Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

He hands back the licence. “Just put him in the back seat, OK?”

“Is there no way we could—?”

“Have a good day, ma’am. Drive safe now.” He gives the pickup’s roof another tap, turning to head back to his cruiser. By now, Connie’s system will have turned over. Odds are Ms Amber-Leigh Schenke doesn’t have any violations, but—

Officer Rudy Daniels gets three yards from the pickup before the ground opens up and swallows him.

One moment, he’s mid-stride, mind already on his burger, wondering if maybe he should skip the salad and just have the fries anyway, Stella isn’t going to know. The next, there’s nothing but air beneath his foot.

It’s as if the ground is the surface of a pond – one that’s just had a heavy stone dropped into it, right where Daniels is standing. A depression forms instantly, a huge hole that grows deeper by the second. The displaced earth rises on either side of it in two enormous waves, the rocks and dirt and dust rushing outwards and upwards. He falls face-down into a gaping pit, mouth open in a scream that doesn’t quite make it out of his throat. His left wrist snaps on impact, a horrid burst of pain ripping up his arm. His ears ring, and above the sound, there’s a horrible, shivering roar.

Daniels rolls onto his back, gasping, getting a split-second glimpse of sky beyond the rearing waves of dirt. He has time to think one thought – a memory of playing on the beach in Santa Cruz with Kyla, holding her tight as they bodysurfed – then the earth crashes down.

Plumes of white dust drift away. The only evidence of what just happened is a vaguely ovular depression, as if a giant had briefly ground the sole of his boot into the dirt. There’s no sign of Rudy Daniels. His cruiser sits quietly on the shoulder, blinkers on, engine ticking as it cools.

In the pickup, Amber Schenke has her hands back on the wheel, ten and two. Knuckles white.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, staring straight ahead. Her voice is brittle.

Matthew shrugs, still not looking up from the iPad. “I didn’t want to sit in the back.”

After a moment, Amber turns the key and pulls away.

Oh, I fucked up.

I fucked up bad .

Sweat pours down my forehead, sliding into my eyes. I wipe it away with a knuckle, but that just makes it worse. Goddamnit, how could I be so stupid?

I lick my lips. OK. I can fix this. No biggie. I already have everything I need. Holding my breath, I manoeuvre the little wedge of metal into view, floating it through the air with my psychokinesis. Just as well – my hands are way too sweaty to hold it right now.

“Come on, baby,” I whisper. “Momma needs a new pair of shoes…”

Moving very, very freaking carefully, I wedge it into the gap. Wiggle it gently back and forth.

With a slight skritch , the metal spatula slips underneath the burnt rice, levering it up from the non-stick surface of the pan.

I almost squeal with anxiety, hardly daring to look. When I do, I let out a relieved groan. I didn’t scratch the pan. It’s the one good piece of kitchen equipment I own, outside of my knife, and I really didn’t want to fuck it up because I don’t know how to make paella.

I’d already transferred the top layer of unburnt rice to a fresh pan, so at least I have that to work with later. I keep at it, gently prying up the edge of the burnt crust. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to use metal on non-stick. I’ve lost my plastic spatula. It’s somewhere, in the messy clusterfuck that is my apartment, and I haven’t been able to find it.

The key to a good dinner party is to cook something you’re familiar with. That way, you can do it on autopilot, casually reducing sauces and sautéing onions while chatting to your guests and looking like a total pro.

So of course, for tonight’s dinner, I got it into my head to cook a dish I’ve never attempted before. Paella. It’s Spanish, and it’s yummy. Chicken, mussels, peppers, chorizo, jumbo shrimp. Bound together in creamy, al dente risotto rice, stained yellow with saffron. It’s one of my favourite things to eat in the world. Even the ones I’ve had here in Los Angeles, which is obviously not Spain, are pretty badass.

After reading the recipe, I figured it didn’t look too difficult. I don’t exactly know why I thought the best time to attempt it would be on a night I’m trying to impress a certain someone, but I did. I’m smart like that.

Paella needs to be cooked over fire, in a wide, shallow pan. That’s how you make sure the rice is soft and squidgy on top, and crusty and awesome on the bottom. I do not have a fire, or a special paella pan. I have a shitty four-ring burner in my postage-stamp kitchen.

My mistake was turning the heat too high. The pan couldn’t cut it. It’s baking hot around the stove, and as I dig in with the spatula to get the rest of the burnt rice, a couple of drops of sweat launch themselves off my forehead and land right on top of the only properly cooked shrimp in the entire pan.

Perfect. Just what every dish needs. Teagan’s secret sauce.

I push the spatula in deeper, going past the edge into the central part of the paella. “Come on , you stupid piece of shit.”

The burnt crust does not come on. The burnt crust is a little bitch and stays put, even with my pinpoint-precise mental movements of the spatula.

Yes: having psychokinesis – PK, as I call it – is really useful in the kitchen. It doesn’t help with actual ingredients – I can’t lift anything carbon- or hydrogen-based, so food is a no-go. But it’s great for implements. Not that I can reveal my ability to anyone. If I ever do make it into a professional kitchen – something that is absolutely going to happen, by the way – I’ll be on my own.

Of course, to cook for a living, you probably have to know how to make decent paella. Right now, I am so fired.

It might be better if the meal actually looked nice – trust me, a glowing pan of orangey-yellow paella is an orgasmic sight. Mine is… not. It’s an off-white sludge of creamy rice and proteins and overcooking peppers. As it turns out, you need a ton of saffron to make any real difference to the colour, and saffron is fucking expensive. Shockingly, the government agency I work for wouldn’t let me expense four grams of the stuff.

I run my finger down the oil-spattered page of the cookbook next to my stove, take a swig of beer. It’s my third, and I only started drinking an hour ago, but screw it. I put the bottle down and go back to scraping, which is when the smoke alarm goes off.

What the actual fuck? I know I let the rice burn, but the thing can’t be that sensitive. Except… Jesus, there’s a lot of smoke. My little apartment has high-ish ceilings, and it’s all collected there, turning the air hazy. It looks like someone hot-boxed the place.

I send out my PK in a wild burst of energy, hunting for the off switch on the alarm. As I do so, my foot lands on a wet patch on the kitchen tiles. I grab at the counter for balance, arms whirling. My flailing hand just nicks the half-full beer bottle, knocking it off the counter to shatter in a bazillion pieces across the floor.

I stand, breathing through my nose, listening to the blaring alarm, doing my best to think very hard about nothing at all.

I somehow manage to shut the noise off, and grab a dustpan and mop out from under the sink with my PK to handle the shattered bottle. Then I go back to scraping, keeping what’s left of my poor mind on the beer clean-up.

PK is great for multitasking, but I do sometimes my wish my parents had given me other abilities. Super-powered cooking skills would have been nice. The ability to sense burning before it begins. Not exactly useful when you’re trying to create the perfect soldier, but definitely more applicable to everyday life.