I think some people are cursed. Not through any fault of their own, but because a greater plan requires them gone. Maybe the world will carry on better without them. And maybe I’m one of those people, getting in their way without ever finding my own.

My name is Martin. I’m seventeen years old, and I should have died last week. I couldn’t breathe, my heart on fire, my lungs frozen ice, my throat contracting to a pinhole. If I was sleeping in my own bed, then there would have been no breath to scream. No chance for help. My father would have found me dead in the morning. He would blame himself, but part of him would be relieved. I don’t know this is true, but I suspect it. How could he not want to rid himself of an endless anchor like me, dragging us both down?

If you have a sick sense of humor, you can call it luck that saved me. Luck at already being in the hospital when the attack happened. I couldn’t scream, but there was a red alarm button which summoned a nurse in time to help. I remember how young she looked, barely older than me, eyes wild with panic. I thought she was beautiful at the time, although I don’t know if I could pick her out of a crowd now.

I might have been the first person she saw dying. I would have liked to be her first death. Then she would have remembered me forever. I never told her, of course. I lost consciousness, and when I came back she was gone. It was just my father, anxiously pacing and muttering to himself.

I have a genetic disease, some type of Familial Periodic Paralysis. I’ve always been weak for my age, but it started getting worse around puberty. My muscles would lock and strain at the lightest resistance, cramping painfully without being able to unclench them. Then the attacks started, full body spasms which lasted up to a minute. I had an attack of paralysis last month which affected my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. I’ve been in and out of hospitals since. I miss only being weak. I miss school. I miss all the things which never happened to me and never will, like the lost treasure of someone else’s memories.

The years have only taken and never given to me. I don’t care what name the Doctor finally decides on for the disease I have. I’m living with a curse, or I’m dying from it.

Doctor Warmal, a frail elderly man who looked like he was racing me to the end, told me as much without the words. He asked how I was feeling, but didn’t really listen, like it wouldn’t matter soon anyway. He hummed and hawed, and asked whether I believed in God, before eventually telling me I would be all right, ‘in the end.’

I asked him when the end will be, and whether I would be walking again by the fall semester to go back to school.

Doctor Warmal looked at the IV machine, at the clock, at his clipboard, and everywhere else besides me.

“Don’t worry about school. You’ll be good again. In the end. You know. After all this goes away.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t think you make the big doctor bucks to make sure I’m okay after I’m dead.”

He smiled tightly as though doing me a favor. I didn’t ask any more questions.

I think he was more afraid of saying I was dying then I was of hearing it. I might have even laughed, my mood so fickle of late. I think I’ve hurt as much as I can, and I only want to laugh for as long as I have left now. I guess it’s some kind of defensive mechanism or something, but damn, if you don’t use all the defense you can when you’re fighting for your life, when is the right time?

My father was more honest with me. He told me the disease would continue to progress, impairing the ion channels in my cells until they ceased to function. My life would be choked from me sooner or later, with only agony to expect until my last gasping breath.

“It will get worse, and then you’ll die. If Doctor Warmal doesn’t change your treatment,” my father finished. His voice didn’t shake, but his hands were white from the strain of clasping the strap of his backpack.

I don’t know if it was because I’m physically weak, but I’ve always thought of my father as an indomitable titan. He didn’t look that way now. Thin shoulders hunched and drawn, he seemed small enough to hide behind his mustache.

"Thanks Dad. You really lit up the room. Maybe call the Doctor back in and ask him to get me something else then?”

“There’s nothing else they will give you. Nothing legal.”

“Well damn, give me the illegal stuff then.” I thought I was joking. He thought I was joking. Neither of us laughed.

“I’m not talking about party drugs, idiot,” my father scolded me. Harsh, but fair. He strode over to the door to the hallway, closing it for privacy. He peered through the windows, then drew the shades. Then staggering across the room, he collapsed from weariness into a narrow hospital chair beside my bed. There was a black backpack on his lap. His knuckles were white and bloodless, trembling from clutching so tight. Exhausted past the point of breaking. I tried not to see how much I was hurting him.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Something from your lab,” I guessed, trying to get a glimpse past his hands as he fiddled with a combination lock on the zipper.

My father’s grin peaked around his mustache. “Something like that. Of course it comes with risks, but at the point you’ve reached…”

“Nope. Not happening. Drive me out to the farm and pull and ol’ yeller on me. I’m not taking anything from that madhouse.” Again I was joking, but also not really. “I don’t get most of the research you do over there, but I am not signing up for genetic mutations.”

“It’s called gene therapy,” father says, eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Oh right, like my genes are going on a vacation, with a little massage at the end.”

“It’s the only shot you’ve got left.”

“I’m still human. I’m not letting that go.”

“Stop screwing around!” my father shouted. His mustache bristled like a porcupine, his eyes glancing nervously to the door, before back to me.

“Do you want to live, or don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” I crossed my arms stubbornly, the motion cut short by the length of the IV tube attached to my left forearm. “Do you want me to live, or are you ready to be done with me?” I knew the question was a mistake as soon as the words left my lips. But I was angry at the world, and didn’t care who was angry back.

My father took a deep breath. In, and out, his fingers flexing to relinquish their grip on his backpack.

“You’re probably right, you know,” he said at last. “There’s no way to know what the long term implications of changing the genetic sequence leading to your ion gate proteins. You are right, and the lab director is right, and the hospital governing board, and the senators, and the food and drug administration, and everyone else. They’re all right. And if any of them found out what I was doing, then I would lose my job, if not be sent to prison. You’re all right, and I’m wrong. So I’m just going to leave this here and go for a walk. If you decide for yourself you’d rather live than be right, then a 100 ml injection should be all you need.”

My father stood. He looked me in the eye as he dropped the backpack into the chair, deliberate, with purpose. He started to leave the room, but hesitated briefly as though the gravity of the backpack pulled on him. The contents seemed precious to him, the culmination of years of his life. Then he looked back at me, and I felt the weight of the years he invested into me as well pulling on him. More than years — it was his life he was leaving when he broke free and closed the door.

I waited until I was sure he was gone. Fumbling with the zipper, I soon had the backpack open and the small white cardboard box on my lap. I wasn’t even thinking about taking it. I just wanted to hold something in my hand that had the power of life and death. It felt like holding a gun.

I opened the box. There was a filled syringe inside, the liquid pale blue and almost glowing the way the light passed through it. I almost punctured myself by accident straight away, my hands shaking so badly.

Shaking, why?

Was I afraid? Or excited?

Like picturing my own death, it must be both, longing and fearing release.

I knew more about my father’s work than I let on. His laboratory consumed him for as long as I can remember. He’s always been on the edge of this or that breakthrough, but I’ve never read about any of them in the papers. This was just the last of a long line of failed experiments, myself being the final experiment.

The door was still closed. I expected him to cool off in the hall and come back, but he was really gone. Never before had he delivered his product with such severity and dread. Of course, there were many treatments along the way which must have been shelved or discarded because of the danger. It was clear now to everyone that I was running out of time, and that danger was better than death.

‘You can be right, or you can live,’ he’d said.

I thought about calling the nurse to inject it for me. But of course it wasn’t allowed. She would take it away, and my father would lose his credentials, and my lungs would be paralyzed. It was a serious consideration though, risking everything just to avoid my own hand pushing on the needle.

I hated the blue liquid. I hated the idea of breaking my own skin. I hated the idea of self destruction, a revulsion so deep it ran to the core of human nature, and beyond to the first spark of life. And in that hatred of death, I knew I would accept anything that fought death back for another hour.

Clenched teeth. Trembling fingers. The terrible sting.

My breath froze. My blood turned to ice.

I almost thought I was paralyzed again. But no, quite the opposite—I was flying. I remained dimly aware of my body, clenched and suffering, and left behind. But I was something else, my vision blurring down the halls of the hospital. Faces whisked by me on either side, with clear vision of the rooms around me that I should have no knowledge of. Then out into the night sky, a star among equals, looking down at the earth from a staggering height. It was so quiet I could hear my heart thundering, a frenzied pace too great for its fragile shell. But the thunder was the speed by which I soared the sky, and I only wanted more.

The sting in my arm was completely gone. My arm was gone. The silence gone, broken and replaced by a chorus of thoughts which were not my own. I felt a woman worrying about her car, and then some children and their unknown distress, then an old man’s nostalgia for a town by the sea which I had never seen before.

I was assaulted by a deafening cacophony, each thought and feeling climbing over the others, mounting in intensity to be heard above the din. Then I was falling, no longer a star in the sky, but a cursed thing once more, hurled from the Heavens to my ruin upon the earth.

Frantic Heart. Gasping breath. I was back in my hospital bed.

The boy chose to live.

I heard my father’s voice. Clearly into both ears, as though I was wearing headphones.

The syringe was gone. The nurse was standing over me again—soft brown eyes, more beautiful for their concern than the fear which filled them last.

He’s a fighter. Doctor Warmal is wrong, he’ll pull through.

Her lips didn’t move. Her thoughts were in my head, filled with more kindness than my own thoughts of me had ever been.

Then came the whispers, half formed thoughts tugging at my attention, the chorus of murmured voices. I could hear everyone around me in the hospital, THINKING in the back of my head.

I could have endured any pain without making a sound.

But I started screaming now.