The world is a very bizarre place, as I found out recently.

  I have to admit that my life was never exactly "normal." I’ll explain that. But things only started to spiral out of control about two weeks ago.

  My name is Max. I'm 19 years old, and live in Budapest, Hungary, with my mother.

  I'm a big fan of martial arts since I can remember. My earliest memory is sitting in front of the TV, watching a fight movie, the kind where the fighters had techniques that looked more like superpowers than something you could actually learn through training.

  My mother runs an MMA gym, so when I asked to train, she didn't hesitate to sign me up. She never pushed; she even asked more than once if I wanted to try something else, but I chose this. Fighting fascinated me more than anything.

  Two weeks ago, at the end of a session, I was sparring with one of the regulars in Mom's gym. He was a mountain of a man, twice my size. I dodged a roundhouse kick, grabbed his leg, and lifted him clean off the ground.

  Anyone watching could tell I shouldn’t have been able to do that. Although I'm not a dwarf or a living skeleton, I'm definitely not tall or bulky either. My height is average at best, but most people I meet are usually taller by at least half a head.

  Back to the match. I spun and tossed him out of the ring. Mom shot me a sharp look, the one that means stay focused. She's the only person who knows that certain thing about me, and she's always warning me to keep myself under control.

  After everyone left, I waited for her to finish the paperwork. I skipped breakfast because I had to hurry, and my stomach was gnawing a hole in itself. I scraped together some change from my backpack and fed it into the vending machine for a protein bar. Of course, the bar jammed halfway down.

  I checked the room to be sure I was alone and pressed my palm to the glass. The bar twitched, slid loose, and dropped into the tray. I reached for it. For a second, it hovered an inch above my hand, like it was suspended by invisible threads. Then I grabbed it.

  As you can guess by now, yes, I have telekinesis. But don't picture anything big. No exploding heads or hurling cars across parking lots, just floating small objects. Touch is where it gets different.

  Remember the fight earlier? I used my power on that guy. No, it wasn't super strength; I don't get stronger. The object I touch gets lighter. The heavier it is, the shorter the effect lasts.

  I didn't discover it in any epic way. I found out as a kid, trying to lift a garden gnome while helping Mom. One moment it was normal, in the next it was weightless. Now I know that a four-year-old's skull is harder than a ceramic garden gnome.

  [If you're skeptical (can't blame you), fair. But if you don't believe me, then maybe stop reading here, because things are about to get even weirder.]

  "Stealing from the vending machine with telekinesis? You're the lamest super-villain I’ve ever seen," Mom called from the doorway of her office. She'd always known about my ability.

  "I paid for it. It got stuck," I said, chewing.

  "Anyway, come into my office. We need to talk."

  On her desk sat the aforementioned garden gnome, glued back together, looking innocent, like it had never tried to murder me.

  The next thing I remember after walking into her office is waking up in a place I didn't recognize.

  Something hard pressed into my back. My head throbbed, my vision fuzzed, and the room spun. When I managed to sit up, the world cleared enough to see I was on a bench in a locker room. Not Mom's gym locker room, this was different.

  A door opened and closed. I braced for the worst. I didn't expect my mother to walk in, smiling like everything was normal.

  "Good morning, sleepyhead," she said.

  "Mom? What the hell happened?"

  "What's the last thing you remember?" she asked, calm as if this were a casual conversation over coffee.

  "You called me into your office. Then blackout."

  "Oh, maybe Claude gave you too much of that stuff," she mused as she sat beside me. "Anyhow, I told you before: you're not the only unusual person in the world."

  "I know. You've said that before."

  She never clarified, just told me not to feel like a freak because there were others like me.

  "Yes, but now it's time to meet some of them. That's why you're here. This is a special place where special people come to have some fun."

  "Fun… as in?"

  "Martial arts," she answered. "And before you ask, no, it’s not gladiator-style where someone must die."

  I wanted to believe her. Meeting other people like me sounded interesting. But one question kept nagging.

  "Why was I knocked out?"

  "For safety," she said. "So you won't know where we are. They do a quick medical check, too. Trust me, you don’t want to be awake for that."

  I felt nothing special. I looked down at my arm and found a small needle mark. Someone had injected me with something, probably that's how I was knocked out. The wound pulsed, but it was the sort of dull ache I’d learned to ignore.

  The door opened, and a middle-aged woman in MMA gear stepped in, hands on her hips. "Hey, Creepy. Your son awake yet?"

  "He's up," Mom said.

  "He needs to rest a bit, or can he come now? We're starting soon."

  "He's ready," Mom said.

  "Great," the woman replied and left.

  I stood slowly. The dizziness was gone. Only the prick on my arm throbbed.

  "Um… why did she call you Creepy?"

  Mom shrugged. "That's my stage name."

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  "Stage name? Here?"

  "Yeah. They call me Creepy Carol." She grinned like the name was a badge of honor.

  Of course, she had a past I hadn't been told about. She never said she was also special, but I always felt a strange vibe from her.

  “And Creepy Carol was your best idea?”

  "Of course, not," she said. "But when the audience gives you a nickname, it sticks."

  I had a thousand questions, but they all crowded at once and muddled into nothing.

  We left the locker room and walked down a long corridor. Ahead, where I expected another plain room, the space opened up into the entrance of an arena. A tall metal fence separated the empty floor from the spectator stands.

  The woman from before was already there, surrounded by a cluster of boys and girls who looked about my age. Mom stayed back by the entrance and motioned for me to join them.

  "Alright, almost everyone's here," the woman called, eyeing the small crowd. "For those who just arrived: I'm Large Marge, and I look after the newbies. We'll start soon, but we're waiting on one more person. Give it a few minutes."

  When she finished, the group dispersed into low chatter; for a moment, it felt like a school event and not a den of freaks. Then I actually looked at the others.

  Some of them could have walked down any street and passed for normal. Others… didn't. Red eyes. Sickle claws. Tattoos that crawled and reformed across someone's arm like a living map.

  I instinctively took a step back.

  "Watch it," I heard, then bumped into two people talking. I froze because of their faces.

  The boy's features (eyes, nose, mouth, chin) were all upside down, as if his head had been attached the wrong way. The girl beside him had no face at all: smooth, tinsel-like skin stretched flat over where her features should be.

  I muttered a quick apology.

  "No problem," she said. Not out loud; not from any direction. Her words slid straight into my head like someone switching on a radio inside me.

  "First time in a place like this, huh? I had the same wide-eyed look when I first met other paranormals," the boy said, voice normal enough.

  "Yeah," I managed.

  "You look pretty normal. What's your knack?" the faceless girl asked.

  "My what?"

  "You know, your special thing. Knack, talent, blessing, curse, or whatever you want to call it."

  "Tactile telekinesis, plus limited telekinesis with small objects," I said.

  "Kinetic stuff can be pretty versatile," the boy nodded.

  "Not mine. I've never fought paranormal opponents. I don't know what to expect."

  The girl didn't answer, but I could hear her giggling in my head.

  The boy looked at me, his upside-down grin looked sad at first glance. "Well, that's gonna make today… rough for you."

  "Everyone!" Marge barked. "Our last newbie's here, so we can begin."

  She waved us back. Above, the stands began to fill with friends, family, and whoever these kids had dragged along. I spotted Mom already in the crowd, and across from her, a faceless woman who had to be the faceless girl's mother.

  Then the final "newbie" arrived.

  At first, I thought a tank had wandered in on two legs. Then I realized it was a woman. Her blonde braids were the only thing that marked her as female. Everything else screamed brick wall. She was built like she'd eaten two powerlifters for breakfast. She carried something small in one of her hands.

  And beside her was a man barely half her size. They looked like the Hulk walking her stick-figure husband.

  Please don't pair me with her, I prayed. Losing first would be humiliating enough. Losing to that would haunt me for the rest of my life... which would probably be a few minutes.

  "Alright, everyone. We'll begin the tournament," Marge announced. "This is just a test round, an initiation. No rankings, no stakes. I just want to know you guys. Think of it as a warm-up."

  Mom couldn't resist. "Max!" she shouted from the seats. "If you lose your first match, you're sleeping in the doghouse!"

  Laughter rolled through the crowd. My face burned. She pulled that routine at other events, too. Her sense of humor could kill at a dad-joke convention.

  "Wait." The Amazon's voice thundered in a thick German accent as she pointed at Mom. "Is that Creepy Carol?"

  "Yeah, that’s her," Marge confirmed. Then she gestured at me. "Her son's competing."

  The woman's eyes locked onto me like I'd just been volunteered as her snack. "Hmm. And the matchups; you chose them yet?"

  "Not yet. I'll choose them randomly," Marge answered.

  "Then I choose Creepy's boy."

  "Of course," Marge nodded.

  Mom shot back instantly, "Aren't you a little old for him, überfrau?"

  "Obviously not for me," the giantess smirked and lifted the thing she carried in one hand. It was a baby. wrapped in cloth. "Your son will fight mine."

  The arena hushed.

  "The first match," Marge declared, "is Günter versus Max!"

  Marge gestured for me to walk closer. I had to go, but my feet barely wanted to obey me.

  From closer, überfrau looked even more horrific. She towered above two meters, with thighs thicker than my torso. The baby was a tiny speck in her ogre-sized palm.

  "You've gotta be kidding me," I shook my head. "I'm fighting a baby? He's what, half a year old?"

  "No," Marge corrected casually. "Half an hour. We waited for him to be born."

  I choked on my words for a second.

  "What?! I'm supposed to fight a newborn?"

  "He had nine months to prepare," überfrau said proudly, lowering him onto the ground. She plucked the pacifier from his mouth like she was pulling the pin on a grenade. "He is already stronger than you will ever be."

  The crowd parted until it was just me and the baby in the arena. He blinked up at me with big blue eyes.

  Marge raised her hand. "Get ready, boys."

  I stared at the infant, my brain screaming. This has to be a joke. But then I noticed something wrong. His tiny body began to change. He got muscles. He was ripped. A literal six-pack manifested on the newborn.

  "What the...?" I began, but couldn't continue.

  Günter's muscles twitched, then bulged. His body ballooned in fast-forward. Kid-sized. Teen-sized. Adult-sized. In seconds, he was a towering 2.5 meters of pulsing, swollen muscle, bigger even than his mother. His legs were tree trunks, yet somehow his arms were still grotesquely oversized, and his posture hunched him forward onto his knuckles like a gorilla.

  And above that mountain of nightmare flesh sat the same tiny baby head, cheeks rosy, drool stringing from his lip.

  My stomach turned. That's not right. That shouldn’t even exist.

  "Ready! Fight!" Marge shouted.

  Günter exploded forward like a gorilla. I dove to the side, barely missing his swipe. His hand crashed into the concrete where I had stood, cracking it like drywall. He giggled again, high-pitched, like he thought we were playing tag.

  I circled, kept my guard high. I waited for an opening, but there wasn't one. Every time I got close, he swung those massive arms, swatting at the air like he was trying to kill a bug. I used little bursts of tactile telekinesis to push myself back faster than my legs alone could manage, but each time drained me.

  "Don't wanna hit the baby?" someone in the crowd jeered. Laughter followed.

  They were right. I couldn't commit to striking his baby face. I kept dodging, shoving, slipping out of grapples. But he was adapting.

  He finally caught my shoulder with a swipe. Pain lanced through me as I rolled back. My head rang. I was slowing down, and he wasn't. With those muscles, he could have run around the equator twice without getting tired.

  My breathing grew ragged. I tried to use telekinesis. My idea was to shove him back, but I never used my power on somebody this big and only managed to nudge him half a step. I was cooked, to say the very least.

  Then I noticed something. His mother, clutching the pacifier in her huge hand. She had yanked it free before the fight started.

  I remembered. Günter had started growing shortly after she pulled it out.

  The realization hit me. That's it! He is just angry because he wants his paci.

  I sprinted. Not away from Günter, but toward the edge of the arena where überfrau stood. The crowd howled in confusion. Günter roared and thundered after me.

  I was too slow. I felt the air vanish behind me a split second before Günter's monster hand closed around my ankle. Pain shot through my leg as he yanked me back like I was weightless. I was upside down, dangling like a toy in his fist.

  "No no no!" I shouted, clawing at the air.

  I reached, not with my hands, but with every ounce of energy left in me. The pacifier was small and light enough for me. My telekinesis wrapped around it like invisible fingers, and it slipped from the überfrau's grasp.

  Then Günter hurled me across the arena like a rag doll. I dragged the pacifier toward me with a desperate psychic tug. I barely managed to flick it forward in midair, aiming it right at his mouth.

  The thing popped between his lips just as I slammed onto the concrete.

  I looked up, dazed. Günter loomed above me, both fists raised like he was about to smash me into paste.

  Then… silence.

  His gaze softened. The fists dropped. He began to suckle, and his whole body started to deflate. Muscles collapsed inward. The hulking toddler shriveled back down into a drooling infant.

  "And our first winner is: Max!" Marge announced, and the crowd erupted in cheers.

  I lay there, chest heaving, every bone vibrating with pain, staring at the pacifier bobbing in and out of the baby's lips.

  I couldn't believe that this thing was about to kill me a minute ago.