See the Shot, Take the Shot

I don't remember a lot about the day my life changed—drastically and disastrously. I have no real memories of the actual lightning strike. Even the time before it is a little hazy... I was riding my bike in a raging thunderstorm between classes at the University of South Florida. The USF campus is too big sometimes... I don't see how they expected us to get from the McKesson building where all the history classes are held to McCabe Hall for my electrical engineering class in 15 minutes—there are two major 4 lane roads dividing campus into 3 main sections... with the light timings, 15 minutes was possible if you caught everything perfectly, otherwise you were in the land of the fucked.

Professor Donaldson was a Grade A dick, too... He was one of those door locking assholes who didn't give a flying fuck why you might be 30 seconds too late—30 seconds were 30,000 milliseconds too many. My World History to Circuits and Signals run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were harrowing dashes where I crossed against the light every single time to make up 90 seconds. It was bullshit, but it does explain why, in one of our typical south Florida afternoon showers I was going balls out on my bike to get to class, regardless of the lightning and thunder literally shaking the earth around me.

And that's all I remember. They tell me I came to a week before, but I honestly don't remember the first 7 days in the hospital... I just remember being in pain when I came to... the look on my mother's face... if you've ever seen your parents with that look, you know... you know something serious has happened. You know something's never going to be right again. I couldn't feel much of my body except... fire. I felt like I was on fire from the inside... my head hurt, my face hurt, my chest hurt... my spine, if you can feel it, it hurt. My left leg hurt.

The lightning, they told me, entered through the top of my head, and exited through my left foot—which is how I stopped at red lights. Right foot up on the pedal ready to pump when it turned green OR the traffic broke for a moment, and left foot on the ground for balance. I looked like a monk on LSD... a huge patch of hair burned from the top of my head where the lightning struck me... a crown of hair that didn't burn around my ears... like a skinny Friar Tuck.

They kept me on morphine for weeks. I guess two or three. I couldn't walk when they moved me out of ICU... everything hurt. That's what I remember most... Hurting. Death would have been better for me I overheard one of the nurses say when I was kind of in between awake and asleep once... and at that time... I agreed.

I didn't recover quickly. Life didn't return to normal for me. I actually needed help learning to walk again... I spoke like a stroke victim at first. I hated my life. I wanted to end it. But time heals all wounds, they say, and a little more than a year later I was enrolled in school again. Still a freshman... I hadn't completed any of my classes that first semester for obvious reasons. But I was alive... I was walking... My brain healed—most of it I guess. I didn't slur words... I wasn't slow on the uptake. I learned to do everything I could do before.

It was during the last bit of my recovery when I began to notice how different the world was, and how differently the people in it treated me... how they responded to me. Sometimes when I looked at them... in their eyes... in their expressions... I could practically hear what they were thinking. It's like I knew what they were going to say before they said it. Some people could be so unbelievably two-faced. My therapist told me I was simply resenting the setback... my injuries... my recovery... that I was projecting what happened to me onto those around me. I didn't think so.

The first indication I had that something -fundamental- had changed in me was in one of my last therapy sessions. Susan—she insisted that I use her first name and not call her Dr. Henninger, was explaining how our time was coming to an end... how I would face my transition without her. She had helped me all she could, she told me. She wondered if there was anything else, I needed before we wrapped... before my insurance wouldn't pay her anymore. It was extraordinary that she managed to get two extensions for my sessions already.

Susan was the kind of woman who polarized a lot of guys... plain, stern face, butchy haircut, but kind of fit and with a huge rack... you just couldn't ignore her tits. It's like, maybe she's ugly as fuck, but her body just made you put her in that "yeah, if I had the chance, fuckin' a, I would" pile.

And all I could think about when she asked me what else I needed as I prepared to return to university... to reintegrate with my friends... to life... all I could think about, semi-jokingly, but kind of seriously was, 'yeah... bust your fucking tits out and I'll feel like our time was worth something.'

The slight headache I pretty much lived with since the lightning strike, grew in strength and I grabbed my temples from a bit of shooting pain—but Susan... her face drained of emotion... she looked at me and said, "David?" and then she said, "but I can't!" and then in the swiftest motion I've ever seen a blouse unbuttoned, her fingers went racing down from her neckline to her belt and she pulled her blouse open for me... her 40" bust line on full display to me in a simple but obviously heavy duty bra as she breathed, awkwardly heavily... her breaths matched mine... like, our chests heaved at exactly the same time... then she slapped me, apologized, and ran out of the room.

I had never been more confused in my life. I left her office... didn't talk to Jenny, her receptionist... I just left and went outside where my mom was sitting in her car waiting for me... and I went home. Home, with the full memory of Susan's huge tits burned in my brain.

I probably jacked off ten times over the next few days to the thought of Susan just ripping her blouse open in front of me... I wished I had seen more... I wished my headache wasn't so vision-splitting when it happened. But that event alone was just the start... and just the beginning of what would happen over the coming weeks with the return of school.

They thought I should take a PE class to keep my motor skills... improving. I needed the elective... there was no better time. It was a "lifetime sports" class where we'd spend a few weeks on things like tennis, bowling, basketball, volleyball, and kickball in a mixed gender setting. Nothing too competitive, nothing too strenuous... it was a perfect way to get three hours under my belt... to at least complete some classes for the first time since starting university the year before in addition to the usual prereq maths and other engineering basics.

Class had been going for a couple of weeks now and I had made a few friends. This one guy, Mark, was... he wasn't coordinated. I mean, I was the lightning strike victim, but this guy... he looked like he'd been in a series of serious storms since the age of three. Nobody was expecting Pete Sampras or Cristiano Renaldo in these classes, but this guy... he was terrible... at everything we did. And though most people were lighthearted and non-serious about our performance on any of the sports or drills in the class, this one big-titted, blonde sorority chick just never missed an opportunity to scoff at him when he fucked up.

Mark was a physics major... Mark was never good at sports, nor would he ever be... especially with the shit-kicking he took from people like Jennifer. The quiet ones are always trouble, though... and Mark... Mark was an odd one, even by my standards. He used to say the darkest shit to me whenever Jennifer or one of the other two sorority sisters in our class teased him. I mean, come on... it's not high school anymore... fuck. But they were relentless.

One day he told me that what Jennifer needed was to be put in her place. I asked him how that would happen, not imagining a way in which the privileged bitch could ever suffer in this world with our rules and our system set up to just... just reward her... and he said, "Someone will get enough... someone's going to rape that stupid bitch and make her swallow his cum. I'd do it... I'd do it and put it up on SoFlaNet to get back at her!"

SoFlaNet is the campus intranet... kind of a wild west... like an internal reader edited message board or something. Campus didn't regulate it that much... wanted to promote the free exchange of ideas... let the students moderate it. So half of it was posts about weed and "mind expanding experiences" and half of it was Wokebook, where we argued over how best to be better than better and other inane bullshit.

Revenge porn wasn't really tolerated on SoFlaNet—but it would definitely stay there long enough to ruin this chick's reputation and find its way to eternal internet stardom on other services / image boards / etc... Anyway, it was an unbelievably specific threat from an unbelievably weird guy about an unbelievably entitled bitch, and my off the cuff reaction was simply, "You should."

Mark was arrested three days later, but not before 4 videos ranging in length from 5 minutes to 25 minutes were posted to the CampusNews channel showing Jennifer crying and handcuffed at her wrists and ankles to Mark's bed. He stripped her and photographed her (the stills were also posted) from a variety of angles, then he mounted her and fucked her while she cried. Three times. The last video is 15 minutes nonstop of Mark pulling her hair and pumping her ass. I actually had a dream about something similar that night... it seemed so real... I could feel her ass... I knew what her tits felt like... what her hair smelled like.

I downloaded everything. I was sad for what happened-to Mark anyway. I hated to see Mark go to jail, but that was clearly taking things too far.

Weeks passed without incident. I never would have thought anything more about it until the end of the semester when Jennifer and I were paired together in two on two basketball as part of the last section... the top she was wearing that day was a kind of sports bra... but it went around the back of her neck and had this triangle of mesh that really let you see the tops of her boobs easily... it was a bit much for the class environment we were in, I thought. Times have certainly changed... but I just thought it was hella provocative.

And the whole time we raced back and forth on our half court two on two match, I just wanted to see her tits again. I had Mark's videos... I had seen them again and again all semester long. She returned to class a week after the incident... we didn't talk about it... but now that the semester was ending, and everyone would scatter off to new classes... I just wanted to see them... in person.

I sat in the locker room with a towel over my crotch. The thoughts about big-titted, blond-bimbo-Jennifer left me with an erection I sure didn't want to sport in front of the other dudes in the class. I looked around. The locker room was empty. The sports center would be empty until the night classes. And then she walked in.

Jennifer looked at me kind of blankly... but she looked at me—right at me—and opened her towel. She just stood there... and I just... looked. I looked hard... I was concentrating... I didn't know when I'd see tits like hers again... I was sure I'd never see her again... and when staring began to feel awkward... I looked away—and then she yelled and looked around—like she had no idea how she had gotten there and she ran away.

I thought somehow I'd be in trouble—but trouble never came. And I moved on. But I moved on with a weird sense that her little strip show wasn't random... that we were connected—in that moment at least. Unfortunately, I would need to unwittingly ruin a few more lives before I realized how I had changed... what I had become... what I could do.

I didn't know. It wasn't on purpose.

There's a ton of forced / non-consensual porn on the internet, but all of it that I was able to find at the time until Mark and Jennifer's videos was all staged. Usually badly acted... usually obviously fake. That's why watching Mark taking Jennifer just right there on camera... openly... brazenly... as much as they tried eradicating the videos from the internet... It was a nonstop game of whackamole... they'd pop up on porn tube sites and amateur video sites... and I admit I wondered if there were others out there... surely there must have been more sick fucks like Mark out there...

This guy in the dorm where I lived had tons of fake Japanese and eastern European rape videos on his computer. He'd show me if he got anything good that week. We'd talk about the girls in the videos or situations we liked or whatever... the guy had a girlfriend... a tatted-up Latina girl majoring in public relations... She was a freak too. He said they role played all kinds of things. Even showed me a video of him fucking her mouth with her hands tied over her head to his bedframe once. Traded me that video for my videos of Mark's craziness.

Seeing a girl in person that you have a hardcore sex video of... that's a new kind of titillation, I can tell you. And that's when things got weird for the final time—without me fully understanding why. It was a holiday weekend, so we had Monday off and the dorms had an extended period of visiting hours because no class and all, and I was just there in Tim's room with his roommate Allan, when Tim's crazy Latina girlfriend showed up.

We had just finished watching a video where a guy's roommate raped his girlfriend in front of him and I felt this... static... like fire... in my head—not unusual for me in the last year—but maybe a bit more intense than other times, and before I knew it Allan was tearing Maria's clothes from her body right in front of me as Tim sat against the wall clutching his head.

I couldn't move... my head was starting to hurt too, but I couldn't turn away from the scene in front of me. Allan was inside her moments after tearing her dress off her body. Maria wasn't wearing a bra... I just stared at her natural tits shaking so perfectly with each thrust as Allan covered her mouth and grunted into her ear. I bet the whole thing didn't take five minutes, but it seemed like an eternity in my mind... my heart pounded in my chest... my cock was raging hard... I could practically feel her tightness with every one of Allan's thrusts.

Then Maria looked at me. Even though Allan's hand was clasped forcefully over her mouth... through her eyes... I heard her ask my "why?"

"It hurts," she told me. "I don't want this."

For a moment... my heart hurt... I felt guilty... Allan let her go... she dropped down between my legs and I looked up at Allan and Tim... they stared blankly at me... Then Maria looked up at me and laughed. Allan's eyes filled with rage... he grabbed Maria by her hair and threw her to the ground in front of us, causing her to scream, but still laugh—like she had won some kind of battle... and Allan mounted her and fucked her until he came in her pussy.

Freaked out, I got up and walked out of Allan and Tim's room when I saw Allan holding Maria face down on the floor as Tim got behind her. I knew what he was going to do when I left. I could feel it. I could -feel- it.

**

I didn't know how I had caused Allan to rape his roommate's girlfriend that day, but I felt that I had caused it. I felt too many things that day. When I say I felt Maria's tightness with each of Allan's thrusts... I mean, I felt it like it was happening to me... like I was doing it. My chest pounding... my breathing... I was as exhausted as if I had been the one overpowering her and pushing myself into her over and over for 5 straight minutes... When I left, I felt Tim enter her... I felt it like I was doing it. I was doing it. I. Was. Doing. It.

I hid in my dorm for the rest of that day, constantly checking the windows and the halls... waiting for the campus police or the city police to show up and take me away. I had raped Maria twice... And just waited for the hand of justice to pluck me out of my bubble and take me to my future home behind bars. They never came.

I thought about the event... over and over... about my head... about the static... about the connection I felt to all three people in the room. Like... like some kind of rope connected us... like a channel between us... After two days of avoiding people, I had to leave my room to get more food... to go to class.

Those connections were all around me. Where 6 months before I thought I was just very intuitive at reading people and their expressions? I realized that if I tried—but not too hard—I could... I could hear their thoughts... their moods at least... some snippets... some directional information. The cafeteria was unbelievably loud to me... nobody would shut up... I felt like I needed a public place like that to try to figure out what was happening to me... to see if I was just going crazy... but the cacophony of individual conversations practically dizzied me.

I realized I wasn't just hearing them all with my ears... I was hearing them all... In my head. I struggled to focus on the two girls sitting a table away from me... only a few feet... and for a brief moment, the world was incredibly silent, but their voices were completely clear to me... but I heard two sets of words, from both girls... it was like I could hear their inner monologue... and their voices...

"Jimmy was nice enough to give me a ride back to the dorm" she said with her mouth. I knew this because I was watching her lips moving... but I heard her say 'and I'm sure he wanted to come up and fuck me' with her eyes. 'You'd kill me if you knew I was about to fuck your boyfriend.'

"He's so nice. He's nice to everyone, that's why I love him so much!" the other girl said. I was probably squinting directly at her as I watched her mouth fake a smile 'why were you both at McDonald's together in the first place, you sneaky bitch!?' rang through my mind. Her eyebrows raised as she thought the last part.

I could hear it. I could -hear- it.

I spent a day trying to attend class... trying to learn how to close my mind to the noise... trying to learn how to focus on it when I wanted to... Tim had texted me a few times to see if I was coming by his room anytime soon. I quit avoiding him and decided to go.

At first, we didn't talk about the events of a few days prior... but then he just came right out and said, "So... that threesome with Maria the other day... that uh... what did you think?"

I looked at him and tried to measure my response. "It was... unexpected." I said.

"You're always talking about all the fake stuff out there..." Tim said before cracking a smile, "So I figured we should just rape my gf in front of you. But..."

Tim started to ask me a question but stopped, but he finished it in his head and I heard him ask, 'why did you leave? Did I fuck up?'

"But what?" I asked him.

"Nah... nothing. It was hot though, don't you think?"

I could tell he was partly nervous, partly feeling quite proud for pulling it off with and in front of his friends.

"So do you have like, more pics and vids of Maria?" I asked him.

He didn't answer me immediately... and as he thought about his answer, I heard and felt every part of his thinking process during his answer. And that's when I realized I wasn't just hearing him... I had his awareness... like... we were sharing his consciousness or something... I knew he had more from his thinking process... so I just... made him open Windows Explorer and navigate to his private GFs folder... GFs... I liked the name... not just Maria. Tim had 7 girls in his GFs folder... Maria was just the latest.

"Just use my thumb drive." I said to a question he hadn't asked as I handed him a 128GB USB3 thumb drive that he plugged directly into his laptop.