All Dressed in White (AC)

I was going to post a copy of a letter I received in the mail yesterday, written on heavy parchment with splattered ink, in my father’s careless hand. It is a fascinating read, and should help me a great deal. There is advice in abundance: something he could always be counted on to give. There are warnings as well—apparently there is a good number of my kind born every generation, but most perish while playing with their skills. The body is such a fragile thing.

I think you would be greatly interested in seeing this letter, but I have not fully digested it myself, and will show it at another time. Right now, I can think of nothing more than my own agony.

I have come to the conclusion that I am incredibly lucky that I had my breakthrough on soft dirt. Every muscle in my body feels torn. It hurts to move. It hurts to breath. I’d rather die than sneeze, and I spent a day and a half in bed, moving twice to roll over and pee in a bucket.

I awoke Wednesday beneath the naked brilliance of a noonday sun. I’d slept on my arm, and my fingers were tingling—a suddenly minor sensation compared to the shrieking protest of every muscle fiber from neck to toe as I tried to adjust myself.

I managed to fish my cell phone from my pocket. I pressed the appropriate button and croaked the name, and the machine beeped quizzically in reply. I had food and water in my duffel bag.

My duffel bag had been hanging on my shoulder when I decided to start running. It had been on my shoulder when I froze. And I could see my duffel bag from where I lay, crumpled like a broken body at the spot where the rent in the soil began. I winced and glanced down at my shoulder, my neck complaining stiffly at the minute change in degree. My shirt was shredded at the shoulder, the skin beneath bruised and bloody, as though I’d been hit by a baseball bat wrapped in carpet. I must have snapped the strap, I remember thinking. Another moment of dazed immobility passed before I started to wonder what kind of jolly havoc that bag’s mass had done to my spine.

Dirt, as I mentioned before, probably saved my life. If I had run on concrete, if I had touched anything more solid than the fertile farmland, I’d probably be suffering from shattered bones, ruined joints, and possibly a mild case of death.

As it was, I managed to call Jin and relay my general whereabouts, which was difficult, because he could barely understand me, and I almost never know where I am anyway.

I lay still, sweating and gasping shallowly until he arrived and recovered me. I blacked out again when he lifted me from the ground. My bones felt searing hot and loose, hanging by abused ropes from each other, lolling and falling like a tangled marionette.

“Holy shit,” he said as he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the piles of earth my feet had displaced.

I’ll have to be extremely careful about my movements. I have not tried to use the ability again. I have not been able to conjure the will to do more than pull my keyboard over to my bed and tap out the post you are reading. I am in jabbering, senseless pain. I’m not even sure if what I’ve written makes sense. One hopes for the best. Jin and his girlfriend Kathy (with whom I live) seem to be hoping for the best. I awoke on my bed in clean clothes, the mud and sweat gone, and a bandage tidily affixed to my shoulder. My mouth tasted of Gatorade, and some of my strength had returned, though little of the pain abated. I recall groaning my way across my bed to write this, a token post that cost more effort that you, my dear reader, probably realized.

“You told me not to take you to the hospital,” he said when I awoke. “What happened?”

It turns out he doesn’t read my blog.

“Did I break anything?” I asked, suddenly imagining my Achilles tendon torn, or my clavicle shattered.

“From the way your clothes were shredded,” he said stone faced, “you probably broke the sound barrier.”