Capturing Ella

Chapter 1 - Joe

March, 2015

The bread knife hung perilously between the shoulder blades of my best friend, the tip of said knife causing a slight dimple in the muscles next to the spine. Suspended in the air, I frowned at the knife for a second or two until I could feel the weight of the stainless steel blade in my mind and had to remind myself to stay in control.

Well, I guess this was the literal interpretation of backstabbing.

'Now, if you wouldn't mind stabbing me,' Jason said impatiently.

The twenty year old stood in the middle of my parent's kitchen with just a pair of swimming trunks on and in the international gesture showing that he isn't armed. I almost found it amusing he stood with his hands above his head, but still continued to egg me on. I continued to stare at the knife, feeling my control of it waiver in and out as my mind wandered. Is it stupid that I'm twenty and still live at home? Don't get me wrong, my parents are hardly ever here as they work at the incoherent hours at night but I still live with them. I've lived in this house for as long as I can remember - it's just my childhood house. A small five bedroom house located on the outskirts of the nearest town with only a few houses around us. As the youngest child, I always had my own bedroom compared to my older siblings. The room we were currently in had little to no change from moving day over fifteen years ago. The room was rectangular, with double patio doors looking across the garden and further onto the green fields behind our house that we used to play on. Counters filled three sides of the room, only breaking for the door. My parents when choosing the colour scheme had gone light and modern, with a light oak finish on the cupboards and white marble tops which has since been stained in some places and cluttered with utensils. On the fourth wall was a built in sofa and a table, with six more chairs around the other sides. With a big family comes a big dining arrangement. However, since my brothers and sisters were older than me, a six year age gap between me and the next brother out, everyone had flown the nest... apart from me. Not for long, though. At the end of August, I was moving into my own small flat a few miles away from here. What could go wrong in the mean time?

Even Jason had moved out at the age of eighteen when he went to university. In fact, all of my friends went to university, in pursue of a career that required a degree in God knows what and a heavy debt which many will never repay. I knew what I wanted to do as a career for ages now, from when I was little. What I wanted to do was pretty simple; I wanted to stop people using their Savant gifts for criminal reasons. When I was younger, my oldest sister Carly told me to picture our family as undercover superheroes. We all had various gifts or "powers" as she used to call them, and we can do what we want with me. They are ours to keep. However, some people misuse theirs and use them for bad. Of course when Carly explained this to me I was six, so the crimes she told me peoples gifts were used for was theft and muggings. Our family was devoted to stopping them, but at the age of six I was too young. To be fair, at the age of six I was already losing control of my gifts and was in the deep end.

Let's just say my parents didn't catch on to what my gift was until it was far too late.

I had started mainstream infant school, and was sat in my Year 1 class alone. I was bullied because I was different. Please read "different" as "a mess". I was overweight and didn't have much in the good looks department. My teeth were wonky and sticking out and I was called "Beaver-teeth" for several years. But I used to always love drawing and reading – but when you're six and prefer to sit at the painting table with the girls rather than play with the Playmobil cars; you are always going to be the laughing stock of the class. I was okay with that, though, because it meant I stay to myself – something my family always told me I must. I always kept a guard up because that's what my older brothers and sisters do, and keep my little superpower inside in brain. That was until one reading time.