Can You Imagine What Would Happen If You Found A Way To Be Nice To Everybody?
I was sixteen, and that was the prompt Professor Keating gave us in his English class. He loved literature, and I loved writing, but I just got stuck. I didn’t know how to tackle that sentence. Perhaps one needs to have lived longer than I had to give a correct answer. I think he wanted us to use our imagination real hard, just for once. In the end, I came up with a lame story written in the first person and he gave me a pass because, as usual, it was clean and well written.
It took me five more years to get to know I’d never earn my living writing novels. But I worked hard and was on my way to becoming a passable journalist.
It took me five more years to know the answer to the question: “Can You Imagine What Would Happen If You Found A Way To Be Nice To Everybody?”
I didn’t ask to gain my powers. I was just trying to do my job, reporting, when the accident took place. The weird accident that should have killed me but didn’t. The accident that made doctors baffle over me and declare me a living miracle.
Little did they know.
Then my powers started to manifest. Can you imagine how it is? I’ll tell you.
To start with, it’s frightening. My hearing developed first. I started hearing voices, and of course, I thought they were in my head. I visited a doctor and she tested me. She found nothing but an extremely keen hearing. But as I underwent those tests, the voices became clearer, until I realized I could listen to sounds that came from extremely long distances.
Then it became frustrating. I heard everything. The worse were the cries for help. I could hear people trapped in crashed cars, people who couldn’t escape fires, women being raped. I went through it all in my head.
I almost went mad.
Then came the strength.
It was a relief. I suppose you do remember “The Masked Marvel”? The vigilante? Me, as many have suspected. During those first months, I could at least run and help those closer to me.
Believe me, it was difficult. Law enforcement agencies don’t like vigilantes. I couldn’t wear anything recognizable, and I regularly recycled my clothes and bought used ones in second-hand stores. I had to leave my phone miles away every time I tried to help and travel by foot, running to crime scenes and hoping I’d arrive on time.
I couldn’t give help to every voice in my head, but I could help some.
It helped me.
Next came the speed, and it was a relief.
Suddenly, I could reach further, and faster. I could save more people in danger, help more people in need.
And I could sleep at night a bit more easily.
By the way, I also realized I didn’t need to sleep. Well, I still slept and I do sleep now, but not much. And I have other ways I can rest. Point of fact, I think I’ve reached a point where rest, for me, is purely psychological: as long as my cells are charged, I could simply go on forever. But my brain feels the need to stop for a while from time to time.
Imagine, if you will, what that meant. After so long I could almost be everywhere at the same time.
Almost. Not enough.
Perhaps one of the reasons I sleep less is to avoid the nightmares. Like the Highway Massacre, as some journalists I no longer call friends called it. I arrived late. Yes, the small girl I saved from drowning when I heard the first car crash against a truck in the fog is now in the University, but what about all the people I couldn’t help?
That way lies madness, do you say?
Perhaps it does.
I hope it doesn’t.
Flight was a blessing. Would wonders never cease? I was fast becoming a comic-book character. And why not?
So I abandoned The Masked Marvel. And I had to learn how to build my own costume from scratch. Because, as you can imagine, neither the ones in the comic-books nor the ones in the movies are really practical.
An unexpected side effect of the changes was that I also found out I needed no sustenance. That’s it, I don’t have to eat. I like to, but I don’t need to. With the need to eat went the need for a job. And I let go of what we could call my secret identity. I didn’t need it.
I could spend all my time helping others. Being nice.
To keep my sanity.
Know what?
It’s impossible.
I’ll give you an example. When I was contacted by a certain agency and asked for help to catch serial killers, of course I said yes, though I didn’t know what to expect. What i found was that. with all my powers, I am not more intelligent than I’ve ever been. I am no investigator. I don’t know how to look for clues, and I have no way to process them. The regular field agents had to do all the dirty work.
And when the moment came to catch him, I couldn’t. I was paralyzed.
The bodies. All those little girls. I still see them. I try not to think of them, but I can’t help it.
I stared at the face of evil, and I failed.
After all these years, I floundered.
I.
Just.
Wanted.
To.
Kill.
Him.
I cannot be nice to everybody. There is no way. Not everybody deserves it.
But I still hear the cries for help, and I do what I can.
For my sanity?
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Inspired by Inspirobot! So, for this week’s challenge we had to visit the wacky site inspirobot.me, generate an inspirational meme and write 1000 words inspired by it.
This proved difficult.
I don’t know exactly how Inspirobot works, but the results it generates are weird and varied. I got ten or twelve that went from the nonsensical to the magic, with a side of interesting. But none of them sparked what we can call the muse, and which is nothing but hard work.
So I went with the one that, who knows why, resonated more in my mind, and ended up writing this story. Kurt Busiek helped me with it.
