7 | Smoke and Mirrors

1.01 - Bad Luck

The hustle and bustle of New York City was always a welcome distraction to Maya Doyle. Especially when she was having a run a very bad luck. Between missing her train every single day for the past week, spilling coffee all over her one clean work shirt, dropping a glass of red wine on the carpet during a terrible date and many, many more instances of bad luck, Maya was beginning to think that she was cursed.

It was probably a bad idea, but she loved stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and just watching the people around her. It allowed her heart to calm down, her mind to slow down and turn from the bad thoughts plaguing her mind to better ones. With the week she's had, one moment of calm was what she really needed. And this may have been the only time she could get it.

When she was little, her mother used to take her to Central Park and they'd sit on a bench and make up stories about the people that passed them. It had been one of her favourite things to do with her mother and was constantly begging her to go to the park so they could play their game. As an adult, Maya still loved to play. Only now, instead of princesses, princes and fairytale characters in disguise, she imagined dark secrets and hidden lives. She would imagine fanciful journeys and love letters hidden in bags. And, on occassion, she would still imagine princesses and princes in disguise.

It took her mind right off of whatever was worrying her. She had always been good at imagining things and coming up with stories that made no sense. It was these stories that always made her mother laugh.

Maya was shocked out of her daydreams as someone knocked into her shoulder and sent her skidding sideways into a bench. Pain blossomed in her thigh where it had made contact with the edge of the bench and she looked over to try and see who had knocked into her but they had already disappeared into the crowds of people. Maya cast her eyes down and took a deep breath, willing herself not to lose it right there on the sidewalk.

But she couldn't do it.

Her legs gave out under her and she collapsed to the ground, holding her head in her hands. No one came over to her to see if she was alright. No one even noticed her. Why couldn't anything ever go right? Why did it all have to be so complicated and hard and wrong? Couldn't she just have one good day?

Something deep inside of Maya snapped, a bubble that was full to bursting finally breaking and spilling it's contents.

Images began to flash behind her eyes of terrible, horrible things. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched at her head, trying to will the images away. But they kept coming. She saw giant spiders and terrifying clowns. She saw zombies and rapid wolves. She saw people, frightened at the images before their eyes, wondering how it was possible that they were seeing what they were seeing. People's worst fears come to life before their eyes.

Cars swerved and crashed on the roads, buses screeched to a halt. People yelled and screamed, some being broken down into tears. Fights broke out as people punched others, not knowing what they were truly hitting— who they were truly hitting. People scrambled to find somewhere to hide from their fears, from the terrible things they could see. Tears escaped from Maya's eyes as she watched it all happen from inside her mind.

For a moment, she wanted desperately to believe that she was imagining it all. That the panic, the chaos, the screams of terror, were all inside her head. Just sounds to accompany the images in her mind. It was then she realized with horror that she wasn't just hearing the screams inside her head. She was actually hearing them with her ears.

Something terrible was going on around her and she couldn't help the belief that she was the cause of it all. Somehow.

And what a horrifying thought that was. That she was the one causing everyone pain, terror, anxiety, disgust... and she had no idea how to make it stop.

But, piped a voice in the back of her, loud to be heard over the horrifying images still playing, how could you be doing this? You aren't special in any way. You aren't gifted. It can't be you because there's no way you could have power like this.

Maya believed that voice. It didn't calm the fear in her heart, didn't stop the images, but it made her feel less guilty. She wasn't doing this because there was no way she could be. She wasn't special.

In her mind, a new image flashed to the front. A man with strange clothes walking down the street, unaffected by the things going on around him. In fact, unlike everyone he passed, this man was calm, concerned about the things he was seeing. In one of his hands, he was holding some kind of strange golden shield made of intricate designs. Maya could see where this man was walking, what he was walking towards... and it was her.

This man, this very strange man, was coming towards her. Walking calmly, confidently, right towards her. And what a pathetic image she made, almost curled up into a ball, eyes tightly pressed shut, hands over her ears to try and shut it out, to make it stop. Why would this man being walking towards her? What did he want with her? Why wasn't he affected like the rest of the people around him?

As the man approached her, Maya managed to open her eyes and look up, finding him looming over her, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He didn't say a word to her, simply reached forward with the hand not holding the shield thingy, put his hand over her head.

Maya didn't see what happened next. Blackness overtook her vision and she collapsed even further.