Being a Hero

Chapter 17

The song for this chapter is "Man or a Monster" (feat. Zayde Wølf) by Sam Tinnesz.

"What if the things we fear most are actually the things we need most? And what if the things we want most are actually the things we should fear most?" –Scott Sauls

*Benjamin's POV*

This all began a year and a half ago, I reflected as I lay on my bed, listening to the incessant drip of the IV line connected to my arm. The sound normally drove me nuts, but whatever meds they'd put in my bag of fluids made it difficult to care about anything. It was all too easy to drift into the past when the present was such a slippery and unpleasant thing.

~~~

I was a geneticist, one of the best in my field despite my cerebral palsy. I was more motivated than most to find a way to correct congenital and genetic defects, and working with Jonas Richards—my longtime friend and colleague—I had hope of accomplishing what none before us had: a cure.

We'd corresponded for years after graduating, even after Jonas moved to join his brother in Africa. No matter what project he'd officially been assigned, he always found time to tinker with our pet project: gene therapy. The field was new and full of possibilities for people who had no other hope.

A year and a half ago Jonas sent me his latest prototype to run through the university's sequencer. With the latest set of research notes, he also sent a letter. "...The ten-year class reunion's coming up, and I have enough vacation days saved up for weeks. My brother and Selena can survive without me for a while, I'm confident. Perhaps I can finally make up for missing you defend your thesis. Is The Fox and Hound still your favorite pub? I'll buy the first round of drinks..."

Jonas was coming to visit. He couldn't come to visit! He couldn't see me like this! Long-distance correspondence had kept him from seeing my rapid decline. After being stable for years, my scoliosis had rapidly overtaken me. I looked from the letter to the picture of us in university hanging on my wall—of myself standing tall and proud if perhaps listing to one side a little. It rather made it look like I was leaning away from Jonas in the photo despite the side hug. I grinned at the memory.

Then I dared glance at the mirror hanging next to the photo. A hunched and twisted man had taken that university student's place in recent years. Youthful strength and enthusiasm had been sapped by years of pinched nerves, constant pain, and troubled sleep. I couldn't let my old friend see me like this. I was a monster.

I would rather him remember me as I was than what I had become. So, I made a choice. "We always wanted to change the world, always planned to do it together," I said to myself, as I turned the vial of blue liquid in my hand. "I'm sorry, Jonas. I tried."

The research notes read as a second chance at best and absolution at worst. I took it. I only realized later that what seemed a gift from a God was closer in truth to a contract with a devil, and there were fates worse than death. Everything came with a price. The gene therapy worked, though it was excruciating. I looked like my old self again, and the constant pains were gone.

The monster wasn't.

As I gazed on my new visage in the mirror, my face shifted before my eyes. To my horror, I continued changing. The hunched creature I had become wasn't eradicated, only put to sleep for a time. And when it woke up, it was far worse, unrecognizable. More hideous, more pronounced, more powerful. I destroyed my mirror and the wall behind it with one self-loathing punch.

Before, everyone had known I was a monster when they looked at me and pitied me for it. Now the monster inspired fear and horror in pity's place. Even when normal, I couldn't look at myself. Not when I knew what lay just beneath the surface.