text: “It appears you’ve been exposed to excessive X-ray radiation. I’ve seen this before in radiologists who maybe put in too many hours.” The next words out of my brother’s mouth just sounded like an ancient dialect of gibberish reciting haikus using only the word “blah”. This was common during moments I needed to protect myself from harsh truths. Usually in the form of “I told ya so” or “Hindsight is 20/20”. It always happens when it concerns my powers. My x-ray vision, which saved so many people over the last few decades, decided to give me cancer. Why couldn’t my x-ray vision see that coming? Maybe I had “blah blah” mode on too long. It’s only a matter of time before I find out my telepathy caused a tiny hike in my phone bill. I used to be able to mold my body at will like putty, slip through a crack in a brick wall and return to form almost effortlessly. Saved a lot of people, including myself, especially in a fight. Then, one day, shortly before a “blah blah” soliloquy by my physician and powerless sidekick brother, I woke up as a deflated blob of putty, unable to return to my regular form. It took me 10 days to de-putty and I could never will myself into any shape other than myself again. That power went almost as quickly as it came. And all I had to remember it were a few local tabloid clippings and a 12-pill/day regimen of arthritis meds that do more harm than good. I know I haven’t woken up as a blob since I started taking them, but they haven’t done shit for my cracking bones. Not to mention I’ve now pissed every color of the rainbow. I’ve heard my brother say once that the cracking sound bones make is gas being released. Could this be true?? I rarely think of the day I got my powers. I was just a boy on a ninth grade field trip to a military research facility who got too close to a room that a lot of people should have never let me near. I remember walking and then a BOOM and then a ringing that was so loud I could almost taste it. All to sneak a cigarette, too. Next thing I knew, I had eye twitches which the doc called involuntary nystagmus. What he didn’t know was that each time my eyes twitched, I could see through walls or skin.. or both.. or neither. Took me a while to control it but, once I did, I instantly knew purpose. Never questioned it. Now I’m wishing I had. No one gives a fuck about me saving them. If they did, someone would’ve come around to save me from these awful side effects. “Blah blah blah blah so take 1 of these, twice a day, morning and night to prevent further metastasis,” my brother said. I popped two, half caring, half pretending. “But until you get treatment, you need a break from work. Maybe it’s time you retired. Blah blah blah sometimes cause auditory and visual hallucinations blah blah blah.” I clicked my eyes a few times to make sure they still worked the way I needed them to. With my brother thinking I’m on a hiatus, I could enjoy myself at work, the way it did when I had purpose. Brotherlessly. Sidekicklessly. I decided to take the stairs down from his 5th floor office. I needed the exercise and maybe I’d release enough gas from my bones on the way down that I’d be magically cured of arthritis. By the third and a halfth floor, I regretted my decision to take the stairs but also saw behind a few layers of concrete and sheetrock that my purpose was about to be reinstated. Two goons trying to rough up a doctor and a nurse in a third floor office. It was time for me to act. Nothing gave me more pure joy than smashing in the faces of those who deserve it most. I quickly put on my mask and casually opened the office door. It took me less than ten seconds to find those goons and snap their necks like twigs. I could see the nurse was almost as aroused by my saving her as I was but I, for the sake of mystery and ego preservation, resisted the urge to exchange even a simple “Can I call you sometime?” Besides, a few twitches of my eyes discovered her name, number and address, conveniently found on the inside of her purse beneath the words “If Found, Please Contact:” I left and quickly finished the remaining 3 floors by taking the one working elevator. God, it was slow as shit. The door opened at Lobby and I discovered four police officers had already arrived. “Third floor,” I said, still wearing my mask, and to no particular officer. Before I could make it to the entrance, I felt something I’d never felt before. Cuffs. On my wrists. The nurse from the third floor had made it down to the lobby. “That’s the man!” she cried, half yelling angrily and half inconsolably weeping. “He killed a mother and her 10 year old son. Broke both of their necks.” I’d never been so confused in my life until I skimmed as quickly as I could through pages of “blahs” which came out of my brother’s mouth, while he discussed something about hallucinations caused by my cancer pills. All it took was this remembering to realize what I’d actually done. There were no goons. I broke the necks of a mother and her son inside a pediatrician’s office. I thought of how odd it was that I no longer hallucinated the memory of my hallucination. It’ll be okay, I told myself. My brother will get me out of this. I passed out. When I awoke, I lied on a stiff bed behind some very expensive looking bars, with my brother reciting the “Unabridged Encyclopedia of Blah” on the other side of them, telling me he told me so. In the next cell, the same two goons from the third floor of my brother’s building bullied an inmate. And there was nothing I could do but hear the words “blah” and the sound of gas cracking from my newly retired bones.