Trigger Warnings: Child abuse/neglect, gratuitous Tony Robbins quotes
This story was inspired by discussions had on a discord server that I frequent. Special thanks goes out to my friend Elsh, who runs the server and has driven some pretty awesome discussion about Clem in particular. If the reader is interested in learning more about Clem's character, I strongly suggest watching his favorite film, Better Off Dead, which is free on youtube!
Huh.
Hmm.
Normally, when Clem turned the knob of his front door, the door would open with a loud creaking sound that always annoyed his dad. Today, however, the knob stopped about halfway, and the door remained shut. That was strange. Perhaps he was doing it wrong. Doing things wrong was something that came pretty easily to Clem. He turned the knob the other way experimentally and was met with the exact same outcome. The door must be locked, he concluded. He let out a chuckle that bordered on despairing. Brilliant deduction there, Sherlock.
So. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon, the time that he usually returned home from school and somebody- either his mom or his dad- had locked the front door, thus denying him access to the ramshackle townhouse that he called home. A glance behind him revealed that the family car, a dented gray station wagon, was still parallel parked in front of the sidewalk. He turned his head back and peeked at the front window. The curtains were drawn, but he could still see that the living room light was on. At least one of his parents must be home right now; there was no way that either of them would risk running up the electric bill by leaving a light on, considering how quick they were to chastise him for doing just that.
Clem curled his hand into a fist and raised it. He paused, letting it hover uselessly over the peeling white wood, before putting it back down at his side. "Open Sesame," he said, in his deepest, most-serious sounding voice.
The door didn't budge.
Must be the wrong password. Clem sighed, supposing that his only remaining option was to knock on his own door and hope that somebody let him in. This action could result in him being allowed to enter his house, but it would also force one of his parents to acknowledge his existence, something that often did not end well for him. Steeling himself, he rapped his fist on the door three times, hard enough so that whoever was in the living room could hear it.
A minute passed. Then another. No answer. Clem looked down at his feet. The mat beneath them read 'WELCOME' in faded black letters. In books, many households kept spare keys under mats like this one. Doing something like that in Gary, Indiana was just asking to be robbed. He didn't have a set of house keys, of course, because his father hadn't wanted to waste money on something that he'd probably just end up losing. "You'd lose your own head if it wasn't attached to that damn giraffe neck of yours, boy," was something that Dad was fond of saying.
More time passed. Should he knock again? No, no, that would be a bad idea; he'd been pretty loud the first time. Doing it a second time might result in him being scolded for his impatience by whoever came to let him in. For all he knew, his mom or dad might be on their way to unlock the door at this very moment!
Or they could be ignoring him on purpose. Clem shouldered off the thread-bare gym bag that served as his backpack and sat down on the stoop, setting his heavy bag down next to him. Of the two possibilities, he thought it more likely that it was the latter rather than the former that was the case. He sat down anyway, his elbow on his knee and face against the palm of his hand, and waited a little longer. It wasn't like he had anything else to do.
He waited what felt like an hour before setting off down the street. The fact that nobody had let him in wasn't very surprising- part of him had known that he wouldn't be sleeping in his bed tonight the second he had discovered the door locked. He could just sleep on the welcome mat, he supposed, but the idea of spending the night curled up in front of his house like an unwanted dog made him want to throw himself in front of a moving car. So he had grabbed his bag and left to go find some other place to curl up.
He wasn't having much luck. Being alone and out in the open in a populated area was unwise, so he had fled from the sounds of traffic and pedestrians, eventually finding himself in a section of the city that was completely deserted. The street, though relatively close to where he lived, was unfamiliar to Clem, a place abandoned long ago by the people and businesses that used to inhabit it. Here, the only beings keeping him company were a flock of pigeons flying overhead, their wings thumping as they flapped, their grey feathers blending into equally grey buildings.
He could smell rot and damp whenever he inhaled through his nose. Years of accumulated garbage, blown in from other parts of town, were piled in the alleyways and street corners, providing nesting materials for the rats and the rats with wings. The crumbling accelerated the further Clem ventured down the block, the buildings becoming more skeletal and hollow. Most of the windows were boarded up, and the ones that weren't were cracked, one thrown pebble away from being shattered. He wondered if it would be possible for him to break into one of those empty buildings. His offensive abilities were weak, but those windows were already damaged, so breaking them couldn't be beyond even his meager abilities.
He continued past them, hoping to find something that didn't involve him smashing up public property. Dire as his situation was, focusing on finding a safe place to spend the night turned out to be a great distraction from thinking about why he was dealing with this problem in first place. Wondering what he had done to deserve this was an endeavor more painful than productive, and if he'd still been sitting on his front step, he probably wouldn't have been able to stop himself from dwelling on it. And besides, Tony Robbins always said to 'identify your problems, but give your power and energy to finding solutions.' So that was what Clem would do; he'd concentrate on solving his problem and ignore all those bad thoughts that threatened to send him spiraling downwards.
In the distance, the pop-pop-pop of gunshots echoed from some other corner of the city. Clem stopped; startled, but quickly relaxed, knowing those gunshots were too far away to cause him any trouble. He took a step forward, then paused, his eye caught by a mattress propped up against a derelict pharmacy across the street, then headed over to investigate. The mattress was stained, and likely had its own ecosystem, but it seemed sturdy enough, and Clem figured that it would probably beat sleeping on the pavement. I could drag it down that ally, Clem thought, tapping his chin contemplatively as he observed the narrow space between the two buildings in front of him. It's not supposed to rain tonight, so I should be okay sleeping outside.
It certainly was his lucky day, he reflected as he grabbed the mattress and pushed it down the alley using a combination of telekinesis and his own physical strength. His parents might have locked him out of the house, but at least he had this filthy old mattress that definitely didn't have any blood or urine stains to sleep on! Three cheers for not having to sleep on the ground!
There was a chain link fence at the end of the alley, more rusty red than steel grey. Clem set the mattress down near it. On the other side of the fence, there was a graffiti covered dumpster overflowing with black trash bags. What a majestic view, he thought as he tapped the mattress with his foot, the springs within it creaking from the pressure. Just breathtaking.
A small pattering to the right of him caught his attention, the source of the noise two scrawny looking rats. They stared at him with suspicion, their little noses wrinkling in what could have been either interest or disgust. 'Hey there," he said cheerily, giving the rats a wave. "You fellas mind if I crash here tonight?" One of the rats cocked its head to the side. "I know, I know, I should have called ahead," he continued as he rifled through his gym bag, "but this was kind of a last minute thing." He reached past his textbooks and journal and pulled out a package of crushed Cheez-its. He opened the bag and tossed a handful out to his hosts. "Please accept this small offering in exchange for your hospitality."
The rats looked down at the Cheez-its, up at Clem, and then back down at the crackers, their heads moving in perfect sync. Then they pounced on the food, gobbling it up rapidly. Clem decided that meant they had accepted his presence for the night. "Thanks guys," he said as he stepped past them. "I'll leave you to it. Wouldn't want to overstay my welcome." His new pals didn't answer, too busy eating their dinner. "I'll be back later. Don't wait up for me."
It was still light out, and judging from the position of the sun in the sky, would remain that way for the next hour or so. There was no reason for him to linger in the alley now that he had sorted out his sleeping arrangements for the night, so he continued walking down the street in the same direction he had been going before he had seen the mattress. Where to go now? He didn't know. Maybe he'd just walk around until he'd tired himself out- sleeping outside and on that mattress would probably be much easier if he was exhausted.
So he walked, no destination in mind, moving in a straight line in order to prevent himself from getting lost. The strangeness of his desolate surroundings became more apparent the longer he spent exploring them. As much as the city had declined, Gary still had a population of over 100,000. Clem felt he should have shared the sidewalk with another down-on-their-luck pedestrian, should have seen at least one vehicle thumping down the pothole littered road next to him. It was as though this entire street was in a separate reality from the rest of Gary, and only the most pathetic, insignificant life-forms could scuttle their way through the barrier that divided this area from the rest of the city.
Speaking of life-forms, one of them had just narrowly missed shitting on his head. Clem Foote: 1, Gutter Birds 0, he thought as he looked down at the quarter-sized splatter of nasty white goop in front of his shoe. Some of it had gotten onto the toe of his converse, which wasn't great, but was certainly preferable to having it in his hair or on his jacket.
Clem scraped his shoe against a patch of grass growing next to the sidewalk and tugged the hood of his jacket over his head in case another pigeon decided that he'd make a good target. When his shoe was as clean has he could get it, he stepped over the splatter and almost stumbled over a deep crack that split the concrete in half.
Step on a crack, break your mama's back. The old schoolyard rhyme popped into his mind as he recovered from his near fall. Was there any truth to that childish saying, he wondered as he strolled onward, his gaze tracking a beetle that was doing it's level best to escape his feet. Of course there wasn't, but his brain conjured up an image of his mother at home, her body bent back cartoonishly at a ninety-degree angle.
In his fantasy, his father reacted to this sudden, brutal alteration to his wife's skeletal structure with a sigh and a shake of his head. "Clem's at it again," he grumbled, picking up the remote and turning on the television. "I bet you this whole house that he wasn't looking where he was going when he stepped on a crack." He gestured broadly at Mom with a sweep of his hand. "Now look at what's happened."
His mother, still firmly on her feet despite the state of her anatomy, nodded in agreement. "I always said that boy would be the death of me," she said, her tone one of weary resignation. "Didn't I always say that he'd be the death of me?"
"Yes, you did. Loudly and often," Dad replied, his eyes fixed on the television screen. "Even when he's not around, he still manages to make our lives miserable."
"It's almost impressive," Mom added.
"Almost." A moment of silence, and then: "I don't regret locking him out."
"Oh, me neither," Mom agreed quickly. "I could drop dead any second now, but at least the last thing I see won't be his stupid, buck-toothed face!" His parents both burst into laughter, their harsh guffaws going on until Mom finally keeled over with an exaggerated death rattle.
"Great job, Clem," Dad said sarcastically as Mom hit the floor with a thud.
Clem stopped, suddenly overcome by an awful burning sensation spreading throughout his chest. It wasn't a physical pain, but it hurt enough to cause his shoulders to tremble and his breath to come out in ragged pants. As over-the-top as his fantasy had been, there was little doubt in his mind that his parents were probably laughing at him right now, reveling in how they'd pulled the rug out from under their worthless, gangly son's feet.
What had he done to deserve this? Which one of the unspoken, ever-changing rules had he broken? There was no way to know, he could spend all night analyzing all of this actions over the past twenty-four hours and still come out none the wiser. He might be out here because Dad hadn't wanted to hear the front door creaking for all he knew.
No. Clem did not want to go down this particular rabbit-hole, not when he knew that the only thing waiting for him at the bottom of it was a painful landing. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Inhale, exhale, slowly- a stress relief technique he had learned from reading one of the many self-help books at home. He imagined all of his bad feelings and thoughts as a ball, tightly clenched in his right hand. He then opened his hand, splaying his fingers out, and envisioned himself dropping that ball onto the sidewalk. He'd used this technique before, whenever his emotions became too much to bear. It didn't always work- sometimes it felt like the ball just bounced right back into his hand- but tonight it seemed to roll down the street and disappear around the corner. The ball would eventually roll right back to him, likely when he settled down for the night, but for now, he walked on, his tread a little less heavy.
His walk continued for about fifteen more minutes, until a large, rectangular building stopped him in his tracks. The building- a one story affair made-up of bricks yellowed by age- was strangely familiar to him, its appearance tugging at his memory. He was at the back, in an area where trucks had once parked to unload their goods onto the long red ramp leading up to the receiving bay. In the upper-corner, some letters still remained of the building's sign: K-I—W-D-R-O—D-U-E-A-R-K-E-T. I'd like to solve the puzzle, Pat. Kirkwood Produce Market?
He could remember going to a store that sold only cheap fruits and vegetables a long time ago, could still recall the way the flies had buzzed around the cantaloupes, could still feel his mother slapping his hand away from display of grapes. Was this the market from his early childhood? It was certainly close enough, being a twenty-or-so minute drive from where he lived. These days most of the grocery shopping was done at the Wal-Mart a few blocks over. This store was probably one of the many casualties of that Wal-Mart's establishment.
There was a tingling in the center of his mind, a tingling so light that he wasn't sure if it was real or not. A breeze blew through the parking lot, a balled up piece of paper rolling with the wind like some kind of urban tumbleweed. It was a McDonald's bag, crumpled up and unfortunately empty. That was a shame. Clem would have liked to have had something more substantial than half a bag of Cheez-its for his dinner tonight. Oh well.
The bag may have been devoid of actual food, but the tingling in his head grew stronger when he bent to pick it up. Psychic energy was coming off of it, the pulse of it faint and fluttery, almost like a bird's heartbeat. Clem smoothed the bag out and wondered where it came from. Had it blown in from another part of town? Or had another human being actually passed through here? They're psychic, Clem thought, marveling at that fact. Like me.
There was a way that he could find out who this bag had belonged to. Whispering Rock did not teach skills like psychometry until a student was at a very high rank (which Clem, as a Tender Brain, was nowhere near close to). However, Agent Nein had set up an entire shelf-full of books in the main lodge; the majority of them extremely detailed texts related to psychic science and psychology. Clem had read a few of them during his time at camp in hopes that doing so would help him improve enough to earn some merit badges. The books hadn't helped him in that regard, but maybe they could help him now.
He took a moment to recollect what he had read regarding psychometry, and then he focused every bit of psychic power he had on the white paper bag he held in his hands. Admittedly, there wasn't much to focus- he wasn't a strong psychic and new skills didn't come easily to him-but he did feel that energy dancing up his arms and into his brain, a sensation similar to those rare occurrences when his clairvoyance actually worked. His vision blurred, then whited out completely, and he thought that yes, this was it, he was on the verge of seeing something, he just needed to push it a little more, just a little further…
And then the near vision dissolved and snapped Clem back to reality like a rubber band to the back of the neck. He teetered forward, the world swaying around him for a few seconds as his brain attempted to recover from the psychic exertion. When it seemed like the ground was no longer about to swallow him whole, he steadied himself and rubbed his aching temples, hoping that the ache wouldn't turn into a full-blown migraine.
This sting of failure hit him deep in his chest, an old, familiar hurt that he should have been used to by now. What had he honestly expected? To do something right on the first try, for once? Clem stuffed the bag into his jacket pocket, sliding this failure into his mental file folder labeled 'short-comings and screw-ups' along with all the other ones.
He turned, intending on going back to his mattress and his rats, but paused, a sudden thought coming to him. Tony Robbins said that there was no such thing as failure, only results. Clem's attempt at using psychometry had not produced the results that he wanted, but he had gotten pretty close. He looked over at the defunct grocery store and considered his options. Maybe whoever had left this bag here had left other garbage as well, like a burger wrapper or a cup. Change your actions, Clem thought as he walked towards the building, and you'll produce different results.
The energy he had sensed while holding the bag became stronger the closer he got to the back of the building. The energy was still relatively weak, which meant that whoever it had come from was long gone, but there was enough of it lingering around to imply the psychic had been here specifically, and their trash hadn't drifted in from somewhere else. Sure enough, as he was crossing the parking lot he spotted an overturned Styrofoam cup emitting the exact same energy as the bag in his pocket. He nudged it with his foot, speculating on whether he had a better chance of success with the cup than he had with the bag.
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. Clem mulled the quote over in his head. If using psychometry on the bag hadn't worked, then there was no reason to assume that it would work on the cup either. Clem decided that he'd leave the cup be for now and come back to it later if he couldn't find anything better.
The ramp running along the back of the building had retained a surprisingly decent paint job, with only one section of the rail appearing to be damaged. Black scorch marks marred the otherwise red paint at the rail's midpoint. Had this person tried to set the rail on fire? A closer inspection of the rail answered the question. The circular pattern of the scorch marks indicated that a psi-blast had put it there. Last summer Bobby Zilch had fired off a psi-blast at him and Crystal as they'd been practicing their cheers. They hadn't been hit, but the mark that had been left on the cabin had looked similar to this one.
One did not typically use a psi-blast unless they had a target they wanted to hit, and Clem doubted that the rail itself had offended his mystery psychic's sensibilities enough for them to have wanted to blast it. So what had they really been aiming at? The slant of the ramp was about chin-level, which granted him a good view of everything on it. That everything consisted of three skinny French fries scattered on the concrete and one short grey feather. The French fries looked shriveled, any flavor they may have had long departed. Each one was bent near the end, as though they'd been pinched hard between somebody's fingers.
Or a beak, Clem thought, eyeing the feather. He picked it up, noting the lack of energy coming off of it. There weren't any pigeon corpses on the ramp, so the psychic must have missed their shot, but they had startled the bird into the dropping the fries. What had the psychic made of that result- had they considered it a loss or a draw?
In any case, Clem didn't need any kind of paranormal aid to figure out what had happened here- one of the pigeons had stolen this person's fries and they had tried to shoot it in retaliation. Not a particularly interesting exchange, really. Clem reached for one of the fries anyway, standing on his toes to grab the closest one. He still wanted to try, still wanted to see if he could get a different result.
And he was curious about the person who had, probably mere hours before, passed through this same isolated stretch of decaying businesses and trash-strewn streets. Did they actually live in Gary, or had they just been cutting through on their way to a bigger city like Chicago or Detroit? If there were other psychics living in Gary, Clem didn't know them. The concept of one maybe living near him was…hmm. Clem wasn't sure if it made him feel anxious or excited.
He turned the fry over, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. There seemed to be the same amount of energy on this fry as there had been on the bag and cup, but something about it was different. It felt angry-but how could that be? Psychic energy didn't hold onto the emotions of the person it came from…or did it? Crystal had told him that sometimes she would feel sadness in the air whenever she passed by certain places in Peoria. Was that what this was?
He could ask her about it in his next letter to her. Right now he had to concentrate on the task at hand. He focused his powers on the fry…or tried to. A small, but very vocal part of his mind was shouting 'Imminent Failure Ahead!' in a voice very similar to Dad's, causing the whole process to come to an abrupt halt. Clem hesitated, then withdrew his focus. What was he doing? If he hadn't been strong enough to do this the first time, what made him think that round two would turn out any differently?
The only thing keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.
Good point Tony, excellent point, actually. The story that Clem had been telling himself had become stale a long, long time ago. But how to change it? He supposed he could start by telling that annoying voice that told him he couldn't do anything to shut up. When he tried, however, it ignored him, and kept right on going with its 'you will fail at anything you do' narrative. Well, if Clem couldn't get it to quiet down, maybe he could drown it out.
With some cheers.
This time, when he focused his powers and felt the energy from the fry flow into his mind, he imagined that Crystal was cheering him on, her voice louder than his doubts, heard her shouting 'go, go, GO!' as his vision blurred and whited out. And then…
Clem didn't know how he'd done it- had merely thinking about his closest friend been enough to bolster his strength?- but the results that he got this time were the ones that he wanted. The vision had been short, and from the way his head was swimming it was unlikely that he would be able to do it again anytime soon. But he'd done it! He had used his powers correctly, and had gotten a surprisingly vivid image of the person who had blasted the rail.
A girl, not a teenager, but a little older than Clem. Round face. Short dark hair, bangs long enough to cover her eyebrows. Heavy green coat. Around her neck, a necklace, what was supposedly her name (Rosalie? Rosalia?) written out in loopy, gold-plated cursive. Scowling eyes. Not a happy camper, even before the pigeon swooped down and snatched some of her fries as she was taking a drink.
The vision had ended with her giving an outraged 'HEY!' as the bird took off with its prize. They way she had said it, the way the anger and shock in her voice had mixed and the way that her mouth had just dropped open struck Clem as so unfunny that it became bleakly comical, and he burst out into almost hysterical laughter. That girl, Rosalie or Rosalia, was already having a bad day, walking around by herself in a dead section of a rotten city, when some jerk bird comes and steals what could have been the only food she would have for the day. Just goes to show, Clem thought as he wiped a tear from his eye, your day is never bad enough that it can't get worse.
He really should feel bad for finding it as funny as he did. Anybody wandering around here was probably not in at a good place in their life. And it wasn't like his own situation was much better- hadn't he just laughed himself to tears in an empty parking lot while holding a nasty, dirt-covered French fry? He wasn't mocking her; if anything he felt a strong sense of kinship between himself and this girl he had only encountered through paranormal means. Crystal, as much as he loved her, still wanted to believe that there was some inherent goodness in the world. There wasn't. The world was just the world, it wasn't good or bad. It didn't care that your parents had locked you out of your own house and left you to fend for yourself- that bird was still going to try to shit on your head, or steal your food. A pessimistic outlook, perhaps, but one he thought that Rosalie would share, if the expression on her face had been anything to go by.
Or maybe none of that was true and he was looking way too deeply into a three-second vision. Clem sighed and tossed the fry onto the asphalt. Let the pigeons have it. Above him, the sky was transitioning from dull daylight to a sullen evening. Time to head back to the alley. He gave the rail and the scorch marks on it one last look, before starting off out of the parking lot.
His legs felt weak, his body drained. I could collapse before I even get back to the alley, Clem thought as he reached into his bag and grabbed his Cheez-its. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing- the pavement was probably less of a bio-hazard than that mattress was.
He hoped that Rosalie was sleeping somewhere more comfortable than he was tonight. He wished that he could talk to Crystal, wished that his powers were strong enough to contact her telepathically. He knew that it was possible to communicate that way over long distances; he'd heard other campers talk about it. Maybe that could be his next goal: say hi to Crystal while the two were miles apart and in different states. Heck, there was no reason to think that he couldn't one day do it!
Okay, there were many reasons to think that he couldn't do it. But there had been many reasons to think that he wouldn't be able to use psychometry, and yet he'd done that not ten minutes ago! That warranted a little bit of confidence in his skills, didn't it?
Eh.
He'd start working on that goal on a day that he wasn't bone-tired. Tonight, he was just going to head back to his mattress and plop face down on it, and hope that he'd fall asleep before he thought too hard about what was sleeping in it with him.