It was a quarter to eight, and Mark Surrender sat dressed up in new casual wear clothes nervously awaiting for Jennifer to arrive at the fancy restaurant they had chosen for their date. The seconds seemed like hours, and the minutes like weeks, especially to Mark's new heightened sense of speed, in which everything seemed to now go in hyper slow motion to him. He had to be extra careful tonight not to use any of his new super abilities. Each move he made had to be sure and deliberate.
As he sat there waiting, he thought about how his day had went. He had woke up early this morning, and called in sick to work. He had to make his voice seem really raspy when he talked. Since he had hardly ever called in before, his boss was a little concerned about him, but allowed him the day off, and even said that he hoped that Mark felt better soon. There was no way Mark was about to tell him the truth about how he felt the best he had ever felt in his entire life. Tomorrow Mark thought he would call in and tell them that he had a much better job offer, and had to move away.
Luckily he owned his own house, or he would have had to make up some excuses to his land lord. However, he did have neighbors, though none were real close or really ever even talked to him. With his new looks though that could change. If anyone did decide to come a visiting, to them he decided he would claim to be a cousin with almost the same name, except that their middle names were different. He would claim that he had a better job offer and was moving away, and that since his cousin had found a job in town wanted to take over the house.
After eating some cereal for breakfast, and getting dressed, he had made his way uptown to do some shopping in his car. A few girls actually looked twice at him, the second time with a sort of lustful look, instead of looking once, and then away in disgust, as he was pleasantly surprised to find because he was not yet used to his new body changes. He was happy and smiling as he drove to the stores uptown.
He glanced down at his watch. He was starting to get really nervous and was beginning to think that this might be a bad idea. He still had fourteen minutes left to wait. Boy, time moved really slow, especially when you wanted to hurry up and get it over with. He chalked up his feelings to now being able to move at super speed, and now all time crawled slowly on.
He had went shopping in all kinds of stores. He bought underwear, white t-shirts, and socks in one store. Blue and black jeans along with some nifty t-shirts with various cool sayings, cool bands, or even food logos in another. Then the last clothing store he went to he bought a pair of slack pants and a nice dress shirt, along with a new belt, watch, and wallet, all of which he was wearing now. He went into a shoe store and bought several different pairs in his now new size. From running shoes, dress shoes, and even sandals, he wanted to make sure his feet were comfortable in their new smaller size. With his clothes shopping done, he could now move onto his other shopping plans.
He first went to a sewing store and bought a sewing machine, lots of different colored spools of thread, clothing dyes, and any other things he thought he might need to design his "super hero" costume, including a couple of books on how to sew.
His next stop was to an electronics store where he bought a microwave oven, and a speed gun, but the max speed for the gun was only 299 mph. He tried to find one faster, but the salesperson insisted that nothing ever hardly went faster than that, so he reluctantly got it, even though he felt deep inside that he moved way faster then that.
Of course, with all that shopping done, he still had one more store to go to, the grocery store. He bought what for him would last a week, but for others it would last a month. Even though he was now a lot skinner, he was still always hungry. If what he suspected about himself being able to move at super speeds was true, then his new metabolism was burning calories at hyper speeds too.
As he glanced again at his watch, to notice that he still had to wait ten more minutes for Jenny to show, he thought about how the sales people had behaved around him as he shopped. Some were guys, who most were indifferent of him, and only one, which he thought for sure was gay, gave him a look over, which had made him feel really uncomfortable at the time. Most, however, had been women. Some where a lot older than him. Most of them had looked him over quite intently, though a couple, who might have been lesbians, or in a serious relationship already were indifferent. Out of the ones that did look, most were married, or, at least, he thought they were because they had wedding bands on their left ring fingers. He supposed the ones that didn't have one on, were probably seeing someone as well because no one hit on him, or openly flirted with him, though they would stare, and that might have just been professional courtesy as well. He supposed he would have to start getting used to that.
He looked again at his watch. Nine minutes left. He sighed, put his right elbow down on the table, resting his right cheek on his right fist. With his left hand he nervously tapped the table with his fingers, as if he was playing a piano in boredom. He began to feel his face begin to stretch, and quickly caught himself doing it. He sat back up, pulling himself back together, and hoped that no one had saw that. He glanced around the room, and apparently no one had because they were to busy in their own conversations, and wasn't really paying him any mind. He went back to thinking about his day again.
He had left the stores, and went straight home to set-up everything. He had unloaded the car at super speed, or, at least by now, he thought so, and hoped that his neighbors hadn't seen him do it. He had set-up the microwave oven in the kitchen, put his clothes away in the closet, pulling out his old clothes, bagging them up to eventually take to good will or something, and even set-up the sewing machine. Even his eyes were now working at super speed he noticed as he speed read the new books on sewing, and set to work sewing up his super hero costume, which he was wearing now under his clothes, with the mask slipped into one pocket. After he finished his costume design, he gathered up all of the boxes, and any other trash he had, and ran it out to the trash dumpster. His old clothes he placed in his car's trunk to deliver to Goodwill.
He then took the speed gun and loaded it up into the car and headed to the high school football fields where he planned on testing his new abilities. It wasn't so much that he wanted to test their true limits, just to see and confirm that he had them. So after a quick drop off of his old clothes to the Goodwill, he was on his way.
He was happy to see that no one was on the football field, as he pulled up. He quickly changed into his costume, and then set up the speed gun. He casually ran around the track, but when he checked out the speed gun it was maxed out, just like he suspected, and was afraid it would be. Well, that finally confirmed it, at least. He know knew for sure that he could move at super human speeds. Now to test his stretching abilities.
He then sat on the fifty yard line of the field and stretched himself out to where he was touching both goal lines at the same time. That took quite a lot of effort, and he didn't think he could go much farther than that, but he was still quite impressed with himself for being able to stretch across an entire football field. How many other people could receive the football and score a touchdown for both teams at the same time? He was probably the only one.
