Finn walked out the rusting weather door, its hinges barely grasping the frame, to see his father working inside the stomach of a truck. His father’s eyes met his own, and a mutual silence fell over them. Finn broke away from the stare, shifting his head back to his home, only to be met with his mothers equally disapproving trance through the living room window. Finn wanted to play the role of a stereotypical son. Unfortunately superpowers did not fit the description. He was thinking about this recurring scene from his childhood when his thoughts were interrupted.
“She is going to die” He thought to himself as his lungs strained for oxygen in the thin air. He lifted his arms to protect his eyes from the minuscule droplets of frozen water. Flying through clouds turned his stomach into a cage bursting with birds who longed to be free, scared that he had lost the world forever. He was pushing through the cold, wet, grey encasing of water vapor, when his empty eyes fell on a woman. She was mediocre. Nothing special. Average. But he found pleasure in the way the average liked him. He enjoyed feeling special. So as he scrutinized her actions, as she tumbled out the seventh story window of a high rise apartment building near the center of New York, he wasn't looking out for the greater good, but looking for a new way to fill the hole inside of him that longed for appreciation.
She wanted to end it all. The pain she felt each time she looked into the beautiful eyes of children she could no longer touch except through the shiny plastic of old photographs. She lived with a sole purpose, and it had been ripped from her life; like ripping a piece of paper. She gently tugged at the window frame, popping the screen out of place. She climbed out onto the window sill and without a second thought she was falling towards the earth. She began tumbling out of control just as her life had. Her eyes fluttered closed for the last time with accepted finality. Her torn jeans and worn out t-shirt hugging her body; arms naturally spread like a bird. The landing was softer than she had expected, less satisfactory in a sense. She was expecting to feel the weight of the world one last time. She opened her eyes ready to embrace the eternal secrets of life after death. But there wasn't a bright light or endless darkness. She wasn't greeted into a new world by angels or demons, but instead when her eyes opened she was staring into the face of a youthful man. He had a sly smile straight out of a Colgate commercial, and soft sanguine eyes. His angelically chiseled features gleaming with pride.
He glanced down at the face of the woman he had saved from imminent death. If only he had known that was what she wanted. Tears streaked makeup across her blotchy face. He took her sobs as a sign of gratitude and smiled with vanity. Another cork to fill the hole that was only growing.  Her eyes weren't filled with gratitude like the countless others he had saved, but glowering with anger and resentment.
"Hello, I'm Finn. I didn't want you to get hurt, that was a long fall”
The colloquy took place with the woman in Finn’s arms, both of them levitating about five feet off of the ground. The woman questioned simply, “Who are you?”
“Um...Finn. Unless you're asking why I’m flying. In that case I could be considered a superhero.”
“Oh” she mumbled, with all of the lackluster you could fit into one syllable. With this last jab of negativity Finn dropped to the ground.
She observed the world around her as if it were foreign even though she had lived in the same apartment for years. Suddenly, she turned and began furiously running, each step propelling her forward to an unknown destination.  She was pushing through the crowded sidewalk when an elementary boy that was portraying a false look of maturity appeared in the middle of the road. Then a young girl with warm chocolaty hair and fear in her eyes slid out from behind a visibly stressed man in a suit and tie. The children were holding hands. In her crazed state of mind the two children on the street were her own children. She waved her arms like they were on fire. Wailing, “Nick! Avery!”, between sobs. The children stopped in the middle of the road, eyes in transfixion. But they weren't locked with hers, but the oncoming delivery tuck. The woman ran toward the children, plowing through the meandering afternoon rush. Her arms extended into the children’s chests’ pushing them backward with the power of an explosion. As the white truck collided with the side of her rib cage the realization washed over her like waterfall that super heroes couldn't save her from an ultimate destiny. With this her kids faces morphed into strangers.
For the first few blocks, Finn tried to run behind her, assuming it was his powers that scared the woman away. And it was easier to accept than questioning why she was running. Falling behind, he rose off of the ground in hopes of reassuring the woman. But as he flew past a thick skyscraper a scene played out he hadn't expected. There was a crowd of people around a body. As Finn lowered to the ground he saw that the woman wasn't in the crowd. She was dead. Inside of him the hole finally sewed itself shut, but it wasn't  joyous, it was   excruciating. He was looking for admiration to act as a cork, but what sealed the gap was the pain failure brought him. The gap was filled when he no longer looked for a way to fill it.