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Kevin can make his imagination real. He can make his imagination as real as he wants it to be. If he tried, if he studied human anatomy and the intricacies of the molecules and elements that make us up, Kevin might be able to make a real man. His power is fueled by his imagination.
Kevin has to consciously make the decision to bring things into reality. This is the reason that his dreams or random thoughts don’t just spring to life around him all the time. He describes it as a sensation deep in his mind that is like a switch, bringing the picture in his mind out into reality.
Today, as Kevin thinks up new tricks in his backyard, he is surprised to stumble over a tree just at the edge of the yard. There were no other trees in the yard and Kevin puzzles at it. It is small, but Kevin wonders if it could have grown to that height overnight; he had not noticed it the day before.
Kevin gets up and brushes himself off. And he hears a steady knocking sound in the distance, like someone was slapping concrete with a blunt object. Kevin perks his ears and follows the sound out through his front yard and to the sidewalk in front of the house. Alia comes out onto the front porch. “Everything ok?”
Kevin looks back at her. “What’s that sound?”
Alia looks around, then closes her eyes. She opens them and shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
Kevin calls back to her, “I’ll be right back,” and he follows the sound down the sidewalk, and to a small park. There is a man standing at the jungle gym, banging his head against the metal bars. There are children standing around laughing and pointing.
“Is he ok?” Kevin calls to the children.
They all scurry away except for one. When Kevin is closer, he sees why. The man’s pockets are turned inside out and his clothes are ripped.
“They stole his money,” the last little boy left says to Kevin.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know,” the boy says. “But he been doing the same thing the whole time. He ain’t even bleeding.”
Kevin approaches the man and he hears his low groans between the smack of his skull against the metal bar.
“Please stop,” Kevin says and he imagines foam padding wrapping the entire thing.
The man flies into a rage when he doesn’t feel the pain of his head against the metal bar. He yells and throws his fist violently through the air. Kevin sees foam at the man’s mouth and he sends the little boy away, who does not need to be told to leave.
“Please calm down, sir, I’ll call for help.”
The man rushes Kevin who encloses him in a ball that he rolls back to his house.
Alia stares at the man in the backyard through the clear material of the ball. She puts a hand to it and she shakes her head in frustration.
“I don’t know, Kevin, maybe its this thing you have around him, but I can’t hear anything. I don’t think that’s it though. It feels like he’s dead.”
Kevin remembers what Detective Young had said when they were in Durham, what Special Agent Manuel Gonzalez had said in Kannapolis. “It’s a fucking zombie.”
“A zombie?” Alia says incredulously. Of all the crazy things she had been made aware of by gazing into the sun, zombies were not one of them.
“Yeah, like Dr. Worthington zombie. This shit is just like him.”
“Who is this man?”
“I don’t know, he was at that playground. Do you think this is what happened to Conner?”
“Conner’s dead, Kevin.” Alia says. “I remember I could feel him and then he wasn’t there anymore. And I can’t find him. Unless he’s just really far away.”
“This guy feels dead to you too.” Kevin says.
Alia sits with that truth. “I don’t know Kevin. Tell me what to do. This is creeping me out.”
The man inside the ball never stops struggling to free himself. He swings his arms violently and Alia has to look away.
“I’ll hold him in this until he tires out. Then we can take him to a hospital or something, get him some help.”
Alia nods and refuses to look in the direction of the man who has a crazed look in his eyes.
“Go inside, I got this.” Kevin says and Alia is relieved to leave him alone.
It takes longer than Kevin anticipates for the man to calm down. Kevin sat in a lawn chair, imagining different things inside the ball that he thought could calm the man. Kevin put a naked woman in the ball. The man beat her and bit her until Kevin made her disappear. He imagined water hoping to knock the man out, but the ball was full for almost thirty minutes and the man didn’t seem to need air. The water at least calmed his thrashing, but it did not stop it and he was only a slow motion version of himself until Kevin disappeared the water and the man went back to his violent thrashing. When the sun went down and Kevin had been outside with the zombie in a ball for hours, Alia came out to check on him.
“He hasn’t stopped.” Kevin said and Alia says good night.
Kevin imagines a fire next to his chair and he pokes it with sticks until he falls asleep.
Kevin wakes up to the zombie punching him and knocking over his chair.
Kevin pushes the man back and then he lunges at him. Kevin dodges his limbs and then jabs him in the gut. It feels like punching a flimsy wall with no support, like his insides are hollow. It unnerves Kevin and he backs away and recaptures the man in a ball. He calls for Alia and she keeps her distance.
“I have to kill him.”
Alia doesn’t say anything.
“You don’t have a master plan you’re not telling me about?”
“I can’t even look at him Kevin…” Alia says.
“Go inside.”
Kevin eyes the man and the ball disappears. It won’t be the first time he kills someone.
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