bullet would have taken me high in the shoulder had I not caught it. I picked the piece of lead from the air with index finger and thumb, turned it over a few times, examining the rings made by the guns rifling, and dropped it to the ground.
The gun shouted again as Mitch emptied the magazine at me. I caught each bullet with my left hand and carefully deposited them into my whole, unblemished right. When the last bullet flew, I caught it and put it into my right hand with its brothers.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” I said brightly and closed my fist. The bullets smashed together into a heavy ball. “My turn.”
I threw the smashed wad of ammunition. The wad was the size of a golf ball and passed quickly through Mitch’s chest, the wall, and sunk eight inches into a huge oak tree outside. The police would later think that he had been felled by a fifty caliber bullet until they dug it out and saw the mashed together pulp.
He died well, with just a low grunt of pain before falling to the ground. Jenny freighted. Her mass hit the floor like a tsunami and a framed picture of some beach fell from the wall.
“Not very brave, is she?” I said brightly to Laura.
She backed away from me, putting her hands up like that would shield her from my wrath. “How…how are you…?”
I laughed. “I’d really like to answer that for you, but you really need to be more specific. How am I alive? Is that what you want to know? Or maybe you want to know how I’m suddenly whole and can do the things I just did?”
She nodded quickly with spastic little movements.
I laughed again, a cheery, sarcastic thing. “There were several questions. A simple yes or no doesn’t help distinguish them.”
She gulped dryly and I heard a loud click in her throat. She didn’t attempt to speak again, but kept backing up until her well formed and most dangerous asset hit the wall.
I followed her with even, confident strides. Why shouldn’t I be confident? Was I not me, the boy who melted? “Very well. I’ll answer all of those questions since your charming voice seems to have absconded.
“Mind you,” I continued, “I can’t be too exact since I’m not entirely sure what happened myself—even with my new omniscience. I’m not actually sure it is omniscience, truthfully, since I seem to only know everything anyone around me knows. I’m digressing though, excuse me, how about we start with where we last left off: with you killing me.
“It all went fairly normal at the start. The rain hit me and my flesh dissolved. When the flesh that was important for me living dissolved, I died. Well, I’m fairly certain I died. It’s hard to say really, since I’m very clearly alive right now, but that’s all philosophical and menial, so we’ll just carry on with saying that I died.
“Now death—if that’s actually what it was—is a very strange experience. Everything went black like you would expect, except for the fact that I was still very much aware. I knew what was happening to me—or had happened—but I didn’t feel any pain. I guess the perfect way of explaining it would be to simply say that my conscious had left the building.
“Once the last little bit of me dissolved, I felt something new. It was an invisible power, bourn only of my will. I realized that I had the ability to reform myself, to take those pieces of me which floated away in those rivulets and use them however I saw fit. I couldn’t really figure out how to do it for a few minutes—that’s what allowed all of you to make it here—but I knew I could do it. I could recreate myself into whatever form I wanted.
“My first instinct was to pull myself back together exactly as I had been before—sans the missing body parts, of course—but it occurred to me that doing so would be a graven underutilization of my new found talents.
“So I dreamed big. I’ve consumed an enormous amount of media over the years of confinement. I’ve read comic books, watched movies and cartoons, and made my way through a thousand novels. I realized that every power available to those enviable superheroes could be mine by just thinking it. So I did.
“I pulled my body together, infusing it with speed, strength, invisibility, flight. I gave myself the ability to see through walls, read minds, and bend people to my will. All of it is mine now. And here I am.”
I opened my arms wide and smiled. Laura said nothing; she just stared at me, horrified. I walked forward and stroked her cheek. She shuddered at my touch, but the wall prevented her from fleeing.
“What are you?” she whispered.
“What am I?” I smiled. “I’m whatever I want to be. Who am I? I’m Jonathan Woodward. But what I think you really want to know is what was I. Is that it? Do you want to know how I was born with a curse so cruelly hiding a gift?”
Her neck gave a short little burst of nods.
“Well that’s a good question, one I don’t know the answer to. Maybe I’m some kind of alien, put into my mother’s womb by some strange design. Heck, maybe my mother and father are aliens as well. Maybe I’m a demigod. Maybe I am god—though that one I do doubt very much. I could be an angel, a demon, a million things. Perhaps I’ll know one day, but I don’t right now.”
I leaned forward and kissed her lips. They were dry and quivering; they did not return my embrace.
Smiling, I stroked her cheek one last time and walked away from her. Jenny was still unconscious. I bent over her and debated with myself what to do with her. I hated her, and killing her slowly would give me incredible satisfaction, but I was not evil. Not on her level. She was a disgusting girl, but it was Laura who had earned my true loathing with her feigned affection. I placed a hand on her flabby neck and stopped her heart with a thought. She gave one small spasm and lay still.
Laura squeaked from against the wall. She had been around death enough to recognize it, and with both of her friends dead, she would be the next logical victim.
DON’T KILL ME! Her mind screamed at mine.
I laughed and shook my head at her. “Kill you? I wouldn’t dream of it. After all, you didn’t really kill me, did you? No, you let the rain do that.”
That rain pounded hard upon the roof as I walked toward the door. Laura mumbled some feeble things behind me. They were unintelligible, even to my perfect ears, but I caught their meaning; her confusion.
“My dear Laura,” I cooed. “You really should have enjoyed that kiss more. It was your last.”
“But…but you said you wouldn’t kill me!” she yelped.
I shook my head gently like a parent to a toddler. “Oh I won’t kill you, dear. But you see, it’s still raining out there and that roof up there is going to miraculously disappear in exactly…” I checked the softly ticking clock over the fireplace, “…thirty-two minutes. Isn’t that just a shame? After all, with that kiss, you just became the girl who melted.”
Ignoring her cries, I walked from the house. The rain fell upon the world, forming little puddles along the cracked sidewalk and overgrown lawns. Halos of light surrounded the street lights which displaced the early morning darkness with their yellowy glow. Apart from the gentle plops of rain, the world was quiet as I strolled up the dreary street, enjoying the cool freshness of the rain on my skin, and wondering what I would become next.
About The Author
Travis McBee was born and raised just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. As a freshman in college, he rediscovered his lost love of writing when he penned a children’s book entitled A Little Holliday Thrill. Since then he has gone on to write four novels: Bridgeworld; Triton: Rise of the Fallen; Triton: The Call of War; and Bridgeworld: Encounter at Atlantis. He is also the author of The Chronicles of a Second Grade Genius series, a continuation of his first children’s book. As well as novels, he has written several short stories. He also hosts a YouTube channel where he frequently talks about writing. For more information and his complete Bibliography, please visit: www.TravisMcBee.com
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