Chapter 11.

>       And I chose, I chose self-medicating woes

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>       not separating causes from the subsequent results

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>             -- “Go with the flow”, Bug Hunter

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>  

- Popper -

(January)

I should have finished the rest of the story last night, about what happened that first night with the pills, but I got embarrassed with having to write it all down, so instead I got dressed and went on patrol. It wasn’t either of our nights to work, but sometimes prowling around, looking for bad guys to beat up just feels better than sharing my stupidest moment with a journal that I’ll never be able to let anyone read. Not after I write this next part, anyway.

Sadly, I didn’t see any bad guys last night, although I suppose that’s a good thing. There weren’t any cats stuck in trees, either, or people that needed me to carry their cars home or anything. But Ii did jump from the ground to the top of a six-story building, just to prove to myself that I am able to learn from my mistakes.

All right, here it goes--

So I was sitting there on the curb, thinking about how nice it was to suddenly be so strong and it occurred to me that I needed to figure out how strong I had actually become. So I considered that for a while, but I couldn’t think of a good test. Picking up cars was fairly impressive, but they are bulky things and hard to manage. Across the street, I saw a large, sturdy tree, but the thought of ripping it out of the ground seemed a bit, well, over the top.

And then I remembered my legs. They looked like they always did, of course, but I knew they were affected by the pills the same way that my arms were and I decided I needed to test what they could do.

So I started running. It was a dark night, so I didn’t run at top speed, but I maintained an impressively good pace--much faster than I had ever run in my life-- without getting winded. I headed west, away from town, and as I ran, the roads grew darker and the stars grew brighter and I was able to keep up the pace just fine.

Finally, I came upon a big, empty field and decided it was exactly what I needed. No fence, no big trees, just fairly soft dirt, a handful of small rocks, and lots and lots of weeds.

It was dark, but I walked out to what seemed to be the middle of the field and looked around, double-checking that there was nothing I could damage or better yet, nothing that could damage me if something went wrong. I took some time to stretch each of my leg muscles, not that I thought I needed it, but as I was standing there I felt like some Olympic champion preparing to do some great feat, and stretching seemed appropriate.

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And then I stood up, looked into the sky, and jumped. Straight upward with as much force as my legs would allow.

Up, up, up I went and it was fantastic. I wasn’t flying, but I certainly went higher than I could have thought possible, even for someone whose thin arms could lift a car. And I went up even more. I noticed the air was much colder and I could tell I was slowing because the wind was growing less and less, and then I came to a momentary stop and then I began falling.

Down.

I looked below me and it seemed as if the world had disappeared. There was nothing below me but darkness and I suddenly realized the sheer stupidity of what I had done.

There were lights in the distance, of course. Houses and cars and such. But my intended destination, that conveniently clear field that I had jumped from, was nothing but a small, invisible piece of the dark void that I found myself falling into.

Down, down, down I fell, with the wind from below me growing faster and faster and I had no way of knowing exactly where I would land. Worse yet, I didn’t know when I would land. The invisible hand of the ground was reaching up to smack me and I didn’t know when or how to get ready for it.

And then it hit me, or rather, I hit it.

My left foot hit first and my body followed in that direction, collapsing on itself in a mangled heap of arms and legs and weeds and one very large rock, which tore a sizable gash out of my right shoulder.

I just laid there for a minute, relishing the lack of wind and grateful for the presence of a solid planet beneath me. My shoulder hurt, but not as badly as I would have expected after such a fall. I stood, made a careful check that nothing else was damaged, and looked around.

It took me a while to get my bearings because everything looked backwards. I could see the road, but the stars were all in the wrong place. The trees as well. Gradually, it occurred to me what had happened. I had missed my starting point completely and landed instead in a similar field across the road from the first. Fortunately, it was free of trees or the outcome might have been much worse. The rocks were a lot bigger, though.

I spent the rest of the night walking back, since running in the dark now seemed rather foolish. It took a couple of hours and by the time I got there I realized two things. First, I was absolutely starving, which wasn’t all that surprising. Second, I no longer felt as strong as I had before. So of course I went to my car and lifted the front end into the air, but it seemed to take more effort. The effect of the pills had started wearing off.

The refrigerator was empty, since I never really ate at my dad’s house, but he had cans and boxes of various things. So I mixed several of them together and ended up eating three or four times as much food as I think I have ever eaten.

By then it was well after midnight, so I decided to spend the night there, instead of driving back to my apartment. As I started getting ready for bed, I noticed myself in the mirror and saw the blood stains on my shirt, over the wounded shoulder that I had completely forgotten about.

The shirt was ruined, so I took it off and threw it away, but as I looked at my shoulder, I saw nothing but shoulder. There was no wound, no scar, nothing at all to indicate that anything had been wrong.

Which was way cool.

And with that, I laid down in bed and slept for twelve hours.