Human Error

snippet 11

It was a real pity then that Rafael didn’t smoke, at all, and never had. He’d just turned old enough to buy cigarettes and prior to that he’d never been offered one. His mother never smoked, his father hadn’t either, and he had no other family, no mischievous friends to talk him into doing it. It seemed he’d have a marvelous advantage over other smokers, what with his ability to heal almost instantly. He hadn’t thought of trying to destroy himself from the inside out, but it was almost certain that Rafael would never get lung cancer. If he drank, his liver would never suffer. If he shot up, his veins would never collapse. His mutated genes, his inexplicable DNA, could remedy any ailment but his chronic cycling of nerves. They had already begun to kick up when the new neighbor appeared in the hallway beside him. She was just the sort of person his father would look at and find peculiar. 

Petrified of taking a ride the entire way down with a stranger, Rafael was on the verge of reconsidering his choice and heading for the stairs, but it was too late; he had already made eye contact with her. He thought of making eye contact with someone as making some sort of pact. She had caught him looking at her and now the bond was sealed. He had to get on or else he’d be too embarrassed to cross paths with her again. Considering she lived right down the hall his efforts to avoid her would be hopeless, so Rafael shuffled into the elevator and pressed “L” for lobby. The metal gate squealed as he pulled it shut, the door rolled closed, and the elevator began its slow descent to the ground floor. 

At this point he felt less lightheaded and increasingly aware of himself and his surroundings. He hadn’t seen the inside of the elevator more than a couple of times and he was disturbed to some extent by how unpleasant it looked. The camera tucked in the upper left-hand corner was sealed in duct tape and the floor was black with scuff marks. There were cracks in the ceiling that looked like spider webs, there were pieces of chewed gum wedged between the gaps in the walls. In the door there was a small glass circle, and Rafael watched the hallway disappear. He felt a deep foreboding and wished he’d never gotten on. He was alone now with this woman, trapped like a guinea pig in a box. His stomach fluttered while the elevator creaked down, and he held his breath. 

If he didn’t have to be stupid all the time-socially retarded-if he didn’t feel so inclined to follow these absurd rituals he had, he thought--stupid! If he hadn’t been so stupid--if she hadn’t crept up on him out of nowhere--if he hadn’t looked at her. Glancing at her a second time meant he’d have to start a conversation, so he focused on the panel of buttons in front of him very intently. His paranoia was settling in. Rafael could hear the other person inhaling and exhaling steadily, the elevator rattling past the sixth floor, the fifth floor, and rattling even more, it seemed to him, when they reached the fourth. Rafael swallowed some air, then held his breath again. In just a little bit, just a little, he could breathe. 

The elevator rattled louder than it had before and stopped. Something in the machinery above them shuddered, and finally, as though it had given up on trying to hold itself there, it dropped just enough to make the woman cry out. Rafael stared at her in silent panic. He pictured the elevator shooting down the shaft at a hundred miles per hour.  Their rescuers would arrive too late. He imagined them pulling the woman’s mangled body from the rubble. They would find him along with her, and shortly afterwards they’d ship him off to Arizona in a wooden crate. Maybe the U.S. government would give him a room with a view of the Grand Canyon in exchange for his cooperation. 

They remained suspended in the air for what felt like an agonizing eternity, though in all likelihood it was just a couple of seconds, before the elevator plummeted a second time and came to a screeching halt. Rafael gasped like a swimmer coming up for air, the jerking motion sent his head reeling. He choked down oxygen, wheezing, and coughing, and shaking uncontrollably. The dim yellow light flickered and went out, leaving the both of them stranded in darkness. Rafael sank into a seated position on the floor, shivering, and wishing he were dead. His cheeks were hot and sticky with tears; if the woman couldn’t see him crying, there was no use in holding them in. He couldn’t grasp she was saying over the blood roaring in his head, but she sounded distressed, and rightly so. Rafael bit his tongue. In a situation like this he’d have to say something or it’d get awkward. They could be stuck there for hours.

“This happens sometimes,” he sputtered. It sounded like he hadn’t used his voice in a long time. “Sometimes. Sometimes they uh, just stop. Just like that. Someone’ll come and get us out of here. The uh. It’s. It’s okay. Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”

- - - - - 

“I think I’d rather be dead.” 

This was quickly followed by an apology. He hadn’t meant to say it out aloud, but the statement was already out in the open. He still felt rather ashamed for having said it. He mumbled that he didn’t mean anything by it and fell silent. He pressed his knuckles to his lips. After a gap of uneasy silence in the heavy darkness, a plaintive groan rose in his throat. There was that tightness in his chest again. Anguish, a deep sensation of panic crept upon him. Any minute now he’d rush to the door and attempt to pry it open until he wore his fingertips down to stubs. He bit down on them to keep such ideas out of his head and thought of death. 

Rafael had thoughts of death about as often as a jailed man had thoughts of freedom, and he had died seven times after his first attempt. The first time he hadn’t felt or seen anything, just a beacon of bright light and then he re-awoken, tugged back into the real world from a dark void. The bullet wound in his forehead closed up leaving nothing but a (trail) of dried blood. He’d fired at himself three times, twice in his head, and once in his leg, accidentally. On the same day he’d fingered the hole above his knee, and plucked a bullet out from its burrow of flesh, his femur was completely restored, flesh and bone intact as if the whole thing had never happened. He wasn’t at all surprised to find himself alive again, just disappointed. He had thought there’d be more to death than blacking out and waking up without any recollection of where he might have been. But there was one thing he relished about his first resurrection--the rush of euphoria it brought, the impression that his sight, his mind, had been revitalized. The world was so much more vivid and exciting after death. Every touch was exhilarating. It felt like, for the first time, he was truly connected to himself.

The second time he died, he went with a beam of white light as before, and suddenly he was thrown into consciousness. He was in disbelief, he’d come back around much more quickly than he had expected. Perhaps he hadn’t done it right, or worse--he regenerative abilities had doubled. About to get to his feet, he realized he couldn’t open his eyes. He was peering into a blank abyss, but his eyelids were hemmed shut. Somehow he could make out shadowy outlines, vague grey imprints of hands, palms pressing against a sheet of light. He tried holding his hands out ahead of him and taking a step forward. His feet met with nothing. He was dangling midair in a cool, windy place, a place he thought might belong to the dead. He was on the brink of death, actual death, there but not quite there, seeing without seeing.

The breeze called to him. It carried voices, whispers, laughter, and a mesmerizing touch that felt like butterfly wings fluttering against his arms and his cheeks. He was in bliss,  an ecstasy cast by the ethereal voices and the caress that belonged to beings that were, must have been, more than human. This time, when he came to, he didn’t feel the way he had after his first death. He was in a dreamlike state and he was consumed by a longing to relive those moments. He was dead for hours, and it seemed he’d only been in his great white paradise for a fraction of the time. He had to go back, and he did, five more times. After that, being dead was nearly all he thought about. He thought of it in class, and in bed, and in the shower. In the damp heat of the broken down elevator, he thought of death. He thought so deeply, he’d buried himself into a speculative trance. Comatose, like his mother. He was unaware of the severity with which he began gnawing the tips of his fingers. He bit down to the bone, he tore through the soft beds of flesh, he shredded his cuticles with his teeth, and the fingernail attached to his index finger slid out. The skin and nail covering the distal phalange of his pinky was gone. Rafael was eating himself. His mouth was crammed with chewed up skin, he had strings of it caught in his teeth. Blood was welling out of his fingers, staining his chin, and he stared indifferently into the dark ahead of him. 

Author's Note

{ a boy who can't die is trapped in the elevator with a stranger }

Reviews

[Dane Osborne]

This was cool as hell. I am in awe of your writing style. The premise is quite original too, to see people with superhuman powers being depicted in serious fiction rather than comic books is something you don't usually see. This character's struggle seems to be a perfect representation of how power mixed with vulnerability is the birth of greater sorrows. To me, this could work as a series of related short stories or a short novel that just has a series of seperate but coherent vignettes about this guy's life and expereinces. You are a very gifted little lady and this is going into my library.Thanks for sharing this. 100/100

[boyinblue]

Reminds me of 'Heroes' but with grit. I really enjoyed it, maybe more dialog might add to it for the better. Keep it up, I await your next.