Imagine, Ben

 I M A G I N A T I O N

(n.) the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

"His imagination literally leaks into reality."

 My eyes rolled.  The
guards posted outside must be new. Everyone else were usually too afraid to
even make a noise. Especially when they know I'm the one behind the heavily
armored door.

The room I'm in is grey, dull, and empty. There wasn't even
a bed. It's so boring it drives me crazy. And that's exactly the point of this
room I've lived in for the past few years: to kill what I have in my creative
mind.

"You hear what he did to his parents?"

They're dead. I know that. It was because of me.

I also know that.

My "gift" surfaced when I was two years old. I had
been playing in the grass outside after watching Aladdin. My parents were on
the porch, talking while keeping both eyes on me.

Eyes that widened in disbelief and shock when a small magic
carpet materialized out of thin air, floating next to my delighted head. In a
few minutes, it disappeared. Just as quickly as it had materialized. My parents
never told anyone else about what happened and just let me be to see what else
would happen. As the days turned into weeks, I started making more things
appear. A dragon that breathed out blue smoke, cars that melted into green
slime, rockets that shot out blue lightning bolts: the imaginations of a
reckless little boy. They got bigger, more dangerous. But after a few minutes,
they always disappeared. My parents figured out and taught me how to control
it. As long as my heart beat was at a certain rhythm, my imaginations stayed
inside my head. Anything that brought my heartbeat up during one of my
imagination episodes leaked it out.

One night, I watched the Chainsaw Massacre with my parents.
I was ten. I had a nightmare that night.

The next morning, they were dead, and blood was everywhere.

The walls, their bed, my hands.

The police came and I imagined a giant snowball running over
them. They took me to this secret institution and they figured out what I could
do in a few days.

And now here I am.

My brain has been fried more times than I can count, I have
numerous scars from where they had cut me, poked me with needles, and taken
samples from. Every day, they give me meds to keep my heartbeat at a steady.
Some days they sedate me.

My life has been derived of color. Of television. Of toys. Derived
of anything that could potentially trigger an imagination. I have no idea
what’s going on in the real world today, I am discouraged to think. They said I
could destroy more lives than just my parents’. So I stayed in this empty room.
Sleeping on the hard concrete floor was better than sleeping on a pillow and
dreaming. If you could call them that.

A few days ago, some adults came and showed me pictures of
guns and bombs. They told me to imagine it out on a bigger scales. They brought
me designs, told me to think them out loud. They increased my heartbeat to
bring them out of my head.

I was a tool. A weapon. I have always been for the past six
years. They say they keep me in here to prevent more lives being harmed, when
really they’ve been training me to be a walking bomb for the lives of millions.
Fools.

But not today.

They had no idea I haven’t been taking my meds. Over the
past few days, I’ve been secretly training myself to project my imaginations
again, little by little. And they say patience is a virtue, but I’ve waited
long enough for this day.

Darkness soon fell, and I knew my plan was to be set in
motion. As predicted, the peep hole on the metal door slid open, and the blue
hues of the guard’s eyes regarded me.

“Dinner time, freak,” he grumbled.

I got down to my hands.

“Hey, hey! What are you doing?” He yelled.

I smiled.

I did a push-up.

The guard was yelling now, calling the others as he
struggled to unlock the door.

By the time the metal door swung open and a guard stood
there with a sedative, I had done 15 push-ups. It wasn’t much, but it was
enough.

“Freak, eh?” I panted, my heart thudding against my chest.

A flicker of fear appeared in their eyes at the realization of
what I had just done.

Black tendrils of smoke appeared from around them, figments
of my imagination but a part of reality. They coughed and sputtered, one of
them rushing to me and waving the smoke away. I laughed.

This wasn’t just any ordinary smoke.

The smoke seeped through the pores in their skin, squeezing
into their blood stream and organs. Then the smoke will harden to cement.

My imaginations only last in the real world for a few
seconds to minutes, but that was plenty of time for their organs to shut down.
In moments, they were dead.

If I could imagine that, then I guess I could do it in a
bigger scale.

So I imagined myself outside the facility, with the entire
prison buried underground. When I opened my eyes, it was true.

My room was plain and empty, but I didn’t need creative
inspiration to imagine my freedom. I just needed to get my heartbeat up.

As I stood barefoot in the middle of the desert, the
facility buried underground, I swear I could hear the screams of the scientists
buried alive.

My parents taught me to never apologize for who I was born
as. This is something I can’t change about myself, but I can control it. If
only they had taught me how to deal with nightmares. They told me that one day
people will want me to apologize for being a monster, but they’ll never
apologize for making me one. I have a gift, and I can use it for the good. Now
that I’m older, I’ll learn to control it better. Besides, my parents never
failed to remind me every day.

“Imagine, Ben.”