Haphephobia

Chapter 7

The party wound down steadily to a tired halt. This was our signal for everyone to clean up so they could go to sleep.

By that time, I was so filled with crappy junk food and Snapple that I didn’t even feel like moving. See, this… this was twenty times better than going to some stupid high-school party where everyone drinks underage and does drugs only for them all to wake up with a hangover and skip school the next day. This was what real satisfaction feels like… nothing about a hangover sounded satisfactory to me.

I was soon beginning to wonder where I was supposed to sleep, and what clothes I was expected to sleep in. I know it seems like a stupid problem to have, but I didn’t wanna be that one kid who was left a rather uncomfortable piece of floor with nothing but a thin cotton blanket and his boxers.

Ava approached me not long after I had thought this, and I rolled my eyes lazily. Of course. I kept forgetting she could read minds… she was probably coming over here to call me out. Maybe she thought I was complaining. Maybe she thought I was regretting my choice to stick around. I wasn’t…

I don’t think any of those things, stupid. But if you keep up with the mental whinings, maybe I WILL call you out. Anyways, you’re not sleeping on the floor or in your underpants. You’re sharing a roommate with Folkvar… you met him earlier. Where is that boy, anyway? Ava finished, and she turned her head slightly, looking not too unlike an antennae. She was probably calling him mentally. I just don’t get why she always used her head to communicate with people and not her mouth…

Shut up, dude! You think so loudly. You know, I never realized it was this hard to concentrate talking to other people if the person you’re connected to is thinking so obnoxiously. Ava chastised me. What does that even mean? How can you ‘think obnoxiously?’ Before I could retort, she continued speaking.

I don’t use my mouth all the time because this place is huge and he wouldn’t hear me otherwise. Also, confidentiality is an issue here sometimes… And finally, I talk to you mentally in particular because it’s easier to get you to understand me that way. Sometimes words don’t express fully what thoughts will, Ava finished. She smiled warmly at me, temporarily dropping her ‘tough-girl’ attitude to replace it with the nice one I preferred. I smiled back genuinely, my face muscles slightly unused to this practice.

Anyway, Ava said, shaking her head and staring blankly to revive from her short reverie, I’m supposed to take you to your new room now. You already saw Folkvar, and for the most part, what you saw from him is a summary of how he acts all the time. He’s pretty nice… thinks he’s the smartest one around here, but that title actually belongs to someone else, Ava finished, and we began to walk out of the kitchen and the living room and into the very long hallway. It was illuminated with several lights, all of which cast a white glow on the impeccably clean white carpet. I’d never seen a white carpet kept so nicely- especially considering the company that lives here.

Coming to the very end of the hall, I looked back to the doorway we came in through. It was literally a minimum of three hundred feet away. My mind officially blown, knowing that it had barely felt like any time to get down here, I whistled.

Brain-wave neutralizers. They stall the time-keeping center of your brain to make it seem like you’ve only been walking for a couple of seconds. We’ve been developing them for a long time for, uh… ‘bigger things,’ but we’ve only ever gotten them to work for small distances. So we installed them in the hall, Ava explained. I nodded, too tired to bother feeling surprised that that was even a thing. Too bad they were practically a failed project, though.