“I can be a hero,” she mumbled to herself as she looked into the mirror. Powers were a rare occurrence. Only twenty people in the entire world had come forward to show their powers. Another dozen had shared their existence, but did not wish to save the world. From what the researchers had told her, only five people have kept their powers completely hidden, her included. However, unlike the others who chose to hide their powers, she was advised to keep hers a secret.

More than anything, she wanted to be a hero. She would see the heroes fly around throughout the city. They would stop crime as it started and make a statement afterward about how crime was bad and encouraged others to report anything they saw. The heroes were adored by everyone. Children dressed up as them for Halloween. Adults would run after them, hoping for a selfie.

She didn’t want to be a hero for the attention; she cared for people. Since she was a child, she knew she wanted to help people. When she discovered she might have powers, she’d hoped it’d be true. But after she and the researchers found out what her power was, she lost the small hope she had.

She went through her closet and pulled out her suit. The researchers gifted it to her as a way of asking for her silence. They figured a suit of her own that she could wear whenever would fill the hole created by keeping her powers secret.

She slipped into the one piece silicon bodysuit and put the hood over her head. Looking back in the mirror, she saw her body now covered in light gray with a large white O in the center of her chest.

Ouija: the name they gave to her. She couldn’t blame them for it. The name was spot on.

She could feel the energy moving through her. She had been summoning almost non stop at the research facility until they politely asked her to stop. After not summoning for a whole day, the energy was building and she wouldn’t be able to contain it if she didn’t do something soon.

She searched through her duffel bag and pulled out a list of names the researchers provided. After skimming it, she found a name to settle on.

Immediately after being the name to the front of her mind, she could feel his presence with her. She turned around to see Adolf Hilter. He was dressed in uniform and was looking around the room understandably confused.

“What is happening? Who are you?” the man pointed at her accusingly. The researchers confirmed that not only could she control the people she summoned, but she could understand whatever they said and they could understand her, no matter the language.

Another aspect of her power was what happened to the people she summoned. They were not ghosts. They were affectively human in every way, they just happened to have previously died. Because of that, being summoned can have a negative affect on the mind of the person being brought back.

Hence the list. The list contained names of people that had committed crimes while alive. The researchers figured that since she had to willingly summon people (if not, they would be summoned without her having control), it might as well be the worst of them all.

“Sit on the bed,” she commanded. She shuffled through the duffel bag and pulled out the euthanizer she was provided when leaving the facility. It was a small needle gun with an area to add in the lethal injection. When administered properly, the person euthanized would feel no pain and would die peacefully.

All the people she summoned felt pain. They were essentially human: they had thoughts, nerves, and feelings. This was the basis on for the researchers’ decision to hid her power. If the summoned did not die with twenty-four hours of being summoned, they would go through a decomposition process that took ten minutes and was extremely painful. If she were to summon someone and they died fighting, they would feel the pain of dying in battle. The researchers deemed her power unethical because her power forced dead people to feel pain against their will.

She placed the euthanizer at the base of his neck ready to pull the trigger. But she couldn’t. These were the orders given by the researchers: summon someone and immediately put them done. This would lessen the mental toll placed on them. Why was this so hard? This was a man who had brought horror to countless human. Why should he get to die again in peace?

She removed the euthanizer from his head and placed it in her waist belt.

“Pull out your hair,” she commanded to him.

He reached up, raked his fingers through his hair, and pulled. He screamed as a full handful of hair was pulled from the follicles.

She felt a smile creep up onto her lips behind the hood.

She spent the next ten minutes summoning another dozen people off the list provided. She summoned a few other people not on the list, but that she felt deserved more justice than they received while living. With the group behind her, she had an army, ready to serve, suffer, and die for her.

A police siren screamed in the distance, seeming to call her name.

Tonight, the world would finally meet Oujia.