Challenge: Prompt 4 (2024)
Prompt:
You can heal everyone and anything, but there's one drawback: something else must take on the damage that is healed and you cannot choose who or what takes the damage on. How do you use your ability and who, or what, do you lose in the process?
DISCLAIMER:
There have been questions in regards to using AI for these. I use spelling and grammar checkers, however the ideas and writing are all my own. I do not use AI to create the prompts or stories.
This is the story of how I lost my power.
I live in the city of Hanha. In my world, everyone develops a superpower when they turn 18, but the power has a drawback. For instance, my mom is a shape-shifter, but every time she changes it is extremely painful. My dad, on the other hand, is a writer and he can turn his writing into reality. He creates amazing and beautiful realities, for thirty seconds. Once the time is up, it disappears from whence it came. Common powers are flight, strength, speed, and varying degrees of enhanced flexibility. Flight typically has the drawback of it being only a few feet high. Strength is usually only arms or legs. Flexibility usually comes in the form of limited parts of the body (arms, legs, back) or it comes at the cost of pain or dislocating joints.
None of these are my power.
My power?
I can heal or fix anything. And I mean anything, but someone or something I love is broken, injured, or lost forever in the process.
It’s impressive, but not a very good power when you think about it.
It's been 3 years since my 18th birthday. Getting my power was odd. For many it happened as soon as you turned 18. For me it took a few days and I found out in a terrible way. I haven’t talked to my mom since then. Because I killed our dog.
It wasn’t my fault. Though my mom doesn't see it that way.
My dad fell off his tractor while he was plowing the garden and he fell. He had rigged the tractor to keep running, even if his butt left the seat. The tractor ran over him. Blood poured from his stomach. I was pruning the pear tree and heard him screaming. I ran to him, willing him to be okay when I got there. When I knelt next to him, I could see the blood, but there was no wound.
Then my mom started screaming. The kind of visceral scream that only comes from great agony. My dad and I ran to her. She was holding our poor sweet dog. The yellow fur of our golden retriever was matted with blood. My dad’s wound had ripped her belly open and I was to blame.
"Why? Why did you do this?" my mom shouted.
"I didn't do that," I said through tears.
"She didn't just sprout a gaping wound from nowhere," my mom said.
"She saved me," my dad said.
"We all learn to control our powers so that things like this don't happen," my mom said.
I wasn’t entirely sure it was my fault, but my mom was convinced. Once she was convinced of something, there was no changing her mind. She stopped talking to me and I became much more cautious with my thoughts. Any time they dared to slip, I looked around for the damage I may have caused and checked in with my family just in case.
A year later, my best friend was in a car accident. Watching her writhe in agony in the hospital bed was too much to bear. I went home willing her to recover. I reached out to my friends and family to check on them while I was still at the hospital. When I got home, my floor was collapsing in a spot that had been fine earlier in the day. I called someone out. They determined that one of the beams under my house gave way and my home nearly collapsed in on itself.
He was able to repair it fairly quickly and it was no longer an issue. By then, I had been experimenting with my power and, to the outsider, it may seem like a wild coincidence, but it wasn’t. Nothing ever was when it came to me using my powers.
Another year passed before I used my powers again, it was not worth experimenting with. My dad had just gotten his diagnosis. It was stage 4 cancer. He refused treatment. We watched him fade for a long time before I sneaked into his room at night and healed him. I lost my house and everything in it that day, but I didn’t lose him.
He was not happy to say the least.
“What did you do?” he asked, looking over the burnt ash that was once my home.
“Saved my dad,” I said with a shrug.
“I’ve lived a long life, honey,” he said. “I was ready to go.”
“But I wasn’t ready to let you go.”
“You lost everything.”
“No. I lost my house and my stuff. I still have you and mom. Even if she doesn't talk to me.”
My dad hugged me for a long time that day. He offered to help me however I needed and I asked to stay with them while I figured out insurance and a new living situation.
I had to move back in with my parents while I was sorting out the insurance and rebuilding my house. When I walked into my parents' house, my mom wrapped her arms around me and held me tight. She still refused to talk to me after killing the dog, but
It took less than a year, but it was pretty miserable with my mom still refusing to speak to me. I was happy to move in when the new house was built. It didn’t feel like my home, but I vowed to make it that. I bought decorations and made artwork to hang around the house. It took a long time to make me love my new house, but once I fell in love with it, I couldn't get enough time there.
Sometimes I'd sit writing in my office, wishing I could make it come to life like my dad. Other times I acted out my stories in front of the bathroom mirror, yearning for my mom's shape-shifting abilities to enhance my stories.
But that was not my luck.
Last year, I got a job offer. As part of the deal, I had to move from the outskirts of Hanha to the metropolitan center. I got an apartment and rented my house out to a lovely couple. My new job requires me to go from one natural disaster to the next, assessing damage and filing paperwork to get what needs fixed done. Sometimes they bring me on-site to help with general operations.
That's reserved for the biggest, scariest disasters. Usually hurricanes and wildfires.
A wildfire that had spread to a major city is what I got called out on most recently. It was raging out of control. So I flew to another country. The firefighters were struggling to get any part of it under control. It was spreading from one house to the next. By the time I arrived, seven houses had been burned down.
At the scene of the fire, a woman held her child sobbing. I knew what it felt like to lose things like that. My heart ached for them. As family after family arrived at the tent we used for our base of operations, my heart broke more. This was just one small part of the burning city. A city much more densely populated than Hanha. I looked at the people with their burns and their tears, then at the monitors showing everything ablaze.
All I could see was a raging fire, wiping out over a million lives if they couldn’t stop it. All I could hear were the sobs of broken people who lost so much to the fire. A loss that I knew well from three years of experience with my powers. I wanted the millions of people to be safe.
Without thinking, I willed the fire to stop. As soon as I realized what I did, I tried to take it back.
“Please, no,” I cried.
People looked at me like I was being dramatic. I couldn't blame them. To them, I was just a woman wallowing in my own pity while they lost everything they loved. I was there for their support.
I held my tongue and my sobs as I watched the monitor. The fire died out completely.
People cheered and danced. Celebrating the miracle they got. Each joyous face etching the ache of my loss in my heart. They ran to their homes. They loved their miracle. None of us knowing what I had sacrificed and they would never know. They celebrated long into the night.
Not me.
It was not my miracle. This was my nightmare. I spent every moment dreading the truth of my actions. I wasn't sure what I had lost yet, but something this large would come at a great cost to me. I was afraid to go home after that.
If there even was a ‘home.’
I spent the night at a hotel and while I was watching the evening news, I saw that just as suddenly as the flames had stopped, all of Hanha went up in smoke.
There was nothing left of the city but smoldering ash. Completely leveled. For the second time I lost my house. This time, along with it, everything and everyone I loved was burnt up too. There is nothing left that I love, so there is nothing left to lose.
My power has no more karmic trade. My power no longer works.
Even if it did, I would end myself before I used it again. Nothing is worth the trade.
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