The Signs of the Apocalypse

The Healer

In a dark bedroom, a scrawny teenager on the edge of his bed made his hands glow green. Cracking his knuckles, Rick observed the light green hue that shone from his skin like a glow stick. Tiny tendrils of green electricity traveled across the palm of his hand, darting here and there and disappearing as fast as they appeared. He didn't know how they worked, but he knew what they did. All he needed was a single touch, and his power would bring someone to their optimal condition. Bones fractured straightened up, chronic disorders removed, missing limbs reconstructed, lives saved...

Who am I? He thought. What's all this for?

The idealists called him a gift, the fanatical even called him the second coming. Most knew him as Elixir, the prodigious healer. Even when he looked at the mirror all he thought of was how strange he looked without his costume.

It was ten in the evening. If he slept now, he would be able to get enough sleep. Tomorrow was a busy day, like every other day. Not a single day, hour, minute, or damn second to waste if he wanted to help as much people as he possibly could.

Unease slipped into his mind, a kind he was too familiar with now, urging him to move, to help someone. He willed his power off, though he knew it wouldn't do much. Nowadays, he couldn't tell if the anxiety belonged to him or to someone else out there.

North-east from here, 3 kilometers? Someone would be having a breakdown there.

He ignored this. He knew if he went there and helped, he'd have less energy the following day to go out and help more people. Instead, his attention turned to a wooden guitar in one corner of the room, dusty from disuse. Off the side of his bed, he shambled towards it, lifting it up and pulling at the strings.

If he could go back to normalcy, if he knew full well that he couldn't do anything anymore, then maybe then people would stop expecting so much of him, stop looking at him with those eyes that asked him, begged him,to do more than he already was doing. His blessing, they called it, but he kept fantasizing what it would be like if one day his powers disappeared.

He bit his lips, pushing the thoughts away. Then the world would be worse.

It wasn't a passing thought - he understood it well. He felt it, no, he knew it. It was like, it was like numbers darting in and out of his brain. Every time something good happened he felt the numbers go up. Every time someone suffered - anytime, anywhere - he saw the numbers go down. These last few years the numbers have just been going downhill non-stop.

He didn't know why exactly, but as someone who could see these numbers and do something about it, then it must have been his mission to make them go as high as he possibly could, to be one of the defenders of humanity.

Someone knocked on the door, interrupting his thoughts. It would be his mother, asking him to sleep. Rick felt resentment bubbling up to the surface. Damn woman never paid attention to him until he got his powers, and now she was, what, tucking him in?

"Rick-" she started.

"I'll sleep soon," he said. Soon enough, soft footsteps marked his mother's departure. There would be no point in telling her off, no point in airing his grievances if it would only make the numbers go down. Reluctantly, he laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. For the greater good, he willed himself to sleep.

Faces of familiar people darted around his dreams. Here, a hospital in a war-torn country, with soldiers and civilians with missing limbs and bullet holes. There, a woman's face with a knife wound tracing from her right ear to the left side of her neck. 

Death was a familiar thing, but it was his duty to make sure it wouldn't happen to people as much as he possibly could. Those times where he remembered he couldn't help everyone were among the most terrifying. One time in this battlefield, while peering out the window of a small, unpainted building, he watched a soldier get gunned down by his opposition. Rick knew his place, he wasn't immune to bullets. Knowing that his mission could lead to his death any day now was nightmare-inducing, but he felt like he handled it better than most people possibly could.

His dreams were short-lived, interrupted by a bout of restlessness where he woke up with tears in his eyes. Blinking, aching, with an anxiety so heavy it was almost as though his chest was pushing in in itself, like he almost couldn't breathe but the narrowest straw through his throat kept giving him air.

He didn't want this life anymore, he didn't want this responsibility. But to give up this blessing because of selfishness, to make other people suffer because you couldn't be bothered? 

Green electricity sparked around him, but to no avail. In a sort of crushing irony, he was completely immune to his own powers. 

He went back to sleep for a few more hours, and when the sun rose up into the sky, he could already feel the numbers going down like they usually did. It was the reality of things, with suffering being far more manageable when the population kept their eyes closed in the midst of the night. Asleep, everyone defaulted to an equilibrium. It was only in the morning when people realized how much they were in pain.

His routine was quick and tested - tasteless porridge eaten alone, and a hot shower in a pristine, tiled bathroom. As he finished, he scratched his engraving, a fleshy symbol resembling an olive on his right thigh. Drying himself off, he got into his costume, a green, surgeon's lab coat with a cape bearing a large, red cross symbol. A blue light flickered in front of him, a holographic image of a man's face materializing.

Transporter spoke, "Are you ready?" 

There was a short pause.

"Where are we going today?" Elixir replied.

The blue image distorted, showing an image of a neighborhood ravaged by what appeared to be a golem.

In a few seconds, Elixir flickered blue and vanished.