Danny 101

There was a loud party at my apartment, and I had gone to my room for some peace and quiet. My friend Sarah followed me into the room to check on me, so I asked her to sit, and conversation ensued.

The topics of conversation are lost in memory, but I can still clearly visualize the change in the air as the discussion continued. The room was dark, lit only by the moon and stars outside my window. As Sarah spoke to me, her voice deepened in pitch and tone, as if a record had been slowed down briefly. She snapped back into the correct pitch, and the discussion continued.

A few minutes passed before it happened again. Shortly after the second occurance, the familiar halo formed around Sarah's head and body. It grew in thickness until it seemed she was immersed in jelly. Her movements became slower, and her voice again deepened. I could no longer understand what she was saying.

The solution to this dilemma was clear, so I immediately willed the jelly toward me, and allowed it to slowly enclose me in a gelatinous membrane. While the rest of the world moved at lightning speed, time, for me, had slowed immeasurably. I moved my hand, and although I could clearly feel all the familiar motor reactions, my hand merely crept before my field of vision, followed by its countless ghosts, moving at an equally patient pace.

I moved my hand again, this time making an effort to wave it in front of my face as quickly as my muscles would allow. I could feel the force of inertia . . . the tension in my arm . . . the air against my skin. Just to be sure, I asked Sarah if she had just seen my hand move quickly. She appeared confused, but gave the appropriate answer in her vastly deepened voice: "Yes . . . uhh . . . why?"

My only answer was a laugh. These mundane questions were for another time... when time itself flowed normally. I had just accomplished the impossible, and right now there was fun to be had. I had willed time to a near stop, and had no idea how long I could make it last.

With this realization, I bolted from my seat on the floor. My bedroom door was closed and approaching quickly, and I had not quite gotten my bearings on this new rate of time. I thought I might crash, but had enough time to analyze the situation, look at the door handle, reach toward it, and twist the knob just as my body reached the obsctruction. The door flew open to reveal a well-lit room filled with people drinking and smoking.

I thought for several moments about this crowd. When they turn, will they see what I see? Will they see me moving at blinding speeds, or at slow speeds... or at normal speed? Do I even like these people? After several moments of pondering these questions, the sound of the door crashing open reached their ears, and eyes began turning in my direction.

Before their eyes had time to focus, I was outside in the cold winter air, taking deep breaths into my lungs. I could feel the cold air as it entered my nostrils, made its way through my trachea, down into my lungs.

It occurred to me that running was a particularly amusing spectacle, as I glanced down at my feet and saw them moving as though I were swimming in molasses - although my basic understanding of physics confirmed that I was running at a normal pace.

This was my most amusing observation yet. No matter how fast I ran, I would still perceive my movement in extreme slow motion. So I ran . . . and I ran faster. I pushed myself harder than I ever had. The faster I ran, the more I pushed, until my feet were gliding over the asphalt like a gazelle, every step a massive leap forward. My feet began to blur, as did the ground, and still I pushed faster. The distance covered by every step was my only reference to my actual speed, and I realized I had probably never run so quickly. Yet I had never moved so slowly. My world was gelatinous and slow, yet I could use the physics around me to determine my speed relative to the speed of normal experience.

As my feet crossed from asphalt into grass, I lifted my eyes from my slow moving feet to survey the landscape ahead. As my eyes lifted, I saw an obstruction in my path. It was a set of monkey bars in the playground for the children of my apartment complex. The children were shorter than me, so the wooden board holding the bars in place was roughly forehead height.

I had plenty of time to analyze the situation. Inertia had not gone away with my slowing of perceptions. I realized that there simply was not enough time to make appropriate adjustments adjustments in order to prevent impact with my skull, so I watched in wonder as the board very slowly approached me in my final step, before being awoken by a horrified Sarah and a laughing roommate. I lifted my head to scan my surroundings and make sense of what had happened, and found myself lying in grass. I touched my head, and my hand came away bloody.

I asked what had happened, and my roommate David explained that everyone was partying, and I had suddenly darted from my room and out the front door so quickly that the only person who had time to see me was him . . . and only because he had been looking at my door at that moment pondering when I would come out to join the party.

I asked how long I had been out, and noticed Sarah's eyes filling with tears. She told me five minutes had passed and that I had just layed there limp while they pushed and yelled at me. They were about to call an ambulance when I finally opened my eyes.

"What the hell were you doing? I've never seen anybody run that fast."

I replied, "But I've never moved so slowly! Watch!" I had realized that time was still under my control. I wanted to demonstrate my new powers, but in the haze of my head trauma, it didn't occur to me that they wouldn't see it.

I took only one step before my head crashed into the very same spot that had knocked me out the first time.

This time they had me awake in only a matter of seconds. They helped me inside, and with a head soaked in fresh blood, I finally joined the party.

Skeletor was finally on the verge of defeating He-Man, and that meant it was time for commercials. Time for the long wait. Typically there were three commercials during each break, but sometimes they would fit as many as four, five, or more in, selling products that I would never care to own. I had watched a documentary about the underhanded psychological techniques used for marketing to children and their stressed out parents, and now I saw through every ploy.

Commercials killed the atmosphere, and stopped the momentum of the show I was watching. They pissed me off. I needed to get away. I needed to stay in the show without being dragged down by marketing. I had to be in the show I was watching.

I was never He-Man or any other character in a show. I was the unseen ninja who took care of the more dangerous enemies before they reached the characters. I worked covertly, without anyone ever noticing, so when the show came back from commercial, it would continue normally.

I was always me, but always in the future, or in a parallell universe. It was obvious to me that an older me of the future or an alternate plane would have explored and mastered the metaphysical realm, and would have powers beyond anyone's understanding. It was common for me to use one of the various psionic powers I could use to control the world around me using nothing but my mind.

I never enjoyed watching many shows . . . but all of my friends had gone. I made them uncomfortable, and I knew it. Everything we had in common had disappeared instantly the moment my sister's body was identified and the police had started their investigation into possible suspects. These aren't comfortable topics of conversation for 13 year old boys. I wasn't interested in their games, and they were uncomfortable. What could we possibly have talked about?

So I spent my time alone. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I practiced meditation, yoga, and martial arts techniques I had learned in books, determined to hone my mind to absolute perfection. I wanted to see into hidden places, and understand everything around me. Other times I went outside and ran around the remote woods and fields of Santa Fe around our house, fighting enemies, and hanging out with people from dimensions beyond our own. When I felt lazy, and was tired of my small collection of VHS tapes, I watched television.

That is how I found myself sitting on the couch, staring helplessly at the television as He-Man's fate hung in the balance, watching ridiculous commercials of children squirting each other incessently with cheap plastic water guns that I, too, could own for just $30 of my parents' money. I was bored with pretending, but I needed an escape.

That thought marked the moment when the walls turned to flame, and the floor crumbled beneath my feet. A deep rumbling sound came from the far corner of the room. As I watched, a massive demonic being stepped into the room and stood in the corner, as if stepping up to a podium. His skin was deep crimson, and his eyes were glowing embers set deep inside his misshapen skull. Just as one would expect, goat-like horns protruded from the sides of his head. A wall of assorted lights flashed colorfully in the background, resembling the set of Wheel of Fortune if it were played in hell. An audience of the damned sat enthralled in raised seats that had suddenly materialized all around us, their pale ghostly bodies writhing in pain, but with eyes glistening at the excitement of what was to come.

To the demon's side, bound in black steel chains, was the most contrasting image possible in this hellish chamber - my sister Tracy, standing strongly, but with sadness in her eyes as she looked down at me. I began to run to her, but was blocked by a wall of flame that burst from the floor.

"Not so fast," the Demon warned, "unless you want me to pull this lever. She'll fall into the abyss, and you'll never see her again."

"Don't believe him, Danny," my sister urged. "He has no power over me. This is an illusion. Don't do what he says."

The demon was quick to bring my attention back to him. "You will do what I say. You have no choice, and you'll know it as soon as I lay out the terms. Play my game, and you might walk away with her. Lose my game, or refuse to play, and this all will disappear, and you will never see either one of us again."

Tracy was shaking her head, pleading with me not to play.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" I asked the demon.

"You don't. I may be lying. But you'll play, because . . . what if I'm telling the truth?"

I looked back at Tracy, helpless to move in her tightly locked confines. It occurred to me that the pain in her eyes was not for her own fate, but for me. She wanted to help me. It wasn't that she had no fear, but that despite her own fear of eternal suffering in an endless abyss, and despite the lack of danger I faced, she was more immediately concerned with the mental anguish I would face if I couldn't save her.

As if reading my thoughts, she nodded. "He won't let you win, and then you'll have to live with the guilt for the rest of your life. You'll have to go back to Mom and Dad and try to act normal, but you'll feel guilty every time they cry for me. You'll spend the rest of your life wondering if you had been just a little bit better, if you could have saved me. Just close your eyes, and when you open them again, this will all be gone."

I couldn't move. I didn't want to move. The demon was right. I would play. That's why he wasn't arguing - he didn't need to. Just for this last bit of time I would spend with my sister, it didn't matter if the game was rigged. I had to try, even if it meant living with the guilt of losing.

I thought of my parents, and of my other sister, and I knew the pain they were feeling. My mind wandered, and I imagined their expressions when they came home to find Tracy sitting in the living room, talking to me. I saw the tears in their eyes, and their mouths moving to speak words that just wouldn't form. I imagined the days following, and the time we would all spend together, feeling no emotions other than joy and relief. I imagined Michael, Tracy's newborn son, back in her arms, smiling without quite knowing why, only that he felt the familiar arms around him, and heard the familiar voice that had talked to him every day since the day she had found out she was pregnant. I had to bring Tracy back to make my family whole again.

"What do you want me to do?" I felt a strange confidence that surprised me. My voice sounded stronger than usual, and it seemed to surprise the demon. It was the confidence of a person who had lost everything that could be taken away. Loss only meant being in the same place I was yesterday.

It was time to begin. The challenge, when he spoke it, felt like a trick. It was oddly simple. He simply told me to make myself a bowl of cereal. I realized I was getting hungry. As I considered what type of cereal I was in the mood for, my sister spoke up, "He didn't tell you it's timed. When the commercials end, this all goes away."

Immediately I sprinted into the kitchen with my sister's voice behind me, "And if you spill anything, you lose!" I found myself with a new determination and focus, moving with a speed and coordination I had never experienced. In the space of a single commercial, I had run into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl from the cubbard, filled the bowl with cereal, poured in a perfect amount of milk, sprinkled on some sugar, grabbed a spoon, and was running back into the room as the commercial faded to black. I leaped completely over the couch with filled bowl of cereal and milk in tow, and never spilled a drop. As He-Man resumed, I was sitting on the couch with a spoon in my mouth.

As Tracy had warned me, the hellish scene faded out as the television show faded in - and with it went my visitors. Tracy was gone. It was no great surprise that the demon had lied, but that did nothing to diminish the pain. I was sure that anyone could be defeated, even a supernatural demonic being. It's simply a matter of finding the right strategy. Despite the stakes, I had failed.

The next day, around the same time, the demon returned, along with Tracy and the entire cast of curious apparitions. I had won the first round, he explained, but the next rounds would get progressively more difficult. I would not know how often, when, or how many trials I have would have to pass before being victorious. Objections to his rules, he told me, would be equivalent to a forfeit.

And so it went. Occasionally I would be in a store, and there he would appear, calling on me to get out of the store without ever taking a step shorter than 3 tile lengths, and without ever taking a diagonal step. When I was walking through the woods he would rise before me in a plume of smoke to challenge me to climb a high tree and reach a precarious point on a distant branch before the last bit of sun disappeared over the horizon.

The rule was quite clear: If I were to ever fail a single task, the game would end. I had to perform every task with speed and precision. One misstep could mean losing my sister forever. It was too much pressure for a boy who was only thirteen years old, but every time I thought the challenge might be too great, I simply remembered the image of my family reunited . . . the looks on everyone's faces when I brought her back with me. I couldn't fail. I didn't fail.

No challenge was too great. I succeeded at every task laid before me. The demon became more and more infuriated, and I found myself running faster, jumping higher, and doing things more efficiently than I ever had. I knew I had defeated him, and so did he.

That was when the demon stopped appearing, and so did my sister.