Minor Disturbances

Where once I looked at this full, heavy city skyline all I saw were bleak behemoths, I now see vast playthings. The grotesque surging in my muscles abated, my hands now twitch with raw need. There can be nothing untouched, no single aspect of my surroundings I do not personally change.

I need to remove these things that surround me, and subject it all to a cleansing. To observe things in my state is only to feel a vast, unfulfilled hunger for their being to reflect my own perfect vision.

To accentuate this feeling, to make it knowledge, I place my hand flat on the tabletop at which I sit to observe the imperfections around me. I feel the cold table, and how the shivering in my hand responds. I push my own sensations through the table, down the legs, and now my touch is amplified through the ground around me.

Electricity fringes the edge of all, and water splashes through old pipes. Everywhere, human warmth taps along it and it takes all control to not simply adopt the sensation of all of them, as well.

As I push further, beyond the threshold of the cafe, I am now the concrete, cold and cracking. I exercise absolute control in my own sensation, that I do not casually tear the sidewalk into unfeeling pieces, sending all the humans spiraling into fear and confusion.

There are other things to taste now.

I withdraw all feeling from the environment, everything a subtle orgasm back through my palm, now cold again.

The people surrounding me, under the same flicking lamps, have no clue. I open my skin, travel between them, and oblivion reigns from its’ small and silent throne. Two men discuss over a laptop screen, and a handful of solitary patrons stare into cups, or the one-sided congress of their mobile devices.

Emotion crawls deep in them all. Somewhere in each, terror and lust and sorrow are waiting to be mined. Very soon, one will experience a joy so profound that it will cross the thin border that separates it from madness.

I take one last sip from my cup, watching the ridges and streaks as they crenelate a pattern along the inside of the cup.

I thumb foam from the corner of my mouth, and smile. My smile is casually returned by the barista whose glance was caught by the heavy porcelain clink of my cup in its saucer.

I blink and, unknowing as to why, she walks out from behind the counter, fishing through her keys.

Palms on the table, I wait for her to lock the cafe doors. Though she will never know why she did this, and no one in this room will live past the next hour, she winks a quick smile, and I smile again, infinitely grateful for her.