Chapter 0:

Prologue

I'm Invulnerable! (But Nobody Believes Me...)


People have often said I get lost in my own world sometimes. Music, Math, Art, and Science. So many different fields appealed to me. I think what appealed to me the most about them was how they each intertwined with each other. Music is just a mathematical equation of different sound vibration frequencies. Science is what used Math to discover that doubling the frequency of a musical note is what makes it go up an octave. Music is just one of many forms of Art. Art is how some people express their view of the world in an abstract way to evoke emotions. Science quantifies that view of the world so others can more easily understand it. I think what I was most enamored with wasn’t any individual topic but how they each came together to form something beautiful. That beauty being the world we live in.

Unfortunately, I’d always felt like other people didn’t see the world the same way I did. Be it all the negativity on social media platforms or generally treating other people with indifference or hostility, I just wasn’t interested in interacting with other people. Looking back, that was probably just continuing the cycle of people not trying to understand one another. If I had a chance to go back and change I would. I believed the world was a wonderful place and I really wanted to share that. Making a greater effort to understand others and help them understand me would have led to a much easier life: it’s easy to look back and think that when that very attitude led to the end of mine.

I was walking home from college that day with my headphones on listening to music. I lived in an urban area so there were skyscrapers everywhere you looked. I generally wore the headphones to stop people from trying to talk to me just as much as I enjoyed listening to music. It was hard for me to split attention between music and my surroundings so I would usually pause the music when I got to intersections for safety but as I continued walking down the sidewalk I noticed there was a crowd a distance in front of me. I kind of wanted to avoid them but they took up the whole sidewalk. I decided to turn up my music and avoid looking up because I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. Talking to people was so much trouble.

As I got closer to the crowd I knew I had a decision to make. Go around them or push through. I didn’t want to go around because that would put me on the road and I was incredibly wary of cars. So as much as I didn’t like crowds I just decided to push through. As I pushed through I noticed that they all seemed to be distracted by something. I was curious what it was but the claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by so many people had me wanting to get through the crowd as fast as possible. That was when it happened.

Suddenly, the crowd all backed away from me. At that moment, I panicked. I thought I had done something wrong and nervously looked up afraid to meet everyone’s accusatory gazes. When I looked up though, I saw something strange. None of them were looking at me. Instead their gazes were fixed upwards. What are they all looking at? I slowly turned my gaze upwards tracing the path of their eyes. As I did that, it all happened so fast.

“Look out!” I heard someone yell over the sound of my music.

I saw a window cleaning platform dozens of stories high tilted over with a man dangling from it.

I saw him lose his grip.

I saw him fall.

I saw him plummeting towards me.

The last thing I saw was the look of terror on his face as he landed on me.