Have you ever wondered what it was like to die? 

I can give you a definitive answer. It’s weird as hell. 

I mean here I am floating above my body, in the wreckage of a coffee shop. It was honestly pretty unexpected, but I suppose most deaths are like that. We don’t choose how we go and all that crap. 

I can’t say it’s too bad though. Which I know sounds morbid but I’m not really feeling much at the moment. Turns out fear and all those nice chemical emotions are tied to the body, so no mental freak outs here luckily. Gives me time to ponder how this mess all started. 

I glanced to my left and saw the massive form of the Skullcrusher. A real nasty piece of work baddie that goes around doing… well the name should give it away. The 7 foot tall Juggernaut was covered in bone plates that grew from his skin, even his head was covered in a gnarly looking skull mask. Word on the street is that he broke peoples bones and absorbed them into his growing collection. My friend Wyatt thinks it makes him stronger too. 

Huh, maybe some of mine will end up in there

Skullcrusher had his foot on top of the prone figure of Ascendant. Pretty narcissistic name if you ask me but it was well earned. The Super had on white spandex with gold colored plating, his face was bare revealing shoulder length golden hair and a scrunched up face that typically had a gigawatt smile. He was currently gripping the foot that pressed against him, slowly pushing back against the bone covered abomination. 

It seemed like a fight broke out and knucklehead kicked our supercharged protector through a local coffee shop. Now I get the privilege of watching a super fight up close. Just sucks that it’ll probably be the last thing I see. That and I’ll never be able to brag to Wyatt about it. 

Looking back towards my corpse I turn my gaze to see the rest of the people that were struck down. Multiple bodies littered the floor around the impact point on the brick covered side of the building. The supes didn’t even have the nerve to crash through the giant window to let us see them coming. Over each body I saw a little ball like substance floating. They all had a string or something connecting to their specific bodies, but as more time passed I could see them dissolve from the midway point of the connection. I watched one of the strings completely vanish and when it did the little hovering ball blipped out of existence. 

Scary stuff

I brought my hands in front of my face and saw two slightly see through palms. For some reason I wasn’t just a ball, which I’m tentatively going to be calling a soul. Whether I’m seeing myself as me because it’s my own perspective or some other reason I don’t know. 

I looked back down at my body. I was wearing a plain gray t-shirt and black sweatpants. My hair was in spiky afro that I’d been growing for a while now. Honestly, my mom is gonna kill me for dying in sweatpants. She never liked the fact that I wore them so much and this is really just putting a nail in the coffin. In the literal sense judging from the gaping hole on the side of my body. My string still seemed to be connected so I’m pretty sure I still have time on this mortal coil. 

With a whoosh a bone white figure was thrown through the hole of the coffee shop. I looked around and saw Ascendant standing triumphant with a fist raised forward. He looked at the damages around before sighing and giving chase to the far flung villain. I just hope he didn’t hit another shop on his short flight. 

Now that the hero was gone the survivors began to show up from wherever they’d hidden. 

That’s not really a concern for me right now though. I need to figure out how to survive, I think. The odds are slim and there isn’t much motivation behind it, yet it would seem like such a waste to let this go just like that. Not having feelings was starting to be a real drag and I do have reasons to live. Like my family and my friends and there’s this really cute girl in my history class that I haven’t worked up the nerve to talk to. I start to shake my soul body to try and knock off the lethargic feeling a bit. The scary part about dying is that you don’t really mind it when you're pretty far gone. I think it’s called Ego death or something 

Anyways I reached out and grabbed part of the string closer to me. A vibrant thrum passed through my soul body, bringing more activity to my mind. That made it easier to grab the string closer to my body. 

I felt my mind reel at the sudden influx of fear and pain and anger, nearly enough to make me let go of the string but I held on. I brought the two halves closer together, moving past the fading part. 

One problem

I don’t know how to stop my soul from fading and I don’t really have much time left. 

Fuck it

I decided to tie it like shoelaces. I subscribe to the bunny method of tying knots and did as such. I didn’t really think it would work, so when I let go you can’t even imagine my surprise when I saw the string snap closer together. I started to feel more pain and fear but also a sense of happiness. My soul was pulled down as the string shortened more and more until I was fully pulled back into my body. 

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A sharp gasp of air rushes into my body as I come to consciousness. I start coughing hard as the shock starts to wear off and a painful ache sets into the side of my body. I could even feel my heart start to pump again. My vision was super blurry and I couldn’t really concentrate on what was going on but I think somewhere heard me. 

“Hey kid, Can you hear me?” A male voice sounded out

I nodded

“Oh thank God” the voice said “Hotspot, we got another one here”

More motion passed and suddenly a weird warmth flowed through my body. My breathing started to slow and the pain I felt receded until there was nothing left and my vision came into focus. Above me were two very clearly super humans judging by their skin tight suits. Those things didn’t look remotely comfortable. The one who initially called out to me had diamond-like skin. It was hard to tell what kind of features he had. The other was a girl of Indian descent with a costume covered in warm sun colors and a mask that covered the upper half of her face. 

“Can you hear me?” Diamond guy asked me

“Yeah”

“How’re you feeling?” That was Sunspot

“Good now” I sat up to get a look around the shop, without the separation of soul and body the weight of awe and fear sat in my chest. Sunspot walked away after confirming I was fine, probably to look for others. I didn’t have the heart to tell her there were no others. Anyone whose soul was out of their body is dead.

Straight up no heartbeat cooling corpse by the second dead. Like I was and still should’ve been. 

I pat the side of my body that ached and felt a large hole around the midsection of my shirt. I’m talking stomach to chest sized hole. 

“You got hit pretty bad” Diamond Guy stood up “It’s lucky we made it to you in time”

“Yeah” I stood up “lucky”

“What’s your name kid?” Diamond Guy touched something on his head and an orange glow brightened from the touchpoint. 

“Uh, Marcus Jackson” 

“Alright Marcus, we’re gonna take down your information. Sometime in the near future an officer or a lawyer is gonna call you and ask you about what went down” Diamond Guy spoke like a pre written monologue

“I mean, I don’t exactly know what went down” Except that I did kinda see, but I don’t know if it’s wise to talk about that stuff. I had a friend in elementary schools whose mom got institutionalized for seeing unbelievable things. 

“That’s fine. Anyways you’ve been healed and there's no lasting damage-“

“I think this was pretty traumatizing” Seriously I can feel a shiver in my spine thinking about seeing my own dead body. 

“We don’t cover mental health man, sorry about that. They tried to implement that a few years ago but the mayor budget cut it”

“Damn. So I just… go home?”

“We can call your parents to come pick you up” 

“No. I’ll just take my bike”  

“Cool” Diamond Guy handed me a card then walked off towards his partner. With that outta the way I left the coffee shop. I stopped outside of the door, taking in a deep breath. The city of Bearsview passed along, there was a crowd of people watching the entrance probably waiting for a super to show up. Some reporters tried to catch up to me but I ducked into the alley where my bike was. Surprisingly it was just out of shot of the massive hole into the shop. Lucky me

I still didn’t feel right, I literally watched myself did and now I just…go home. I felt like I was under reacting. I should be more upset at the fact that I watched my side implode. 

But I just couldn’t. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone, maybe call someone and let them know what happened. Unfortunately, it was on the side of my body that got caved in.

Well that freaking sucks

So I hopped on my bike and started to make my way home. It was an hour or so after school had ended at this point, I had initially stopped to get a little snack before going home for the day. I know some people think it’s weird to eat out alone but I honestly prefer it. Anyways the whole getting crushed by a supervillain thing only lasted like 5 minutes, if even that long. I think that also contributed to me not knowing how to react. It didn’t even take up a fraction of my day and yet everything that came before feels insignificant now. 

Around 20 minutes later I pulled up to the blue two story house my family owned. My moms car wasn’t in the garage and around this time my older brother was probably at university. That was fine, I tossed my bike into my garage and ran upstairs to hop on my laptop. I looked up the local news channel to see how much of the story was covered. On the front page of the website under the live feed video they were talking about the aftermath of the battle between Ascendant and Skullcrusher. The bone covered asshole had managed to get away. That sucks. 

Those two heroes that helped me out turned out to be a part of a junior hero team. They were following Ascendant for the day when Skullcrusher showed up and snuck the golden hero. 

Oh and Diamond guys super name was CarbonStone. Neat

I’d have searched more but I heard the front door opening downstairs. Glancing at the clock and yeah no one was supposed to be home yet.

“Markus” My mother’s voice called out to me

“Mom? What’re you doing here?”

I walked out of my room and saw my mother at the front door. She looked frantic, her suit was a mess and she stared at me with wide eyed fear that shifted into relief. She ran up the stairs, wrapping her arms around me. 

“The police called me” She squeezed me tight “Why didn’t you call me when you got home?”

“My phone got busted up”

“Are you okay?” She pulled back and looked me up and down. I had forgotten to change shirts so the hole was super visible. Not the smartest move when you have a frantic mother. Still though she took me to the closest apple store and got my phone switched out.

Superhero insurance is expensive but needed unfortunately.