Becoming Supernatual follows the wild ride of Mark Justin who rejects and supresses telekinetic powers until he has to save a life.  Then there's no stopping the local and Christian press coverage, a syndicate takeover of his church and the chaos of expanding energies he can't contol.  Nothing in life prepares you for becoming supernatural but in the end you save yourself and the ones you love anyway you can.   

The first of a trilogy, it's self-published by Lulu.   Appreciate any comments.

Chapter 1 - Summer 1972

   Mark Justin and his band of merry tripsters were cruising south on Texas 124, out of Houston heading to the coast, not Galveston, too many lights there to get the full sense of the event.  They were headed for a remote beach up the coast.  No one in the '64 Volkswagen van had seen it yet but it had arrived that night on the Texas coastline and every FM station from Victoria to Port Sulfur was raving.

"Listen compadres, I'm not telling you to do anything illegal but if your head ain't right and you're still dressed and dry, let's just say you'd better find a way to the coast in the next few hours.  It's 2 A.M. Southeast Texas and the Rover wants to hear from all over what my friends are seeing and doing in the water tonight.  There's magic in the Gulf and I'm taking your calls until dawn," announced The Midnight Rover, on Galveston's Power 98.

 Mark drove the party van and sipped a cup of his favorite brew, a mixture of coffee and beer he called Maxwiser.  Nasty but effective, it left no residual fuzz of a hangover even on the longest road trips.  In his early 20's and still buff from running high school track, Mark was taller than most and handsome in a jut-jawed way with killer blue eyes and long blond hair.  

With the summer rotation of UT students Mark's usual friends were long gone and the ‘drive board' was where he found these paying customers for this little excursion.  Forty eight hours ago he had tacked his card on the bulletin board in the commons under The Tower and advertised, "Experience the Gulf: one special night-$10 round trip."   Now he had five companions, three girls and two guys, and more than enough cash to cover it.

Their destination was High Island, a small beach town northeast of Galveston across the bay, isolated from the lights and traffic.  Mark had surfed Cosby's Beach for years and knew the cut through the dunes that opened to the wide long beach that should be deserted despite all the radio buzz.   The idea was to party on the beach and skinny dip for a few hours in the most fantastic migration of phosphorescent plankton to hit the Texas shoreline in fifty years. 

When the van rolled through the dunes, the coast was literally clear-not another vehicle in sight.  And the water glowed.  Mark drove slowly down the beach, taking some time to adjust to the dark and the amazing lights in the naturally phosphorescent surf.

Like an inverse shadow, the plankton reflected the energy from everything in the water.  That night, a gallon of the Gulf contained hundreds of thousands of the bioluminescent dinoflagellates each secreting a mixture of protein and enzyme intended to light up and frighten away predators.  It was this extreme concentration of the plankton that generated the rare light show in front of him.

The sea foam was electric white as it rolled up the beach and then dissolved into twinkling stars seeping into the sand.  Breaking waves glimmered white-green at their crests, fish were streaks of lime flashing through the troughs and hermit crabs left sparkling trails as they scooted across the back wash.   Even straight it was dazzling.

The tripsters went bananas.  Before Mark stopped the van they stripped and piled on to the beach jumping up and down, dancing and singing, celebrating their sensory overload.   After a beer-toast to new friends and psychedelic plankton, six naked screaming hippies sprinted into the water to see it up close.

At belly button depth they stopped moving and started laughing as another surprise surrounded each one of them.  From every body a perfect ring of reflective light beamed life energy in all directions. 

An aura revealed is an awesome sight.  In this water it shown first as intense white-green (like a glow stick) close to the body, fading to lighter green within a foot, then trailing off to a deep green that disappeared into the night water about three feet away.  

Mark and April stayed back apart from the others.   They had hit it off since she called about the ride but now it was love at first sight, a common problem for him.  She was so cute and relaxed he could not help himself.  They were tall, slender and blond, a fine match for the gene pool. 

But Mark had sworn off relationships; too many expectations with too much consequence and unpredictable results-not worth the effort, until now.

"Hell of a light show," he said to break the ice.

"You should see it from here.  God, it's everywhere.  Come on, slow poke," she laughed and pulled him deeper until the water was chest high.

Now their full body energy was reflected and lit up the water around them.  They were close enough so that their auras were indistinguishable and she playfully pushed him away.

"You're all aglow Miss April.  Lots of energy in that lovely body of yours."

But as he moved away she stopped laughing and just stared at him, at the water around him. Transfixed and amazed, mouth agape, she panicked.

"Stop a second.  Damn it!  I can't believe I'm seeing this.  Tell me real fast Mark Justin and don't lie about it.  Why the hell is your light not like mine?"

He couldn't answer the question.  Instead of a white-green glow like all the others, his aura was an rainbow of red, green and yellow light, blending then separating and fusing again; ebbing and flowing to some unknown biorhythm.  It swirled around him like a watery kaleidoscope pulsing color in all directions.  To April it was inexplicable, powerful and frightening.

"Wow, that's a relief," he finally replied.  "I thought you were looking below the surface."  She didn't laugh.

 "Okay, okay, there are lots of pretty colors.  It's just the Maxwiser.  You know it does that to everybody if you drink enough, so take it easy.  But it's pretty cool, huh?"

"That's pure-dee bullshit, but it's so far-out I don't care.  That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  All those colors, dancing around you like some kind of Tim Leary psychedelic ballet.  It's fan-damn-tastic."   

He just smiled and hunched his shoulders not knowing how to respond or explain the light show emanating from his body.

"I swear, Mark Justin.  You are so trippy and you don't even know it.  Come back over here right now.  I gotta take your pulse from inside that thing," she said with open arms and a smile.

But spoiling their perfect moment, Mark noticed new lights flash across the beach.  A pickup truck had cut through the dunes and was slowly heading down the beach toward his van.

At that moment his dream date ended and the freak show began.

In the bed of the pickup, standing together against the cab, a tall naked longhaired hippie wearing only a flapping black trash bag for a cape was flanked by two totally nude blondes each holding a kerosene torch high above the truck cab.   They looked like a bargain-basement entry in an East Texas porn parade. 

Mark quickly warned April and began swimming toward shore as fast as he could.   Realizing how vulnerable they were, he felt more threatened with every stroke. 

In seconds he reached shallow waters and jogged up the beach.  From the dark side he grabbed his jeans out of the van and then walked into the torchlight.   Hoping for the best he waved in Captain Trashbag, the bouncy blonds and the rest of the crew.

"Ahoy matie," shouted the captain shining his flashlight on Mark.  "How's it hanging?"  The blonds giggled on cue.

"Just a little party in the water.  Looks like you're dressed for it so come on in and join us.  It's unbelievable out there."  Mark smiled, admiring the porn stars.

The captain and his naked beauties leaped out of the truck onto the beach, ready to party, but trouble was behind the windshield.  Three fully dressed 20-something, stubble-faced, baseball-capped rednecks unloaded from the cab and stepped in front of the blonds.  Two approached Mark.

"Got any dope?" one of them asked.

"Well, you know, not on me." Mark replied and extended a hand in friendship knowing it was the moment of truth with these guys. 

Instead of returning the greeting the closest one slammed a meaty right fist into the side of his face, instantly knocking him down.  The punch was strong but it was the skull-and-bones silver ring that gashed his left temple and chipped the cheekbone next to his eye.   

The bone was nearly exposed and a bloody stream poured into his eye.  In an instant he was half blind and on his knees, fighting off total darkness as the pain ripped through his head. 

At that moment, his companions, Jason and Keith, stumbled up the beach into the flickering torchlight.  Laughing and expecting to party with the newcomers, they had no clue about the danger in front of them.

But it was the third and the largest of the rednecks that clarified things when he pulled a Louisville Slugger from behind the seat and ceremoniously slammed it three times on the truck's weathered hood.  The blows sounded like muffled gunshots across the windy beach. 

"Alright you stoned out hippie maggots.  I am not screwing around.  You are trespassing on my beach.  That means you shits are going to have to pay the freight."

"Hey man, don't be so harsh.  Let's just take their dope and bail," said Captain Trashbag.

"Shut up, bag boy.  I'm gonna have a little fun.  Hey Bubba, you and Cuz empty out the van.  Gotta be some good stuff in there.  The speed is mine.  You can have the rest."

April and the other girls had just enough time to circle around out of the water, slip into the van and put on their underwear before Bubba slid open the door. Their screams shook Mark to the bone as he tried to find his bearings and use the van's bumper to get back on his feet.

"Hot damn!  Buddy, they got women too.  We'll herd ‘em over your ways," Bubba yelled as the girls ran around the front of the van and stopped.

"Hello ladies.  You with these creeps?" asked Buddy whose 6'3" frame towered over them as he tapped the bat in his hands.  His glazed eyes and wicked grin scared them beyond words.

"Well, the correct answer is, ‘Not for long,'" he said and took a few steps toward Jason.

"Dude, don't you want to party?" Jason asked. 

Buddy answered by smashing the barrel of the Louisville Slugger into his gut; a brutal crunching blow that dropped Jason to his hands and knees. 

Breaking out in a toothy smile, Buddy added a quick two-step kick in the ribs that flipped Jason over and out on the beach.

Then he turned back to the other tripsters trembling in the torchlight.  "Now, are we all paying attention?  That's good because I have a little announcement.  I've decided to take some more batting practice and then I'll be impounding your van back to my garage.  Hey Cuz, you find the keys to that heap?" he yelled across the beach.

"Oh yeah.  Some dope and money too." Cuz said holding up the booty.

"Damn hippies.  Don't you know that possession of narcotics is still a felony in these parts," Buddy said waking over toward Keith. 

"So, here's the deal, boys.  I'm gonna finish off these maggots then we'll get what we can for the van after we party with their chicks.  Any questions?"

Mark was helpless.  A thundering headache, bloody eye, and the nausea of a concussion overwhelmed him.  He knew the whacked out speed freak meant to kill them all but he could only watch.  So he focused on the bat.

"Alright scumbag.  Your turn to meet The Eliminator," Buddy said to Keith as he started to swing for a deadly headshot.

But in mid-stroke, two feet from Keith's forehead, the bat stopped. 

"Hey, gotdamnit.  Let go of it!  Now that is your death warrant.  You hear me?" Buddy threatened as he yanked on the bat. 

But it didn't budge and suddenly he looked more like a crazed mime struggling to pull a bat out of thin air than a meth-crazed psychopath. 

And then his voice changed too.

"Gotdamnit, now my hands won't move either.  Sumbitch is stuck to me!" He screamed at a stunned audience.

Finally the bat moved, in reverse.  It arched back over Buddy's head, swooped down in front, and then behind him again in an arching tetherball motion. 

And Buddy rotated with it. 

Suddenly he was the target; terror just inflicted reflected back by an unseen force.

"What the hell?  My legs are stuck too.  Bubba, help me gotdamnit!  I can't move.  Stop it.  You're breaking my legs!" he yelled in sheer panic.

Bubba and Cuz dropped the girls and ran toward him but they froze in their tracks, invisibly hog-tied.  The rednecks and the tripsters all watched as Buddy, now crying for mercy, slowly twisted in the sand like a human drill bit.

Then, as if picked up by a hurricane gust, Cuz and Bubba launched off the sand and flew over the cab of the pickup, crashing into its open bed.   They cried and groaned for help but Captain Trashbag and the blonds had disappeared, taking cover under the dashboard inside the truck.

Mark's stringy hair hid part of his bloody face but his eyes cut through the night and remained fixed on the passed out psychopath.  Both of Buddy's legs cracked then splintered as he continued torking deeper into the beach

April could see and feel Mark's fury.    

"Stop it, he can't hurt us any more!" she yelled and grabbed his arm.  "Stop it now!  You are killing him!" she pleaded.

"What?" Mark broke his focus to look at her, "I got nothing to do with it.  I'm not touching him."

But Buddy did stop his slow spin in sand.

Mark wiped his bloody eye and tried to smile at her.

"Well, you have to admit, his luck did take a turn for the worst," he said feebly trying to win her back.

But April loathed him.  With his face grotesquely bloodied and swollen and wielding some kind of uncomprehendable power, he had morphed from adorable to terrorable in less time than it takes to smoke a cigarette. 

"How could you...How can you do that?" she stammered and raised her voice to ask, "What on earth are you, Mark Justin?"

He couldn't answer; he didn't know either.

Suddenly, more afraid of him than she had been of Buddy, April ran to join her girlfriends gathered around Jason, still face down in the sand.  Feeling Mark looking through her, she didn't look back.

"Hey, you in the truck, get dressed!" Mark turned his attention to Captain Trashbag and the blonds.  "It's time for you to collect this garbage and get off my beach."

They struggled to dig Buddy out of the sand but with Mark's help they untwisted his legs and laid him next to his friends in the back of the pickup.  Peeling out and swerving down the beach, the truck disappeared back through the cut in the dunes.

The glowing waves still broke in bright white shifts and the sea foam still dissolved into a million stars on the beach but the tripsters didn't care. 

They were down. 

Jason was bruised and coughing from a broken rib, Mark could barely see out of a swollen left eye and the girls continued crying as they finished dressing and got back in the van.  Mark washed his wound in silence, doing his best to stop the blood and tears.

On the drive back to Jason's house in Houston, April never looked at him-no thanks or forgiveness there. She just hugged the door handle and sobbed. 

He was not a mind reader but knew what she was thinking,  

Get away from this monster as fast as you can before he does something like that to you.

They pulled up to Jason's house at daybreak and the boys quietly helped him into his room and bed.  Keith decided to crash there too.  He'd rather face Jason's Dad in a few hours than spend another minute with Mark.

"Dude, I saw what you did to those guys," he whispered to Mark.  "Are you like some kind of extraterrestrial or from a parallel universe?  You can tell me.  I'm cool, you know, unless you'd have to kill me."  His eyes went huge.

"Oh s***, wait.  I didn't mean it." And he reflexed the two-finger hippy salute that makes everything right, "Peace, brother.  No more violence."

"Me?" Mark whispered back.  "You can't be serious.  It was you, man.  I saw it with my good eye.  Don't bullshit me.  You put a spell on the bat and another one on those three maniacs.  You're a wizard aren't you?  Wait," he held up a stop-sign hand, "don't erase my memory. I won't say a word."

And he folded three fingers to return the peace sign as he backed out of the room, bowing like an infidel and closed the door.

He was feeling better, even smiling, as he returned to his van.  But the girls were gone.  He retraced the route out of the subdivision but they were nowhere to be found.  He was alone and suddenly deeply depressed knowing they had run away from him. 

"Don't blame yourself, Markus.   No one knows what really happened on the beach.  Lives were saved-nothing else matters.  Questions without answers will suck you dry.  S-U-C-K, man.  So drive.  Just drive," demanded his inner dialog.

"Good advice, boys, but I can spell."

He took a deep breath and a long pull of Maxwiser then slipped a favorite 8-track into the player, found ‘Good Vibrations', and the Beach Boys were live as he started the long drive back to Austin.  He needed a few stitches but that would have to wait.  He could make it.

But ten miles down the road, hands shaking, exhausted, and convinced his left eye was going to explode, he pulled into a 7-11.  The pain, depression and anger opened an abyss and it swallowed him. 

Nothing made sense and everything pissed him off.  He would never have April or any girl that mattered and he had wanted to kill those guys.  Kill them all. And he would kill someone before long. 

"Who the hell am I?" He yelled at a passing semi.

"Hey mystery boy, we sent that one to Research.  Take a number.  Someone will be here soon to suck you dry," answered the voice in his head.

He was going mad and the only thing that made sense at the moment was to end this torture.  Instantly he knew the 50-foot overpass just ahead was high enough to do the job.

And he was about to put the van in gear when the passenger door swung open.

"Hi.  You headed to Austin?" asked a slim, short haired, smiling brunette.

"No, not going to make it that far.  You don't want to be in here."  He waved her off not looking.

"Yeah, thought so.  You'd better let me drive," she said throwing a backpack on the floor and climbed into the passenger seat.

"Come on, rainbow, that's no way to think.  It's time someone did something for you, " she said reaching over, pressing her hand on his swollen face for a moment and then gently pulled him toward her.

"You are going to crash, sweetie, but in the back seat," she said and helped him curl up on the bench seat where he immediately passed out.

*  *  *  *  *

Perched on the lowest limb of the giant elm tree a mockingbird sang in the warm afternoon breeze as Mark awoke in his van parked in the shade about 20 feet from his Austin apartment.  Abruptly sitting up on the backseat bench, he was looking in the rear view mirror at a face that was exactly as it had before the road trip.

"April, the naked blonds, the psycho speed freak that tattooed me and..."

He looked back in the rearview mirror and rubbed his perfectly smooth face and forehead.

"Did it happen?   That could not have been a dream so, yes, it happened.  Right?"

He listened but his internal dialog was off the air. 

Looking around the van for evidence of the beach trip, he didn't see anything different from the usual dirt, trash and stains always there.

"It would help if the maid came in occasionally," he said as he got out and walked toward his apartment.

"Hey, Justin.  How many times I got to say it?  You pay single rent," said Jack Dearborn, owner and irritating slumlord of this six-unit off-campus complex.  "Start shacking up and I'll need another fifty bills per month. Now tell old Jack the truth.  That brunette has her own key, right?"

"No sir.  There's nobody living here but us chickens.  Just take a look at this disaster area," Mark said unlocking the front door.  "Could anyone live in this mess but me?"

The door opened to a spotlessly clean den and kitchen area.   From floor to ceiling it was immaculate.  Beyond clean it was a disinfectant miracle.  Even the Maxwiser rug stains were gone.  He knew that Jack knew only a woman would live in a place this tidy.

"So Jack, tell me about that brunette.  Was she perky and cute?"

"Yeah, sure, melted my heart.  Hellofa job in here, though.  I might have something for her if she'll do that to all my units.  But it's still fifty bucks from you."

"You are so right, Jack.  Fifty bucks it was."

He pulled out his wallet and stared at the money the five tripsters had paid for the beach trip.

"I'll be damned.  It was real," he mumbled and took off his shoes to enter.

"Sorry Jack.  She's not coming back.  No maid or girlfriend I ever knew could do this."

He closed the door in Jack's face and slowly walked around, marveling at the sanitized kitchen with its bowl of fresh fruit, sparkling linoleum, and light petulie oil fragrance.  The bedroom was equally impeccable; clothes hung, sheets changed, all Downy fresh.  He knew from Philosophy 101 that Aristotle would call this the heavenly reflection of a cheap earthly apartment.

"She did this to be sure I get it.  A Clorox epiphany for the prodigal son, coming-of-age, accepting his gift.  There's just one problem, lady.  I don't want it," he said aloud entering the spotless bathroom.

"Do you hear me?" he screamed at the perfect face in the mirror. 

"I DO NOT WANT IT!"