ia:initiate
| 13
There were more things on the bathroom sink than on his bedroom nightstand. He bristled. “They were my things,” he said, once more looking at the bathroom door. “My things!” Then he let it go at that. He put some toothpaste on his toothbrush and began to brush his teeth. Yes, there was something different today. As he brushed his teeth and studied his reflection in the mirror staring back at him, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the tube of toothpaste he had put down was rising again in his reflection but this time on its own. What was even stranger was the toothpaste hovering in midair next to his face did not seem all that odd to him. In the back of his mind he could hear his mother saying something, but between brushing his teeth, the water running, and the suspended toothpaste, her words stayed right there—in the back of his mind. On the other side of his head, a bar of soap mimicked the toothpaste. He smiled and twisted his hair with his free hand. He decided to step back and take it all in, but there was no floor, or at least he wasn’t standing on it anymore. He, along with the soap and toothpaste, was suspended in midair. And if things weren’t interesting enough, a bottle of mouthwash floated by on its side, and in the mirror, a towel sailed just over his head.
when he heard a rumbling sound growing steadily in the distance, making his mother’s words through the closed bathroom door indistinct. It finally dawned on him—it’s an earthquake—and fear claimed him for the first time. An earthquake? No, never in the Exclave … a tornado, which would explain that rumbling sound getting louder. He had heard about tornados before but never experienced one. Is this what it’s like … slow motion and things floating all around you? Momma must’ve been trying to warn me, direct me to safety. Is it too late for me to take cover?
HE BECAME CONCERNED