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"Stop!! Don't hurt him!"
"Huh? What are you screaming about?"
"The butterfly!"
The school kids all stopped and looked towards the short green child, eyes welling with tears.
"You're too close to his wings! You're going to hurt him and even kill him! Stop!!"
When Mrs. Boole came to the school she knew she should have been more shocked at what happened. Her child was crying to the point of hyperventilating because another kid had crushed a bug. She knew she and her husband would have to have a long talk about the powers she had hoped wouldn’t be passed down. The young psychic would never return to school until many years later, being homeschooled so they could learn to be normal.
Eventually the child grew up into a normal person, mostly. Compton was never quite able to live up to his mother when it came to ignoring his powers, however he did manage to hide it when near others. He learned not to talk to bugs in front of anyone, especially not in a group like with bees or ants, but with dogs and cats you can do it to a certain amount without getting weird looks. Compton had a lot of questions about his powers, but didn’t dare ask any to his parents because of how upset they looked when telling him for the first time.
Compton found that as an adult he felt the need to hide his ability to talk to animals less and less, he knew of course that nobody would truly understand, but people thought of it less as a sign of there being something wrong with him but rather just as if he was having fun. When he waved hi to the songbirds in the morning the other college students just thought he was a jovial morning person. When his neighbor’s got a new puppy he would help them if the dog ever needed help and they thought he just was a fan of dogs. When he moved to a new town, the people that worked at the store just thought he was some stuck up jerk.
The new city Compton lived in was a good one, he liked the people there and the distance from his hometown, but the pet shop down the street was the most nightmarish thing to be within a mile radius of. Day in and day out he could hear the whines and screams of the animals in the cramped cages, begging to be allowed to move around or go back to where their home was. Compton tried to remember his mother’s old advice to just ignore it when animals cry out to him, to try and focus on himself until he can’t anymore, but it felt impossible to ignore.
“This establishment needs to be shut down!”
“... Okay?” The tired worker blinked slowly at him behind the counter.
“No!! This isn’t okay! Don’t you see the harm you’re doing to these poor animals?!”
“Sir, please calm down. I don’t control the store, if you want you can take it up with my boss.”
“Glady! Show me the owner of this place! I sure would like a word with them!” Compton could feel his face growing redder and redder, he had never been this angry before. Everyone else in the store was either staring at him or had left. He felt like he was going to explode.
“Are you the guy who’s been causing this racket?” The tall man loomed over Compton but he felt no fear.
“Yes I am! This so-called ‘store’ is-” Before Compton could say another word he had been effortlessly picked up and physically thrown from the building.
“And don’t come back.”
After the shock of what had happened, Compton felt embarrassed. The same kind of embarrassment he felt back in kindergarten when his powers had first taken hold of his senses.
He tried to go back to normal, he truly did. He did his best to ignore the store when he walked by, he tried to reroute his routine to be around it often, he did everything he could think of to try and get away from the shop but the cries of the animals in that shop managed to find it’s way into his mind one way or another.
Eventually he realized there were only two options left for him in this situation. Either he had to move away or find a way to fix this situation. Moving away would be his best option but he could not find it in his heart to leave this place and leave the animals suffering away, he knew he had to do something, anything.
So he did.
His brain was on autopilot, he became focused on only a few things. He managed to memorize that the person who worked the midnight shift would always arrive late to work, meaning there was a solid couple of minutes where the pet store was completely empty of humans, leaving only restless animals.
He broke the back window and crawled in, no noticeable security system activated, as far as he knew he was in the clear. He opened every cage he could see, releasing all the animals from their tight, crowded cages. It was only until he went to turn around to go to a different room when he realized just how large the crowd of various animals surrounding him was.
He was tackled to the ground by a terrier dog and quickly got surrounded by all different animals from other dogs to small monkeys to rabbits and rodents, each one trying to thank him in some way. Compton felt happy, but in the most overwhelmed way imaginable, and then the happiness went away as he realized he was now unable to get up. He tried telling the animals to stop but they were too excited they couldn’t listen to him.
With every animal that licked at his face or tried to crawl on his body in some way he felt more and more panicked and overwhelmed, his thoughts became more and more muddled as his thoughts raced into nothingness, he felt like he was going to...
Explode.
Explode... When Compton came to there was nothing where he felt like there once was everything. All he could see left of the animals were a few stray collars left from only a select few dogs, other than that there was...
Nothing.
Compton felt cold, he felt like he was in a bad dream, but he knew he wasn’t going to be waking up soon. He felt sick, he felt like he was going to cry, he wanted to scream but he just couldn’t. His mind was racing.
“Did you kill them? You killed them. You monster! How could this happen? Is this real? How did you do this? Did this even happen? Why would this happen? Why did you do this?”
The police didn’t know what to make of the sight before them, a man had just rushed into their building screaming, crying that he is an awful person, a murderer, that he should be given jail for as long as imaginable. They decided to put him in a cell for the time being, it was only after the pet store had called them in that they truly began to understand what he was raving on about.
Word spread fast, headlines calling the situation all sorts of different things, very little treated Compton like a human. Compton didn’t feel like a human after this, so he thought it was deserved, he refused any comments to the public. Nobody knew anything about the small man or why he would do this, which caused word to spread even more because of the so-called mysteries surrounding it.
“Mr. Boole.” No response... “Mr. Boole, you have a visitor...” Compton stirred from his bed, rolling over to face the police officer.
“Hello there, Compton, is it?” The taller man looked down at Compton, “I think you’ll be pleased to find Your bail has paid off, you're a free man now.” Compton couldn’t speak, he opened his mouth a few times but could not manage to say anything, what could he say?
The man ushered him into his car and Compton entered wordlessly. He had no idea what awaited him, but he didn’t care to ask, his mind felt empty. The two drove for a long time, neither one saying a single thing.
“Why?” Compton finally spoke up.
“What d'ya mean?”
“Why... Why did you bail me out?” Compton asked with a pained expression. “I don’t even know you... Why?”
“I’m looking for people like you.”
“... What?” Compton paused for a moment. “What do you mean? What do you mean by ‘people like me’?” Compton felt panic rising as his thoughts raced wondering what he meant.
“You're psychic aren’t you?” Compton froze.
“... How...” He choked on his words, “how did you know?”
“I’m a psychic myself, me and a couple other psychics I know have been studying different types of psychic powers. Have you ever heard about ‘blastokinesis’?” Compton didn’t say anything in response, he just looked out the window.
“... What’s your name?”
“Oh! Can’t believe I forgot that! Name’s Ford, Ford Cruller!”
“I’m Compton Boole, but you already knew that...”
When Ford drove up to the Gulch the other psychics in the little group gathered around. Compton hesitantly stepped out of the car and struggled to look at the group of people who had all their eyes on him.
"So who's this guy?" The bearded man was the first to speak.
"This man here is Compton Boole, he-"
"He's the exploding guy I told you all about!" Another man cut off Ford.
"Otto-"
"You brought this guy here?" The bearded man groaned, "dude this is where I live."
"Bob, let Ford speak." A woman placed her hand on his shoulder and he rolled his eyes.
"... Now, this is Compton, he has blastokinesis-"
"I prefer to call it 'psi-blast', a much cooler sounding name if you ask me." Otto once again interrupted Ford while walking over to him and Compton, "the power makes it so he can make stuff explode, you've read those books about spontaneous combustion I've lent you guys right?" He gestured to the others and laughed, "usually in history it's only been documented in cases of people who blow themselves up, but here's a living example of proof you can use it on other things!"
"I'm going to go look at my plants." Bob said and quickly walked away from the rest of the group. The woman of the group stepped forward to talk to Compton herself.
"You can call me Lucy, don't worry about Bob too much, I'm sure he'll warm up to you, he's just a bit of a loner." She reached her hand out and Compton shook it.
"Now don't let old Otto get you down, we didn't bring you here just to make you into a spectacle. We are trying to hone in on our own psychic powers, learning to use them to their fullest potential."
"And guess who it was that begged and pleaded with dear Crully to get him to bring you here?"
" We both came to the agreement that if you or anyone else could learn to control your ability to 'blast' things, it would be an extraordinarily useful power for many situations!"
Compton just stood awkwardly around as he listened to the others speak. He was listening to what they were saying but he felt like he couldn't truly process what was happening. "I... " He hesitated to speak, "I like to talk... To animals…" He stepped back from the other three that were surrounding him, "I never... I never knew I had this particular... Power? If you can call it that, but growing up I always was able to listen to what animals could say, I got it from my mother but I..." Compton began increasingly fidgeting with hands nervously, struggling to find the words to describe himself as the anxiety of the situation he was in started to wash over him.
Otto said something to Ford and Lucy but Compton could not focus on hearing anything as he could feel himself growing more and more dizzy.
"Hey," Compton jumped and turned to face Otto, who had come up beside him and placed his hand on his back, "I've got tons of books about zoolingualism, if you want to know more about that. You want to read something from this decade or a few hundred years ago?" Otto chuckled to himself as he walked over to one a large structure Compton had failed to notice earlier, he hesitantly looked at it for a while before following Otto inside of it.
Compton had gotten quite comfortable inside the dome surprisingly, sinking into a beanbag chair while reading a book older than him about the very thing he grew up being ashamed of. He looked up from his book at Otto who was flipping through books, perhaps trying to find a specific one. Compton realized that until today he never really could process that what was wrong with him was something others experienced, he knew he got his ability to listen to animals to his mother but besides that he never thought about the fact that people all through history have been able to talk to animals and understand their thoughts and feelings.
He also never thought about the fact that he was probably not the first person in history to do what he had done a few days ago. Suddenly he felt a pit in his stomach wondering if that was something he so inherited from his mother, or if it was something he could spread in a way.
"Otto?"
"Yeah?" Otto didn't even look up from the book pile he had finished looking through and had now started clumsily sorting.
"Is being psychic something that's... Genetic?"
"Ehh sometimes? You said it yourself you got your animal powers from your mom, but me? Nobody in my family has the powers I do, bet you could imagine the look on my grandma's face when I started my first fire!" Otto laughed, "fond memories."
Compton didn't say anything, he felt it wasn't a conversation worth having, for now at least.
"Oh, Compton!" Otto clapped his hands together and quickly turned to face Compton, "I gotta show you something." He dug through his pockets a bit, "oh? Do I not have it?" Otto turned a bit to the side, looking like he was going to turn away from Compton completely before quickly turning back and throwing something at him. "Catch!"
Compton panicked, moving around wildly and dropping the book he was holding, but he did somehow manage to catch what was thrown at him.
"Hahaha! Nice catch! Sorta disappointed you didn't blow it up though." Otto laughed and clapped in amusement before Comptons brain could process what was happening. He opened his closed hands to see that Otto had tossed him a wrapped piece of candy. "Housewarming gift, welcome to the gulch bud! If you need anything ask Ford." Otto began to walk off joyfully.
"W-Wait" Otto paused. "Did you want me to blow this up?!"
"Oh no no no no no!" Otto waved his hands defensively, "not want! No no no! I'm just saying that if you HAD done it it would have been super fun, haha!"
"Wh... No it wouldn't have been fun! What if I hurt you?"
"That would have been fun!" Otto laughed and continued to head out the door. Compton sat in silence, now alone. He looked at the piece of candy Otto gave him, the words 'Dream Fluff' was barely legible on the side.
It sure did taste like a dream, whatever that means.