Tick, tock…

    Timothy heard the clock ticking incessantly. The room he was in was large, there was a fireplace in the center, the way its stones were dark meant that it had been used many times, but it looked like it had not been lit for a while.

    The furniture was old, just like the ones in his great-uncle’s house, but while his were so well cared for that it looked new, these ones were more worn. The seats were sunken, they seemed to have almost no padding, and Tim was playing with sticking his finger in a hole of the sofa he was sitting on.  

    The clock in question was a large grandfather clock on the right side of the fireplace, leaning against the corner of the wall. Its hands showed that it was a little past seven in the evening. Tim watched the pendulum go from one side to the other as he heard screaming and muffled laughter coming from the other side of the window which faced the back garden.   

    Tick, tock…

    Smelling the almost ready dinner made him realise he was hungry. The children would soon be inside, they were already outside when he came down from the bedroom, but he didn’t want to go join them in the backyard, he didn’t know what to say to them and they didn’t even come looking for him.

    He then preferred to stay in the living room, with just the sound of the clock. 

    Tick, tock…

    What would happen when they returned? Should he say that he knows about them having abilities or was it best to just say nothing? Perhaps they should already know that he knows, his uncle also had an ability and it could not be difficult for them to imagine that he would have told him since he would come to live in the orphanage.

    In any case, it was better that he didn’t comment on anything , they might not like talking about the subject and he didn’t want to be nosy, because depending on what power they had, bothering them could cost him dearly.   

    Tim was startled when he heard the unexpected sound of a bell ringing next to the door that led to the garden. It was Mrs. Parsons who rang it, she looked at him and made a gesture for him to follow her.   

    “Come on, dinner is ready.”
 
    He got up from the sofa and silently followed her down the hall. The children caught up to him seconds later, the smaller ones ran past him, then disappeared from sight as they turned left into the hallway.

    Tim wasn’t in such a hurry, however, he hadn’t seen the other parts of the house yet as he hadn’t been down that hallway before.

    It was wide, but not that long, half of the wall down was completely covered in wood and there were several photographs hanging on both sides of the corridor.   

    Tim stopped to look at some. The first one he saw was a photograph of all the children taken at the front of the orphanage, they were all lined up next to each other. The photo was taken from a distance, the entire house could clearly be seen in the background. Tim got closer and managed to remember some faces, they were the same ones that welcomed him that same day. The photo had been taken two years prior.

    The other photos were similar, only the children changed, but Mrs. Parsons was in all of them, always in the right corner. The next one was from 1924, the next from 1922, then came 1920, and then 1918. In 1914 the number of children was much smaller compared to the one from four years later, which meant that many of them arrived there during and after the war.   

    Tim went through them a little faster, just looking at the dates. 1912, 1910, 1908… and this was the last photo they had of the orphans, the next one was not a photo, but a painting. The painting was way larger than the others and it was of a house under construction, he soon realised from the structure that it was the orphanage itself. This painting had been done in 1840, meaning the orphanage couldn’t be more than 88 years old. 

    But, if one were to count only from the photos where there were children, the orphanage would only be 20 years old, which didn’t seem like much.

    “Hi.”

    The little black-haired girl was standing in front of him with her arms behind her body. He had not even seen when she got there.

    Her body swayed as she looked at the ground.

    “Mrs. Parsons asked me to call you, everyone is already in the dining room.”

    “Oh, y-yes. I’m coming.”   

    The girl ran to the end of the hallway and he followed her. He had been distracted for a moment. For a few seconds he had even forgotten he had been called to dinner.

    Upon arriving in the dining room, Tim saw that the girl was right. Practically all chairs were full, even the high chairs were already occupied with two babies he had not seen at the presentation when he arrived. There was only one empty chair almost at the end of the table where he would sit.

    Mrs. Parsons was sitting on the far end, no one had touched anything yet, they were all waiting for him.

    “Very well, now we can begin our prayer,” said Mrs. Parsons. Tim remained motionless as everyone closed their eyes and put their palms together.

    “Deign, Lord, to bless the food I am going to eat, to better serve and love you. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

    In the same second that the prayer ended, dishes began to float from hand to hand across the long table and the rattle of cutlery echoed in the room.

    What they were going to have for dinner wasn't of much variety. In front of where Tim was sitting was a pot of tomato soup, and next to it was a jug of orange juice. At the other end where he could not reach, there was a plate of meatloaf.

    The smell was very similar to what his mother used to make, it was strange how after years he could still remember things like that. The meatloaf she made was his favourite; no one, not even his uncle's cook, could make it quite like hers. Maybe here he could get that lucky.

    “Ough!”  

    His thoughts were interrupted when the sound of clanking dishes startled everyone at the table. The little girl sitting in front of him — the same one who had talked to him before — had accidentally leaned on the plate when trying to reach the pan, causing a good part of the tomato soup that was already in the plate to spill onto the tablecloth.  

    “Beatrice, how many times do I have to tell you not to lean on the table?” The older boy caught her attention.   

    “Sorry, Stephen,” she replied with an embarrassed face.  

    “Come here, give me your plate, let me put it out for you.”  

    Stephen dipped the ladle into the pan and added more soup to the plate that the girl had spilled over, she smiled back at him.   

    “Do you want me to help you put it on?” he asked. It took Tim a few seconds to realise that the boy was talking to him. 

    “N-no, I can do it.”   

    He hadn’t put anything on his plate yet, that must be why Stephen had offered, but it was difficult to have the courage to do anything when surrounded by children with powers he couldn’t even say what they were.

   However, that didn’t stop him from being hungry. The meatloaf remained untouched on the other side of the table, its appearance seemed attractive, even more so than the tomato soup that all the children were having.

    Tim wanted to ask someone to bring the dish closer, he was just waiting for the right moment to do so.  

    “Hey, Charlie, can you fetch me the meatloaf platter?” asked the red-haired boy who sat next to him, as if obeying his thoughts.  

    When the dish arrived, the boy cut a large piece and placed it on his plate, the way he picked up the cutlery almost made the piece fall, but instead only a few crumbs fell. Tim took the moment to cut a piece for himself too.  

   As Tim put the fork in his mouth, he could not help being a little disappointed. It wasn’t the same taste, it tasted the same as what he used to have in his uncle’s house, but not the same as his mother’s.

    Or maybe it did, he started asking himself if he even remembered the taste at all.

    After a minute of only chewing and cutlery sounds, the red-haired boy spoke again.

    “Guys, I... I think I’m going to...”   

    He tensed the muscles in his face, lifting his head and closing his eyes. The boy was trying to hold back his sneeze, but it wasn’t working.

    “Oh my God,” exclaimed the girl next to him.

    “Not that again...” said the voice of another child that he couldn't identify.

    “Guys, be careful, Norman is going to sneeze!” shouted a boy in gloves from the other corner. The little girl in front of him went under the table, scared.  

    Tim didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, and when he was about to ask, flames came out of the boy’s mouth, which made him jump out of his chair, terrified.

    The fire had passed before his eyes, he had the feeling he was burning for a moment, but fortunately the flames only reached the table where the meatloaf was.

    “Put it out, put it out!” Shouted Mrs. Parsons.

    Norman took a cloth napkin and hugged the meatloaf with it, the girl next to him threw a glass of water on the remaining flames and they went out, leaving a hole in the tablecloth.

    Norman unwrapped the meatloaf. Its surface was now black as coal. 

    “And there goes our meal,” said the boy sitting next to Norman. 

    “It was an accident!” he tried to explain himself. “but look, we can still eat it, it’s just a little black on top, that’s all!” 

    Everyone at the table turned to Tim, he was the only one standing. He stared at the almost completely burnt meatloaf with his eyes wide open, his breathing almost labored, trying to calm his heart which was still beating rapidly.

    For a moment, he thought the worst would happen.   

    “Hey, are you okay?” Norman said.  

    “Yeah, I just… it was so sudden.” 

    “I’m sorry about that, darling, you can sit down,” said Mrs. Parsons. Tim obeyed her. “It's sad this had to happen on your first day, but there is no need to be scared, Norman is still learning to control his ability, it is a shame it cost us a meatloaf.”  

    “I still think it is still good to eat,” said Norman.

    “No way, this is rubbish now” joked the boy on the other side of the table. All the children laughed.  

    “Hey hey, break it up!” Mrs. Parsons interjected. “Everyone here is also learning to control their own abilities. And Norman has already improved a lot.” 

    “Yeah, at least now he can aim” the same boy said. Norman stuck his tongue out at him.   

    “Oh, really? At least I’m not the one with a monkey’s tail.”  

    “Boys, please” Mrs. Parsons caught their attention once more.    

    Tim didn’t understand what Norman meant until he saw something moving behind the jokester boy: a rather long, furry tail, its brown colour and thin shape really resembled that of a monkey.

    “Have you… had this before? When I arrived here?” Timothy wanted to know. The boy laughed. 

    “Ah yes, I hid it under my trousers, Mrs. Parsons had not warned us that you already knew about our abilities, so I figured you would be scared to death.”  

    “She did say it, you didn’t hear because you have your head on the clouds all the time,” said Stephen, making the children laugh. Now Tim remembered, this was the same boy who had been scratching his trousers at the entrance.  

    “Mrs. Parsons told us you knew, but that we had to be careful not to scare you” the girl sitting next to him said. “But that’s kind of no use anymore, right?” she said looking at Norman, who gave an awkward smile.

    “No, it’s okay, I don’t mind,” said Tim. “Actually, I was a little… curious to know.” He muttered. Maybe they didn’t want to show it, he didn’t know if it was rude of him to ask such a thing.    

    “We can show you then!” said Norman, Tim had not anticipated his enthusiasm. “Not mine because you have already seen it, it is not very fun, but Sally’s is incredible!”  

    Sally was the girl sitting on Tim’s left side. The girl was a few inches shorter than him and Norman, she looked to be about nine years old. She wore a yellow dress with a white bow and had a pink clip on the side of her head holding up her blonde bangs. She gave a shy smile.    

    “What is it?” Tim wanted to know.   

    “She can make things fly, it is really incredible!” said Beatrice.  

    “Yeah, it has a name, Stephen told me once” Sally put her index finger to her lips, trying to remember. “It’s tene… tele… something.”  

    “Telekinetics?”

    “Yes, exactly!” She exclaimed. “You seem to be as smart as Stephen.”  

    Sally picked up the slightly dirty soup spoon that was next to her plate and placed it next to him. 

    “Look, I will show you, it’s easier with small objects.”  

    Sally closed her eyes and squeezed them tight, opening them again as the tip of the spoon began to levitate off the table. The spoon rose slowly, and then rose higher, faster, until it hit the ceiling, making her startle. The spoon then fell from that height to the table again, making a loud noise. The little soup that was in it formed a small stain on the ceiling.

    “Darn…” she mumbled, then turned to him. “That happens sometimes, I still have to learn to leave objects still in the air.” 
 
    “That seems to be very difficult.” 
   
    “It is a bit, yes. I need to imagine exactly what I want the object to do, otherwise it doesn’t work and it ends up doing something else, like what happened now.”  

    “I don’t think you need to squeeze your eyes so much, Sally, you will end up losing control,” said another girl sitting next to her, at the end of the table.   

    “Yes, that might be why, but I do it unintentionally, I think it’s a force of habit” replied Sally. 

    The girl was a little skinny, even more so than him. She wore a dress just like Sally’s, but red; she also had brown hair cut above the shoulder and was shorter than Sally. She had some freckles on her nose like Tim’s, and her plate was the only one on the table that was empty, even though dinner had already started a while ago.   

    “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” asked Tim pointing to her plate.

    “No, I don’t like anything there is today.”   

    “But aren’t you going to be hungry afterwards?”

    Tim remembered how it was when he was younger, his uncle would make him eat the food even when he didn’t like it; If he refused to eat, he could not eat anything else, and when he was so hungry that he could not bear it, he was forced to eat what he had.   

    “Anne doesn’t get hungry. Never, ever” said Sally.  

    “I don’t need to sleep, go to the bathroom or eat, only when I want to,” she said.

    “That is her ability,” Sally added.     
    Tim was silent for a while, thinking about how that made sense.

    How could someone not need to eat? Or sleep? According to his school science classes, there were these things called cells that needed proteins to function, and they also needed to rest. What was it about this girl’s body that made her not need any of that?    

    It was fascinating.   

    Though at the same time, it seemed to be somewhat boring. What was it that she did all night long when everyone else was asleep? The days would be much longer than they already are if it weren’t for the hours of sleep, and that would be horrible if, like him, she also wanted time to pass faster. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like if he had been in her place

   Throughout the conversations, Tim discovered more things about each of the children. One of them, a boy called Edmond, had the ability to give electric shocks just by touch, something that, because he was only six years old and didn’t know how to control the power properly, could even kill someone if he wasn’t careful, and that is why he used rubber gloves at all times.

   Tim wondered how Uncle John would react if he could see this. He was already afraid of the electricity in his house, he would only turn on the light if there were other people with him in the room, if not, he preferred to stay in the dark. He thought that heating the bulb would cause it to explode or that the wiring would short out. If he saw this boy, he would run for the hills.

   Edmond was one of the youngest children at the orphanage, he and Beatrice were almost the same age, the girl being only a year younger.

   Beatrice also had an interesting, but less dangerous, ability: every time her skin came into contact with water, small green scales like those of a fish would appear in place of her body hair. She could also breathe underwater for longer than normal, and as she was still small, this time could be increased with more practice.

   There were still children younger than Edmond and Beatrice, the twins Peter and Madeleine were two years old and still did not sit with the other children, staying in chairs separate from the others. At some point during dinner, Mrs. Parsons left the table so she could feed them while the others were still finishing their food.

   “They have abilities too, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Norman said when he noticed where Tim was looking. “But it’s very little, they don’t know how to control it properly, that’s how it is when you’re a baby.”

   “Did you have them when you were babies too?”

   “I did, my ability manifested early, I think it was when I was about two,” he said.

   “Mine was when I was four.” Sally decided to join in the conversation. “That’s when I got here.”

   “So this is something you acquire over time?” Tim said.

   “Not exactly,” she replied. “Mrs. Parsons explained that it’s something that has always been inside us, but hidden, and that manifests itself when we are children.”

   “But there’s no way you can have it now,” Norman added. “If you’re over eight and haven’t manifested anything, then that means you don’t have it.”

   Tim didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed. On the one hand, it would be amazing if he could do at least something similar to what these children did, but he didn’t remember having manifested anything unusual at any point in his childhood, so it was already certain that he had no abilities.

   But on the other hand, this even had its advantages. What would it be like to be born with a dangerous ability? Most of the children at the orphanage had horrible or meaningless ones, it seemed that having a good ability like his uncle’s wasn’t very common, he doubted he would have that kind of luck.

   Norman looked at him weird.

   “What’s that on your arm?” he pointed to the scar on his right arm.

   “Oh, that? It’s nothing, it just got burned a little, it was nothing.” He changed the subject. “But then did you all manifest at different times?”

   “Yes. Beatrice’s was when she was less than a year old, I think. Charlie has been like that since he was born, Anne too, but she only arrived here about four years ago.” Norman continued: “Edmond arrived when he was three, so it should have been around that time, and Stephen arrived when he was five. It was around the same time you had your first vision, wasn’t it, Stephen?”

   “Yes, it was,” he replied shortly.

   “Tell him, Stephen, you haven’t told him yours yet!” Beatrice said, pulling the sleeve from her shirt. She turned to Tim. “He has the best ability ever!”

   Stephen shook his head, laughing at her statement.

   “It’s not even close to the best, Tris, yours is still better than mine,” he corrected her.

   “Do you really have visions?” Tim was curious.

   “Yes, they’re visions of things that are yet to happen,” Stephen said, adjusting his glasses on his face. “But it’s not that exciting, they’re just flashes that I see, and they’re not that simple to interpret.”

   “He is just being modest, Tim. He is the most talented here, too much for us mere mortals,” said Norman. “He saw you were coming, did you know? At the end of last year he had a vision that a new boy would arrive at the orphanage, and now you are here.”

   “Can you do this at any time? Can you predict my future?” Tim asked. He wanted to know where he would be in a few years, maybe his future would be good.

   If so, then it would be worth the wait.

   “No, it doesn’t work like that,” he replied. “I have these visions by accident, they are usually to warn me of important things that are going to happen,” he paused. “And… when I have them, it’s not very nice.”

   “But Mrs. Parsons said that will change over time. The ability to predict the future is one of the rarest that exists and takes longer than usual to master” said Charlie while chewing his last piece of meat.

   “Yes, you can still be very powerful” said Norman. “This is much better than mine. I can breathe fire from my mouth, and that is it, it’s only cool if I’m going to work in the circus” he complained.

   “Yours would be cooler if you could breathe fire from other parts as well,” mocked Charlie. Everyone at the table started laughing, except Edmond and Beatrice, who didn’t understand much.

   “Shut it, you idiot” he exclaimed, letting out a laugh.

   “Lads…” said Mrs. Parsons, but even she could not hold back her smile.

…

Dinner ended quickly, and it wasn’t because the children didn’t eat, most of them even repeated the soup, but they ate quickly, putting one spoonful after another into their mouths, all so they would have more time to play during the night before having to sleep.

   The clock in the room was showing 10:30 when Mrs. Parsons asked everyone to go upstairs. All the children collected their toys and stuffed animals and went to their rooms.

   They were used to preparing their own bed, each child made their own, they changed the old sheets and put new ones, placing a blanket on top, all the same navy blue colour.

   Tim had never seen such obedient children, it even made him ashamed of his bed, whose sheet was stretched to one side and full of wrinkles as it was never his job to do such things back home, it was no worse than little Edmond’s bed.

   But that was the most he could do, it was better to leave it as it was, so at least he could go to the bathroom before a queue formed.

   Before he could open the bathroom door, Tim heard a sound, someone had already entered there. He was already turning to leave when he heard crying coming from inside, a boy was screaming in agony.

   He opened it a crack and saw Stephen. He was crouched on the floor, both hands on the side of his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut to try to hold back the pain.

   “What happened? Are you well?” Tim asked, opening the door wide.

   Stephen’s eyes opened. He was panting, his lips were dry and wrinkled, he looked like he had just vomited. He stood up, trying to forget what had just happened.

   “I’m… I’m fine.” He said, but his face seemed horrified to look at, like someone who has just woken up from a nightmare.

   “Are you sure?”

   “Yes.” He replied dryly.

   Stephen looked away. He didn’t say anything more, just closed the door after leaving.