Arthur Bennett
As my vision faded into darkness, I eventually awoke somewhere else. A place where I felt nothing. I could see my body, but I couldn't feel my skin. I couldn't hear my own breath, yet my chest moved like I was still breathing.
There was nothing else. Just darkness. An empty void.
I think I'm dead.
I didn't want to die.
Even if I didn't have much going for me no friends, deadbeat parents, and probably most importantly, no powers. I was more alone alive than I am now, in this expanse of nothing.
But still... I don't want to be dead.
Am I truly dead if I'm still conscious?
No... I saw my own body. I remember the moment my head hit the ground. I remember the look in her eyes when it rolled into her hands.
I am dead.
Maybe this is some kind of in between place.
Maybe I'm about to be judged.Maybe I'm being judged right now.
I don't think I've sinned.I haven't lived a long enough life to sin.
Despite being abandoned by my parents, I find myself thinking about them.
Why do I miss them?
Do they miss me?
Do they regret leaving me alone?
I doubt it. They didn't even leave a note. No message. Nothing. They enrolled me in high school and then, not long before the first day, they were just... gone.
I can't say I was surprised. They never really seemed to like me. They bought me what I needed. I never starved. I was never hit or yelled at. But I was invisible to them. They ignored me at every chance they got, like I was just taking up space.
It seems they never really wanted a child in the first place, let alone a child with no powers. Maybe if they could've bragged about me to others, they would've at least pretended to care.
They still paid the bills after they left. I guess that means something. Not a lot. But something.
I've been here for a while now. Ten minutes, maybe twenty. But only now am I starting to feel truly uncomfortable. The void, once devoid of being, has changed. It has eyes now. I can't see them, but I can feel them watching me. Studying me.
Judging
I look around for the eyes once more, but just like before, they see me without letting me see them. Then the silence is broken. A voice echoes through the vast nothing.
"Save me."
A silhouette of a woman stood before me, her features indiscernible. Then it sharpened, coming together piece by piece, until I saw her.
Behind her, the void glowed with a deep purple hue. Hundreds of ghost like chains floated in the air, swaying like they were alive, all bound to her.
"Mara?" I said out loud, still unable to hear my own voice.
She blinked. "You know who I am?"
Do I know who she is? She's the only student I remembered. The only person to catch my attention. Does she remember me? Why wouldn't I know her name?
Why is she in this limbo with me?
None of the other students are here. Just her.
"Well, I saw you at the..."
I couldn't finish.
The chains that hovered around Mara shot out without warning. I tried to move, to run, but my feet were frozen in place against the nothing beneath me.
One chain wrapped around my arm. Then another. Around my neck. My legs. They just kept coming. A final one coiled around my torso and began to merge into my chest.
Suddenly, the rhythmic rise and fall of my chest stopped. My lungs didn't burn. My chest didn't ache. But my brain knew. It screamed at me to breathe, begged for air that wouldn't come. But I couldn't. The feeling was unbearable, worse than any pain I'd ever felt. Not physical nor mental, It was my soul.
I screamed, or at least I thought I did. Still voiceless.
And then my body began to move. Slowly, I was dragged across the void toward her. The chains pulled me in. Closer. Closer.
Until I was inches from her.
the expression on her face was one of apathy, she didn't care.
And then, without warning, without pain or impact... we were one.
Like I had never been separate from her at all.
I was overtaken by cold. Suddenly, I could feel again. I could touch, smell, and see. This wasn't Earth, and it wasn't the void either. This place was darker. Emotions crashed over me envy, anger, longing. None of them were mine, but they consumed me all the same, like I'd stepped into someone else's grief and wore it like it was my own.
I saw brief flashes of a stern man with scarlet red hair. I felt emotions about him that weren't mine. I didn't like it, like something was forcing its way into my mind, trying to make me feel things I didn't understand. Was I judged? Is this hell?
As quickly as that thought passed, I was pulled from the cold expanse and thrust back to Where I had once died, I now stood face to face with the man who had killed me.
I was overcome with fear, no chance to process what I had just experienced. Dazed, like I'd just come out of a dream, my senses were foggy and distant. I wanted to run. But then, the words I'd heard in the void echoed in my head.
"Save me."
And my body began to move on its own. I resisted, slowing my steps as I approached the man.
Behind me, a girl screamed, her voice sharp and panicked."What are you doing? Why are you stopping? I said save me!"
Mara
he man let out a laugh that shook me down to my bones. It echoed through the air, cold and mocking. Yet my resistance was futile. My legs kept moving, one step after another, dragging me closer to him.
He stared at me the whole time, not with fear or caution, but with a smirk. Like I was nothing more than a joke, a source of amusement to pass the time.
Still resisting, my body moved on its own. I swung at him, the motion sloppy and unbalanced. My fist connected with a dull thud.
"Is that all?" the man said, then laughed louder this time. Like he couldn't believe this was the best I could manage.
I threw another punch, just as uncoordinated as the last. It landed, barely. He didn't even flinch just laughed again, shaking his head like he was watching a child throw a fit.
Then he moved.
He reached out, grabbed me by both arms, and began to pull slowly, one in each direction.
I felt my body start to tear, muscles ripping apart with a sickening resistance, like they were trying to hold themselves together, trying to heal even as they broke.
Why wasn't anyone helping me?Where were the teachers?Where was Mara?
With a final, brutal tug, my torso split in half.
He dropped what was left of me to the floor.
My face was torn straight down the middle.And somehow, impossibly, I could still see each eye staring in a different direction.
As I laid on the floor, the two pieces of myself, slowly reaching for each other, being willed together my flesh begging, reaching out toward its missing counterpart. Slowly reconnecting, As I heard her again.
Mara.
Her voice cracked as she pleaded with the man. Begging.
He didn't respond.
He just stepped over me, like I was nothing more than a broken toy.
reached out my hand and grabbed the man's ankle. Unbothered, he kept walking, dragging my half strung together body behind like a hollowed out weight.
Mara's pleas grew louder, her voice rising in desperation as she begged for her life. The man didn't say a word. He kept walking forward, dragging me along as my body did everything it could to slow him down.
He stopped once he was standing directly over Mara.
Then, out of nowhere, Ms. Blake came sprinting toward him. The once green glow around her had turned into a vibrant red, radiating from her entire body.
She threw a punch with everything she had.
But just before it landed, the goo on the man's body hardened like stone. Her arm hit the surface at full force and shattered, bone splintering out from all sides. It hung limp at her side as she screamed, then unleashed another desperate strike with her other hand.
The result was the same.
That arm shattered too.
The man turned to her, brought his leg back at an unnatural angle, then released.
His foot struck her square in the chest, and she flew backward, crashing into the wall with such force that the entire gym rattled from the impact.
My body was nearly fully regenerated when the man turned his gaze back to Mara.
His hand rose above his head his goo covered hand shaping into a blade. my body got up and moved. only barley meeting his arm as he brought the blade down.
I caught it with my shoulder.
It slid halfway through my body, The pain was overwhelming, then dulled as my body began to regenerate around the blade.
"What are you, a cockroach? Why won't you die?" the man asked, a hint of curiosity slipping into his otherwise mocking tone.
I sighed before responding
"I don't fucking know"