Story originally written as a response at r/WritingPrompts (u/PrimitivePrism)
Prompt:
Everyone is born with a number over their head that shows your chances of dying. For most people it hovers at a certain number for the most of their lives, and the older you get the higher the number goes. One day you wake up and see your number has gone to zero.
Response:
I swiped at the fog on the mirror in disbelief, trying to get a full view of the air above my head, feeling a chill creep down my spine. This was unnatural, nothing I’d ever seen or heard of.
The 0 hovered there clearly, unmistakable, nothing before it and nothing after it. I moved around the bathroom to examine myself from different angles, and checked myself in the front camera of my phone, just to make sure.
I called Temir, even though I knew he’d just be getting out of bed.
“Dude, what is it?” he answered blearily from the other end.
“My number is zero,” I almost shouted.
“What?”
“I just woke up and it’s zero! I’m not joking.”
“That can’t be possible. Let me turn on video just quick.”
His unshaved face appeared on the screen, and I saw his tired eyes go wide as I held the phone at arm’s length so he could get a good look.
“Holy shit,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “No way.”
On the screen I could only see the bottom half of his number, but it was enough to show me that it remained at 17–pretty much the average for those in their mid-thirties like us.
I was lost in thought already on what this could mean for me, when Temir spoke again, pretty much speaking what was on my mind.
“Does this mean…you can’t die? Not a chance? I thought there were no absolutes. Even perfectly healthy children held under observation in labs hover between 2-3…”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t seem, y’know, fair…”
I detected something in Temir’s voice that made me profoundly uncomfortable, and in a way it chilled me as much as the abnormality above my head: jealousy.
“Why should you get that?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
I was silent for a moment, lost for words. “Can I call you back later? I’ve gotta, uh, get ready and everything. For work.”
“Yeah, man, yeah. Go for it.” Temir’s face was strangely sullen, conflicted looking.
We hung up.
I couldn’t just call up work and say I’d woken with a zero and therefore wouldn’t be coming in. On what grounds? It could be gone by tomorrow, or the end of the day, or even in an hour. It could be a cosmic glitch, if that made any sense.
But the staring began the moment I left the house, making for the train on foot.
The grandmotherly old woman who ran a newspaper and tabloid stall near the entrance to the underground, chatting with a customer, stopped immediately when she spotted me. Both she and the middle-aged man’s mouths cracked open in confusion. 134 and 57 hung over their respective heads.
They looked back to each other and then to me again. The man spoke first, seeming to want to leap into my path on the sidewalk and grab me.
“Hey, how’d you get that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not right. That’s impossible. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
I kept going, wanting desperately to be off the street now.
“What did you do?” asked the old woman behind me, her voice shrill. “What did he do!” she cried, louder, trying to attract more attention from others on the street.
Muffled conversation and even sounds of alarm broke out behind me, at first a trickle and then a storm.
I stepped onto the escalator, and as I hurried down it at a quick pace, passing those who rode it stationary, I realized that the underground, compact as it was, would be much worse than the street. Everyone I passed–those on the way down with me, and those coming up the other way on the adjacent escalator, were gasping as they took notice of me, calling other people’s attention to the zero.
Down the hall at the bottom of the escalator I strode at the fastest walk I could manage without running, fumbling my pass out of my wallet. I pressed the card to the sensor at the gate and slipped through quickly as the barriers swung open. There was now a chorus of voices around me, a sea of staring faces, and I finally looked back to see a crowd following me, piling through the gates as fast as they could open them.
The faces of the crowd were frightening. There were no smiles. Instead there were looks of suspicion, and where there was no suspicion there was a mix of strange desperation, like one sees in the eyes of wild animals. Finally–and worst of all, it seemed–were faces that matched the voice of Temir on the phone that morning: ones contorted with sheer jealousy, as though I were bearing immortality in a bag that could be swiped from my arms.
There were roars from the crowd for me to stop by the time I reached the platform, alerting all others waiting for the train.
One group of men walked quickly toward me, eyeing me predatorily. They looked somewhat malnourished, pale, with unkept hair. There was aggressiveness and secrecy in their stride.
“Looky here, wassis now?” one said, stumps of teeth visible beneath a ratty mustache. “Never seen a zero before. Any you boys seen such a thing?”
“Nuh uh.”
I hadn’t looked at their numbers at first, more aware of their posturing. Now I could see that they were dangerously high, especially for men that couldn’t be more than 45 years old: 128, 146, 151.
“You got some trick for us, Superman?”
“Yeah, what the fuck!” The voice came from somewhere in the arriving crowd. In fact, this was a mob.
“Dude, believe me, I woke up like this and don’t know what’s going on. It’s probably just a glitch.”
Stump-tooth’s mouth pulled into a mean-spirited grin, his beady eyes remaining frozen on mind. Fox eyes. Snake eyes.
“A fuckin’ glitch he says! Like we’re in the, uh, the matrix or sumthin. Like a fuckin’ movie.”
Suddenly the other two leapt to my side, grabbing my arms forcefully and locking them behind my back.
“Now Hollywood, you tell us where you got this zero from, so I don’t need to cut the truth outta ya.”
A knife appeared from beneath his jacket.
Rather than come to my rescue, the crowd roared with him in agreement.
“Out with it, you little shit!”
“I said I don’t know!” I tried to holler, but my voice was small and frightened in my ears. I struggled against the men holding my arms. “Let me go! Let me GO!”
“All right, Superman. Hollywood.” Stump-tooth’s face formed an ugly, cruel rictus.
Dimly, I was aware of the sound of the approaching train.
“Show us how this zero here works then, why doncha?”
Laughing, he punched me hard in the stomach, and as I folded, winded, his thugs threw me off the platform into the tracks. At last, cries of outrage and horror erupted from the crowd, but it was too late.
I looked up as the lights of the subway bore down on me. There was no time to get my feet under me and scramble to the shelter at the side of the tracks.
I raised my hand, as though it could protect my body from destruction, and even as a scream tore out of my lungs, I heard Stump-tooth announce, almost as though he was carrying out an experiment, “Still zero.”
It was like the train hit an invisible wall. The screech and tearing of metal was deafening as the entire thing crumpled like an accordion, its small windshield and yellow headlights bursting and peppering me with shards of glass.
The blood had not even begun to seep from my superficial lacerations as I stood. Screams of horror erupted from a hundred throats, with just as many pairs of eyes bulging in horror at both me and mangled train.
And even if they could not comprehend me, I knew who I was in that moment.
I was invincible. I was Zero.
