"Now imagine that the blood is stopping and the cut is healing." Bambi told me. "Your skin is closing and the cut has healed over. Everything is back to normal."
I mentally healed the cut in my imagination. I could feel a tingling on the back of my hand as the cut closed and the skin knit together.
"Open your eyes." Bambi told me. I did and looked at my hands. They were fine.
"I guess it didn't work." I said.
"I wouldn't say that," she told me. "I expected to see one hand get paler than the other as you constricted the veins. That didn't happen. But look at your leg."
I lowered my arms and looked down. There on my thigh were three drops of bright red blood. I jerked my hand up and looked at it. There was no sign of a wound. It was perfectly normal.
Bambi took my hand and turned it over. The palm was normal as well. She said, "It's called stigmata. Deeply religious people can manifest what they imagine to be the wounds of Christ. They are usually young girls like you. The wounds are real. The blood is real. You just did that. I watched it happen."
I was starting to get scared. "Why do you say 'imagine to be'?"
"Because the wounds they manifest are usually in their palms. Physiologists will tell you that you can't crucify someone that way. If you are going to nail someone to a cross and not have them fall off, you have to put the nails in the wrists. Stigmata are not religious, they are psychosomatic. People who manifest stigmata are doing it to themselves with their minds. As you have just demonstrated."
I clutched my hand and looked at Bambi. She was getting that same, 'I don't know you' look that I had seen before. I couldn't blame her. I obviously didn't know me either. I didn't know if the abilities I had were the result of my days of torture or if they were something I had always had and the pain just made me bring them out. Whichever it was, I now had abilities that very few people had ever seen, much less possessed. I was suddenly seized by a need to find out what else I could do.
"Do you see that small mole on my hip?" I asked Bambi. "I've had that all my life."
"Yes. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Just watch the mole." I lay back and returned to what I now understood to be a trance state. It was getting easier to get there and I was becoming more comfortable about it. I visualized the mole. I tried to see it in my mind in every detail. I pictured it shrinking. I saw it fade to nothing and disappear under smooth, unblemished skin. I waited for a while and tried to make myself calm. Then I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Bambi was still looking at my hip. I sat up and looked for myself.
"It's gone," she said, visibly impressed. "It just went away."
"What else do you think I might I be able to do?" I asked. "Challenge me."
"All right," she agreed. "Autographism. The ability to manifest writing on your skin."
"You mean, like words?"
"Words, lines, symbols. Some people have done tattoos."
"I've always wanted a tattoo. It's just that they're so... permanent. Let's see — what kind of tattoo do I want? I know! A heart. Right here." I pointed to a spot in the hollow of my left shoulder. It had been so easy to reach the trance state last time that I tried it without lying down and closing my eyes. I simply concentrated on the feeling that meant I was there. I felt it wash over me like water in the shower. Everything became a little blurry, a little distant, a little muted. I stared at the spot where I wanted the tattoo to be and pictured it in my head. I saw a small pink heart, shaded to make it look three-dimensional. When it looked just the way I wanted it, I let my mind slide back out of the trance. I blinked a few times, but the heart tattoo was still there on my shoulder. I touched it, but it did not feel any different than the rest of my skin. It wasn't raised or sore or anything. It was just a little pigment in the skin. Watching it appear made it easier to get exactly what I wanted.
"I like it," I told Bambi.
"If you don't," she shrugged, "you can always change it or get rid of it completely."
"Can you think of anything else I can try?"
"I'm not sure I want to suggest anything else. You have already demonstrated abilities well beyond those of even the most dedicated mystics and fakirs. A minute ago you made a mole disappear. That's not in any of the reports that I have seen, and I read up on this extensively after Ben came back with his stories." She paused a moment, thinking. "I can think of one thing that you might try that you have expressed an interest in. There are documented cases of psychosomatic galactorrhea."
"Psycho-what?" She lost me completely.
"It means lactating by thought. I would be surprised if you were not able to do that with everything else you have shown me."
"I thought you wanted me to wait before I got into that."
"That was before I knew you could start and stop anytime you wanted. But let's wait on that one anyway. Something tells me this could be messy."
I laughed. I had a mental picture of me lying on my back with milk spraying from my nipples like twin fountains. "You're probably right. I came up here to get a tan, not to... A tan! I don't need the sun, now! Let's see. Dark Tropical? Deep Brown? Golden Honey? Light Coffee? Pale Blonde?"