With thanks to Robert Pollard

We’re gonna get you old man, we’re gonna get you…

     My eyes shot awake in bed. I was, once again, within their psychic range. I had to get out now.

     My weary eyes scanned the grungy motel room where I had spent my last few nights. Although I had felt their messages for at least a week, I half expected to see a pair of mischievous eyes watching me from the shadows, the way they had in Tallahassee when I barely escaped with my life.

     It wouldn’t happen again. Before I was even awake one hand reached down to grab the go bag resting beside the bed while the other jumped to the half-disassembled radio sitting on the bedside table. The speaker began blasting out a garbled mess of noise, only barely resembling the classical music broadcast that it was pulling from.

     The function of this Device, beyond bothering my motel neighbors, was twofold. Respite and triangulation. There was nothing I could do to fully drown out their violent jeers and taunts, but as I crawled towards the door holding both the bag and the Device, the screeching blend of symphonies, minor league baseball games and satellite signals created a large enough wave of frequencies to obscure the worst of it.

     I gingerly stepped out from the room and within a couple of seconds was inside my gray beater sedan, parked right out front.

     As I propped up the Device on the dash, I took note of its second function: triangulation. The broadcast was loud and full-throated, no sign yet of the interruptions and frequency cuts that indicated the presence of psychic waves. I pulled out of the parking lot and was on the road before any lights came on, wondering what that ungodly noise was.

     I don’t remember where I was when I learned about the formation of the Psychic Youth Investigation Bureau, the organization that quickly became known as the “Teenage FBI.” What I remember far better was the day I became their target.

     It was a few months after I finished school, when I was working at a catering company trying to get my life back together after my mom had passed a few months earlier. I had little motivation to pursue anything, and at the same time was deeply dissatisfied with where life had found me.

     My eyes scanned the intersection as I turned onto the highway. I thought about the guy with the long hair and glasses who asked me for a smoke one day. Then he asked for stronger stuff. I told him I could get him some, from some old high school friends who were throwing a party later that day.

     I continued down the dead highway, the Device still chattering away. I only have my sister Sarah to thank for my being here at all. She called me in a panic when I was on my way home, telling me to meet her next to our local news radio station. She had been at Mom’s place when the windows smashed in, and a group of kids dressed in all black with strange masks asked her where I had been.

      “But, they didn’t ask for it,” she said. “At least, not in a clear way. I heard it in my head, all around me, but it was like I was remembering it from a past encounter.”

     “It was them,” she said, seeing the incredulousness in my eyes. “The Teenage FBI. You need to leave, you need to leave right now.”

     The black countryside stretched out before me. It had been hours since I’d seen a car. The Device was screeching as loud as ever, but I truthfully couldn’t say, because the droning of the wheels and the screeching of the Device and the throbbing of my eyes all blended together into one dreary mix.

     My eyes began to droop. The only constant motion my body had experienced in the last few hours was the small muscular movements to adjust myself back on the road.

     My eyes drooped down again, and I snapped my head up as I focused on the mile marker sign ahead. And I felt my fists tighten around the wheel.

Youwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrash

     And I couldn’t unclench them.

     The taunting voices shot into my head like a thousand rail spikes, and I could only watch the hands that had so recently been in my control as the wheel turned and the car smashed into the highway barricade.

Youwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrashyouwillcrash

     All I could do was focus in on the squeaky, immature voices that bounced around my skull as the car rolled around me, slivers of glass making their way into any bits of exposed flesh, the Device ricocheting off the roof and driving into my forehead, slicing a warm, wet gash that spilled down into my eyes. My head was still spinning long after the car had settled into the roadside ditch.

     I could see the drip of my blood onto the dried grass below me. I knew in my head, before I even thought I knew, that I was done for, that I was gone. Maybe that’s why I felt no need to extricate myself from the wreckage and run as fast as I could from the black-suited figures descending into the ditch.

     The muscles constricted around my broken bones and the blood began to pour in even greater quantities. The last thought I had before the chanting and the noise claimed my coherent thought was one of fearful acceptance:

I’D FINALLY BEEN FOUND BY THE TEENAGE FBI!