The metal rod lay on the table. One inch in diameter, eight inches long. He could have lifted it with one finger.

It wasn’t moving.

Connor had actually been glad to see the black dude that morning. Joanne had been gone for two weeks, two weeks of wandering three rooms with nothing but his own head for company. If he really had super powers he would be Boredom Man, able to break out of any mind-numbing situation whenever he wanted. He had beaten both Call of Duty and Halo ten times each.

He almost missed his fans. Right now, even screaming thirteen-year-olds would be good company.

So when Angine appeared at the foot of his bed and commanded him to shower and pull himself together, Connor complied.

This time he even actually made an effort. He studied the rod, noticed the small imperfections in its surface, the almost invisible lines crosshatching its cut ends. He pictured what it would look like lifting, settling in the air, rotating in a circle.

It was a no go.

Angine walked in circles around him like a shark scoping prey, breaking his concentration.

“Back off!” Connor snapped. “You’re making it harder.”

“Try something different this time,” the Senator said. “Try making it hot.”

Sighing, Connor imagined it growing red hot. He thought he remembered something about molecules going faster and faster to generate heat. He tried to see this. What did a molecule look like anyway? Was it like a cell, round and sloppy… star shaped? His science teacher had been a man with a monotone voice and a huge sloping belly, like a cartoon bear. In fact his name was something bear-like too... Ursa? Grizzle? Baloo!

“Stop.” The Senator’s voice lashed whip-like from his mouth. He had been unpleasant all morning, compact and dense and urgent. “Connor, this isn’t a child’s game.”

“I know that. Look, I’m trying, but I really don’t think--”

“You are pretending. Imagining what you want to happen is just fantasizing. You must make it happen. Believe it is happening.”

“I don’t think I’m your man,” Connor said.

The Senator’s smile was a disturbing thing; it didn’t fit on his face the right way at all, it kind of slid around trying to find a place to fix. “Oh, I am quite sure you are,” Angine said. “But I don’t believe you’re your own man, and therein lies the problem. You don’t like yourself very much do you?”

Connor’s reaction was reflexive. “Why wouldn’t I like myself? Everybody wants to be me. I’m hot and talented and famous and rich.”

“None of those things do you any good now. Those things people think are a form of power, but they are nothing. Illusory. The only real power is being able to control everything around you, not to be a well-paid puppet on a string.” Angine was standing over him now, looking down with flat gray eyes the color of a frog’s underbelly. “Anyway, you’re not so hot now are you? You’ve let yourself go. You’ve got a gut, and you smell bad. You’ve washed up on my beach, Connor, and I am trying to help you get back in the ocean, but you’re just sitting in that apartment getting fat and stupid.” He leaned down, his eyes on level with Connor’s. “Your time is passing.”

Connor rubbed his jawline, felt the stubble there, reminding him of the scrubbie his mother had kept to clean the sink. He could picture her clearly, a woman that had never been in the right time. She would have been happy living forty years earlier, baking cookies, attending church socials. She had always felt removed. There was a strange sadness about her, and now he knew why.

Angine had told him in the first meeting that they weren’t his real parents, but they had never spoken of it again. What was there to say really? Connor knew in his heart that Angine was telling the truth. He had always missed some vital connection with them, and in a way it was a relief. He was able to let go of all the guilt he carried for not loving them enough. But then, who was he really? How had he ended up here cosseted by a mad man that insisted on impossible parlor tricks? He had given away everything that had defined him and now he was nothing, just a young man that was already growing old, hiding under the streets of a city that pretended to adore him.

“Who were my real parents?” he asked suddenly. “You know everything else, you have to know that.”

Angine’s lips twisted. “Trash. Worthless people that didn’t know what to do with you.”

“Like what, homeless people, druggies?”

“Worse.” Angine shook his head affecting pity, “They just didn’t care. They didn’t want you. They abandoned you, left you in the trash where Social Services found you.”

A sickening horror and sadness clawed at Connor’s heart, tightened his lungs, but underneath all that a small, still voice said. He’s lying.

Angine flinched as though he had heard it.

“I don’t believe you,” Connor said.

“Of course you don’t. The golden boy can’t possibly believe he started as a piece of garbage. And if you don’t accomplish what I am requesting that’s where you’ll end your life too.”

“You’re going to kick me out.”

Angine tsk tsked. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, so don’t look so hopeful. I know everything you think, Con. It’s impossible for you to lie to me. No. If you can’t deliver, then you will simply go away.” He looked almost forlorn. “Your fans will be shocked to discover that you’ve been suffering from depression for years. That’s why you started drinking. And in rehab you found out about your parents, and well, it was all too much for you.” He smoothed his hand over Connor’s hair with cold affection. “It will be convincing,” Angine said. “Suicide is one of my specialties.”

“So that’s your plan?” Connor was surprised to find he wasn’t really scared. “Threaten to kill me and then hope I’ll perform?”

Angine raised an eyebrow and sighed. “I know something that will motivate you.” He steepled his fingers together thoughtfully, a vaudevillian parody. “The other night I was fortunate enough to see a most spectacular display, and it gave me an idea.”

Connor was very, very nervous. He didn’t like the tone in Angine’s voice. Something bad was about to go down.

He tried. He tried so hard he thought his head would explode. He tried because he knew that this time was for real. If he couldn’t find some way to make that damn rod do something, anything at all, something was going to happen to make the rest of his stay here look like the best vacation he’d ever had.

Just breathe. You can do this. You can do this. It’s rising. It’s rising. I see it in the air and... I can do this. I--

And unbelievably, it was rising, lifting off the table, the metal glowing faintly silver.

“I did it!” Connor shouted. He had broken his concentration, but somehow the rod stayed in the air. It rose higher, floating in his direction. It was then that Connor saw the Senator’s face, the malicious smile, the brow furrowed in concentration.

Connor wasn’t lifting it. Angine was.

It hovered over his head and Connor saw what was going to happen. “Stop, no-- I--”

The rod struck downward with incredible force, hitting Connor on the shoulder. The sound was like a stone smacking mud. He crumpled to the ground staring up at Angine with wide shocked eyes. The pain was excruciating, a white hot blossom, but already it was dissipating, fading into the rage that overcame him.

“You son of a--!” He leapt over the coffee table for Angine, but something was in his way, some sort of force or energy that would not allow him to come any closer. The rod came down again connecting with his forearm, and Connor went back to his knees.

The rod changed trajectory, targeting the soft bend at the back of his neck. The next blow would leave him paralyzed or probably dead, and all Connor could do was watch. He saw everything focused through a narrow lens, Angine, his face lit with an unearthly glow, the devil’s own minion enjoying his game.

“NO!” Connor shouted. The heat ripped through him, shook his bones, razed his flesh, poured forth from somewhere in the back of his brain. He felt the rod come firmly into his power, gripped in the hand of his mind.

He wielded the weapon now.

He turned the rod back toward Angine, his only thought, a thought that ran somehow into the rod itself, was to kill the Senator, to beat him bloody and senseless. As soon as his intention to do that was clear, he felt the rod torn from him. It hovered in the air in front of Angine, under his command.

Connor’s breath was fast and ragged, his skin tingled in a million places, he felt husked and empty.

The rod slowly settled back to the table, and Angine nodded, smiling his approval. “Well done, Con. I knew you had it in you.”