What Is A Superhero?

What is a superhero?

It is a title given for those having the superpower and using it to represent hope, opportunity, and strength for everybody.

Because when you only have a superpower without the right attitude, you are not a superhero.

You are just someone with a superpower.

---

I was nine years old when I realized that I have a superpower.

When I was five, I walked near a TV, then the screen turned blurry and then blacks out completely. Since then, my Mom blocked my way near the new TV in the house.

When I was seven, I touched a light bulb, and the electrical wire zapped. It could never turn on anymore. Since then, my Dad banned me from helping him to change the light bulb.

When I was nine, I found a random electrical wire at the backyard, and all the electricity got absorbed into my body. Since then, both of my parents agreed to send me out to the prison where I am currently living.

---

“Five,” the sound from the back of the door called me. “It’s your turn.”

Following that call for my presence, the door is wide open. From inside the blanket, I can see a woman walking towards me.

“Let’s go, Five,” standing in front of me, the woman put her hands unto the pocket of her white coat.

I tighten my grasp into the blanket. “I don’t want to go.”

The woman frowns. Her face looks agitated by my rejection. With her big green eyes, she brings her face closer and glares intensely right at my eyes. “Let’s go, right now.”

“I don’t want to! It hurts!” I yelled at her. I quickly pull my blanket, hiding my face away from this ruthless woman in front of me. The woman clicks her tongue in annoyance. I can imagine her facial expression turns even worse by the second. 

She tries to jerk off my blanket, tries to get me out of the tiny, dark room where she keeps me the past couple of months. However, I hold on to that piece of fabric as if my life depends on it. 

Why? Because I’d rather stay in this stinky hole forever than to follow her. 

Because even if I am not allowed to do anything as I please, cannot go anywhere else, no longer eat tasty food on the outside world, I know I can stay alive if I stay inside this fully-guarded, concrete-walled room.

Because when I am inside those white room that she calls her office, she will force me to do all those dangerous things that may end up costing my own life.

---

When she realizes that she has no strength to bring me over by herself, she walks out of the room, still clicking her tongue in annoyance.

When the sound of her steps fades away, I uncover my head out of the blanket. I turn my head around, clarifying that the evil is no longer in my room, and let a sigh out of relief as I relax my grip on the blanket. I lie down comfortably, thinking that I have successfully dodged a bullet.

But that feeling does not last long.

The woman comes back, with two muscular guys in black uniform who are pinning me down. 

I gather all my strength, desperately trying to break free from the two guys on top of me. 

Yet my effort is meaningless. The physical strength of a nine-year-old kid falls way below those trained guys.

From the opened door, I can see the woman gradually getting close to me. And when she reaches the side of my bed, I can see a needle on her hand. 

That second, I can see her scariest grin before all goes black.

---

The next moment, I find myself chained to a large wooden chair. I can move neither my hands nor my legs. I cannot even move my neck to observe the situation, but I know I am inside the so-called office. 

“Let’s begin with the smallest voltage first,” I can hear a sound from my right-hand side, a man’s voice. Using the corner of my eyes, I glance at the owner of the voice, who is standing behind a glass wall, beside the damned woman who dragged me down here.

“Experiment five, o, one begins in 3, 2, 1,” the woman clicked a button on her hands. A series of electric shock runs down from my head and goes all over my body, taking me by shock for a second.

And off it goes, all inside my body. I wince from the tingling sparks on my fingertips.

“Success. Moving on to experiment five, o, two.” 

More electric spark coming through, but this time, stronger.

And I can feel the electricity gradually creeping inside, into my internal organs, and slowly disrupting my nerves.

I scream out of pain, right before all the sparks get its way inside of me.

“Two hundred volts, success. Begin experiment five, o, three.” 

I struggle to catch my breath, yet another set of electricity strikes again.

“It…, it hurts. Please stop!” I yell in between my breath, begging to those people behind the glass wall.

But the electricity continues to run.

“P-please, please stop it!” I screamed out. 

I know my body cannot intake any more electricity. 

I know I have exceeded my capacity. 

I know that if this continues, those sparks will soon hit my brain and kills me off.

Yet, the two stood still, kept watching me behind the glass wall, with an amused expression on their face.

I try to withstand the incoming pain for as long as I can remember. I scream, again and again. I beg for their mercy to let me live, again and again. 

But, it is more than I can handle. I give up; I let the electricity cuts my brain off.

---

The two muscular guys unlocked the chains on Five’s limbs, taking the lifeless boy away from the electrocution chair.

“Ah, seems like a failure,” the woman said, watching through the glass.

“Oh well, every cloud has a silver lining. At least, now we know that the kid can only absorb the maximum of 500 volts,” the man said.

A grin shows up on the woman’s face. “Let’s replace the kid with sample number six and test that hypothesis.”

---

What is a superhero?

It is a title given for those having the superpower and using it to represent hope, opportunity, and strength for everybody.

Because when you only have a superpower without the right attitude, you are not a superhero.

You become a guinea pig, a test subject for those mad scientists.