First Power
First Power
Nine year old Katie runs into the kitchen, sobbing. Ruth, standing in front of the stove, turns around to catch her daughter. "Honey, what's the matter, did you fall again?" The little girl, whose head was buried in her mother's dress, shakes her head. "Well, what is it, baby?"
"I'm s-sc-cared, m-mommy!" She takes her face out of Ruth's dress, but cover's her eyes with her hands.
"Why are you scared honey, and why are you covering your eyes? Did you get something in them?" Ruth kneels down and tries to uncover her daughter's eyes, but Katie screams, "Nooooo!" and holds her hands tighter.
Hiram runs into the kitchen from the back door, asking, "What is it? What's wrong?"
Ruth looks up at him, shaking her head, "I don't know what's wrong, Hiram, sh-she ran in here, grabbed my legs, sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she was scared. I asked what scared her, she just covered her eyes. I tried to take her hands away, that's when she screamed. Oh, Hiram, I don't know what to do."
Hiram kneels next to his wife and daughter, and takes Katie into his arms. "Katie, sweetie, what's the matter?" Katie shakes her head and cries harder. "We won't be able to help you if you don't tell us what's wrong."
"Daddy, I-I-I saw a-a-a-a m-m-m-mon-monster wh-where mommy was at in th-the ki-ki-kitchen." Katie bawls.
"What do you mean by a monster, sweetie?" Ruth asked.
"It was s-st-standing where you sh-should have been, mommy. I was just playing and the floor d-d-d-dis-disap-p-peared and I s-saw the kitchen and the m-monster." Katie continued, sobbing each word.
Her parents pull her close and whisper in her ear, "Its going to be alright."
The first time my x-ray vision showed up, I was so scared. I was in my room playing, minding my own business, when all of the sudden, the walls and my floor just disappeared.
I saw what looked like the kitchen, but standing at the sink, instead of my mom, was this… thing. I now know that what I saw was my mom, just her muscles and other… innards. The thing that scared me the most, though, was the fact that I could see her heart beat. I had no clue what was going on.
After mom and dad calmed me down, dad carried me out to the farthest field on our property. He had to carry me because I refused to open my eyes because every time I tried to open them, I saw things I shouldn't be able to see.
Once we were out in the middle of nowhere, dad told me to open my eyes. After a few minutes of fighting, he got them open. At first, it was okay, because all I saw was… well, nothing. Then I made the mistake of looking at my dad. This time I saw my dad's skeleton.
I screamed.
And covered my eyes again.
It took daddy thirty more minutes to get me to stop crying.
When he had me calmed down again, he asked me to describe what I saw. So I told him what I saw when I looked through the floor.
He could have laughed, and I found out later that he wanted to, but he knew that laughing was not going to help me. Dad told me that what I saw was mom's muscles and that it was her heart I saw beating.
After he explained everything, dad told me he was going to help me. He told me to picture his face in my head.
"Now, Katie, I want you to concentrate. I need you to see my face in your head. Remember what color my hair is, the color of my eyes. Every little detail you can remember. Do you have it? Now when you do, I want you to open your eyes. Got it? Good."
I opened my eyes.
I saw my daddy smiling at me.
For a minute.
Then I got so excited that I saw bones again.
I immediately closed my eyes again. Dad talked me through it again.
It took a couple of days for me to be able to see properly, but fortunately this happened during the summer, and I told my friends I was sick.
After this incident, my parents decided to tell me the real story of how they found me.
I was asking questions about why I was so different. Why could I lift daddy's plow with one hand, but he had to struggle to hook it up to Lilly? Why did I not get burnt on the stove when I accidentally ran into it, but mommy had to use rags just to hold the skillet? I was even able to outrun Lilly. And now I could see through everything, all I had to do was concentrate.
Two weeks after I was able to use my x-ray vision whenever I wanted, mom and dad decided to sit me down to tell me the story.
After they told me, I ran to room and refused to talk to them for the whole night.
The next morning, I realized that I was glad that they were the ones to find me.
So I apologized. Dad offered to show me the ship. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. To my nine-year-old mind.