A/N: Hey everyone. I stared writing this series of one-shots because I've always wondered about the other mutants out there. The ones who don't leave home and don't join a vigilante group. You know, how they see the world, how there mutations affect their lives. And that's how the change of perspective series was born. Please note that these are not OC stories. The characters won't be in more than one shot and they won't join the X-Men. They are just meant to be the vessels through which we look at their worlds. Our first subject is a teenage boy, working a job over his summer vacation. So now that you know how this deal's going down, enjoy.
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Welcome to Four Pines Country Club: Where Bigotry and Racism run wild. Okay, so that's not our real motto here, but it should be. Seriously, if you ever want a degrading job, come work for a CC. It blows. Trust me, I know. Caddies don't exactly get a lot of respect around her. You should also apply for a job at a country club if you have a passion for doing physical labor for rich, pompous, balding, fat guys who have nothing better to do than count their millions and golf every…damn…day!
I'm not employed here by choice, as you can probably tell. No, I'm here for her. Who is she, you're probably wondering. Well, she is 22lbs of beautifully sculpted, fire engine red, hand-painted titanium. She is a 42cc, 2 stroke engine capable of reaching speeds of up to 30 mph. She is the motorized dream of every 13 year old I know. She is the XC505GT2 Tornado Motorized Scooter. And for too long has she been displayed in that window of the bike shop on Parkway Drive, just sitting there and taunting me. So one day I decided I had to make her mine. I had to become $600 dollars richer, I had to be proactive. I had to get a job. Hence how I ended up here.
Ah, the things I do for Wanda (for that will be my scooter's name, once I make her my own).
Want to ever experience real anger? Try standing there, lugging around a hundred pounds of expensive titanium for a man, only to hear him rambling on about how much better off the world would be if you got sucked back into the evolutionary pit that created you. See, cause next to homosexuals, and illegal immigrants, Mr. Hoffernan's (the slime-ball that requests me as caddy every time he golf's) favorite minority group to bitch about are mutants. I have, on many occasions, fought down the urge to hit him with a golf cart while his back is turned. Or steal the hood ornament off of his Mercedes.
One or the other.
Oh yeah, I just enjoy feeling really degrading. And the money's not even that good, but it's better than having no job at all. I wonder, sometimes, about what might happen if this Mutant Registration Act passes. What the people at work might say if they ever learned that, for all this time, their latest minority target was sitting right under their noses. Cleaning their clubs for them, listening to everything they said. Sullying the good name of their exclusive, three martini a day, lick my boots for me, club. I figure that moment would be pretty amusing; a real shot for the little guy, you know?
Personally, I don't get the whole 'country club' deal. Why it's better to let some people join and not others. But I'm a fairly open minded person, see. I have to be. My aunt is African American, and I have two bi-racial cousins from that branch of the family. They live up in New York, where my Uncle writes. That's my Dad's side. On my Mom's side, I have a homosexual second cousin. In fact, I attended his and his partner's 'bonding ceremony' last fall. So, like I said, I have a pretty open minded view of the world. Life's too short to worry about stuff like that, I figure.
So maybe that's why, to me, being a mutant isn't that big of deal. I guess most people don't share my easy going view of the situation, though. Especially around this joint. The most gratifying thing about my job, the one thing that makes it bearable, is that I have dirt on almost everyone here. For example, I know that Mr. Hoffernan's three iron has been at the bottom of the water hazard on 11 several times during it's ownership. I know that Burgess's dropped his wallet when he was visiting his 'other woman' three days ago, the same way he dropped it outside the Pro Shop yesterday. You can see where I'm going with this. Like I said, there are some very lucrative advantages.
My gift, if you will, is…well, pretty stupid, and fairly lame. But I get a kick out of it. What happens is when I touch something, any inanimate object, I cam see it's history inside my head. I can see where the object's been, who it's been handled by, when it was made. Stuff like that. There's no big flash. I don't go into convulsions or anything when it happens. The knowledge is just there like a file stored in my brain. A file full of images and smells and sounds, but a file none the less.
It first started happening when I was younger. Nine, maybe ten years old. At first it was random, happening once and a while, out of the blue. Now it happens constantly. Yeah, that's right. I get data from everything I touch, and trust me, that gets pretty old after a while. Most times now I don't bother to even mentally access the information I acquire. That's one recent development that I'm thankful for. Not so long ago I had to mentally process every bit of data I got, whether or not I wanted to. Now I can just unconsciously store most of the useless details.
And access only the stuff that's good for blackmail :)
I worry sometimes about what might happen in the future, to us, the mutant population. It's weird thinking that, the mutant population. See, cause while I know there are others out there, like me, I've never actually met one. It's kinda daunting sometimes, the isolation. But most times it's the furthest thing from my mind. I don't like to focus on the negative much. My glass is usually half-full.
Except on days like today.
"Okay, Hoffernan's foursome: Hoff, Burgess, Williamson Jr., and Polluck. Teeing off at 8:04. Chase caddies: Rick, Alex, and Eddie."
Shit, why me? Does that man enjoy making my life a living nightmare? Is he just that evil?
"Eddie, did you hear me?"
'No, I've gone spontaneously deaf. Get someone else to run around after that cheap bastard,' I say inside my head. But my real response is,
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going." I pull my ass up and jog off after Rick and Alex. 'It's all for her,' I remind myself as I round the Pro Shop and spy Hoff, smoking a stogie and scratching his Jello-jiggler butt. 'All for the bike. Plus if Hoff drops of another cheap tab, his wife just might learn of last week's little strip club incident…'
Yeah, being 'gifted' defiantly has its perks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A/N: There, now tell me what you think by hitting that little purple button down there. I don't mind flames (just no death threats please) but please leave a review cause if I don't know what you guys think, then I won't know how to continue. Push the button!!