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Accelerate
© 2016 By Robert Wurth
When I was 8 years old I nearly died.
The reason was because my bedroom door was locked.
It was probably my brother, Charles, who locked it. He was always harassing me like that. Playing pranks or just being the kind of jerk only an older brother can be.
He probably locked it after I went downstairs that morning to leave for school. Mom and dad would think it was my fault. That I did it by being careless and I’d probably get grounded or something.
I stood there in front of the closed door, pissed off and imagining my brother in his own room laughing his damn head off. I just wanted to get in my room. I didn’t want to get in trouble. I wanted to punch Charles in the nose.
But mostly I just wanted in my room.
And then I was.
Somehow I went right through the door. It was like in the movies when someone can turn into a ghost to go through a wall or something.
Only I didn’t exactly turn into a ghost.
Only somehow my right leg didn’t quite make it.
It didn’t hurt. You’d think it would, but it didn’t. I was laying on the floor, naked and surprised and staring at the space where my leg should have been with mild curiosity. When the blood started gushing, though, that’s when I screamed.
The screaming is what saved my life.
My brother and mother rushed to the door and pounded on it. I couldn’t talk I was so freaked out. All I could do was keep shrieking. Blood ran under the door into the hall and they started freaking out, too.
There was a loud thud, then a splintering sound, and the doorframe cracked and splintered as the door swung open. Mom rushed in, took one look and yelled at Charles to call 911. I guess what they say about a mother’s strength was true.
Mom grabbed the blanket off my bed and scrambled to stop the bleeding. She made soothing noises at me, but I could see her entire body shaking with fear.
While Charles spoke into the phone, delivering our address to the operator, his eyes locked onto mine. He looked scared, too, but somehow I could tell that it wasn’t fear of the blood, or that I might die.
It was fear of me.
It was like he knew what I had done. I wasn’t even sure what I had done, but it was like he knew.
That was the moment that everything changed.
My right leg was gone from about midway down my thigh. The rest of the leg couldn’t be saved. In fact, it couldn’t even be found. The paramedics, and later the police, searched my room and then the rest of the house, but turned up nothing. I somehow instinctively knew that they would never find it. It was gone in a way that I lacked the capacity to explain. Just like the clothes I had been wearing before I went through the door.
The next several weeks were hazy. I spent them in the hospital, undergoing surgeries and other procedures to close up the amputation. I existed in a state of semi-consciousness from the pain killers. I remember snippets of comments from the doctors. They couldn’t explain the loss of my leg any more than anyone else. Years later, when I read my medical reports, I learned that what they were most confused about was the complete lack of trauma. None of the tissue or bone was damaged. There were absolutely no signs at all that my leg had been cut off. That’s because it hadn’t been, but they didn’t know that.
While I was in the middle of recovering, our family was going through a crisis greater than just the loss of my leg. The police were investigating my parents. Social Services had stepped in and began legal proceedings to make Charles and I wards of the state. No one accepted the notion that my leg just vanished, because it was impossible. It had to be some kind of child abuse. The police really wanted to charge my parents with a crime. You can’t just have a kid lose a leg without some kind of explanation or accountability. Yet the only evidence was a stump where my right leg used to be.
I knew my parents didn’t do anything. I was responsible for the loss of my leg. Me. But I couldn’t tell anyone that. Who would take the word of an 8 year old kid laying in a hospital bed trying to cope with the loss of a limb?
My entire life was falling apart and all because of one simple fact that I was slowly coming to terms with.
I’m different.
And that moment when I passed through a solid door was the moment I discovered just how different. I was scared at first. Terrified, really. Eventually, though, I’d learn to embrace just how different I am. And get better at it, too.
Eventually I decided to call it “accelerating” myself. I don’t know if that’s the most scientifically accurate way to put it. Then again, I’m not sure science really applies.
The most basic way I can explain it is that I can willfully manipulate my body on a molecular level. By concentrating hard enough, I can cause all of my molecules to accelerate, or vibrate, or something. With a bit more concentration, I can make my molecules “phase” through other groups of molecules, allowing me to pass through solid objects like doors and walls. I also learned to extend my ability, to a limited extent, to other objects that I’m touching. This is how I can now accelerate my artificial leg, or, conveniently, my clothing. Something I couldn’t do back on that day when I was 8.
When I was 20, I learned to control the acceleration to such a degree that I gained the ability to fly. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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