6 October 2012
Imagine this.
You fall in a well and all of a sudden your regarded as some sort of returning Messiah. Well, I guess it wasn’t as simple as that… Come to think of it, it was after a few weeks. I vaguely remember the voices from inside the well. I fell for what seemed like forever. When the darkness had outstretched my fear of death, a meek light flooded my eyelids despite them being closed. I had submitted to death — lost all hope and succumbed to the fact that my life was going to end. I thought I was fed up of life before that. It was boring. Everyday was the same. Everyday things are born and everyday things die, yet nothing happens. Nothing changes. I wanted to live in a way unlike everybody else. It was only when on the verge of losing my life that I realised I didn’t want to see tears falling on my grave from heaven: if there really was a heaven. What type of paradise is that? Watching my loved ones mourn without having the option to comfort them sounds more like torture. I thought of all my friends, my mother… How much I wanted to accomplish and would never get to — seeing what my children would look like… Heck seeing what I would look like fully-grown. Either way, it was when I had completely given up hope that the white light appeared. It started with a song; angelic harmonies from a source unknown. Voices came from incomprehensible directions. I was sure that I had died at this point. The white light turned to sparkles of heavenly fragments; then I stopped falling. I was floating now. My eyes couldn’t open, so I had to rely on my minds representation of a representative for the message that followed. They told me that my mission was far from over — that I still had much to accomplish before I could die. The voice seemed so distant, yet so close… Unfamiliar yet familiar all the same. Next thing I know, its night and I’m lying soaked from head to toe next to the well.
Over the weeks, my powers began to show… began to grow. It started with a dying blue tit. The poor bird had sung its beautiful song to me in the park many times prior. It was the only animal, or any living creature for that matter that hadn’t ran away from me. A fox had attacked it from the looks of its injuries. It was holding on to its last strands of energy by the time I had found it on my way to my part time job. I was late anyway, so I thought I’d take a stroll through the park when I found it, bleeding by the bench I had first encountered it, almost as if it was waiting for me. I walked over to it, and felt the hurt of loss in my heart for the first time as the light of innocence in its eyes began to die out. I picked it up in my cradled hands, and that’s when it happened. A glowing light began to emit from the bites, and the bleeding instantly stopped. The wound healed itself with not even so much as a scar, and the life returned to its eyes. It stood on my arm, and flew away into the morning sun. I was half amazed, and half scared.
My second encounter with my power came before that day had even finished. I’d spent the entire day reflecting on the morning’s event, wondering just what the hell had really happened. I was cooking my favorite pasta, when a ladybird foolishly flew through the stoves fire, and crashed into my kitchen window. I watched the entire procedure, and marveled at its idiocy. It had spelt its own death, and had no one to blame but itself. Fascination led me to touch its burnt wing, and that’s when my powers showed their ugly face yet again. Its wing had healed — reverted back to its original state. It flew away into the setting sun through my open window.
Within the following years, I had tried my powers on varies dying creatures, returning them all to their previous states without fail. After I’d grown comfortable with my healing powers, I decided to go public, and became known under the name ‘Messiah’. They loved me. I was the biggest star of the decade. A YouTube video went from ten to the most viewed clip on the net within a week of my public debut. I was a worldwide hit. Children looked up to me and adults wished they could be me. The girls crawled after me; Toys, comics, mugs, and bed time clothes. The lot. I was it. I healed on TV shows, and made money just by literally touching people. I had the magic fingers. Everything revolved around me. I had achieved my superior existence. An existence unlike any other.
—
It was at the Prime Ministers birthday party that I met her: A girl unlike any other. I had avoided the scarlet’s that just wanted my money, but with her things felt different. At a glance I could tell she wasn’t like the others. We instantly hit it off. The press wouldn’t of left her alone under any other circumstances, so we met in private, deep into the nights. We would drive to the countryside, and spend a few hours together, before I would return her to her home and get back to king sized bed back at the mansion. She didn’t want my riches like anyone else. She just wanted the real me. I could be natural around her. Anything she wanted I could provide, yet she never asked for a single thing — except my love. It was an experience unlike any other. I had no reason to lie to her. It was the truth that I whispered in her ear of the Southwest coast by the beach that I needed her in my life. I wanted to be more then a friend to her, and I wanted to be the guy that she loved too. I asked her honestly could she promise me that she’d stay by my side for the rest of my life.
Just close your eyes and imagine. She was angelic and energetic, using sex as a weapon. The way she filled my heart with passion; a personification of all God’s blessings, coming to me in just one physical being. Tanned olive skin, and black hair with hints of brown that reached just below her shoulders, amenable to her boundless brown eyes — easily comparable to the most beautiful sunrise. God’s gift to man was her wearing a see-through! I thought I didn’t know what love was, but tell me this; if I didn’t know what it was, then why did I feel like that? Like my heart was physically aching. My love for her was so blatant, and I was tired of waiting. We lost ourselves under winking planes of the night; before we sat and attempted to watch the last stars disappear into mornings blue, fingers intertwined.
—
Something wasn’t right.
I began to grow weaker with each healing. I didn’t know why, but I was sure it had to do with it. So I had to cut down; but the patients kept coming. I was beginning to look years older then my age, and could feel my bones growing more fragile. Yet no one could notice this. It was all about them now. I left my mansion… Began to run from patients. Disposed of my phone, shut down my website, stopped replying to request emails and everything. I didn’t need them as long as I had love right? Wrong.
She came to me one morning, crying, begging me to heal her mother. She had been diagnosed with cervical cancer, and wouldn’t have long left at the rate she was going. I was her last hope — but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how long I had left, and I hadn’t told her about my mother either. With shame, I had no choice but to refuse. I loved her, but enough to sacrifice myself? For her mother whom I didn’t even know? It was hard enough deciding for my own mother as it was. She left me. Whatever we had was gone. No words. No emotion. She just walked away. I glimpsed for the last time at the hair that got me flying, with her eyes forever shining — the smile like a chemical extract of perfection. She stormed out my downtown apartment, and became the unsuspecting victim of a hit-and-run. She was rushed to the hospital with me by her side. Four broken ribs and severe head injuries. Things were looking bad. She squeezed her eyes open as she came too in the emergency room. I was by her side, holding her hands tight, begging for her to stay with us. She gurgled blood, and coughed out a request for me to heal her. I froze. A manifold of thoughts began to flow through my mind; ‘would I die if I healed her?’ being the most momentous of them. I slowly let go of her hand, mouth gaping, sweat beads dripping down my brow. With the look of death she called my name. I ran out those revolving doors. I ran and ran until I could run no more. Then punched the walls of the alley repeatedly until my fist bled, the fist that would automatically heal itself. It hurt with the intensity of a thousand suns. My own body was impervious to physical harm. Every time I broke a bone, it would heal within seconds. I beat at that wall for over an hour, causing a never-ending cycle of skin breaking and reformation. Every time I punched the wall, it was with new skin. New skin that tore under the intensity of my rage. The rage that was packaged with uncontrollable tears that flowed freely as I screamed at myself for my own failure. She passed on by sundown.
My mother got worse. The doctors said she didn’t have long left. “The only way to better this is to let it get better by itself," is what they told me, but it didn’t help that the pain was worse then she’d ever felt. They didn’t know I was her son. I’d told them I was a distant relative. I peeked through cracked doors at my mother in her purist state; a clean white hospital gown, perfectly accommodate her graying hair. The bedside window was open. As the setting sun shone deep into her hazel eyes through the double glazed windows, she gazed blankly back through them, as if her vision was fixated on something far away… Or as if she was searching for something… Maybe for me. By the time I’d dealt with my demons and went to save her, it was too late. Even with all my powers, I couldn’t save anyone.
The hype ceased. I slowly became hated. The ‘devil that wouldn’t save the young ones’. It not that I wanted to.. I couldn’t — but they wouldn’t take that as an answer. When I stopped helping them, they turned on me. People began to question the nature of my power. Instead of God, people be
Imagine - A Fact Of Life • Opuss № I