him but he passed right through me….

I tried to scream at him getting between them to maybe scare him. Like he was scaring her…I could feel how scared out of her mind she was…

Then she stepped into me…

I was like sucked into her and suddenly I could move, I could feel, breathe right…He lunged and I moved…okay basketball, he’s trying to get me…I dodge right, the left then right again and he goes right like I telegraphed what I was doing and he goes for it and I let myself fall…drop to my knees instead and his grab misses me and I haul off and punch him in the balls as hard as I can…I’ve boxed, and wrestled and stuff when I was in school so…the hardest shot I can give him is an uppercut smashing his balls. He makes a sick sound and I punch him out and break his nose and send him flying back.

I stare at my…or rather her little hand for a minute. I’m, she’s five two…maybe ninety pounds and it felt like me when I hit him.

I’m a bit wobbly getting up to my feet band the rest of the staff get into there and I’m staring at myself in the glass of the door.

My eyes…her eyes are glowing a soft golden color like that woman in the robes.

I feel dizzy and stagger but I stagger out of her and I’m there again like a ghost again.

I’m not sure why or how but I staggered through tings and people until I got to my room…I was still there but gently glowing in that same kind of light…It goes away when I fall exhausted into myself.

That first time I thought it was a dream.

The second time…it was a black kid…in trouble with the cops and he had a gun…He was so scared…I stepped into him again almost by accident. Made him drop the gun before they shot and killed him.

The third time was the one that really made me sure of all of this, the thirteen year old kid with the carpet knife scared to death about being pregnant…about her dad…doing it.

I got into her…set down the knife…and had to sit…cry…cry because I felt her…not the girl I was possessing but her little baby…her daughter…life inside of us….things rushed together and a nurse and a cop sat with me…and I could touch her mind…her thoughts and feelings and…and even though I was pushed into remembering that bastard molesting me…I did what she couldn’t…

I talked…

I cried for three days once I was down in my body again. They drugged me, tried to make it better but nothing they did helped….I was crying because I really felt what she was too scared to get out herself.

It really showed me more than anything what I had become…who Quinn had been…who I had been.

I wandered around a ghost in the hospital for about a month helping here and there as I could. Mostly, mostly my powers worked with those overcome by fear…but those really out of it like a drugged up guy raging on PCP…I’ve stepped into them and calmed them or stopped them until the restraints were put on fast.

And once I stepped into a car accident victim in shock and kept him breathing…that was hard so I had to think about breathing, make him do it. Lend him my strength…That’s the thing when I take over, my strength gets added to whatever they have.

…………………………..It was late, dark and I was wandering the halls. If there’s real ghosts here I haven’t seen any here. But tonight I see Daystar…yeah the Ark Angel. Christian Stevens and he’s there in the flesh and huge…seven feet tall three hundred pounds of sculpted muscle…and super model looks mixed in…he’d make greek gods feel inadequate. He’s on my floor dropping off a bunch of boxes of goodies at the nurses station and he takes a drink of a take out coffee cup and he look directly at me.

“Hello Quinn.”

Oh…oh shit, WTF he can see me.

I take off and run.

He doesn’t chase or follow me and after awhile I can smell coffee. I’ve never smelled anything before.

………………..shit he’s in my room.

There’s a blur as I snap back into my body.

I open my eyes and he’s there with that Paki…uhm the Indian Mage lady from Paradise City. I ask scared. “What’s going on?”

He’s in a chair and leans forward. “I came to see the golden angel of St. Mercy Hospital.”

“Huh?”

“They’ve seen you when you’re inside these people…there’s a light.”

“Do they know it’s me?”

“Yes, your body shimmers while you’re gone.”

“But they…they’ve never said anything…never turned me in as a freak…”

“They’re hospital staff…and everything you’ve done and helped with here Quinn…they don’t look gift horses in the mouth here.”

“Oh…”

“I want to offer you a new chance.”

“New chance?”

“You’ve heard of Sanctuary? Of Halo?”

“Yes?”

“We want you to come with us there.”

“Me…why…”

“You still deserve to have a life.”

“But…”

“No…you do…we can help.”

“How? I can’t exactly go anywhere.”

“You can project, use this form.”

“But normal people can’t see me.”

“Parvati?”

The hindu lady comes over with a ring. “This is the ring of Seamus Sole, he was a thief that stole things by astral projection.”

“How?”

“It let’s your spirit form gather ectoplasm to take a form…it’s not really solid, it’s not really strong but it’ll let you be there physically in a way. Will you try it?”

“Uhm…okay.”

She slips it on my finger and I can’t feel it. “Try to push yourself out through the ring and the stone.”

It takes me several tries before I’m outside myself again…I’m this thin featureless grey sexless thing but I have arms, legs, fingers and toes…and I can move them…. “Whoa…and I can…I can use this?” My voice sounds strange soft, and androgynous and slightly muffled like through a mask.

“Yes…and go to classes, be around people that will see you.”

“But why?”

Daystar looks at me and stands and takes my new hand. God that alone after all this time feels so good.

“Because you can help people Quinn, because you’re all alone and that’s just wrong. Because you’re sixteen Quinn, you’re sixteen and you deserve to have another chance, you deserve to have someone to give a shit and not walk away…”

He gives me this look that only a dad can have and that honestly I barely ever seen on my own dad’s face.

I’m crying…I can see my body crying and this form’s shaking… “Please…Please…I’m so tired…I’m too scared….Can I?”

He smiles. “Yes…C’mon lets get started and then we can get you home.”

“Home…”

“Yeah, at my place if you want.”

I look at him again and as much as I can feel fear he gives off truth…caring…no bullshit.

“I’d like that.”