Dots. Dots. More dots.

And they pulse.

It’s freaky. It’s weird.

It’s a bit dis­gust­ing.

You re­al­ly should not have made them look like acne. Some may take glee in pop­ping pim­ples, but y­ou do not.

Se­ri­ously.

It’s gross.

You look away, shiv­er­ing.

What use is a map if you can’t read it?

Oh well, noth­ing to be done for it now.

“THIR­TEEN!” you yell.

You glance back at the map, sit­ting so in­no­cently in the palm of your hand.

It lights up.

One dot, then three more.

You tear your eyes away.

What a re­lief.

You count peo­ple.

Wait.

There are only three peo­ple in the room.

That does­n’t make sense. There were four pulses. One, fol­lowed by three more…

Ah. Some­times, you can’t help but laugh at your­self.

There are four in the room. You just have to re­mem­ber to count your­self.

“Don’t think about that num­ber. Se­ri­ously.”

Im­me­di­ately, three dots light up.

Yours does­n’t.

You can con­trol your thoughts—even what you don’t think of.

If you wanted to, you could man­age to say the word with­out even think­ing it. Well, with­out think­ing of the num­ber.

Most can’t think of a word with­out the thing it means. Oddly, they can think of the things with­out the words, de­pend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion.

If you say “don’t think of a pur­ple fin­ger­nail eat­ing a mouse killed by a fly­ing rab­bit that was perched in a tree,” peo­ple are go­ing to think about ex­actly what you told them not to think about.

Not re­verse psy­chol­ogy or any­thing.

They just can’t let words be words.

You can.

“Thir­teen,” you say again.

Three dots blink. Two of them dim again.

You frown as the third does­n’t fade; it just–

“Why do you keep say­ing ‘thir­teen’?” She asks.

Thir­teen?

All four dots flash.

Oops. Looks like you need to prac­tice your con­trol.

You should have let the word be a word, not a thing. Not a num­ber.

It just hap­pened be­fore you could even think–

Come to think of it, you’re sure you did­n’t think of any num­bers.

Much less thirt–

Yes, yes, blink all you want, you stu­pid map.

You frown.

This time, you con­trol your­self. This time, though you say the word, you think no num­ber.

“Thir­teen.”

Four dots.

You scowl.

You spin around.

You kick vi­ciously at the air.

Air makes such a beau­ti­ful “Oof!” sound when kicked. Well, air does­n’t. But an in­vis­i­ble man does.

For­mer­ly in­vis­i­ble, at least. He ap­par­ently can’t con­cen­trate prop­erly. Not af­ter be­ing kicked there.

He should have done his home­work.

If he had even looked at the tro­phy shelf over there, he’d have seen it: Cham­pion In­vis­i­ble Man-kicker, with Groin Hon­ors.

He sees it now. It’s rather hard to miss. It’s shaped like a boot.

You like boots.

He strug­gles to his feet, hold­ing aloft a wand made of ice. You won­der how he holds it with­out his fin­gers go­ing numb.

Icy ten­drils of wa­ter fly to­wards you.

This guy’s re­ally thick, is­n’t he? At­tack­ing with ice… it’s ever-so…

You poke the icy ten­drils with your fin­ger. They shat­ter, and melted wa­ter falls to the ground.

He stares at you, shocked.

He must be new at this. It’s amaz­ing he man­aged to pen­e­trate head­quar­ters all the way to your of­fice. You think he would have tripped over his own shoelaces first.

You pluck the icy wand from his grasp.

You lick it.

Just wa­ter. You were hop­ing it would have some fla­vor. Black­berry, prefer­ably.

You stab his eye out, and lick that.

You thought you’d en­joy the taste of blood bet­ter. Not re­ally. Too salty. You have a strong sweet-tooth.

You look at him.

Scream, scream, scream.

Well, if he’s that up­set, you guess you’ll fix the eye–but only this once!

He’s go­ing to need it, af­ter all.

“Next time, try when I’m not here. It’s in the fil­ing cab­i­net. That’s the one that looks like a trash can. Now shoo. I have al­most com­pleted de­vis­ing a new method of play­ing soli­taire that in­volves three and a half peo­ple. Or, at least, three peo­ple and an ex­tra eye. I was go­ing to use yours, but now it’s back to the draw­ing board. Go. I re­quire peace.”