Jack Of All Trades ✓ | steampunk, dragons, trickery

Chapter 1.1: Meet Jack

Jack Ogswold sat in the waiting room of the hospital. The two-hour travel had better be worth it. He tapped his foot as the nurse peered at the register. He knew he was next, and she was going to butcher his name.

"Mister...Jack...Cogswold?"

He stood, nonetheless. "It's Ogswold, miss. My mother's name was Mary C, but my parents divorced so now I'm Ogswold, not Cogswold."

The nurse looked at him like she was sorry he had to go through the trouble to say that. "O-kay, come this way, sir," she said.

He brushed the back of his hand against her left arm.

Effin idiot. She was thinking. Likely tale.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to."

"That's okay. The hall's quite narrow." She smiled a forced smile. As if she'd practiced it in the mirror.

"Ah. Single file then!" He tried to sound cheerful.

What an effin idiot, she thought.

Jack silently scolded himself for relying on the cursed gift again. He was hearing just her front-most thoughts. Doing this feat required brushing his hand against the left side of someone. It couldn't be any body part. It had to be the left arm, and sometimes hand. The hand didn't always work though. So, of course, that meant he couldn't hear the thoughts of someone without a left arm.

He once met an amputee who had a left arm that was a machine. Jack had tried to hear something when he shook the man's mechanical left hand, but he couldn't. It had to be skin and flesh.

It was all about getting into someone's personal bubble. Some important people had a big personal bubble, and some had small personal bubbles. It was the big ones that were hard to get in to. They never let him get physically close enough to brush his hand against their left arm or hand.

Having this cursed gift did have its perks, but recently, it was more bad than good.

And that was why he'd come all the way to see Doctor Gregory Thomas who was a renowned doctor specialized in everything. He was a Jack of all trades even though his name was not Jack.

That's me. Jack thought, fingering the pills in his pocket. Jack of all trades. He fingered the taser gun in his other pocket that he always walked around with. Not that he ever had a use for it.

Once in the doctor's office, and after pleasantries were exchanged, he explained what he could. That he was having these horrible migraine headaches for the past three months. And it made it hard to concentrate, especially at his job where he had to talk to and shake hands with many people. Why was this the case? It was because he could tap into people's thoughts. Even when he tried not to shake the left hand or stand on the left side, the older he got, the more sensitive his radar became.

Was he born with this? No, he wasn't born with this. It was a cursed gift his mother gave to him when his parents divorced. He'd lived with it since he was eleven and now, he was twenty-two, and look, double numbers again. It had to be some kind of sign that at twenty-two it got worse, right?

How did it get worse exactly? As Jack explained, the doctor seemed less and less medically concerned. He had this air about him that he firmly believed Jack was a loon, or he was making it all up to get attention.

But Jack was serious.

"I'm serious, sir," he said. Sometimes, he wouldn't even brush his hand against a left arm. He could just be walking and pass someone's left side and hear their thoughts. Often those were the most unpleasant ones and sometimes directed at him.