The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Mental Quakes

Cade Wheeler tried to suppress it. He fought an internal battle no one seated in the small cafe could possibly imagine. There was nothing he could do. Cade knew that when it happened, it happened. He was only delaying the inevitable.

“Can I top you off?”

Cade looked up, his eyes dark, but the real darkness contained far beneath those eyes. The waitress was young, early twenties he’d guess. Not her, he thought, please not her.

“Sure... thanks.” He grumbled.

Sliding his coffee cup out towards her, Cade tried not to stare down her open top as she leaned over and poured. She was young, but mature enough that he felt the slight twinge inside him. He was losing control. It always was worse when others were around. He’d maintained composure so much easier in the mountains he called home.

“Anything else, sir?”

Cade took a breath. Anything else, he thought. Sure, there was plenty else, but nothing that would be appropriate for a public cafe. He grit his teeth and smiled. He had to suppress it. It was possible. He’d done so before, just never in the company of so many young girls.

“No thanks. I’m fine.” He said.

As the waitress walked off, he failed to avoid the obvious sway of her hips. Perhaps she exaggerated it to gain more tips. Perhaps she was a natural at drawing in customer’s leers. Or maybe it was simply Cade’s overactive brain struggling to process the quake he was bracing to deal with.

Cade looked around the cafe. How was he to know? How was he to ever guess that the one day out of the month he’d come down from his self-imposed exile, this would happen? It wasn’t bad at first. He’d felt the tingling, the slight chill running up his spine into his brainstem. Those were normal. He grew used to that sensation every day. But then the cheerleaders had arrived.

Focusing all his attention out the window, trying to avoid the bouncy girls giggling and kidding around at several tables beside him, Cade looked at the big yellow school bus. Greysville High School, it read. Apparently, from what he’d overheard in perky conversation, the Greysville Cheer Squad had just finished a state-sponsored cheer expedition up north and were on their way home. Somehow that led them to a fate much worse than any road hazards. It led them here, to this small out-of-the-way cafe, occupied by one Cade Wheeler.

The pressure seemed to pulse now, the surface of control cracking. Cade wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. If he tried to simply leave, that always made things worse. Staying calm and still were his only hopes.

For years Cade had been in exile. He’d separated himself from society because of what happened when he was around young virginal women. He’d cursed his father for the torture he left him with. A force lay inside his mind, a force not unlike the ground shattering, building crumbling, city collapsing earthquakes that seemed so unusually common these days. Maybe there was a relation. Maybe all forces of nature were connected and linked to Cade Wheeler. Often, he’d felt the world was on his shoulders. Maybe that’s why the world seemed to be going to hell lately. Cade Wheeler was losing control.

His hands shook as he pulled his coffee cup closer. Two giggling schoolgirls ran by, nearly brushing into him. He quickly glanced up just enough to avoid contact. Those two would have been very sorry if they’d have touched him in the state he was now. His mind was only able to maintain some hold on the quake inside so long as nobody touched him.

“Mandy, come here, look at this pic!” The thin blonde called out.

Cade watched the other girl, a much more voluptuous brunette, presumably Mandy, go bouncing over to her friend. She really did bounce, he realized, unable to tear his eyes away from her rather tightly confined breasts. Cheerleaders seemed to get away with wearing mockeries of uniforms these days, he thought. The top swells of teenage breasts, the bare midriffs and taut tummies, the generous amount of thighs; it was nearly too much to remain focused on the task at hand.

All he had to do was maintain control until the cheerleaders left. Then everything would calm down. There were just too many of them. Fighting a battle like this was not what Cade had in mind when he left home this morning.

As the closest group of cheerleaders began staring at cellphone pics, Cade looked back over to the truckers currently shoveling away their breakfast while stealing lewd stares at the high school girls. He had to swallow the quake. He had to calm himself. He’d avoided people for so long, he almost wasn’t sure when the last real friend was a part of his life. And all of this; the loneliness, the fear, the mental strain, and yes the quakes; all was thanks to an act he had no part of.

Though his father was long gone now, Cade had been told once what happened. His mother sat him down and explained when he was not even twelve years old why she was going to have to leave him. He was alone for most of his life since and thankfully television had provided a strange sense of social communion for him.

His father had been a man of great power and mental control. He developed skills beyond what most felt was even possible. He used his mind in ways that scared Cade’s mother. He used it to create pills, pills that could solve everything, or stir everything up.

These scientific breakthroughs were shunned by many in society but still others provided Cade’s father with exactly what he needed, what he wanted. Power was a tricky thing. Cade realized that very much now. But his father likely wasn’t aware that many of the darker individuals he dealt these pills to were becoming rather obsessed with what they could do. Like most obsessions, these led to something bad.

Sipping at the coffee, Cade tried to meditate himself into a place where attractive waitresses weren’t strolling around cocking their hips to each side, where nubile young cheerleaders weren’t giggling and showing off more flesh than girls in magazines used to. He tried to tell himself he’d get through this with only a slight tremor, no more than a small shock. A storm would be very bad. A full quake would likely result in chaos. No, Cade said to himself. A tremor, that’s all it would be this time. Just a few small tremors.

The attack on his father had happened when Cade was very young. He never remembered the night the men broke in. They planned on stealing the pills, amping up their own mental powers to levels beyond even his father. Maybe if they had succeeded, Cade would be better off today. Of course were that the case, Cade realized the world would likely be very different. If the war of that night long ago had ended differently, the cheerleaders he now tuned out would likely be on their knees servicing the truckers at the bar while the waitresses took turns seeing which customer could better top them off.

Cade shook his head. He had to fight off images like that. Imagining things only made it worse. It only loosened his control. He went back to what his mother had told him about that night. It was her who first called it a Mental Quake. His father had battled a war of the minds and caught in the ammunition exchange was young Cade. The energy had sent him into a coma, from which he awoke after six months.

His father had researched what might happen as Cade matured and grew. He was hit with a blast of mental energy, the kind endowed previously only by way of his father’s miracle pills. As Cade’s mother put it when telling him, it was a quake that shook the mental plates inside his mind loose a little. Just a little. But as he grew, those gaps might grow as well. The mental plates might shift and due to the very nature of the energy he was caught up in, being around others would only make things worse.

So Cade was alone for much of his life. He did so for the good of the world but sadly he still had his mistakes and he would long suffer the results of his father’s obsessions. One of those mistakes came when Cade was just eighteen. He was convinced that the occasional headaches and odd dizziness were as serious as these mental quakes could ever get. He also, like many boys his age, was determined to get out and experience the most intriguing thing to him, girls.

Girls were something Cade had on his mind quite often in his loneliness. To say he was interested was putting it lightly. But what happened that fateful day to Jamie and her sister would long haunt Cade.

Jamie Williams was a beautiful girl. She had long red hair, the kind that sparkled in the sunlight and set off her lightly freckled cheeks. She always had a warm smile and even warmer heart. Maybe that was the reason she actually stopped to talk to Cade at the local drugstore that day.

Cade had simply been enjoying the day, liking the change of scenery from being alone all the time. He almost bumped into Jamie as she entered the drugstore. She was to him a vision of youth. Her young curves were still maturing as she appeared maybe only a year or so younger than him. Her older sister Prudence was not as pretty but certainly no slouch when it came to playing up the looks she had.

“Excuse me,” Cade had said.

“My fault really.” Jamie replied, even though Cade knew it wasn’t her fault at all.

In ten minutes, the two had gone from strangers to talking and laughing like old friends. Cade and Jamie had sat outside on the bench, as Prudence went in and checked on a prescription she was waiting on.

That was about when it started. Cade shook his head even today at the memories flooding back into his strained mind. He recalled it so clearly. That was the first day he experienced a full quake.

It began innocently enough as Cade was looking into Jamie’s eyes. He was so captivated with having such a beautiful creature being near him that he had a rather expected reaction. His pants began to tent. Only a little at first, but suddenly it was quite obvious, even to Jamie.

As she looked down and her eyes widened, the world collapsed for Cade. Her smile turned to a sneer, which then turned to a small laugh. She was laughing at him and that had a profound effect on how he felt inside, his mental resolve. It crumbled and the thoughts of his mother talking about mental plates came back to him.

It happened the way it always did, Cade now realized. Beginning with a tremor, what Cade now referred to as Titty Tremors, the quake took over. Jamie, sweet innocent Jamie, began to shake.

Not all of the girl shook. No, that’s why he called it a Titty Tremor. It began like a small vibration deep inside her chest. Then it seemed as though she were convulsing, but only right around her breasts. As she felt the sensations and looked down, Cade did as well and was treated to a full-blown Titty Tremor. Her shirt tightened as the flesh beneath it swelled. The swelling seemed to increase in time with the shaking and soon poor Jamie was sitting there on a public bench outside a drugstore while her own tits slapped her senseless. They smacked the underside of her chin, knocking her head up and down, shaking her brains as her shirt stretched to contain the twin monsters.

That was when it moved on from tremors to shock. Cade had named it Slut Shock because the girls it happened to typically began speaking like one. Jamie opened her mouth and what came out was far from anything Cade had been expecting.

“Ohhhh fuck, my titties feel sooooo good!”

The young redhead had grabbed her still shaking tits and squeezed. She moved one up, one down, groaning and whimpering as her body began shifting on the bench. Others outside the drugstore became aware of what was happening and Cade had lost his focus at that moment.

A loud shred brought him back to Jamie who was ripping her shirt off, her hands fondling firm creamy white flesh with a mania that seemed to somehow spread to others in the parking lot.

Cade couldn’t understand what was happening. He looked around and everyone he met eyes with fell into a state of shock. Men began groping the women they were with. Women began squeezing tits that were beginning to undulate and slap at their shirts like animals trying to escape captivity. Chaos was erupting and nobody seemed to mind.

Jamie moaned and Cade looked over at her. She was sucking on both of her tits. The young girl had somehow managed to cram both massive teats up against her somewhat fuller lips and was inhaling her nipples as though nursing like a baby. It was that image that led Cade into what he now called a Brain Storm.

Brain storms, to Cade, were just his way of describing what the mental quake did next. It struck others in their minds and whatever they fantasized about, whatever dirty little daydreams they had, it all became real.

Jamie let go of her tits and giggled. She’d looked around at the others no longer paying attention to her. Then she’d looked at Cade, whose mouth was wide open in shock.

“Have a drink, cutie!” The young girl had said.

Cade barely registered before Jamie grabbed both breasts and aimed them at him like water balloons. But what came out wasn’t water. She crushed them and sprayed a fine mist of milky white jets all over his face. He coughed and sputtered, standing from the bench and backing away.

Jamie laughed and resumed milking herself into her own throat, sucking down gulp after gulp as Cade felt his head throb in an intensity he’d never felt before. He stumbled around, looking at the others standing there. If they weren’t groping each other or stripping off clothing, they were leering at the young teenager now guzzling fountains of milk.

“Stop it!” Cade had shouted. “Stop this!”

The Brain Storm wasn’t over though. Men began growing more muscular, women began growing more buxom. One woman’s hair turned bleach blonde, her eyes turning rather dull, and her chest ballooning out into twin torpedos that her husband clenched onto. She began giggling like an idiot as her rather brutish man grabbed her, bent her over a nearby car and began fucking her brains out.

Elsewhere, a younger woman stopped dead in her tracks, her skirt shortening up her thighs until it was barely beneath her panties. Her top loosened then tied up around her tits, tightly pressing in to show off her hard nipples. Apparently spontaneous gum manifested in her mouth and as she began chewing, her eyes grew rather seductive.

Cade watched her stroll on out of the parking lot, leaning over to look in the windows of cars that slowed down. He took the scene in and hardly could breathe. Everyone was changing; everyone was behaving like they were mad.

It was pure pandemonium for the next several minutes. Men grabbed young girls, running hands all over their young bodies, the girls eagerly urging the men on. Women grabbed young boys. Mothers stripped for sons. Fathers put dollars in daughter’s g-strings. It was insanity in the flesh as suddenly Cade had heard a familiar voice behind him.

“What the hell is this?” Prudence asked.

Cade looked at her. His eyes were panic-stricken but he couldn’t form a word. The older sister looked over and saw Jamie sitting on the bench. Cade saw her as well.

Jamie was now covered in milk. She’d sprayed what easily looked like gallons of it all over her red hair, spotting it with thick white patches. It dribbled down her cheeks and dripped into massive cleavage like he’d never seen before.

“Ja- Jamie?!” Prudence shouted.

She dropped her prescription bag on the pavement and kneeled down, looking into her younger sister’s eyes. There was none of the old Jamie there. She was a horny, perverted and heavily lactating schoolgirl now.

When Prudence turned to Cade, that was when he felt a pop inside his head. It was what he now called a full-on quake, a Corruption Quake.

“What did you do?” Prudence asked.

Cade mumbled but could hardly form a word as Prudence came at him. Suddenly she stiffened up, her arms dropping limply at her side. She seemed rather zombie-like for half a second as Cade felt a searing release of tension inside his brain. Straightening up, Prudence grinned and turned back to Jamie.

“Hey sis!” Prudence shouted, catching Jamie with a nipple dangling between her front teeth. The teen opened her mouth and her breast flopped down loose next to the other one.

“Yeah, what?” She asked.

Prudence walked up and reached down grabbing one of her sister’s tits. As she lightly massaged it, thick streams of milk spewed like geysers all over her pant legs.

“Save some for me!” Prudence said.

And with that, Cade watched as both Prudence and Jamie fed themselves one of her swollen breasts, sucking the never-ending deluge of creamy white fluid until their tummies began to look swollen.

Cade Wheeler had realized that day what his mother meant when she described the mental quakes. Long ago, the ultimate quake had sent him into a coma. But as with most quakes, there came aftershocks. And on that day, Cade had experienced a serious one.

Now, he was better at recognizing the symptoms, the precursors to a quake. He’d even managed to stop one or two before anyone got hurt. Of course staying away from people was the simple solution.

It was his fault, Cade now understood. He was the one who insisted on traveling once a month into town and visiting. He had to stop here, at this lonely cafe today. If only he’d visited tomorrow or yesterday. Any day would be better than the one day Greysville High School cheerleaders showed up for breakfast.

He was losing it, Cade thought, feeling the sweat trickle down past his brow. He reached up and shakily wiped at his forehead. Giggling caught his attention and he glanced over at a few of the cheerleaders.

While most were chatting incessantly about bands or boys, or who knew, boy-bands, Mandy and her two friends were looking right at him. Apparently as he’d been wiping his forehead, the napkin he’d been resting his arm on had stuck to his sleeve. It was now dangling off his elbow and that, apparently, provided a surprisingly substantial amount of entertainment for these young girls.

He averted his eyes before Mandy’s pendulous breasts caught too much of his attention. The girl was far too seductive looking to be a high school cheerleader. Her tits alone were worthy of porn star status.

He stopped his thoughts as quickly as he could. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way, not until Mandy and her friends were safely on that bus and heading home.

Home for whores, Cade thought, gripping the table tightly. His thoughts were winning the battle. He couldn’t hold off much longer.

“Leslie, look at his pants.” Cade heard Mandy mutter.

Glancing over through sweat-drenched hair that began stinging his eyes, Cade noticed that he was still supposedly a source of amusement to the girls. They were laughing and covering their mouths as they looked at his pants.

As subtly as he could, Cade looked down and noticed his old and beaten jeans. He’d patched them many times over the years. It was a skill he had to learn, living in exile. Maybe the pink spotted patches weren’t the most manly he could use, but there was only so much fabric left in his house. He had to use what he could.

“Oh wow, looks like an old circus tent,” the girl named Leslie said. She broke into a laugh and Cade was quickly losing his control. He was angry that as much as he was trying to protect these young girls from what might happen to them, they were simply being stuck-up and rather callous.

Girls like that deserved a lesson or two, Cade heard his mind pushing.

Taking one last glance around the room, from the truckers, to a young couple eating over by the window, to the several waitresses that scurried from table to table, Cade glared right into the three cheerleaders’ eyes. Mandy, the sultry brunette stopped smiling. Leslie, her blonde friend let her smile fade, and the yet unnamed girl with a rather petite figure looked suddenly caught in the headlights.

If he had to let just a little control slip, it might as well be with those three. Cade tried to regulate the quake. Breathing slowly, he looked from the girls’ eyes right down at their cheerleading tops.

“Ooohhh!” Mandy moaned.

Leslie looked over at her friend then closed her eyes tightly as the same sensation hit her. Soon, all three girls were gripping the table and appeared to be spontaneously climaxing on the spot.

Cade smiled. Mandy’s already stupendous tits began shaking. It was subtle at first, but soon they were jumping from side to side, up and down, showing the entire room how clearly she wasn’t wearing any support underneath the top.

Cade tried to maintain some control but allowing just a little to slip meant it was an avalanche of release. He wasn’t going to be able to hold off much longer.

“Girls, stop it right now!”

Cade looked over at the female cheer coach and closed his eyes. Slut shock was beginning. He couldn’t prevent it.

“Girls, I said stop shaking you’re perky little tits like that!”

The woman clamped a hand over her mouth.

Mandy opened her eyes, and looked over at her coach. “My tits are anything but perky! These are big drooping hooters!” And with that, the girl stood up and showed the entire cafe how true that statement was.

Truckers spit out their food as they saw the young brunette teen lift up her top, shaking her tits in their direction. Waitresses gasped. And Cade lost more of any resolve he still had. It was going to be bad this time. He could feel it.

Brain Storms began all around as Cade closed his eyes and lightly shook from the release.

If he’d thought Mandy had porn star status before or that she should be in a whore house, he was totally unsurprised as she became exactly that.

Mandy left her two friends still shaking away, each of them looking a little dumber from being walloped by their own growing tits. She passed by Cade’s table and smiled, walking over to where the largest group of truckers was.

“So which one of you big boys wants to pound my pussy?”

The men were staring right at her tits, each straining at the material of her cheerleading uniform. One bold man got a rather serious grin as he looked from his buddies to the high schooler.

“What do you mean, one?”

Mandy brushed a hand through her hair, tilted her face to one side, and licked her lips. “So you all think you can fill me up. Go ahead. I’m easy. But let’s go three at a time, I haven’t got all day.”

Cade stared with a certain separation from reality as Mandy was surrounded by three truckers. One pawed his hands over her tits, quickly stripping her of her uniform top. Another reached beneath her short frilly skirt and ripped her panties off. The last pulled her face up towards his sweaty beard and began shoving his tongue down her throat.

“Mmm... Oh! Patience boys!” Mandy moaned.

She was quickly folded back flat on her back over a nearby table. The larger of the three men grabbed her legs, spread them apart and sliced his rather tremendous erection deep inside her. Another man positioned himself at the other end, grabbing her head and yanking it back to a point Cade worried it would cause the girl pain. Instead, she whimpered in pleasure and inhaled most of his cock straight from his open pants. With her hand, she gripped a third man on one side of the table, squeezing his cock firmly up and down, providing as professional a hand job as Cade had ever imagined.

He looked back around the room. Besides Mandy, all the cheerleaders had succumbed to the Brain Storm and Slut Shock. Girls were making out on the floor, licking each other in places they probably never imagined being before. The cheer coach was on the floor next to the couple that had been eating alone by the window. The man was fucking into her again and again, shouting at the woman he’d come in with.

“See here Cindy, I’ll show you precisely how you start a family. You think it really requires thought and consideration? It isn’t so hard.”

“Ohhhhh... sooo hard!” The cheer coach screamed. Her long blonde hair was shaking with every brutal thrust.

The man looked down at her. “Shut up slut. I’m talking to my wife.” He looked back at the woman in the booth. “See, all it takes to start a family is me squirting a little baby juice inside you. Fuck! How could that require thought or consideration?”

Cade watched in disbelief for a minute or two. The man apparently successfully argued his point as he finished up inside the cheer coach and soon was sitting in a chair as his wife sank her pussy down on a still thick erection. As she straddled him, his hands ripping at her shirt, the woman became rather demanding.

“Fuck Steven, come on stud! Fuck me! Fuck your slutty wife. Make me a baby machine! I want you keeping me pregnant for years to come. Just load me full of that creamy man juice!”

The man grabbed his wife around the waist, stood up with her still firmly rooted on him, and turned to the table. Lowering her, he drove down inside her, watching her freed tits slosh up and down, hitting her chin almost as hard as he was hitting the edge of the table.

“Oh fuck, yeah!” He shouted. “You want this? You want all this?”

“Fuck me, oh god! Fuck me, Steve! Fuck a whole litter inside me!”

Cade looked away, wondering if the man’s fantasy really was a whole litter. That could be problematic down the road.

Mandy was the sweet little high school slut she apparently was meant to be. Her tits were now wrapped sloppily around a greasy trucker’s cock and her face was covered in a mask of semen. Her legs were spread and she squatted on the floor between the man’s legs. Another trucker was behind her, working his own erection into position. As she squealed and Cade caught the unmistakable squishing of packed cum between her legs, he recalled her two friends.

Searching the chaotic mess in the cafe, he found that Leslie was apparently victim to some cattle-farmer’s warped fantasy. She was up on one of the tables on all fours. Her cheerleading top had been removed at some point and the man had positioned several empty glasses beneath her dangling tits.

He was rubbing his hands together as Cade looked on. “Now let’s see if you’re ready to give,” the man gruffly mumbled.

Reaching beneath Leslie, he grabbed each of her tits around the base, massaging for just a moment before squeezing and sliding his hands down towards her nipples. After several tries, the man had success as thin squirting streams of clearish white fluid began spraying into the glasses.

He alternated tits, filling one glass after another until Leslie’s moaning turned to mooing. Taking a break, he grabbed a glass, downed it, then looked around, seeing Cade.

“Care for a drink, mister?”

Cade shook his head slowly. He’d lost control again. It happened rarely to this extent, but Mandy and her friends had driven him to it. He stood up and laid a tip on the table. The cafe was filled with the depraved slapping of flesh, the constant orgasmic cries, the men grunting in exhaustion as they again and again used every female around for pleasurable acts.

Even a couple of the cheerleaders had taken a dominant position and coupled with men of varying ages. One now wore black leather from head to toe, held a nasty looking whip, and had a spiked black boot positioned up on the shoulder of a man who worked in the kitchen at the cafe.

“Please mistress!” He whimpered.

The girl had an intense look in her eyes. “Lick my boots. We’ll see if you’re worthy to lick any higher.”

Cade walked past the man fucking babies into his wife. He watched as the man pulled out, his cock still hard, still spurting in uncontrollable bursts. The man let his wife rest, her belly already looking rather full to Cade’s humble opinion.

The waitress who’d topped Cade’s coffee off came strolling towards him. Her hips were very exaggerated now, her hair full and bouncy, very blonde, and her lips succulent and red. She spoke with a slight giggle, her mind clearly having been drained a few IQ points.

“Like, hi there again. Need me to do something for you?”

Cade was about to say no thanks when the husband, Steve, grabbed the waitress and spun her to him.

“I need you. I need to fuck a baby into you right now!” Steve shouted.

The waitress smiled at the man with a rather dim pair of eyes. “Okie dokie. Go right ahead.”

Cade stopped for just a moment to watch as the waitress was bent over the table, right next to the man’s no doubt successfully bred wife, and had her pussy stuffed by the customer who’d chosen to breed her as well.

He rolled his eyes and began making his way to the door.

Mandy was being passed around like a blow up doll and Cade suddenly worried whether she may become one. If it was a fantasy, a Brain Storm could make it a reality, no matter how sick or twisted. Luckily, she still seemed to be able to move her limbs and her body hadn’t taken the sheen of rubber. It shined quite well of cum though.

The cheerleader Cade had felt was quite beautiful was now a slutty whore and the men in this cafe weren’t going to be done with her anytime soon. They’d likely abuse her body and fill her with sperm until she couldn’t walk anymore. But such was the fate of pushing Cade over the edge.

He felt really bad for the girl, for everyone, to be honest. But Cade was as much a victim to these Mental Quakes as they were. He needed to leave, to go home, to stay where nobody could be hurt.

Taking one last look around the cafe, Cade watched as Steve continued in a quest to knock up the most girls, the cattle-farmer continued milking young Leslie dry, and Mandy continued fucking every man who wanted a piece of her. The other girls were a mix of slutty lesbians, strict dominatrixes, naughty schoolgirls, and even one that appeared to be a bunny girl. The quake was over for now.

Walking out the door, Cade Wheeler breathed in the fresh air. One thing, the only thing really, that was good about releasing a quake like that. He felt alive again. He could smell the air, taste the flavors in the wind, feel the breeze on his skin. The pressure was released. His mental plates were shifted and he could focus clearly for once in a rare moment.

In time the quake inside the cafe would fade, like most quakes do. There might be ripples, aftershocks for a few days, but things would slowly return to normal. Lasting effects might linger, he thought.

Mandy would probably always be a whore. Her friend Leslie might have a new lactation kink. There may be a small population boom thanks to Steve. But overall they would recover.

Climbing behind the wheel of his truck, Cade took a moment to think about how wrong the day had gone. He thought about being alone, about being away from the world he cared about, and how those he had known may have wondered what happened to him. They could blame his father and those damned pills of his for that. It’s what Cade did.

Quakes were like people. Even when far away from civilization, they branched out and had an affect on those somewhere. Once the real harm was done, it couldn’t really be undone. Oh sure, the damage was glossed over, painted fresh, made to look like nothing ever happened. But there would always be cracks beneath the surface.

Driving off into the mountains, Cade was temporarily free from those cracks. But sooner or later, they’d surface again. They’d strike when least expected, and a Mental Quake would again create chaos among whoever was unfortunate enough to be around him.

It was only a matter of time now.