Blank - Sample Segment
I was going to fly; that had to be my special ability. I was running out of ideas and my patience was worn down to a nub. The back of my throat felt dry and I coughed as my leg muscles coiled. I slowly released air from my mouth, breathed in with my nose, and closed my eyes.
The rooftop was wide and empty: solid, lonely, and as gray as the sky above. A few pieces of litter scattered around my feet in the breeze. Hopefully the small wind would help me. I stretched my arms and envisioned wings. Yeah, I looked ridiculous, but that was okay: flight had to be right. I could feel it—maybe.
I took a step forward, stopped in hesitation, and started up again; legs pumping and eyes looking to the edge of the rooftop. Faster and faster. The ledge grew closer. Now. I jumped off a three-story building.
The sky greeted me and everything slowed. Wind enveloped my body. Clouds shadowed my face. There was a moment of peace, but only for a split second. Tranquility replaced by the stern fact that I had no idea what I was doing. So I tried flapping my arms…and I fell. This hadn’t been my best plan.
As I dropped, I somehow got turned around and ended up facing the sky. My back slammed into something that stuck out of the second floor: maybe a pole. I heard a crack. Not the pole, me. I lost sense to everything. When I hit the ground, my breath came rushing out and my vision went black, but I fought out of the darkness. I couldn’t move my body. The dirt was hot and my throat tickled, making my head convulse. I was coughing out blood: something important was broken inside of me.
I heard footsteps and opened my eyes. Mom. She was upside-down to my perspective, looking down in terror.
“Really Daniel? Again?”
I couldn’t exactly reply. I didn’t have any breath in my lungs.
“Flying this time?”
I couldn’t nod either.
She sighed, her body shaking with worry. “You need to be more patient! How many times have I told you?”
Mom reached down and put her palms against my chest. Her fingers were young and beautiful but the worry lines on her forehead prominent. Her eyes glowed green and her hands grew pleasantly warm. A mother’s touch. My body grew hot, not unbearably, and readjusted itself. A tendon or two snapped back into position. My heart sped up; working harder to pump all the new blood I was reproducing. My jaw relocated itself as a rib shyly crawled back into place. As quickly as it had started, it ended; leaving only a raw hunger from all the energy my body had used up. My mom released her hands. I had been healed.
“Home. Now.” mom’s tired voice commanded. “We’re moving this week. I found a job.”
There wasn’t any yelling. Any what were you thinking? She had accustomed to my experiments by now. She shook her head and walked off without another word. Yeah, she was pissed, but not as pissed as last time.
Well, two other powers I could add to the ‘don’t have it’ list. Flight was a no. Healing had been a joke for a while now. Joke. This—what I was doing—was all becoming a joke. Finding a power made me careless, but a part of me still tried to reason with my conscience. I mean I knew I wouldn’t have died; mom had been only a few yards away, screaming at me to come down. It had been pretty close though, closer than any other attempts. I wrestled my thoughts back down until I was able to shrug it off. If I let myself feel bad, it would mean I had given up. No way would I do that.
I got up, rolled my shoulders, and followed her.
This was my life. The life of the only normal person. Everyone on Earth had a power. An ability that allowed them to be marvelous and do incredible things. Fly, turn into liquid, teleport. Me? Well the only incredible feat I could do was a summersault. No, I wasn’t the norm; everyone else was. I was the oddball. Different for being plain and powerless—and I was determined to change it.
Later I tried catching myself on fire to see if I was immune. Don’t ask me how it turned out because that experiment didn’t work either.
The rooftop was wide and empty: solid, lonely, and as gray as the sky above. A few pieces of litter scattered around my feet in the breeze. Hopefully the small wind would help me. I stretched my arms and envisioned wings. Yeah, I looked ridiculous, but that was okay: flight had to be right. I could feel it—maybe.
I took a step forward, stopped in hesitation, and started up again; legs pumping and eyes looking to the edge of the rooftop. Faster and faster. The ledge grew closer. Now. I jumped off a three-story building.
The sky greeted me and everything slowed. Wind enveloped my body. Clouds shadowed my face. There was a moment of peace, but only for a split second. Tranquility replaced by the stern fact that I had no idea what I was doing. So I tried flapping my arms…and I fell. This hadn’t been my best plan.
As I dropped, I somehow got turned around and ended up facing the sky. My back slammed into something that stuck out of the second floor: maybe a pole. I heard a crack. Not the pole, me. I lost sense to everything. When I hit the ground, my breath came rushing out and my vision went black, but I fought out of the darkness. I couldn’t move my body. The dirt was hot and my throat tickled, making my head convulse. I was coughing out blood: something important was broken inside of me.
I heard footsteps and opened my eyes. Mom. She was upside-down to my perspective, looking down in terror.
“Really Daniel? Again?”
I couldn’t exactly reply. I didn’t have any breath in my lungs.
“Flying this time?”
I couldn’t nod either.
She sighed, her body shaking with worry. “You need to be more patient! How many times have I told you?”
Mom reached down and put her palms against my chest. Her fingers were young and beautiful but the worry lines on her forehead prominent. Her eyes glowed green and her hands grew pleasantly warm. A mother’s touch. My body grew hot, not unbearably, and readjusted itself. A tendon or two snapped back into position. My heart sped up; working harder to pump all the new blood I was reproducing. My jaw relocated itself as a rib shyly crawled back into place. As quickly as it had started, it ended; leaving only a raw hunger from all the energy my body had used up. My mom released her hands. I had been healed.
“Home. Now.” mom’s tired voice commanded. “We’re moving this week. I found a job.”
There wasn’t any yelling. Any what were you thinking? She had accustomed to my experiments by now. She shook her head and walked off without another word. Yeah, she was pissed, but not as pissed as last time.
Well, two other powers I could add to the ‘don’t have it’ list. Flight was a no. Healing had been a joke for a while now. Joke. This—what I was doing—was all becoming a joke. Finding a power made me careless, but a part of me still tried to reason with my conscience. I mean I knew I wouldn’t have died; mom had been only a few yards away, screaming at me to come down. It had been pretty close though, closer than any other attempts. I wrestled my thoughts back down until I was able to shrug it off. If I let myself feel bad, it would mean I had given up. No way would I do that.
I got up, rolled my shoulders, and followed her.
This was my life. The life of the only normal person. Everyone on Earth had a power. An ability that allowed them to be marvelous and do incredible things. Fly, turn into liquid, teleport. Me? Well the only incredible feat I could do was a summersault. No, I wasn’t the norm; everyone else was. I was the oddball. Different for being plain and powerless—and I was determined to change it.
Later I tried catching myself on fire to see if I was immune. Don’t ask me how it turned out because that experiment didn’t work either.
About the Book:
Blank is a book series I have been working on for nearly five years now. The concept of everyone in the entire world having a super-power except for the main character came from the idea of changing up a common subject. Super-powers are everywhere: in books, movies, games, etc. Why not make the main hero powerless? The greatest challenge in creating the story is contemplating how if everyone had an ability, how would everything from sports to cooking change. How would the police, the government, or even history differ? It was a lot of fun to write and I hope that others will enjoy the world I have created around the character Daniel Harris.
