Touch of Death

Her soft brown eyes searched mine as I looked down and saw the newborn writhing in her cot. She wasn’t kept with the other babies, she was isolated. Hidden away from prying eyes and wandering hands. Nothing but the rhythmic beeping of the hospital monitors to lull her to sleep. She didn’t cry when she saw me, she remembered me. Though I knew who she was I couldn’t place her sweet innocence. As if I was staring into a mirror, not recognising the reflection. Nothing can be compared to the softness of a baby’s skin, yet there was no comfort in the poison of hers.

I was born a murderer. My mother died during my delivery along with my father and every doctor who held me in that theatre. When I was older, I was told my mother had a rare disease. They thought that I was leeching her blood in the womb, a severe foetal anaemia of some sort. She necrosed slowly from the inside out as I grew inside her, a bad seed. The condition was diagnosed well before my birth, so they never expected her to survive the delivery. It was the doctors and my father dying, that confused them. They concluded that this new rare sickness did not solely affect expectant mothers but was rather a contagious one spread by direct contact with one of the infected. No further research was conducted as this would have involved analysing me, an exposure no one was willing to take, too high of a risk. I was, for all intents and purposes, the only known survivor of this disease; supposedly due to my youth and adaptable immune system. In their defence, they were along the right tracks, it was the skin to skin contact that nailed those coffins. What they didn’t realise was the sickness was me. I was sent to isolation. No one thought to name me. I was just a hospital number until a nurse began referring to me as Ceadis. Murder in Latin. They should have killed me right there, for the greater good. Sacrifice one life to save the many. But killing a newborn, no one would have deemed that ethical.

Powers are thought to be a gift for chosen ones. To better their lives and those around them. But when I was younger it didn’t seem to be a blessing. In all honesty, it didn’t seem like a curse either. All I knew about life was death and I hadn’t learnt to associate it with sadness. That was the beauty of isolation. From the outside it may have seemed heartless and cruel, keeping a child locked away, no contact, but it was quite the opposite. It kept the tragedy of my birth unbeknown to me alongside the societal connections of death being bad. Being kept from the world meant I didn’t make associations between my actions and emotions like happiness and sadness. I just existed and hence surprisingly had a happy childhood; ignorance is bliss after all. I had assumed all children lived this way, to be frank, I didn’t even know of other children’s existence. When I was 16, no longer legally a child, I was freed from my isolation. It was then I understood what happened in that operating theatre many moons ago.

I said goodbye to the nurse who mothered me, the lady who never let me experience loneliness. As I did, I felt sadness for the first time. Not from being torn apart, but instead from seeing her eyes dull and limbs limp from an innate hug. The only mother I’d ever known dying from an act of love. I felt afraid, fearful of who I was and what I could do. If this was the price I would have to pay for my freedom, then I wanted to be sent back to the chains of imprisonment. But that was no longer possible. So, I ran. Ran from the hospital I once called home, ran from the scene of my crimes, ran from the only thing I knew. No one stopped me. No one wanted to touch death.

After my first memorable murder, the grief led me to research more about powers. Literature said there was no known cause of powers, but affirmed they were overwhelmingly good. Experimental studies into the origin of power showed they came to people in times of need or to people in positions to help others, like a doctor given powers of healing. In hindsight, I guess I was what you’d call an anomaly. My research pushed me to considering using my lethal skin for good, but I struggled to understand where death fell in the balance of good and evil. Lacking certainty as to when the use of my power was justified meant many deceased in collateral damage throughout my years as a vigilante. I was foolish to think a teenage girl could hold the scales of justice steady, and soon grasped that I was a danger to society rather than an asset. I took to wandering the earth alone, taking precautions. If I couldn’t be a part of society, I instead would be an observer. A passenger on a train looking through the glass at the world around me. Watching but never touching. I tried to live an ordinary life, one where my power didn’t control me, but I learnt that I would never have complete control of it. Even on the side lines, a hand accidentally grazing mine soon went stiff and child running into the road would still lie cold if I tried to save them. Everything was black and white in this new world outside the hospital, if I wasn’t good, I was evil. It wasn’t long before I learnt my final lesson in the new world. I could never truly exist as an outsider until I was on the other side of the glass looking in. Once I learnt that, everything became clear. My only redemption was ironically, my greatest flaw.  

So now I stand here watching the baby girl with no name sleep peacefully in her cot. Unknowing of the damage she’d done and the lives she took. You must be wondering how I got here, well, I had help from a friend. Now you must be wondering where along my journey I made friends, truth be told, I didn’t have many. I’d met her whilst researching powers, she was unique. A girl gifted with the power of time travel. She embodied the true reason behind powers, her powers helped her to stop atrocities and help the world learn from its mistakes. I approached her once I made my plan, and she agreed to help me right the wrong I brought into this world. So here I stand. Focusing my attention back to the child, I watched her as I slowly I slipped my fingers out of the gloves that had become my second skin. She opened her eyes and smiled. She remembered me. Young Ceadis with an old soul, knowing that this was how it should end, this was her escaped fate from many suns over. The greater good. In knowing this, with my bare hands I picked her up, my power finally tipping the scales to good.