He turned back to the apple and tried to shift the focus of his thoughts to mimic how he had felt. He thought about the apple the same way he thought about his arm, or his toes. He wiggled his toes and moved his arm up and down and tried to capture the sort of sensation it gave him to know that these parts of his body were under his control. He looked at the apple and tried to imagine how it would feel for the apple to be part of his body. He commanded the apple, as part of his body, to roll off the stump to the left.
Neil’s eyes tracked the movement immediately.
The apple rolled off the stump. He watched it fall to the ground almost in slow motion.
“YES!” He exclaimed, “FUCK YES, I DID IT!!”
Neil felt the rush of excitement. His heart started beating faster and he got a sudden burst of energy…until he felt the breeze. The damn wind had blown it off. His mood sank almost as quickly as it rose. He picked up a stick, threw it at the can, missed, and sat down on the ground, defeated.
Neil tried for another 20 or 30 minutes in an attempt to make something…anything happen to the apple and the can, but nothing worked. He decided he was tired of wasting his time looking foolish and walked over to the stumps to retrieve his produce, feeling embarrassed.
As Neil was walking towards the apple, he felt a tickling sensation on his cheek and heard a buzzing noise. It took a split second for him to realize that a bug had landed on his face, and a split second longer for him to raise his hand to try to swat it off.
He was too late. He felt the sharp pinch and realized that the bug was a bee, and his cheek was throbbing with pain. His temper immediately flared from the sudden sting. He knew he needed to swat off and kill the damned bee, so that’s what he did. Instead of raising his arm to do it, he reflexively used the other part of his body – the new part of his body that he hadn’t used before – the red spherical part of his body that he sensed had untapped potential that could be used in this very situation to kill a bee.
Before he realized what he was doing, he felt a baseball sized object smack into the side of his face, explode into tiny juicy pieces, and knock him to the ground. He laid in the dirt and leaves, staring up at the sky. He tasted something on the corner of his mouth. It tasted sweet, and then it dawned on him what it was that hit him in the side of the head. He had just killed the bee with an apple.
Superhuman Nature is Brandon Overall’s first novel. It was written and published during his first deployment to Afghanistan as a 2nd Lieutenant in late 2013.
Neil Hitchens was a senior ROTC Cadet in college. He was just weeks away from graduating and becoming an Officer in the United States Army, until a strange dream set off a chain of events that would twist his life into something he could have never prepared for.
In the days following his dream, several strange happenings occurred that he began to suspect were the result of his own actions. Before long, he discovered that he had the ability to control the world around him with his mind.
What started out as an unpredictable ability quickly evolved into an extraordinary power that had the capacity to change the world. It didn’t take long for the government to find out what Neil could do.
They knew having such limitless potential on the side of the US Military could give them limitless political influence, and they would stop at nothing to get Neil to do their bidding. They would find out what happens when you back a dangerous animal into a corner.
Neil spent his whole life believing he would amount to greatness, but he never expected how greatness could corrupt even the most innocent of minds.
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Genre – Science Fiction
Rating – PG-13
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